#I own the UK and Australia VHS's

[eighthwholove]

Doctor Who (1996) + VHS & DVD covers, variations.

Featuring Australia's M rated cover, and the very rare US VHS.

I included Finland's release of the VHS, for apparently (according to The TARDIS Library), it translates to "1999: Destruction of Earth." And I found that quite interesting!

Bonus: The Chinese Laserdisc, Japanese VHS, & Czech Republic VHS:

Sidenote: The Czech Republic & French VHS both translate to: The Lord of Time. How intriguing!

[feetoffire]

showjumping individual qualifiers here we go:

Israel: Isabella Russekoff on C Vier 2. Micklem (or adjacent) bridle. pretty lighter bay. he spooks (or ‘spooks’) shortly after the final fence. 

Canada: Mario Deslauriers on Emerson. that turn to the ‘bonjour paris’ wall is Tight. in time, only one rail down. Deslauriers has been doing this forever so that really doesn’t surprise me. double reins on an elevator or pelham bit. 

Lithuania: Andrius Petrovas on Linkolns. Linkolns decided something about that jump or the course was not worth it and Petrovas retired. good for him!

Mexico: Andres Azcarraga on Contrendros 2. dropped a stride before the water and still cleared it - horses like that are the best. first double clear round! and an extra little buck. 

Sweden: Henrik von Eckermann on King Edward. Oh that’s right he goes in a nose fly net thing. King Edward is Going today - “jumping out of his skin” yeah you’re right. definitely saw Eckermann grab mane. 

Spain: Ismael Garcia Roque on Tirano. drop noseband. lots and lots of air on Tirano’s part. only one rail down. 

France: Olivier Perreau on Dorai d’Aiguilly. mare! some froth i think. this girl is here to Get It Done. knocked a rail on the last fence. elevator-type bit with converter reins. 

Saudi Arabia: Abdulrahman Alrajhi on Ventago. ah a kicker. tapped a rail but went clear and in time. froth. 

Austria: Gerfried Puck on Naxcel V. okay i’m sure those fly mask things are blinkers but i can’t get a close enough look to confirm. drop noseband. much discussion from this pair - Naxcel has his own plans it seems. elevator-type bit with two sets of reins. 

Japan: Eiken Sato on Conthargo-Blue. red ribbon. Disagreements after the water and over the red vertical. drop noseband, elevator-type bit with double reins. retires on course. 

USA: Karl Cook on Caracole de la Roque. mare! one of the two mares going in a hackamore. her topline still bothers me. double clear. every time i’ve seen this mare she gets shit done. 

Netherlands: Maikel van der Vleuten on Beauville Z. came in a little wiggly to that second jump (we’ve all been there). only one rail down and a 70 second course. 

Ireland: Shane Sweetnam on James Kann Cruz. would like a better look at that bridle. they are tearing through the course in style - no rails in 73.35 seconds. 

Belgium: Jerome Guery on Quel Homme de Hus. converter reins. one rail down, four seconds under time. 

Switzerland: Edouard Schmitz on Gamin Van’t Naastveldhof. quick buck as they get going. two rails down, four seconds under. 

UK: Harry Charles on Romeo 88. always interesting to see which horse’s manes get braided for showjumping and which don't (Romeo 88 doesn’t). the double noseband situation bothers me, and also it seems like you could just use a flash. blinkers. double clear. some bucks just for funsies. 

Norway: Victoria Gulliksen on Mistral van de Vogelzang. Mistral has things to say about the rein contact - tons of head shaking between fences. froth. double clear. 

Australia: Hilary Scott on Milky Way. mare! pretty gray. i don’t think she has a throatlatch. knocked two rails - one in the double combination and one in the triple combination. 

Poland: Dawid Kubiak on Flash Blue B. shadow roll and hackmore. blinkers maybe? two rails down. 

Denmark: Andreas Schou on Napoli VH Nederassenthof. Schou’s shoulders look a little slumped as they come in - kinda odd, for how much we worry about our posture. maybe i'm seeing things. knocks a rail on the last fence. 

Germany: Christian Kukuk on Checker 47. buck. pretty dapples. two rails, i think. 

Brazil: Rodrigo Pessoa on Major Tom. i’m not going to make a built-in sponsor joke. or a Space Oddity joke. i’m not. lovely jump. double clear. i think Major Tom is the third? horse i’ve seen with his fly bonnet tied to the noseband so it won’t flap. 

UAE: Salim Ahmed al Suwaidi on Foncetti VD Heffinck. froth. Micklem adjacent bridle. lots of praise after the round. four rails down. 

Israel: Robin Muhr on Galaxy HM. two rails down. interesting how there are so many dark bays/blacks in dressage but considerably fewer in jumping. 

Canada: Erynn Ballard on Nikka VD Bisschop. mare! big bold blaze. entered the ring fairly quietly. extra little kick over the jumps. i like this pair.

[muchalucha-art]

A long time ago in a country far far away...

One of the first things I co-created, designed and directed. This is the second episode of 'Snout' for Nickelodeon Australia.

Circa 1998/99 - my first studio, Fudge Puppy. I'd also just started working with Lili Chin Those dancing elephants may be the first thing she animated for TV.

[voulezloux]

Hello hello I am here to bother you <3

What’s your comfort movie or tv series?

And what’s a quote from a book that stuck with you?

Hope you have a great day 🫶

this is gonna expose me so hard oh my GOD

my comfort tv shows have been niche one off shows that were on netflix for the longest time before being taken off and i’ve been unable to find them since 😭😭 shows like cheapest weddings that’s from australia, frisky business about a sex toy company called lovehoney from the uk, shit like that. if they were vhs tapes, i’d wear them down so bad that’s how much i watched these shows. my comfort movie is the recording of shrek the musical 😭 it’s literally one of my favorite musicals to ever be made unironically. i have a tattoo for it and i even referenced it in my big bang fic. it was on netflix for the longest time before i was taken off in the past couple years, and i legit had a bit of a panic attack before i found out i could buy it for streaming on amazon prime. i do plan to eventually get a physical copy of the musical just in case!

i could not for the life of me remember literally any quote from any book i’ve read (it’s more of the impact of the overarching story than a quote itself for me) and it’s been so long since i’ve been able to sit down and read a book (i’m very ashamed of this too) so instead i’ll recommend books ive read in the past that i loved growing up

it’s kind of a funny story - ned vizzini

the giver - lois lowry

copper sun - sharon m. draper

endangered - eliot schrefer

flowers for algernon - daniel keyes

number the stars - lois lowry

the outsiders - s. e. hinton

paper towns - john green

the giver is honestly my all time favorite book and i fucking despise the movie adaptation of it (sorry meryl streep) i once annotated and lent my copy of it to my high school boyfriend who then broke up with me a month later and never gave it back so get fucked [redacted]

a lot of these books i read as apart of english courses throughout school, save for it’s kind of a funny story and paper towns. there’s something that john green said in a vlogbrothers video about paper towns that i cannot for the life of me find. i found a scathing review from 2012 about it’s kind of a funny story where they put a 2012 mindset on a book published in 2006. im not say that it makes up for what they said was bad about the book, but it lends itself to why there were ignorant things written in the book. ned vizzini also wrote be more chill, which is also a musical apparently, and sadly took his own life at the end of 2013. it’s kind of a funny story is written based on his stints in psychiatric wards and it hits harder considering the circumstances around his death

copper sun i read in 8th grade and it’s a very good read. i read it so fast that i finished it before i was supposed to (nerd) and my english teacher had us do an assignment where we predicted the end of the book. i asked him what do i do since i finished the book and he told me to act like i didn’t finish the book and pretend to predict the ending. i obviously did not do that and instead gave the ending away and drew a crude stick figure depicting it

flowers for algernon fucking hurts. it’s both a book that makes you feel great and then it takes it away from you because you were feeling too great. i still recommend it bc while it hurts, the story itself is still wonderful. the outsiders is a pretty standard read for middle school kids and still a great book. we read it in 7th grade and watched the movie during the last week of school. number the stars is about the holocaust and two friends with one being jewish living in a nazi occupied town. there’s one scene that has stuck with me for years since i’ve read the book where someone is killed by firing squad by nazi soldiers (i won’t spoil who) and i can’t remember if it happened on screen in the book or im confusing it with the death by firing squad scene in the film life is beautiful (which is also about the holocaust and made my entire 8th grade english class cry) which happens off screen. endangered is about a teen girl trying to save a group for bonobos during a country’s civil war. its apart of a four part series by this author called the ap quartet

sorry to ramble but thank u for asking 🥺

[mezmer]

Items on my wishlist from cheapest to most expensive

Death Individual Thought Patterns zip up hoodie size medium

Revenge of the Sith VHS tape (this was only released in like UK and Australia so it is a rare find) as well as RoV tapes which are likely unofficial euro releases

New shoes. Mary Janes or simple brand sneakers

Bridge piercing ....

Yamaha portasound 460 keyboard (had sold my own years ago for dope and I regret doing that)

Dream Theater majesty symbol tattoo

Ermm. Let me think. It's not a huge list

Well finally. $500+ on an Oscar Jarjayes Rose of Versailles thigh piece including roses (not overbearing gratuitous roses) that will encompass my whole right thigh

Tit job????? Fix my tits???

[sevenkittensinatrenchcoat]

A Brief History of George: and Some Other Cats Who Are Not George

Is a cat a cat when it’s named that cat, or when it looks like that cat? In 40 years of productions, character designs have been recycled for characters with different names. Sometimes, it’s pretty simple to sort out as a matter of regional differences. If you see a cat boy who looks like this:

If the production is based in the UK, or in Europe or Australia more recently, his name is Bill Bailey. If the production is based in the US, or an older international production, his name is Tumblebrutus. Simple enough.

But, other cat boys are as simple as Tumble Bailey, and many of those not-as-simple cat boys revolve around the name George.

Most of the Georges in this post are not actually George. They aren’t named George. But, they look like George.

So let’s begin at the beginning with George:

So, this is the 1981 original character design for George. Despite George being a minor character, he was already named. Tumble Bailey’s design was just calleed “Kitten” and only named later, so he started out as an extra. But, George was more important earlier on, actually singing a portion of Old Deuteronomy solo. He wasn’t exactly a main character, but he was important enough to be named from the very beginning.

In 1981, when the character was first played by a human, he looked like this:

Not sure how the design became this costume tbh. The leg warmers and eye patch are familiar, but why is he blond?

Anyway, a few years of show go by and the role of George was given to Steven Wayne, who played George throughout most of the London run. When he retired, the character of George retired with him, because he was basically THE George. He’s Steven Wayne George in an adorable Christmas video from the late 80s:

George now looks more like his design. Over the next decade, slight changes would be made to the costume every now again, but George remained clearly George. He’s a pic from 1997:

Why 1997? 1997 was the year the VHS was recording, though it wouldn’t be released until 1998. For said VHS, instead of have the One George play George, he was played by Frank Thompson, who’d previously played Admetus/Macavity, as well as being a swing, which meant he could easily cover a lot of different roles.

This George can still be identified as George, but the make-up is a bit different. Stage George has a black patch that covers nearly half of his face, while VHS George has a bit of gray shading around his left eye, but nothing more. The more simplified design, combined with some sources crediting this George as Admetus, with Thompson only credited as the Rumpus Cat, makes it seem like George was almost meant to be a swing of sorts. His unitard and wig are George, and George played the Rumpus Cat in London at the time, which is enough to call this George George, but he’s sort of half George, half OC, in a sense.

After the London Production, George mainly appeared as a named swing, with few exceptions. He was in the Moscow production as full character, but that’s the only major one I can name. So, we’ll take a break from talking about George to talk about Pouncival.

Pouncival has a confusing history of character designs. In the London Production, he actually didn’t exist. He was added to the cast for the Broadway Production. His character design was apparently made by taking the “Kitten” design that the London Production had named Admetus and shading out most of the ginger and brown with silver and black.

Not very distinctive or exciting, but he was meant to be an extra. When humans started playing Pouncival, the costume ended up pretty diverse, often with yellow added in. Here’s a Broadway Pouncival:

Pounce ended up kind of blond, though that might just be the lighting. The Hamburg Production had its own character design artwork and here’s their Pouncival:

Gold, ginger, black, brown, white, Pouncival is every color! Here’s how he looked as a human in costume:

The blond parts were removed, and silver replaced some of the gold. You can see a lot of the Admetus design in the unitard, with the large brown patch and smaller ginger patches. Here’s said Admetus design for comparison:

Broadway-based productions didn’t originally use the Admetus design. The character of Plato, who did most of what Admetus did in London, had a very different design, so they could’ve literally given Pouncival the Admetus design and it wouldn’t have mattered. It seems like Hamburg was leaning in that direction.

But, all the confusion eventually got to people and the idea of “let’s just use London character designs with Broadways like Tumble Bailey but for everyone” eventually came up. However, Pouncival never had a London design. He wasn’t a renamed character like Tumble Bailey. Later on, he took over the role of a London character once the character was removed from the Broadway show.

This is where Carbuckety comes in.

Carbuckety is a character when can’t decide on how to spell. The 2003 score for the show spells it with one t so I’ve started doing the same, but tt is also common. Here’s his 1981 design:

Notice that it’s spelled with two ts here. There’s that confusion.

But, I’m not here to talk about spelling. Carbuckety is another character who was named from the start. Several character designs are only called “Kitten”, and these characters were nameless when the show debuted. Three of them remained nameless and were used for the swing characters nicknamed NBQ, AJ, and Patches by fans. The two other tom kittens were eventually named Admetus and Bill Bailey, while the remaining queen kitten design was named Electra. Another nameless kitten, later named Etcetera, was designed based off of Rumpleteazer’s chorus costume. The only kitten characters to be named from the beginning were Victoria, Jemima, and Carbuckety. Victoria and Jemima both have very clear roles in the story, while what Carbuckety does varies between productions. Normally, in productions that cut extra characters, Admetus, Bill Bailey, and Carbuckety are kept, while Electra, Etcetera, and the nameless kittens are cut. But, on occasion, Electra has been kept, and Bill Bailey cut to keep the cast count the same, though it’s now pretty common to include both. But, because he was never a nameless extra, Carbuckety is never cut. He’s always around in some form.

Broadway originally included Carbuckety, while also adding a kitten named Pouncival. Here’s Broadway Carbuckety:

Like Pouncival, he ended up a bit more yellow than normal, but you can tell he has the original Carbuckety design.

But, then some interesting shit happened. The Original Broadway Production cut the characters of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. Etcetera was included as a placeholder, and Pouncival was probably meant for the same purpose. But, when Jerrie and Teazer were added back in later, it was Carbuckety who was cut, not Pouncival. But, since Carbuckety can never be cut, the roles of Carbuckety and Pouncival merged. It became similar to Tumble Bailey: UK has Carbuckety, US has Pouncival, except this time they had different designs.

So, now we’re back to that confusion from before. “Let’s just use London designs with Broadway names but for everyone.”. Pouncival now equalled Carbuckety, so his design was used. I’m not sure which production was the first to do this, but Zurich is the oldest production I’ve seen that did it.

Zurich was mostly based on the Vienna production, with was mostly based on the Broadway production. But, Zurich added a few London elements back in, including the original version of Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, as well as several character designs. They had a black and white Alonzo, and a Plato that used the ginger Admetus design. They named the characters the same way the 1998 VHS would. Tumble Bailey was Tumblebrutus, the Carbuckety design was called Pouncival, the Admetus design was called Plato, but Jemima was still called Jemima, instead of the more internationally common Sillabub. For all I know, Zurich is where the VHS got the idea.

So, VHS Pouncival also got the Carbuckety design. Karl Morgan had only played this character credited as Carbuckety before this.

There seems to be a disagreement between Zurich and VHS for which eye the brown patch is supposed to go over, but same general idea.

So, though not the first to completely combine Carbuckety and Pouncival like this, the VHS is what made it popular, because anyone, anywhere could see it. In international productions after London closed, having a character called Pouncival with the Carbuckety design was the norm.

But it didn’t stay that way.

This essay/presentation/thing was supposed to be about George, wasn’t it? Well...

In 2014, the London Revival decided to do something a little different. This production didn’t have the best track record with trying new things, with most of the major changes later reversed, but this is one that stuck. 

So, in this picture, that’s Carbuckety on the left. You’d think that was George on the right. George was another character named from the start, so it’d make sense to bring him back, but no, that’s Pouncival. They renamed the George design Pouncival and, like the Broadway Production, had both Carbuckety and Pouncival in the show.

The Broadway Revival, eager to both be trendy and do the thing it did the first time, copied this:

The 2015 Australian production also copied the London Revival, having a Carbuckety and a Pouncival, but they also included George as a full character. Because Pouncival stole George’s usual design, he looked like this:

He looks like a combination of Carbuckety and George that had the color drained out of it and might be dying.

When these productions closed and were replaced with new tours, they all went in separate directions. London cut Pouncival and just went back to having Carbuckety. Australia also cut Pouncival, but they kept George around with his original design, now that it was no longer taken. The Broadway Revival, did the exact same thing the Original Broadway did and cut Carbuckety, keeping the Pouncival with a different design

Somehow, this whole mess caused no problems in terms of characterization. The original George wasn’t a kitten. He was younger than Munkustrap, and probably younger than Alonzo, but he was more like Mungojerrie: a big Tall Boy with a goofy, childlike personality at times, so he comes across as a very young adult. According to the actors of the Broadway Revival, Carbuckety is meant to be a teenager with hints of the arc that Tumblebrutus was originally given on Broadway, and some similarities to George, while Pouncival is a Baby Kitten, the youngest of the boys. With Carbuckety cut, if they wanted a character in his role, they could just give it back to Tumblebrutus, and Pouncival could keep being Baby. There’s always someone there to play the Carbuckety role, which was originally somewhere between the two. Carbuckety is classified as a kitten, but he’s usually portrayed inconsistently. He’s a baby when a baby boy is needed and a teenager when a teenager is needed. He can also be old enough to be paired with an adult cat at the Jellicle Ball. Basically, he’s anywhere between 10 and 20, depending on what the scene needs. This applies to basically all kittens in most productions.

So, George is Pouncival. George and Pouncival are both Admetus. Pouncival is Carbuckety. George, Pouncival, Admetus, and Carbuckety are all each other, except when they’re not, which is most of the time. Any questions?

[jacewilliams1]

Ferrying a 1946 Auster J2 through Australia

God was on my shoulder. The problem being I was not sure on which shoulder and who was on the other one!

The aircraft ferry game is both interesting and where one always expects the unexpected. My card reads “Can Ferry, Will Travel.” Flying an older aircraft cross country is more than just throwing your bag in the back and departing. To do the job properly means planning ahead.

Now for a long time I had always wanted to get to fly an Auster J2. I had seen the J2 pair of VH-PUK and VH-PUL around Victoria with various owners over the years but had never set foot in one. I had flown several Austers but for some reason I had a fancy to fly the two-seat J2. Maybe that was because I had flown a Taylor J-2 and a Piper J-3. Who knows?

Then I heard that VH-PUL was for sale in Queensland. I contacted the owner and said if the new owner needed an experienced tailwheel pilot to ferry the aircraft anywhere please pass my number to him. I had hopes that the new owner was located in Western Australia. I could wish!

Sorry, was the reply, but the aircraft has been sold and the owner has his own tailwheel-endorsed pilot to assist him. Oh! I know what crestfallen means.

Time passed. Somehow I made the contact with the new owner and told him that I was an instructor, had good tailwheel time, and had flown Austers amongst other older aircraft.

OK, thanks, was the reply.

Time passed. I got a call from the new owner, Rod. Would I be interested in ferrying VH-PUL from Moree to its new home near Bendigo?

Hmm, YES, was the reply.

The die was set. I made my way to Sydney in a 737 and then to Moree in a QF Dash -8.

Now somewhere in the first ferry south from Gympie, Qld., PUL had an issue on landing at some strip north of Moree and the left gear leg got bent.

Time to get acquainted.

Campbell Briggs of Statewide Aviation, an ag operator, took kindly to Rod and his pilot and ground transported the bent machine to Moree. There it was nursed back to good health.

On arrival at Moree I checked in at a motel. Next day the airport. There I met PUL. After a good look over, I went for a test drive. I did a half hour of general handling and shot a few circuits on runway 01. The wind was rather much a northerly so I did not have to work too hard to keep the aircraft straight with its drum brakes and heel brake pedals.

I saddled up and departed. The forecast was for low cloud and haze along the route that I had planned, Moree–Narrabri–Narromine and a refuel, some 189 nm.

As I flew south the cloud base progressively lifted and from Narrabri it was plain sailing. Past Coonabarabran and a big area of trees—not good for a forced landing. I skirted west of the Siding Springs Observatory and the nearby mountain that had a spot height of 4,344 ft. Over Gilgandra and onto Narromine. There was a westerly wind so I elected to land on runway 29 with a tad of crosswind.

I touched down and the left wheel instantly flattened and I pulled up with a bumpty bump. A flat tyre!

There I was on Narromine’s runway 29, stuck like a shag on a rock. No one around and the cold wind must have come direct from the Antarctic. I called Rod and give him the good news.

I tried to get the airport manager but he was on his day off. Then low and behold he trundled up in his work truck. Soon after≤ another fellow turned up. He got a trolley used to raise gliders with the gliding club and we slowly manhandled it to a hangar. There we spent almost an hour trying to get the tyre off the wheel.

A guy working on a Mooney in the hangar showed how you have to take off the outer rim, then push back the tyre casing to get access to a circular circlip. Once that is removed the tyre can then come free and give you access to the tube inside. Sound easy? Not for an Auster wheel newbee.

Now with the tube in hand, it was easy to see how it had been pinched when the out rim had been put on. The secret is to have some inflation in the tube before fixing everything in place. Hmm! So we were in need of a 600 x 6.5 tube. Only the Brits could have an odd size. The manager took me into town to a tyre shop.

“Nope, cannot help you with a 600 x 6.5 tube but I have a 6.0 and a 7.0. Which one do you want?” I took the 600 x 7.0 tube. Then we trundled by a hardware store to try and get a tyre pump. We got the tube and tyre on faster than Superman could. The tube got inflated and I was ready to go. I was too late to get to the next stop, Temora. I did not like dickering around a strange airport in a strange aircraft close on last light. If the headwind slowed me down I could have had my blood pressure hitting red line trying to shoot a landing in the gloom or darkness.

Overnight in the nearby cabin park. I got a special deal with a taxi into town for a feed at the Veterans club and back again as his last customer for the night.

Next day it was a refuel and then I was off to Temora, 137 nm to the south. The weather was fine. I took off from runway 29 and bumbled along with an enroute top-up from the aux to the main. As the fuel moved from back to front and was burnt off, I adjusted the trim with the lever in the cabin roof above the left door.

Past Parkes and Forbes and on to Temora. I landed on runway 18 at Temora, a breeze with the headwind. It had been a slow flight from Narromine, so I taxied in for a top up. A young fellow my age got to chatting about how he was taking flying lessons, and what sort of aircraft was PUL? We traded notes. He was all smiles.

Not a lot of avionics to worry about.

I departed from runway 18 for Tocumwal and a refuel then on to Bendigo and the nearby new home base for PUL.

I landed on runway 18 at Tocumwal, taxied up to the fuel station and got fuel. There was no one around. I started up and taxied out and started backtracking on runway 18. I was halfway to the keys when I felt a lurch and PUL swung to the left. The tyre had gone yet again!

Same issue. Here I was stuck on a runway with a blown tyre. No one in sight. A curse?

I got on my portable VHF radio and called up on area. Silence. I made the call again and then a fellow replied and said he was listening. I asked him to advise centre of my problem. Centre must have wondered how airworthy this Auster was with two blown tyres in two days. He acknowledged the call and then asked if I needed a hand. He was a training flight out of Mangalore airport to the south. He landed and with his student we pushed PUL off the runway onto the grass verge.

I then called Rod on my mobile: “Err Rod, I have this tyre problem, again.” Now what to do?

An SUV came towards me. The driver introduced himself as Jamie Ball. He was a Toc A&P and saw my problem. “Need a hand?”

We managed to jack the left gear leg up to remove the tyre. Jamie said he had worked on an Auster wheel only a week before so he was current on how to remove them. Gold! The tyre casing was still intact even after this second adventure. We had the tube and tyre off in five minutes flat.

OK, now what to do. “I think that I have a 600 x 6 tube back in the workshop,” said Jamie. He found one in his store.

We fitted the tube and tyre and then another problem. How could we get some air into the tube? The penny dropped! I had that electric air pump that I had bought at Narromine. We connected up the power cable to the SUV and quickly inflated the tyre.

I was mobile again. I taxied PUL to Jamie’s hangar. He offered to house PUL for the night and then in the morning he was off to Kempsey on the far east coast in his Thorp T-18.

Jamie drove me to the motel and arranged to pick me up in the morning. I checked in and walked next door to the local golf club for a meal. Next day we hauled PUL out of the hangar. Jamie waited while I cranked up. He fired up his T-18 and departed for Kempsey.

I taxied out and as I passed yesterday’s blown tyre location I offered a silent prayer for no repeats. God, the good one, heard me.

I launched and departed south to Bendigo. Some minor cloud enroute, then past Shepparton and on to the southeast of Bendigo. Rod had said call him inbound; I did and he steered me to his strip at Myrtle Creek.

He had a smudge fire burning at one end of the strip to give me the wind direction. I came in over the tree line, dropped a nice side slip (the J2 has no flaps) and pulled up well before the end of the strip.

The ferry was over.

I taxied to Rod’s hangar. We put the aircraft away and over a cuppa I gave Rod the saga of my adventures.

I had kept both blown tubes. The second one, the Narromine special, had split all the way around it. No reason that we could figure.

It was too late in the day to give Rod a check flight. I returned a week later and we did some flying and shot some landings and ground handling to get him comfortable with flying his aircraft.

Enjoying every minute.

I have now flown an Auster J2 Arrow Special. An interesting machine. Drum brake shoes with heel brake pedals in the cabin. Not one but two blown tyres. Good memories for the future.

Tech stuff

Auster J2 Arrow Special, c/n 2384, was built in 1946 at Rearsby, Leicestershire in the UK by Auster Aircraft Ltd. It first went to Belgium as OO-AXF before coming to Australia, where it became VH-KAY on 31 May 1951. In 1958 it was re-registered as VH-RQL with the Royal Queensland Aero Club at Archerfield. The 75 hp Continental C-75-12 engine was replaced with a Lycoming 0-235-C1B of 115 hp. It then became an Auster J2 Special. In 1963 it became VH-PUL.

The J2 was built as a low cost private owner aircraft. Only 42 were made. In part this was due to financial problems with the Brits obtaining American engines for their aircraft.

The max. takeoff weight is 771 kg and the empty weight is 518 kg. There is a baggage shelf behind the seats for up to 20 kg of gear.

The main nose tank carries 60 litres of fuel and behind the seats there is a 40 litre auxiliary tank. An electric transfer pump moves around one litre a minute from the aux to the main tank. The extra fuel gives the aircraft real range. It is best to check the pump before start up to ensure that fuel can be transferred during a long flight. The main feeds to the engine by gravity. There is no engine driven pump.

Designed as a private aircraft, it had dual heel brake pedals installed later. Cruise is 95-105 kts IAS at 2350-2400 rpm. Plan on 25 LPH fuel burn.

Glide is 50 kts. Crosswind limit, said to be 8-10 kts. Climb is 52 kts, stalls at 30 kts. There is a small battery for the starter and the cabin roof mounted Bendix-King KY97 radio.

The panel has an ASI, Altimeter, VSI, Tacho, TC and Oil T&P gauges. No AH. The bat and ball TC is driven by an external venturi. Plan on 500 ft. after takeoff before it becomes reliable. There is an American compass on the top of the panel. The original P-12 compass must have been retired due to old age. Give three shots of the Ki-gas primer for a start up. Under the panel there is a cigarette lighter socket for use with an iPad in flight. I navigated with my iPad. The charts were in my flight folder ready at hand.

VH-PUL had done some 7,340 hours to June 2019 when I flew her.

The post Ferrying a 1946 Auster J2 through Australia appeared first on Air Facts Journal.

from Engineering Blog https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09/ferrying-a-1946-auster-j2-through-australia/

[tenchiforum]

For the first time ever, the Toonami versions of OVA1/2, Universe, and Tokyo are available online! On their respective archive.org pages you can access each episode easily.

Watch now: OVA1/2, Tenchi Universe, Tenchi in Tokyo.

For users who keep up with contemporary anime communities, we also have an upload for the entire run available on Nyaa.

It’s been quite a journey in getting these episodes from analog to digital. If you’re interested in reading about the process of how these almost lost-to-time edits came into our hands and how we’ve gone about preserving them before the tapes rot, then sit back and enjoy the story below!

Part 1: Toonami – A Love Story.

Tenchi Muyo! and Toonami are tied together like the red thread of fate often times referenced in many East Asian myths. For those who aren’t aware, Toonami was a programming block on the Cartoon Network channel. Starting in 1997, it did one thing for anime that no other channel in the English-speaking world had ever done: showcased anime during “PrimeTime” (In North America at least, this was 4pm to 7pm Eastern Standard time). Before the internet, having this block of time meant having the most eyes on your product, meaning exposure was huge. Oftentimes whoever got on this block, regardless of the channel, was “made.”

However, it wouldn’t be until mid 1999, with a soft-rebranding, a new host, and an almost entirely anime-focused block, that Toonami would take over the world.

And on July 3rd, 2000, an entire generation was introduced to Tenchi Muyo! for the first time.

- The now legendary two minute Toonami promo.

Thanks to the efforts of Jason DeMarco, Sean Akins, Gill Austin, Sean Polinski, and the rest of the Toonami crew, the “Toonami generation,” still to this day, is the largest block of Tenchi Muyo! fans. Whether it was Toonami US, UK, or Australia. Tenchiforum is a testament to this fact. I personally would not be here were it not for Toonami, so to say that fans of Tenchi Muyo! hold Toonami in a high regard is an understatement.

I had always wanted to somehow, some way, get the Toonami version of Tenchi up for everyone to see again, but my old Toonami VHS recordings were long gone, and I figured trying to piece together the Toonami version from other people’s tapes would just be too hard with how many episodes were broadcast, that was until… 2012

In mid-to-late 2012, I found out that Pioneer actually released a home video version of what was shown on Toonami. It was simply released as “Tenchi Muyo!” in those big, white, clam shell VHS cases (that most people probably remember for old Disney movies). I felt as though I had struck gold! I was able to get a hold of the first two OVA, and was able to rip them to my computer.

- Vol. 1 & Vol. 5 of “Tenchi Muyo!” – No distinction was made that they were separate series.

Though I was high on my endorphin-induced nostalgia, I ran into a couple of unforeseen problems.

First and foremost, the equipment I was using was not great. I used an old StarTech composite to USB dongle and the software that came with it. While this isn’t necessarily bad at first glance (it doesn’t support Windows 10), I had no experience whatsoever in the field of digital transfer. While I think my rips were okay for the time, I knew even then that they were too low of bit-rate and the quality of the rips suffered for it.

Because I also had no VCR at the time that had S-Video output, I was only able to output from composite, which meant the whopping 240p equivalent VHS tapes look fuzzier than they probably should. (I realize that VHS is technically an analog format, meaning that a 1:1 equivalent digital representation is hard to pin down or that someone might argue that it did technically output 480i over composite, but basically it was 240p.)

Another problem was the software itself, I had no idea about Virtualdub, AmaRecTV, or other helpful capture software, so I only recorded at a lower bit-rate, again producing an inferior quality rip.

I also ran into the problem of showcasing the videos. Funimation (who now owns the vast majority of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise in North America) had finally started really cracking down on people uploading videos to Youtube. Even though my videos were not completely the same, the algorithm immediately flagged and blocked them. This led me to uploading the videos to Facebook. I had to cut them in half because of Facebook’s restriction to roughly only 12 minutes of video. Somehow in the process, some of the videos had audio drop out for a minute or two, and for some the audio dropped out completely.

Arguably the biggest blow though, was when I learned that this set of Toonami tapes was incomplete. Pioneer stopped producing the Toonami version for home video after they finished releasing Universe. Meaning, the only way to get the Toonami version of Tenchi in Tokyo, was hope that someone, somewhere,  had taped it 11 years earlier.

While Tenchi in Tokyo has been getting more appreciation from fans as of late – thanks in part to most newer entries in the Tenchi OVA sucking harder than a vacuum – in the year 2000, it was the black sheep of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise. So expecting fans to have recorded any of it, let alone the entire series, was the long shot of all long shots. But even still, I made a post on the forum in 2013 asking if anyone knew anyone that might have anything.

Naturally, no one had any leads, and all of these previous problems meant that this project would, frustratingly, have to be shelved indefinitely.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

Part 2: Deferred Dreams Don’t Die.

On April 5th, 2019, a person by the name of Talos dropped into our Discord server, and posted an introduction. Like so many, they had gotten into Tenchi through Toonami, but what would change everything, was this.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, someone actually had it!

Instinctively, I reached out to Talos via PM to ascertain how to go about acquiring these tapes, and admittedly, to see how legit this claim actually was. Because the fact of the matter is, when you’ve been around Tenchi fandom as long as I have, you’ll quickly realize the best bullshitters in the world come from this fandom.

But Talos was more than the genuine article! They sent over pictures and an incredibly detailed analysis of the quality of their tapes, watching through them all again to prove to me that their claim was valid.

It can’t be said enough that this all would not be possible without Talos, their willingness to work with me and send me their own personal tapes that they’ve kept for almost two decades just goes to show how awesome they are and how much they care about the fandom.

So the deal was struck, and the dream that laid deferred for almost six years lived again.

- A time capsule from another era.

But with dreams from the past, come the demons that plagued them way back when. I still only had the setup I once had, and at this time I was really trying to be tight with my finances for a number of different reasons, but this opportunity was too good to pass up, I wasn’t going to let this dream go, even if it wasn’t perfect.

Talos’ tapes showed up, and I rolled up my sleeves.

So I put in the first tape, the first seven episodes of Tokyo, into the old VCR I used to originally rip the Pioneer tapes, a JVC HR-VP650U….

And static…

Or rather, a tape that would play for 3 seconds, then immediately drop to static.

This wouldn’t work.

I then tried my other VCR, a Sony SLV-N50 from the mid-to-late 90’s that I was able to “fix” by removing the old Android Kikaider tape that got stuck in there many years prior.

It worked!…..but…..not all that well.

While it did actually play the tape relatively smoothly, the colors were completely washed out in comparison to the JVC, and it had this weird color flickering that was particularly noticeable when black backgrounds were on screen. (This was not unique to this tape, it did it with everything I put in there.)

As much as it pained me, there was no way I was going to rip it with this setup.

So the hunt began for not just a replacement VCR, but one that was high quality and recommended among enthusiasts for digital transfer. Which meant research and long winding rabbit holes of non-answers and vagueness, and unfortunately, money.

Without a doubt, the de facto list of best VCRs for transferring comes from digitalFAQ.com. This list is not only informative but gives you a broad range of ones to look for in the event you can’t find an “elite” one. However, this list has also become the de facto list used by people who are hawking their sets on eBay to try and get every penny from enthusiasts and new-comers as possible.

After three frustrating weeks of losing bid wars on eBay, someone finally put up one of the good sets, the JVC SR-V10U. I quickly sent them what I thought was a reasonable but not bank-breaking offer….

And they accepted! The beast was finally mine.

Immediately upon unwrapping and testing it, the quality difference between what I had then and what I was looking at now was staggering. The SR-V10U had beautiful color, while having the incredible ability to stabilize the old tapes with its TBC (Time Base Corrector), as well as onboard Video Stabilization option. Combined with the ability to output video via the superior S-Video cable, I now had something that, despite its age and typical old VHS wear, was way better than I could have imagined.

Part 3: No Need for Nostalgia.

You’re probably thinking to yourself “Dagon, why go through the trouble? The OVA has a beautiful Blu-ray release, and Universe and Tokyo have pretty decent DVD releases. Why would you ever want to rip old VHS tapes of an inferior quality release that was in some cases censored?”

- The now famous Toonami “bikinis”.

Because this version of Tenchi Muyo! is a piece of history. Not only is it a piece of Tenchi history, but a piece of Toonami history as well. Being able to preserve this in the best quality possible is being able to point to future generations and say “This is why I’m here.”

For a lot of us it’s about taking us back to a simpler time, grade school, high school, university. Taking us back to a time before the internet was what it is today.

So now we can, after almost 20 years, re-watch the version of Tenchi Muyo! that brought so many of us joy and wonder.

[luthienebonyx]

woodelf68

replied to your

post

:

God, I hate Amazon. And not just for all the usual...

One thing to say for VHS tapes, there was none of this dividing up by different regions nonsense.

Well, there was. There were two main regions, but they were based on actual different technology used for colour video in different countries rather than something artificially imposed.

The US had NTSC, which was an older form of colour technology. And it wasn’t just the videos that were NTSC - the TVs were, too. It had to do with the number of lines of colour in the signal or... something. Sorry, can’t quite remember all the details now.

The UK and many other places got colour TV a bit later, so they used PAL. PAL tended to have clearer, brighter colours, and I remember in those days really being able to tell the difference between a TV show made in the US and one in the UK - the colour in the ones from the US always looked a bit washed out.

But of course in those days, no one bought much of anything from outside their own countries, so no one really noticed - except mainly fans trying to share things with each other internationally!

Then Amazon came along and started selling video tapes to people all over the world - without mentioning on the listings that you needed not just an NTSC player but also an NTSC-compatible TV for the tapes to work.

I knew many unhappy people buying from Amazon around this time.

This was also when TVs with NTSC playback started becoming more common here, though, which meant that we could finally play NTSC tapes. However, because NTSC was the older technology, It was impossible to do the reverse and have PAL playback on an NTSC TV.

So, we FINALLY got on top of this as well as we could, and then DVDs became a thing, and surprise, surprise, the manufacturers decided they liked having differently encoded videos in different countries, except now they were doing it on purpose.

For me personally, after years of buying VHS tapes from the UK because the UK and Australia both used PAL colour, suddenly finding that they were different regions was an unpleasant shock. The BBC circumvented this by making most of their DVD releases encoded for both Region 2 (UK) and Region 4 (Australia), because they knew their customer base.

But yeah, it’s always been more complicated than it should be. It pisses me off more than I can say that these days they do it on purpose.

[marcloveskylie]

Kylie Minogue Sunday Times interview in full. (Thanks to Darren Nixon)

Kylie Minogue interview: the pop star talks love, regret and new beginnings ahead of playing the Glastonbury ‘legends’ slot

Kylie Minogue is glowing. Of course she is. As the blue-eyed, blonde princess of pop music and golden girl of pop culture, idolised by millions since the 1980s, Minogue, I imagine, floats around in a perpetual state of looking luminous. She has also been dancing in front of our photographer for an afternoon and, as she puts it, “should be glowing after all that make-up!” It’s not just the make-up. On the brink of releasing a new album, the gig of her career, her 51st birthday and with the thrill of a new man, she is happy. “I could say nothing and you could read everything,” she laughs, pointing to her smiling face. “I’ve met someone who I feel good with. It feels right.”

Post-shoot, Minogue sits upright and cross-legged on a sofa in our east London studio, her 5ft frame wrapped in a barely-there slip dress. Much has been written about her dabbles with Botox, something she admitted in 2009, but today she looks beautiful and natural — faint lines on her face, yet still miles younger than 50. She speaks so softly that I strain to hear her and she answers many questions with a giggle. On the surface, dainty and delicate. Underneath, nerves of steel. “None of this was handed to me,” she says, “but this was my destiny. I was meant to do it.”

The first music I remember was a 1989 VHS tape of Kylie’s videos. Aged five, I watched nothing else for months. Fever (2001) and Aphrodite (2010) — the CDs scratched from overuse — made up much of the soundtrack to my clubbing twenties. Interviewing her is an excruciating test, as I attempt to maintain professionalism while trying not to touch her face. (Full disclosure: when we hug at the end, I scream a bit. She doesn’t mind.) But aren’t we all Team Kylie? In 2005, when, at the age of 36, she revealed her breast cancer diagnosis, support from fans and the press came in floods. When her highly public relationships end, it is always her the world sides with. She is, perhaps, the only non-Brit considered a “national treasure” by the tabloids — The Sun ran a campaign in the early Noughties to have her bottom listed as a World Heritage Site on the grounds it was an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Brand Kylie has mastered the near impossible: triumphing for three decades, with gold- and platinum-certified records, scandal-free and to global adoration. She’s still considered both a reigning disco diva and a bubbly, Aussie girl next door. Underestimate her at your peril, though. Being Kylie, she says, “takes a lot of work, graft and insecurity — not always what the wrapped-up end product looks like. There have been times when I’ve thought, ‘I just can’t.’ But you’ve got to take the knocks because they’re always coming. It ain’t all roses.” A pause. “But maybe otherwise it wouldn’t be as sweet in the end.”

She values her private life as “precious”, and admits that she has “sacrificed some anonymity”, no doubt because her romances have been tabloid fodder for years. Her most high-profile relationship was with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence from 1989 to 1991. In 1997, long after they broke up, he committed suicide. For four years, she dated the French actor Olivier Martinez, who supported her through her cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy (“Olli was there all the time,” she said in 2006). They broke up in 2007, but were rumoured to have reignited their romance in 2017, claims that she has never addressed. Then there was an engagement to the British actor Joshua Sasse. The two started dating in 2015 and that December she told Desert Island Discs that Sasse, then 28, was “my love”. They announced their engagement in February 2016, but broke up 12 months later; last September, he married an Australian entrepreneur. It strikes me as sad, but her steeliness quickly reappears.

You’ve had your heart broken, I begin. “I don’t know about heartbroken,” she flashes. “I’ve made mistakes.” Such as? “I regret lying to myself. Like, ‘This is OK,’ and doing the merry dance. When that honest bit inside of you knows, but you’re busy covering it up? I regret doing that. It’s not fair on yourself. And yet I think we’ve all been there, we’ve all done it. But I don’t see myself doing it again. I’ve met someone who I feel good with.” She has been dating Paul Solomons, the 45-year-old creative director of British GQ, for just over a year. When talk turns to him, she lights up. “I can feel my face going,” she says. “People say, ‘Your face changes when you talk about him,’ and it does. Happiness. He’s an inspiring, funny, talented guy. He’s got a real-life actual job! It’s lovely.”

Their weekends are generally spent in her Knightsbridge home, watching documentaries on Netflix — “We liked the Ted Bundy Tapes. I was too scared to watch them on my own” — or listening to podcasts — “Have you heard Dear Joan & Jericha [Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine’s mock agony-aunt podcast]? I’ve literally creased myself to that, it’s so inappropriate.” He does most of the cooking. “He’s got me cooking too, actually. He’s the first to do that. It can no longer be the family joke that I can’t cook.” Her family are all still in Australia. Her parents, Ron and Carol, worked as an accountant and dancer respectively, and her younger sister, Dannii, followed in Kylie’s showbiz footsteps as a pop star. She also has a younger brother, Brendon. They are a close family who text daily and speak frequently. I imagine they are overprotective about any new boyfriends. Minogue tells me that the first time Solomons met her clan was spending last Christmas with them. “They [already] could tell I was good within myself. They liked him before they met him, and they liked him more after they met him.”

Her Australian accent is still distinctive, but she has lived in London since the early 1990s, when Soho was her stomping ground. “I was really deep in London nightlife back then,” she says. Now, generally, the only time she’s up until the early hours is when she’s on tour. Her last big night out was her 50th birthday party, a year ago, at Chiltern Firehouse, complete with performances by Rick Astley and Jake Shears. “I went to bed at about 5am, but probably had no more than a glass of champagne all night. I was talking and dancing and high on life. The icing on the cake was that I had my special someone to share it with.”

It’s remarkable that Minogue has the stamina to dance until 5am at an age when many women are experiencing the menopause. Indeed, she’s already been there, done that. As is common with younger breast cancer patients, her menopause was medically induced when she had treatment, to suppress her oestrogen levels. On Desert Island Discs, she stated that she would love to start a family. It’s a difficult subject to broach, but I wonder if she feels the chance to have children has passed. “I can definitely relate to that,” she answers. “I was 36 when I had my diagnosis. Realistically, you’re getting to the late side of things. And, while that wasn’t on my agenda at the time, [cancer] changed everything. I don’t want to dwell on it, obviously, but I wonder what that would have been like. Everyone will say there are options, but I don’t know. I’m 50 now, and I’m more at ease with my life. I can’t say there are no regrets, but it would be very hard for me to move on if I classed that as a regret, so I just have to be as philosophical about it as I can. You’ve got to accept where you are and get on with it.”

Born and raised in Melbourne, she attended acting school in her home town and became a superstar at 18 as Charlene in the Australian soap Neighbours. Charlene’s wedding to Jason Donovan’s Scott in 1987 was witnessed by 20m viewers in the UK. Despite no formal singing or dancing training, she left the show to pursue music, and her debut album, Kylie, released in 1988, was No 1 in the UK for six weeks. She has since released 13 more studio albums, as well as dozens of compilation, live and remix records. Next month she is releasing Step Back in Time, her latest greatest hits album. All the big hitters are on there: Spinning Around, I Should Be So Lucky, Confide in Me. She doesn’t have a favourite, but points to Where the Wild Roses Grow (1995) and All the Lovers (2010) — “just glorious”. She had to brace herself, she says, to listen to some of the older tracks. “I recorded Locomotion when I was 18 or 19. I was so young and I felt so young.” She shakes her head in bewilderment.

Minogue has just finished the Golden Tour, six months of shows in Europe and Australia. “I don’t know how much time I’ve got before my showbiz hips and knees start to protest,” she laughs. “They’ll be like, ‘You’ve been treading those boards for a long time, we think you should slow down a bit.’ ” This summer, along with gigs in London, Manchester and even Scarborough, she will take to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in the Sunday afternoon “legends” slot, previously filled by the likes of Dolly Parton, Barry Gibb and Lionel Richie. It is particularly poignant as she was set to perform there in 2005, but her cancer diagnosis meant that she had to pull out. She sang at the festival in 2010, as a guest of the Scissor Sisters, but has never performed solo. “I’m bound to cry,” she says. On stage? “It’s going to happen. When I was meant to be there, I watched it from Australia. I was dealing with much bigger things back then, but when I’m there it will take me back to when I wasn’t there. But I’ll work through that.”

She confirms there will be guests joining her on stage, but won’t tell me who. Dolce & Gabbana designed the Greek goddess-inspired costumes for her Aphrodite: Les Folies tour in 2011, but her on-stage style now is “more human, more real”. “But even Elvis had a few diamantés on him,” she continues. “Come on! I’m thinking of it as a big sing-along. It’s daytime, so you can’t have the lights, effects and lasers that I normally have. I think the simplicity is part of what makes that slot so magical. Dolly Parton just walked on out. Lionel Richie just walked on out. I mean, I’ll sashay on out.”

Minogue’s manager then intervenes. The car is waiting and the star has somewhere to be. “I keep threatening my team that I’m going to retire,” she winks, safe in the knowledge that there are decades left of her career. And, with that, she sashays out. Glowing.

Step Back in Time is released on June 28

[x5red]

The lost Supergirl

To its detractors the 1984 Helen Slater Supergirl is an underwhelming, disjointed, and self-contradictory attempt to profit from the Superman franchise beyond the Man of Steel. To its supporters the 1984 Supergirl is a much misunderstood blending of super-heroics and fairy-tales, creating a magical story of adventure and courage. But no matter what your take on this movie, no one can deny that it failed to meet box office expectations and did not garner anything like the same reputation as Chris Reeve’s first two iconic Superman outings.

But with the passing of time comicbook fans seem to have slowly mellowed towards Slater’s Supergirl. Sure, it may never be considered a classic, but many fans now acknowledge that Helen Slater’s time in the red cape has a lot of charming qualities, qualities that are sadly lacking in many of DC’s modern offerings.

So, what caused this shift in attitudes?

Well, thanks to the internet, today’s fans have a greater awareness of the intentions of director Jeannot Szwarc, who (we now recognise) was pitching at a younger audience than the Superman movies -- hence the looser fairy-tale quality of the plot. But, more importantly, there’s also a growing awareness that many of the movie’s weaknesses were made far more glaring by the distributor’s brutal editing for US markets.

As more and more of the cutting room floor footage has been seen, so criticism has softened. Although still far from perfect, 2000′s extended 138 minute cut is generally recognised as a more balanced and coherent experience than 1984′s US theatrical version of just 105 minutes. But fans have speculated that yet more footage is still to be found. Rumours circulate on the far flung reaches of the internet concerning a possible 150 minute edit, smoothing over even more of the disjointed elements of the story.

In this article I want to first attempt a fact-packed recap of the editing history of the Supergirl movie, noting when and why its numerous cuts were created; then I want to briefly speculate on what might be in the still-missing 12 minutes (if indeed they exist), by pulling together the various rumours and looking at their evidence.

So, let’s begin...

From silver screen to small screen

Supergirl got its debut in London on Thursday 19th July 1984, as part of a Royal Charity Premiere screening attended by Princess Michael of Kent (whose husband is the current Queen’s first cousin, as I’m sure everyone knows(!)) This UK version was distributed by Columbia-EMI-Warner and ran at 124 minutes. Initial critical reaction was mixed, leaning more towards underwhelmed.

As US fans waited for the Maid of Might to fly onto their cinema screens, the movie began to open around the world. Ireland and Japan got Supergirl just days after the UK, then August saw Supergirl open in the Philippines, Australia, and Spain. In October it was the turn of France and Canada. Meanwhile Kara Zor-El fans in her (adopted) home country had no choice but to wait... and wait... and wait... The delay in the US release was caused by Warner Bros. dropping out of negotiations to promote and distribute the film in US theatres midway through production. As the movie was in post production, and overseas distribution deals were being struck, the Salkind family (the producers) scrambled to find an alternative distributor for their biggest market.

Finally, on Wednesday 21st November 1984, the Maid of Might launched onto US screens thanks to TriStar Pictures, but the switch in distributor had not been without major consequences. American Supergirl fans were treated to an experience that had been cut down to just 105 minutes, removing key exposition scenes from a movie that was already criticised for struggling with plot coherence. Supergirl grossed $5.7m on its opening weekend, and went on bring in $13.6m in the US market. On an estimated production budget of $35m, it was not considered a success.

At the same time as the US theatrical release, a 125 minute LaserDisc version appeared in Japan, marking the first time fans could watch the Girl of Steel in the comfort of their own Fortress of Solitude. The advertised 125 minute running time likely represents a rounding error rather than 1 minute of new material. Although not sold into US markets, some copies apparently did cross the Pacific. The LaserDisc version was likely a pan-and-scan copy (no documentation suggests widescreen), with Supergirl’s wide cinematic 2.35:1 image cropped drastically to fit television’s nearly square 4:3 ratio.

Pan-and-scan would also have been done to the initial VHS release into US markets by U.S.A. Home Video in 1985, which used the 105 minute cut that had appeared in US cinemas the year before. In 1987 a second pan-and-scan edit was created by TriStar for HBO‘s cable tv screenings, which was then used by the ABC Network when it broadcast a brutal 92 minute cut in February 1987. (It was common practice for ad-supported tv to heavily edit movies, making space for commercials without stretching the running time too far.) This super-slimline cut was later thrown together with other Superman movies into a tv syndication package by Viacom. The Internet Movie Database suggests that there was also a VHS cut that ran to just 89 minutes -- this may have been either the Avid Home Video release (1991) catalogued on the same site, or it may refer to an unknown overseas VHS release.

Lurking in the depths of the vaults

By the late 1990s the full 124 minute cut of Supergirl had still never been legitimately made available in the US. The rights to the Supergirl movie had subsequently been snapped up as part of a bundle of films by Canal + Distribution in France, and they allowed Anchor Bay Entertainment to release the two hour so-called International Cut on VHS. Many Supergirl fans now thought that they, at last(!), had copies of the most complete version of the film. But rumours quickly started to circulate that this was far from the case.

Not long after the International Cut’s release, speculation began that Canal + had found something interesting lurking amidst the dusty film cans they’d acquired as part of their rights acquisitions. A previously unknown 138 minute cut of Supergirl featuring a mono soundtrack had been unearthed, which quickly acquired the moniker of the Director’s Cut.

(Note: one citation-free internet comment suggests that the Director’s Cut was actually discovered at Pinewood Studios, in a box marked “do not use”. Although the early Superman / Supergirl movies were filmed at London’s Pinewood soundstages, it seems odd that a finished edit of the film, complete with soundtrack, would be discovered there.)

In mid-2000 Anchor Bay Entertainment released a two disc DVD set featuring both the 124 minute International Cut, and the new 138 minute Director’s Cut, both in widescreen format (2.35:1 letter-boxed to widescreen tv’s 16:9 ratio.)

So, thought fans, surely this is the definitive Helen Slater Supergirl... right..!?

Well, apparently, no..!

The rumours didn’t end with the Director’s Cut. Some evidence suggested that there were still scenes shot at Pinewood that didn’t make it into the 138 minute edit. Speculation was that somewhere in a rusting film can there might lie yet another 12 minutes of unseen footage, bringing the total running time of the film to a whopping 150 minutes -- that’s almost 50% more Supergirl than was seen by the original US theatrical audiences in November 1984.

So, what’s missing..?

First, let us rule out what we can say with certainty is not in any potential missing footage.

The original script for Supergirl, penned by David Odell, made heavy use of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. According to director, Jeannot Szwarc, the main plot device always revolved around the recovery of the Omegahedron, but in early drafts Superman was to encounter Supergirl in space, and the pair were to share a heartwarming scene in which he teaches his cousin how to fly, involving dancing together in mid-air. At a later point in the script Supergirl was to rescue Superman from a prison, where he languished as an old man having lost his immorality.

Regrettably, the producer’s hopes of securing Chris Reeve fell apart not long before shooting began. Without Reeve, Odell’s script (which, Szwarc claims, had already suffered numerous rewrites at the behest of the Salkinds and/or original distributors Warner Bros.) underwent yet another a major overhaul. As such, we can say with absolute certainty that none of the possible missing footage includes Christopher Reeve’s Superman.

So what might it contain?

A draft of the movie’s script, dated Monday 17th January 1983, is available online, and it seems to mention scenes that never appeared in any publicly available cut of the film, including the Director’s Cut. The draft’s date is just a few weeks away from the alleged filming dates: Monday 18th April 1983 to Thursday 11th August 1983. The script does follow the story line of the finished movie, although it is apparent that some action segments have been reworked and some of the dialogue is only vaguely similar to the filmed version.

A second source of information comes from an apparently test audience viewing in the US, with online accounts of this screening at sites like IMDB seeming to bear out the rumours that some of the elements in the draft script may have been filmed and included in this screening.

Speculation suggests that a number of clips featuring Selena are still lost. These include more material with Selena and the Omegahedron, and a clip during Selena’s takeover of Midvale in which the angry townspeople are cowered (except Lucy) by Selena when she uses an ice spell to kill a woman.

There’s also speculation that two short interactions with Linda at school are absent. The first involves Nigel quizzing Linda about her plans for the weekend (this happens immediately before the scene, 50 minutes in, with Linda sitting outside the school as other girls leave with their parents, when Lucy invites Linda to join her later in Midvale.) The second is a chat between Linda and Lucy about clothes and fitting in on Earth.

One interaction that always seemed a bit odd in the movie takes place immediately after the shower sequence (when Kara uses her heat vision to punish the two school bullies.) Entering their shared dorm room, Linda asks Lucy to comment on her new hairdo -- Lucy replies that it looks the same as before. In the script however (and in accounts of the advance screening) there is a segment with Supergirl using heat vision and a bathroom mirror to cut her blonde hair, but she forgets that she has reverted to Linda’s brunette wig when Lucy offers her critique. The second half of this interaction appears in the movie (albeit with different dialogue to the script), so fans have speculated that the laser haircut footage may exist too.

The January 1983 script also does a better job of tidying up the story’s loose ends. For example, rather than have Linda Lee just vanish without explanation, school principal (Fred?) Danvers uncovers Linda’s secret identity after she fights the energy monster, explaining why he won’t be frantically searching for her once Supergirl returns to Argo City. No accounts, rumoured or otherwise, suggest that these segments were filmed, however.

Conclusion

Even at 150 miniutes, Supergirl would still be a flawed movie. But then perhaps, as Jeannot Szwarc has noted, its intentions were never properly understood or promoted. The film isn’t trying to be the Christopher Reeve Superman, but rather a children’s fairy-tale in which the hero uses Kryptonian superpowers instead of magic. One internet commentator noted that Slater’s Supergirl is best enjoyed as a series of unconnected vignettes -- forget that the overall plot doesn’t make sense and just enjoy each scene on its own. I think there might be some truth in that analysis.

Despite its flaws, the 1984 Supergirl movie has amassed a loyal fanbase. The special effects are superb (even Richard Donner apparently admitted that the technique Szwarc used to make his Girl of Steel fly was superior to the zooming-lenses trick pioneered on Superman), the story is unapologetically lighthearted, and Helen Slater’s endearing portrayal as the Maid of Might is still considered by many to be the definitive live-action Supergirl.

Restoring the extra footage won’t overturn the movie’s shortcomings, but it will further soothe some of its inconsistencies, while sprinkling just a little more magic dust onto what its loyal fans already consider to be a charming and bewitching cinematic experience.

The movie’s heroine succeeds in her quest to find the Omegahedron and restore Argo City to its former glory -- we can but hope that one day her fans will find any missing footage, and restore her movie to its fullest length.

Timeline:

124 min (2h 04m) international theatrical release, July 1984.

105 min (1h 45m) US theatrical release, November 1984.

125 min (2h 05m) Japanese LaserDisc, late 1984.

105 min (1h 45m) initial US VHS release, 1985.

92 min (1h 32m) HBO / ABC television cut, 1987.

89 min (1h 29m) VHS release, unknown date (1991 perhaps?)

124 min (1h 04m) Anchor Bay VHS release, 1998.

138 min (2 hrs 18 mins) Director’s Cut DVD release, Summer 2000.

150 min (2 hrs 30 mins) speculated original cut, as yet undiscovered.

Sources:

imdb.com : Supergirl main page.

imdb.com : Supergirl alternative footage.

movie-censorship.com : Supergirl International vs Director’s Cut.

supermancinema.co.uk :  List of VHS and tv cuts.

maidofmight.net : Director Jeannot Szwarc interview.

Thanks to Corrine, aka supergirldiaries, for the initial inspiration.

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | Q&A w/ FRENCH (UK)

Influenced by heavy metal, fantasy artwork, and 80′s skate graphics. artist Richard Sayer, aka FRENCH, summons through his art the images of decrepit skulls, mummified skeletons, and creatures from the deep abyss, all with a “good dose of dayglo colours.” Not only one thing, FRENCH has been taking his dark arts to various mediums from animation, claymation, printmaking to textiles. His works have been shown all over the world, his graphics have appeared for various skate companies and brands –from Creature, Independent, to Santa Cruz–, and he once had his art show in Sweden visited by band 'Entombed.‘ We’re stoked to chat with FRENCH about his art, his process, and his influences as he gears up for his upcoming art show at New Image Art Gallery Dec. 16th in LA. 

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Introduce yourself.   My name is French, well actually my real name is actually Richard Sayer, but since I was about 12 I’ve had the nick name of French and its just stuck ever since. I got the name ‘cos I bought a t-shirt on holiday in France and then when I came back I got given grief from all the other skaters for buying it. There’s a long standing resentment between the English and a the French a little like the States and Canada, so I guess it was meant as an insult to call me 'French’. I’m an artist / illustrator based in the UK, but I just spent the past 3 and half years living in Melbourne, Australia.  I make artwork for many different brands and industries, including the skate industry, fashion, print, music and advertising. 

I run a small skateboard brand with my friend Alex Irvine called Witchcraft hardware. I currently make all the artwork for an Australian brand called 'Death Rites’ run by my friend Shawn Yates.  

I exhibit my artwork widely, I have exhibited in the states, Europe, Asia, Australia, Israel and the UK. More recently my work is generally a bit darker, looks a bit like a cross between old metal album art, fantasy artwork and skate graphics from the 80’s but with a sense of humour and a good dose of dayglo colours. I’ve just started to work more with ceramics and also with animation as well. I like to work in many different fields and medias and I think that helps improve my work in all areas.

Your drawings are always filled with rad imagery like skulls, skeletons, dragons to crazy creatures.  What were your early influences art wise? I grew up surrounded by heavy metal records and music, my brother was a huge metal fan, which caused me to be. He was also super into 'Fighting Fantasy’ books, 'Warhammer’ , 'Dungeons and Dragons’ & all kinds of fantasy stuff, I think that just filtered its way into my brain and seeps out through my artwork. Obviously skateboarding and the artwork involved in that was a massive influence on me, when I was a kid I was obsessed with old Santa Cruz graphics and as I got older I was always more drawn to the skulls and puss versions of graphics, rather than the clean edge stuff. I grew up in a military town in the south of England so I think being surrounded by war monuments, soldiers and those sort of images it brought me more visually to it. My brother used to make me watch movies after school, before my mum got home from work, there would be a lot of John Carpenter movies, Arnie, horror movies of the 90’s had so many rad monster and animatronics that I think thats stuck with me as well, the covers for those old VHS tapes we seriously imaginative.  

What are your all time favorite materials you like to use? Any new mediums you’re interested in trying? I like working in pencil first and then ink over the top. Recently I’ve started to paint in colours to the artwork, I wouldn’t say it was painting as I just add areas of solid colours, nearly always dayglo or fluorescent paints. Saying its not painting, I think everything I do is drawing, for example I just started to make some ceramic pieces and I definitely come at 3D in the same way as I would drawing, but I think that makes it my own. I’m interested to see what the ceramic works come out like in the end as its still early days and I haven’t fully glazed a piece yet. 

You’ve created art for tons of things from skateboards to albums to clothing. How did you get started creating graphics or art for some of your favorite brands?  And tell us about your current or upcoming collaborations with Vans? I got started making artwork for people way back in the days when you had to show people a physical portfolio. I actually used to make post cards and small zines and then go and look up peoples details in Borders, like look in the magazines I liked for the art directors details and then send them a zine and post card and ask if I could take them my portfolio. I also used to just send people my zines and then call the office and see if they’d got it and if I could come and see them. I used to send so much stuff it was mad, it was a bit like 'if you through enough mud at the wall it starts to stick’ and I got work from a few people and from then on it kinder worked for me. 

I think the best way of getting work, is by having work. You do one job for one brand, people see it and want something from you and so on. I worked in a few different skate shops and at a skate distro as well so I got to know people at brands I liked and respected and sent them my work and then I gradually got more work in the skate industry. That’s pretty much how I got to do work for Creature, Independent, Santa Cruz, Real etc. I met Nick Street & Jasper Jones who worked for Vans europe and they started to hook me up with small jobs for Vans and gradually I got more and more through Vans, not just in Europe but also in the states and world wide. It’s funny, cos I actually worked in the Vans store when it first opened in London. 

I’m currently making work for a solo exhibition at New Image Art in Los Angeles which opens in December and Vans have very kindly offered to support the project and help me make a bunch of artwork for the show. I making drawings, animations, ceramics, enamel wall hangings, trophies, flocked screen prints and bunch of weird and wonderful merch. I’m really excited for it all, as well as stressed about making all this stuff. Recently you’ve been making some giant prints which we’ve seen on your IG.How did this come about? What’s your background with print making? How’d you get into it? The big dayglo paper ones? Yeah that was purely that I was having a few exhibitions in skate shops and smaller shop venues when I lived in Aus and I found that trying to sell original artwork to skate kids or metal heads is dumb. They can’t afford to buy originals and I can’t afford to sell it that cheap, but if I can make a print or zine and sell it for the price of a beer or a board then that audience is stoked. I’d rather be able to give something to those guys that love what I do and want to support it, but might not have a the cash to buy an original. I was working on and off at my friends printers in Melbourne and he just said that he would make me some huge digital prints on the fluro paper, the same as they used for band bill board posters and so I made a few and people seemed to dig them, so I made more. Its fun, cos its digital, theres no real set up cost and you can make as few or as many as you like. So if no one seems to like one image you can just ditch and make another. Also I really liked the bright coloured papers and the black ink, its a bit like a 1 colour black light print.  

What’s your process like for making art?  Do you keep a sketchbook or just get at it in the studio? I usually just work in my studio, in my house. I often work from reference images and pull together images and photos in photoshop and then draw from that in pencil, then re-work it again in pencil, adding the detail and finally ink it. If need extra computer stuff I scan it and do that after.

Who are some of your favorite artists you think folks should check out? Some my current fav’s are : Parker Jackson, Daniel Cantrell, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Grady Gordon, Will Sweeney, Ragnar Persson, Paul Parker, Aaron Storck.

What are your favorite kind of Vans? I always skate in black and white original old schools or sk8 hi’s, I don’t do colours. But since the new pro’s came out I’ve been really into them, the inner sole has saved my knees.  

Can you tell us your best or weirdest art story? I dunno if I have any weird ones really, its all pretty boring really, I just make artwork. I have a ton of weird skate trip stories, drunken stories, but art ones not really. Once one of the dudes from the band 'Entombed’ came to my art show in Sweden? 

What’s on the horizon for 2018? What you super stoked on coming up? I dunno yet, I’m just trying to get to the end of 2017 and make the exhibition at New Image Art the best I can. I’ll keep you posted!  

Follow FRENCH Website | www.funeralfrench.com Instagram | @funeralfrench

[alisonmanic]

So I was at Kitacon this weekend 18th to 20th August. I was happy to find out that an article I’d written for the con book made it in! (as pictured above). Now that the con is over and I’m home. Here is exactly what I wrote: It feels like only yesterday I would sit and watch the first Digimon (Digimon Adventure (Season 1) on CITV.  But Digimon did not start with the Animation. It started on the 26th June 1997 with the release of the Digimon V-Pet in Japan. Yup that's right, Digimon is now officialy 20 years old. Feeling old yet? I am lol as I was 14 at the time! You could raise Digimon like Agumon or even Devimon in the very first V-Pet. Ah if only I had been able to keep my original V-Pets and Digivices. Still, I have been very fortunate to get some of my collection back over the years and have recently ordered the 20th Anniversary from Japan. Digimon Adventure first started in Japan on the 6th of March 1999 and ran for 54 episodes into March 2000. The English dub started to air in America in August 99 to June 2000. We were introduced to the 'original' Chosen Children (Digidestined dub). I have keen memories of writing down the evolution lines while I was watching the dub and this drove me to start my own Digimon website (Digital Starlight) in 2001. Although it is no longer updated, the site still lives. Most of my favourite Digimon and cosplay have come from Adventure. I have cosplayed Vamdemon/Myotismon, Tailmon/Gatomon and Hikari Yagami/Kari Kamiya. I would one day like to cosplay Wizarmon/Wizardmon and PicoDevimon/DemiDevimon. Digimon Adventure Zero Two (02) first started in Japan on the 2nd April 2000 and ran for 50 episodes into March 2001. The dub started in America in August 2000 and ran to May 2001. The Chosen Children expanded a lot, we got new types of evolution (Jogress/DNA and Armour). I would like to cosplay the Digimon Kaiser at some point and was rather disappointed when there were no United Kingdom Chosen in the Digimon World Tour. Also it marked the return of my favourite Digimon villan – Vamdemon/Myotismon. It was towards the end of Season 2 that I was introduced into Real Media clips from Japan that took ages to download on 56k dial up! Digimon Tamers first started in Japan on the 1st April 2001 and ran for 51 episodes into March 2002. The dub started in America in September 2001 and ran to June 2002. We met new Digimon Tamers and their partners and this series was darker than the previous two. Digimon died and were not reborn like previous seasons. This was not expected and depression was tackled in youngsters. Afterall Juri/Jeri's Digimon Leomon died and sent her spiralling. For some, Tamers wasn't popular and for some they loved it. I'm more in the middle ground. Digimon Frontier first started in Japan on the 7th April 2002 and ran for 50 episodes into March 2003. The dub started in America in September 2002 and ran to March 2003. Digimon Frontier never aired in the UK and a friend in Australia ended up taping me the episodes from TV and sending me the VHS'! Digimon Frontier was very different. There were no Digimon partners, the children Spirit Evolved into their Digimon forms. Frontier was considered as 'the end' at one point. People did not like it didn't have partners or the drawn out Royal Knights story line. By  the time Frontier ended in Japan. There was no new Digimon show ready to take it's place. There was a hiatus, only broken by a Japanese Movie Digital Monster X-Evolution in January 2005. No humans, just a pure story about Digimon that got rather confusing at times. Then it was back to waiting until... Digimon Savers/Digimon Data Squad. Diginon Savers first started in Japan on the 2nd April 2006 and ran for 48 Episodes until March 2007. The dub, Digimon Data Squad, started in October 2007 and ran to November 2008. Data Squad was aired on an obscure channel called Kix at the time. Digimon Savers followed another new route with 'DATS – Digital Accident Tactics Squad' and the Humans partnered with Digimon were for the most part teenagers (Minus Ikuto/Keenan who was younger). Once again, this season was a little darker as it was shown how Digimon can be 'corrupted' with huamn thoughts' and even went so far to have a Nazi-esq evil human called Kurata who wanted to destroy all Digimon! We were also introduced to Yggdrasil (King Drasil) the god of the Digital World...and once again at set of Royal Knights. Some good..some not so good. Once again, we had another hiatus and paved the way to... Digimon Xros Wars/Digimon Fusion. Digimon Xros ran for 79 episodes in total and was in three different parts. It ran in Japan from 6th July 2010 to March 2012. The dub has only covered the first 54 episodes, Part 3 having not been dubbed. The dub Digimon Fusion started in America in September 2013 and ran to August 2015. Part 1 is just known as  Digimon Xros Wars and was 30 Episodes long. Digimon did not evolve as normal at first as they had to Xros using multiple Digimon to create Xrossed up Digimon (I.e Shoutmon X2, X3 X4 etc). Digimon levels as we knew them were thrown out of the window and things were somewhat war like. Part 2 is known as  Digimon Xros Wars The Evil Death Generals and the Seven Kingdom and covered Episodes 31 to 54. Bagramon had won and turned the Digital World into his own image and placed several of his Death Generals into the seven single zones. The Chosen having to fight each to re-take back over the Digital World. Part 3 originally wasn't meant to happen and was more of an off shoot of Digimon Xros. It is known as The Boy Hunters Who Leapt Through Time. While it had Taiki/Mikey and Yuu from Parts 1 and 2 it also featured a new set of Characters. Episodes 55 to 79 were covered and are generally considered 'they don't exist' by some fans. Hunters went so far as crossing over with the other Digimon series and bringing in the 'Goggle boys and several other chosen/Tamers cast members' fan service like...which honestly...didn't do it for me. Once again, we had another hiatus and paved the way to something that many Digimon fans were very excited for... Digimon Adventure tri. This is currently still ongoing, with Part 5 Symbiosis of Part 6 airing on 30th September 2017! Tri Part 1: Reunion  was released on the 21st November 2015. Part 2: Determination on 12th March 2016, Part 3 Confession on 24th September 2016 and Part 4 Loss on 25th February 2017. Each Episode was released the same day, subbed, in America and other places (sadly not UK) on Crunchyroll. The original eight chosen are back...with a new addition of Meiko and her partner Meicoomon! The Zero Two children (Minus Hikari and Takeru) are 'currently unknown' status. Digimon are getting infected, the infection is making them very strong and attacking the human world. The Chosen, 3 years older after the events of Zero Two, start to take the burden and responsibility of still being Chosen with the attacks happening in the real world. Part 1: Reunion Dub (Japanese Audio and Subs available as well) was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-Ray on 22nd May 2017. Part 2 Determination dub is due out in America on 15th August 2017. At the same time, we currently have... Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters. It started to air in Japan on 1st October 2016 and is still airing. There is currently no dub. It introduces another new casting characters and Digimon are known as Appmon. So far as writing this, there are no 'old school' Digimon. A being known as Leviathan is wanting to turn all Appmon evil and our heroes must stop him! I actually need to catch up on Applimon! It does feel strange that Digimon has, pardon the expression, evolved so much over the years. Not only does it have animation, it has several manga. My favourte of these manga being Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01. A different Taichi Yagami and his partner Zeromaru the V-Dramon must save the Digital World from Demon and his 'child' Arkadimon. There were also English Adaptations of Season 1 to 3 of the anime with Tokyopop. Digimon is still going strong over 20 years. I hope you have enjoyed the little overview of Digimon and here is to another 20 years! Now the Adventure Evolves. ~Vande~

[futuresandpasts]

Futures & Pasts | MRR #405

From Maximum Rocknroll #405 (February 2017): reissues of two crucial Kiwi post-punk LPs & some truly fractured early ‘80s US DIY; a brilliantly sparse one-off single from a band who should have been the next Young Marble Giants & the latest seething synth-punk export from Australia. 

The waning months of 2016 have yielded two absolutely essential reissues culled from the rich archives of the New Zealand underground. First, there’s X-Features, an anthology LP collecting the two EPs from early ‘80s post-punks the FEATURES, plus an entire side’s worth of material that had never been officially released until now. Where many of the Kiwi DIY agitators of the era drew liberal influence from the FALL’s caustic and jagged sneer (SHOES THIS HIGH or the GORDONS, to name two), the FEATURES seemed more closely aligned with the American strain of intellectual art-punk that had its heyday from from about 1979 to 1982. “City Scenes,” taken from the group’s 1980 debut single, has all of the rubbery, herky-jerky danceability of NYC’s pre-new wave downtown weirdos COME ON, while the desperate, angular dissonance of “Party” and “Mirror” (from their Perfect Features Exposed EP, released later that same year) suggests MISSION OF BURMA transported to the Southern Hemisphere. The group’s avowed love of PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED is also worth noting, particularly given that like so many of their UK post-punk counterparts, the FEATURES origins can be traced back to relatively straightforward early punk combos (in this case, the PRIMMERS and the TERRORWAYS), before ultimately branching out from what was quickly becoming a stale musical orthodoxy post-‘77 - SEX PISTOLS to PIL, BUZZCOCKS to MAGAZINE, the list goes on. They definitely made the right call with that particular trajectory, and this collection is a total gem. (Flying Nun, flyingout.co.nz)

Then there’s the latest entry in the Hozac Archival series, a reissue of the TERMINALS’ brilliant Uncoffined LP from 1990. The independent music scene in New Zealand in the 1980s has since come to be largely defined by the warm, kaleidoscopic pop hooks of the holy trinity of the CLEAN, the CHILLS, and the BATS, but more so than their contemporaries, the TERMINALS’ jangly melodies were spiked by a sinister organ-accented drone that was most likely the product of a good number of hours spent studying the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s White Light/White Heat album. It’s that thread of somber psychedelia that ties Uncoffined to the bands lurking in some of the darker corners of the early Flying Nun catalog, like the PIN GROUP and SCORCHED EARTH POLICY (both of whom had personnel overlap with the TERMINALS, appropriately enough). But for all of their moodier leanings, the TERMINALS were still very much a continuation of the mid-to-late ‘80s Kiwi-pop tradition - “Frozen Car” is right up there with the CHILLS’ ‘Pink Frost” when it comes to haunting and heartbreaking NZ underground classics, and “Gasoline” reimagines the CLEAN’s most freewheeling and giddy side (think “Tally Ho!”) with an anxious post-punk edge. Buy the damn thing! (Hozac, hozacrecords.com)

On a non-New Zealand reissue tip: the ZOOMERS existed more or less parallel to the council flat-centered DIY racket of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s UK post-punkers and hometapers, but with their own uniquely warped (and, truth be told, heavily drug-addled) approach to crafting true freak sounds perfectly representative of the Louisiana swamps from which they were spawned. They held it together long enough to press a few hundred copies of a three-song single in 1981, then apparently proceeded to toss a good number of them out of the window of a moving car during an acid trip in a move that was easily way more punk than the Sex Pistols memorabilia bonfire stunt that Vivienne Westwood’s son recently pulled. The records that survived that particular joyride have since been fetching triple digit prices, so Mighty Mouth have truly done their good deed in re-releasing the 7”, complete with recreations of the original garishly colored hand-painted sleeves and everything. “From the Planet Moon” has rightfully become an iconic song in the pantheon of Hyped to Death compilations, showing all of the ramshackle art-punk charm of legends like SWELL MAPS, the HOMOSEXUALS or TRONICS, but with the addition of the sort of bent melodic knack that the New South jangle-pop groups who followed  in the wake of the ZOOMERS just a few years later ultimately straightened out. The way they not-so-subtly swipe from LOU REED’s “Vicious” in “You’ll See” is pretty genius, too. (Mighty Mouth, almostreadyrecords.com/mmm.htm)

Not reissued, but someone should really get on it: INDIFFERENT DANCE CENTRE’s entire recorded legacy is limited to an impossibly rare single from 1981, which includes an A-side (“Flight and Pursuit”) that’s basically the best YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS song that YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS never wrote. There’s the same stark, brittle foundation of chilly drum machine beats, ethereally-detached female vocals and steady bass throb, all delicately arranged like a house of cards. On the flip side, “Release” takes those Moxham and Statton-patented hyper-minimalist post-punk vibes and filters them through the kind of gauzy dream-pop atmospherics that 4AD would go on to make their name with post-COCTEAU TWINS, without any of the dour goth pretensions. It’s hard to believe that this 7” appeared just a year after Rough Trade released Colossal Youth - is there a whole secret history of early ‘80s UK-based YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS disciples out there that has eluded me all of this time? I really hope so.

And last but not least, we return to the here and now. I’ll admit that the KLEENEX and SCREAMERS comparisons that were thrown around to describe the new demo cassette from Australia’s SPOTTING were what initially reeled me in, although those reference points are actually, at least to my ears, tenuous at best. Not nearly as loopy and off-kilter as the former, nor as unhinged and terrifying as the latter, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not an absolute scorcher of a tape. If anything, I’d put SPOTTING on the same general axis as the Goner Records-affiliated cohort that’s drawn equally from raucous, no-fi garage and synth-damaged post-punk as of late (think AQUARIAN BLOOD and BLACK ABBA, or if you want to go back a little further, even ANGRY ANGLES). The shouting in an echo chamber vocals, wobbly, distorted synth, and TV static used for sonic texture do give everything a distinct “recorded directly to VHS” feel - maybe that’s where the SCREAMERS analogy really comes in? Future-punk is now; it’s SPOTTING’s world and we’re just living in it. (No Patience, nopatiencerecords.bandcamp.com/album/demo-cs-6)

[lilynoellerogers]

Cuba, Libre

From the moment the plane hovered overhead, fought back by warm sweeping winds, I could tell we had entered a different world. Already the 5am wakeup, the disorientation of being alone on a voyage I had envisioned for two, and a five hour flight had left my head a bit spun out. But landing in Havana, and all that followed that day, gave me a sense of being suspended in time and place. It was pure magic. In the final miles that the plane descended on the lush tropical landscape of Cuba, small scenes caught my eye: a group crossing a green plain on horseback to check the crops, exuberantly bright old cars barreling along a highway going about 50 but looking like they were pushing themselves to the brink, pockets of dense jungle scattered within a mile or two of Habana Centro. The plane landed smoothly, despite the strong gales of wind,  and a ramshackle faded yellow airport building appeared. We were bussed over to it and were ushered in, where numbered cubicles that looked like small wooden phone booths were the vessels we would pass through to a land that felt like the Wild Un-West. A few quick questions from an immigration officer and then a mystery door, opening up to Cuba. An immediate rush of people appeared, some well intentioned, some not as much. In the bathroom a cleaning lady hoped to do an unofficial currency exchange with me. I navigated through the crowd to get a taxi, which ended up being a new vehicle with AC rather than the 51 Chevy convertible of my dreams. But those pushed along the road with us, some looking as though they had been worked to the bone and others as though they hadn’t exited a garage since whatever year in the 1950’s they had been made. An occasional pink Cadillac would sidle up alongside us. Men selling mangos rushed to do a quick exchange with a car in front of us on the highway - “only in Cuba,” my driver said with a chuckle. Cuba by and large felt safer than many places with a similar demographic, though some opportunists were emboldened by the recent rush of tourism. My driver began to tell me about trips I could take to the countryside, and I started to prepare a kind but firm defense, knowing that the pitch for his services was forthcoming. Instead, he surprised me by suggesting that I take the bus for a couple CUC, or to walk through Habana Centro rather than taking a taxicab. He really wanted me to have a good time, and that made me smile. Somehow it felt like everywhere else we had slipped into the era of young capitalists seeing the chance for a quick buck rather than the simplicity of people who loved their country and wanted others to experience it’s beauty too. Walking down the streets also felt safe. The only frustrations were people begging for money and men hitting on me in Spanish (for which I didn't have a full enough Spanish vocabulary to adequately warn them off). I arrived to the building where my homestay was located, and a man smoking a cigar lingered in the doorway. He grunted a bit and directed me where to go. Another ancient looking man with a bulbous nose was slumped on the stairs, and his eyes smiled at me. I found my host, Magalys, who I exchanged excited noises of greeting with in lieu of a common language. My mind flashed to google translate - but there’s truly no service anywhere in Cuba. Not even easy wifi. It’s complicated. So with no raft to save us, she rattled on in Spanish, I caught every fourth word and the general gist, and smiled inside at how much I appreciated the simplicity of it all. This was a different world. The lack of technology and virtually no internet was one of the most striking things I first experienced in Cuba. I used a paper map to navigate and made educated guesses. I gestured a lot with my hands and employed a broad smile. I seemed to over-rely on the word “perfecto” for everything. Low-tech seemed to change the nature of everything. Even the fact that I pushed through a writer’s block the minute I arrived was telling. When I first found Magalys I walked past apartment doors, all mostly open but some with a barred door just to stop people from walking in. Small windows into small worlds, and again a different era. Ancient TV sets and photos of granddaughters alongside renderings of Jesus were the pretty vignettes through the bars. Beams of golden light, brightly colored walls, overgrown plants, and indoor/outdoor living abounded. I was loving Cuba. My apartment was clean, bright, and perfect. Twin balconies overlooked the streets of Havana. The capital shone in one direction and Plaza Vieja in the other. An old cherry apple red Ford convertible idled below while a group of men chatted. Stray kittens mewed and meandered across the street while street puppies play fought beside them. I ventured out in the world after unpacking a bit. I ended up At El Del Frente, a place I could tell would be my new home base. Fresh juice and a welcoming environment, as well as some young English speaking Cuban guys who told me I was their “favorite customer ever.” I’m a sucker for feeling special. I had baked plantain chips, a sweet potato puree, and some incredibly fresh cold lobster tacos. I met an English couple from Yorkshire who were incredulous I was alone, and the woman in particular seemed to feel a bit of motherly responsibility for me. As we ate on a small terrace one floor up, able to somewhat invisibly observe the happenings down below, a Michael Jackson impersonator very enthusiastically (but not too adeptly) performed some renditions of “Black or White” and “Thriller,” complete with sparkly glove. I became lost in my own imaginings of this man as a young boy, watching the only VHS tape in the house of a Michael Jackson concert, drilling himself on the moves and sounds so that someday he could voyage out with a very particular set of skills. My new friends from the UK, Shelley and Rick, took me afterwards to a bar they had been to before dinner, where there was live music. A group of women ran through songs that seemed every Cuban person in the room knew, and brayed along drunkenly. People were salsa dancing, smoking, imbibing in the crowded but pulsing space. This felt like Cuba. “Stand by Me” was also thrown into the mix and we had a chance to sing along. My usual judgments or self-consciousness in this was nowhere to be found. A city, colorful and alive, was allowing me to feel like me.

But it’s funny how days can go. The last line of this, both poignantly true and utterly false on day two. The thing I thought would be tough about traveling as a single woman alone in Cuba, my (lack of) safety or being an easy target, was only partly true. I felt pretty safe, even on blocks that looked as torn apart as Aleppo, but I was constantly catcalled and targeted for the scam du jour. Every block I walked, multiple no’s. The interaction exhaustion I experienced after only one hour “out” forced me back to my apartment to recoup. It reminded me of parts of Asia or Istanbul, for slightly different reasons. Third world with a side of being hit on constantly made it tough. The language barrier was the cherry on top. There’s not many creative ways to couch “NO” when you don’t speak the language. And sometimes they don’t listen. Yesterday a guy followed me home for 30 minutes babbling drunkenly while I completely ignored him (full disclosure: I spoke to him for a couple sentences as “nice American”) before starting to completely ignore him. But that’s the problem with going full “feminist at a frat party” NO. I feel vulnerable here. This is not my country. A way I might feel safe communicating in LA, with a full grasp of the English language, a car in clicker shot, my complete bearings of where I am…that doesn’t apply here. So in a way, you put up with it. “Nice American” it is. It’s brought up a lot of internal questions about feminism here. Sometimes I think many of our male-dominant culture issues are American ones. But as I think about it, there’s really not a single place I’ve been, with the exception of maybe Australia and New Zealand, where that’s not an issue. For some reason, I imagine Tokyo might be the same. However, everywhere else I’ve been catcalled, treated as lesser than, touched without permission. Yesterday, even my well-meaning driver touched my leg an awful lot over my virgin Mojito and his Cuba Libre - and I was the one who felt like it would have been impolite to ask him to stop. It’s truly a global issue. And I’ll be honest, in the case of Havana, it’s making me want to jet to Cancun sooner than later, as much as I also love it here.  I think being a single woman traveling here is truly not an easy task. Despite all this, yesterday was still fun. I found an old flea market near the Plaza de Armas with loads of precious small things: pins, old books, sentimental trinkets. This was nothing like the tourists markets with maracas, cheap drums, and Club Havana t-shirts. I bought a pin that spoke to me - 1972 Blood Donor - as well as an old 1988 Dave Stewart baseball card. Funny to travel all this way for that! The rest of the day was spent wandering out of old Havana and into other areas on the outskirts. I got caught in a sudden tropical rainstorm and kids emerged from every door in underwear, dancing and yelping. I took refuge in a dark corner of Cafe Miglis and had some meatballs that seemed a million miles from Cuba. I took a wander after the rain died down to the nearby Ocean Wall, the Malecon, where young lovers canoodled and fisherman sat on the wall, kicking, looking for the catch of the day while simultaneously hissing at me with approval. I made my way up to the Hotel Malecon, a grand decaying old Hotel but well worth popping in to spend time in the rolling gardens with a drink or a cigar. I exited the hotel quickly and immediately met Michael, a driver with a pink Chevy who beckoned me to come on a city tour with him. I hadn’t planned on this, but why not. I was tired and could use to take a rest and see some sights. So out we went, past the old University with the broad stairs and broken windows, through Revolution Square, a bleak places with a couple outlined portraits of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and up to the somewhat mythical Bosque of Havana. The bosque is a forest right in Miramar, on the outskirts of Havana, and though I cringed a little at parts of it being trashed, it still felt like something out of Avatar. People were even bringing dead things down to the river for a Santeria ceremony. We rolled home through Miramar and after a mojito on the Malecon. I fell into a deep sleep at 8pm and slept for 13 hours, exhausted by the stimulation of it all.

[artkitterman-blog]

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