#_draft:true

[hiworld-me-blog]

the world. the universe. the great big milky way. the sun that shines so bright. what a dark and endless nothing.the stars that are these big balls of gas. In this world, in this place that we call earth. we wait ever day for the next to then repeat the same thing over and over until the day comes that we die. but people so scared of death they forget why they living. some live for nothing, others live for everything. then there is those in the in-between. but no one knows which live the best. that's only because we don't know what happens in their head.

okay so this is the first time i have ever shown this to anyone. so ya

[robotsvsdinosaurs]

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

Priyanka Chopra's stylish $30 summer skirt from Target is finally available — shop it before it sells out

Priyanka Chopra attends Vineyard Vines for Target Launch at Brookfield Place in May 2019 in New York City. (Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Priyanka Chopra just stepped out in one of her most affordable summer looks yet — a $30 target skirt. The budget-friendly blue and white striped midi skirt is from Target’s new Vineyard Vines collaboration, which launches on Saturday, May 18.

The actress and newlywed has always been known for her head-turning ensembles and this one is no different. She paired the fashionable skirt with a white Wolford bodysuit, white pointed cap toe heels and a crisp white boxy bag.

As you head into Memorial Day Weekend, Chopra shows us exactly how to dress to impress — and on a budget. You can style the skirt with anything from a tank to a t-shirt to a blouse and shawl, all summer long.

Priyanka Chopra attends Vineyard Vines for Target Launch at Brookfield Place in May 2019 in New York City. (Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Priyanka Chopra attends Vineyard Vines for Target Launch at Brookfield Place in May 2019 in New York City. (Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)

Target’s Vineyard Vines line is stocked with stylish summer essentials for the entire family. You’ll find chic polos for men, apparel for the kids — and even your pets! Stock up on beach chairs and floaties, as well as tabletop and decor necessities you’ll need to throw a memorable summer bash.

Shop Chopra’s skirt below before it sells out. While you’re at it, check out our other favorites from the new Target x Vineyard Vines line and make sure to shop the entire collection at target.com.

Vineyard Vines for Target Striped Midi Skirt

Vineyard Vines for Target Striped Midi Skirt (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $30, target.com

Vineyard Vines for Target Rope Beach Bag with Whale

Vineyard Vines for Target Rope Beach Bag with Whale (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $35, target.com

Vineyard Vines Men’s Fishbone Short Sleeve Woven Button-Down Shirt

Vineyard Vines Men’s Fishbone Short Sleeve Woven Button-Down Shirt (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $25, target.com

Vineyard Vines for Target Toddler Boys’ School of Sharks

Vineyard Vines for Target Toddler Boys’ School of Sharks (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $12, target.com

Vineyard Vines for Target Girls’ ¼ Zip Pullover Patchwork Whale Sweatshirt

Vineyard Vines for Target Girls’ ¼ Zip Pullover Patchwork Whale Sweatshirt (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $16, target.com

Vineyard Vines for Target Pink Whale Collapsible Wagon

Vineyard Vines for Target Pink Whale Collapsible Wagon (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $100, target.com

Vineyard Vines for Target 11.5oz Pink Whale Lidded Wine Glass

Vineyard Vines for Target 11.5oz Pink Whale Lidded Wine Glass (Photo: Target)

Shop it: $5, target.com

Read More from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• ‘Like walking on air’: Are these the most comfortable sneakers ever?

• ‘So easy, no need to reapply’: Why you should wear UPF sun-protective clothing this summer

• Expert packing tips on how to travel like a pro this summer

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.

Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo’s newsletter

[spoonfulloflife-blog1]

BLACKISNOTBEAUTIFUL

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

Aly Raisman says this part of her skin care routine is 'self-care'

Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman tells Yahoo Lifestyle that applying SPF is a part of her daily routine. (Photo: Getty Images)

Aly Raisman is teaming up with Olay to raise awareness for sun protection and stars in the brand’s Sun campaign. “Sun care is self-care,” says the two-time Olympian in the video ad, which she shared on Instagram.

She tells Yahoo Lifestyle that when she was growing up using tanning oils to lay out under the sun or using tanning beds was the norm among her group of friends. And she’s thankful her mom didn’t let her partake in the trend. “I was kind of embarrassed when my mom would make me put on extra sunscreen all the time and now when I look back I’m so grateful because it’s so important,” she says.

Today, Raisman says a daily self-care routine is very important to her. “I’m very much a creature of habit and the more things I do regularly, the better I feel.”

Part of that routine includes taking care of her skin. “SPF is a part of my everyday routine and its also a part of taking care of yourself,” she explains. “I live in Boston and even in the winter, I wear SPF every single day. It’s super important.”

View this post on Instagram

Ahhhhhhhhhh so excited to share this!!!! Anyone who knows me knows I love skincare, it’s always been therapeutic for me. I usually start my mornings drinking hot water with lemon, writing in my gratitude journal, putting on my skin care products and of course ending with SPF, even when it’s snowing in Boston! Skincare allows me to take a moment for a myself and reminds me to take a breather before the day begins. Taking care of your skin is SO important….. I hope this post will encourage some of you to take time for yourself and apply your SPF! 😋 I love being a part of the @Olay #SunCareIsSelfCare campaign #faceanything #olaysun

A post shared by Alexandra Raisman (@alyraisman) on Apr 1, 2019 at 1:39pm PDT

In addition to her skincare regime, Raisman incorporates wellness and fitness into her self-care routine.

“I do meditation pretty much every single day at least once a day,” she says. “I also like to journal. I keep a gratitude journal, and I go to therapy.”

She also works up a sweat by staying active. “I started doing yoga using videos I found on YouTube, even if it’s just 10 to 20 minutes, and I also like boxing,” she says. “It’s all about doing what works for you and I’m very open to trying new things.”

Below, shop some of Aly Raisman’s favorite Olay skin care products.

Olay Regenerist Whip with SPF 25 ($29)

Olay Regenerist Whip with SPF 25. (Photo: Olay)

“I don’t really wear makeup … I try to be as natural as I can,” says Raisman. “In the morning I start with the Olay Whip with sunscreen, I love this one.”

Shop it: $29, amazon.com

Olay Sun Face Sunscreen + Shine Control ($20)

Olay Sun Face Sunscreen + Shine Control. (Photo: Olay)

“Then I use the new Olay sunscreen that I’m seen with in the campaign,” she adds. “You can never have enough protection, that’s just my opinion.”

Shop it: $20, amazon.com

Olay Fresh Reset Clay Face Mask Stick ($10)

Olay Fresh Reset Clay Face Mask Stick. (Photo: Olay)

“I also love Olay’s stick masks, they’re so easy to use,” she says. “I’ve been traveling a lot lately, so I switch it up, but I love the pink clay mask.”

Shop it: $10, amazon.com

Read More from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Amazon’s best-selling ‘holy grail skin care product’ is also dermatologist-approved

I tried the wildly popular $11 Amazon face mask that reviewers claim ‘works miracles’ — here’s what happened

‘This is a game changer’: Amazon shoppers can’t believe this anti-aging retinol cream is only $20

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.

Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo’s newsletter.

[ethanalter]

'The X-Files' postmortem: 'Plus One' director Kevin Hooks talks bringing sexy back to the show

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in ‘The X-Files’ (Photo: Shane Harvey/Fox)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the “Plus One” episode of The X-Files.

Phew — is it hot in here or is it just us? This week’s Chris Carter-penned X-Files installment, “Plus One,” was one of the steamiest in the show’s history… even though Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) didn’t do anything more on camera than cuddle. In the midst of an investigation into a strange case of murderous doppelgängers, the paranormal investigators provide an overdue update on their complicated romantic status by sharing an intimate night together in their hotel room. Initially occupying separate beds, an emotionally troubled Scully approaches Mulder with a request: “Can you hold me?”

Once in bed, the duo — who, let’s not forget, have a child together (or do they?) — engage in some sweetly emotional pillow talk about taking care of each other in their old age and the unlikely chances of spawning another rugrat. As Scully turns to face Mulder with a smile on her face, the camera pans subtly away to the left. When we cut back to the room later on, there’s obvious evidence that they’ve gotten hot and heavy beneath the sheets, from his rumpled tank top to her bare shoulders. It’s quite possibly the closest that The X-Files has gotten to a sex scene in 11 seasons — or, at least, close enough to make us want to rechristen the series as The Sexy Files.

“The Sexy Files! That’s pretty funny,” says the hour’s director, Kevin Hooks, with a good-natured chuckle. A former child actor turned veteran director — his past episodic credits include everything from St. Elsewhere and China Beach to Prison Break and Lost — Hooks says he was excited to learn that his first X-Files episode would be such a momentous one for the main characters. “That scene is obviously huge, and when I read the script I was really excited about it. It’s something that X-Files fans have been looking forward to for some time.”

Hooks filled us in on how he brought the sexy back to The X-Files and how he accomplished the difficult task of making a simple game of Hangman seem like the scariest thing ever.

Yahoo Entertainment: David and Gillian obviously have a long history together that they drew on for the more intimate moments in this episode. How did you see your role as the first-time director coming into that relationship? Kevin Hooks: The biggest challenge in doing a show that has the long history that The X-Files has is to gain the trust of the cast, as well as the crew. That’s something that I really tried to invest a lot of thought and energy into, knowing we were going to get to a place of intimacy that hadn’t been explored on the show in a while. Because David and Gillian are so close and so invested in these characters, they brought a lot to it that I couldn’t even have anticipated. They did a lot of work with Chris in terms of how to handle the passage of time and the ages of the characters. I just wanted to impress upon them the trust that I felt in them and that hopefully it would be reciprocated, which I think it was. I wanted to say my piece and get out of the way, because what they brought was going to be rich, and I wanted to make sure they felt comfortable enough to offer that.

The pillow talk sequence is the centerpiece of the episode, and you allow it to unfold in a very relaxed, almost languid way. It’s increasingly rare to see that kind of pacing on network television. How long did the scene take to shoot? We shot most of the hotel material in one or two days. What was paramount for me was to make sure that the scene played as honestly and earnestly as it possibly could. I didn’t want to rush the actors through takes; it was important to let that scene breathe, and I felt it worked well. In an episode that really does have a [fast] pace to it, that scene needed to breathe to be authentic.

As intimate as it is, we never do see Mulder and Scully kiss. Were there versions of the scene where things got more physical? Everybody was in agreement that we didn’t want to sell any body language that would indicate where it was going. The reveal was in the time cut when Mulder gets up to go to the bathroom, and you see bare shoulders. That’s when you realize that something has changed — that they’ve probably gone to another level, to use a euphemism. [Laughs] So we took great care with the body language to ensure that we didn’t ruin that reveal for the audience.

It’s not unlike the way Hollywood films functioned during the Production Code days — you had to hint at things rather than be explicit. Well, that’s the irony of the structure of that sequence, because we were restricted from what we could show for different reasons. We did it to serve the story as opposed to being dictated to by Standards and Practices.

Some lines in that sequence — like Mulder’s comment about Scully having plenty of “scoot in her boot” — sound improvised. Did the actors have leeway to play around that way? As much as Chris wanted to make sure that we got the scripted dialogue, he also trusts David and Gillian to try different things. I don’t remember if “scoot in your boot” was scripted or if it was David, but there’s some improv in there that works really well. When you’ve lived with characters for as long as they have, it becomes instinctive and just adds to the spontaneity of it all.

Anderson and Karin Konoval in ‘The X-Files’ (Photo: Shane Harvey/Fox)

Let’s talk about the other major hurdle you faced in the episode: making a game of Hangman seem frightening, not goofy. How did you approach those particular scenes visually? [Laughs] I knew there were going to be a ton of inserts, but I wanted to make sure that we didn’t rely entirely on them. I always think that camera movement creates drama, so I tried to get some push-ins and camera movements around that material. We also talked a little bit about jump-cutting in the editing patterns. Karin Konoval plays multiple characters in the episode, and one thing we talked a lot about was what grade of lead we’d use in the pencils. I wanted to feel the texture of what was being written on those pages, and Karin decided that she was going to make one of her characters left-handed and the other one right-handed. It was a wonderful idea that worked well with what the whole Hangman game was supposed to be in the episode.

I’ve always liked the conceit of doppelgängers as boogeymen. Did you enjoy playing around with that notion behind the camera? Chris and I talked a lot about designing shots that put characters in the same frame, whether it’s the young man in the car in the beginning of the episode or the fight Mulder has with his doppelgänger. We really wanted to give the audience visuals that felt a little bit more original and a little bit more fun than some of the other stuff where he had to rely on cuts. Putting both characters in the same frame was a wonderful exercise in the doppelgänger of it all.

The last shot of the episode — where Scully opens the adjoining door to their hotel rooms and finds Mulder waiting — is very playfully intimate as well. You can imagine where the scene goes next, even though we don’t see it. It’s very true. This sort of goes to what I was saying about relationships that exist well beyond a director coming in to do one episode in Season 11. There’s a foundation there that they’ve been working from and building on for years, and I just wanted to help bring it out. It was a lot of fun; watching them work together was amazing.

Were you a Mulder and Scully ‘shipper back in the day during the show’s original run? Working as a director and producer in television, you don’t get a chance to watch a lot of the shows being done. And that was before binge-watching! So I can’t say that I was avid a fan as many, but I certainly followed the show and aspired to be part of it. When I first talked to Chris Carter about doing [this episode], I told him that wherever I worked previously in the business, it was almost like “Six Degrees of X-Files.” I always met someone who had worked on the show, and thought they had worked with me on it! [Laughs] Finally, I was able to actually do the show and share the mystique of The X-Files.

The X-Files airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Fox.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Betty White and Bare-Chested Hunks: A Birthday Tribute

Review: The Versace ‘American Crime Story’ is a chilling thriller

Helen Mirren wants in again on ‘Fast and Furious’ — but driving this time is ‘essential’

[society-watch-blog]

【Yahoo論壇／陳少甫】用民主掩蓋的民進黨「法西斯」內涵

圖片來源：中央社

民進黨向來喜歡標榜和宣揚台灣的「民主」與「自由」，尤其民進黨人，特別狂熱於將民主與自由掛在嘴邊，彷彿從嘴巴說出來，台灣的民主與自由才不至於轉眼間消失無蹤。然而，民進黨人真的那麼熱愛民主，如此嚮往自由嗎？

對民進黨而言，民主自由或許曾是少數老黨員的理想，但理想敵不過現實，正如低頭耕耘的鋤頭，敵不過利益收割的鐮刀。民主與自由作為普世價值，早在二十年前，早已被民進黨視為選舉的策略與工具，而不再是一種價值信仰。懷抱理想的黨員陸續退黨或失聯，剩下的幾乎全是汲汲營營於利益分贓的幫夥。

而民進黨將民主自由視為策略與工具的目的，不在於思量如何對這些普世價值加以落實、堅持或捍衛，而在於針對台灣歷史記憶的篡改，使民主自由作為台灣民主化的成果，盡數轉化為僅限於民進黨獨攬的功勳，進而突顯國民黨的獨裁與專制。對於曾經在台灣施行威權統治的國民黨，既無能也無力反擊辯駁。

這是另類事實的運用，以真假摻半的方式，讓政治宣傳更具說服力。然而，若不是國民黨的顢頇懦弱，民進黨也不至於洗腦得如此成功。思想掌控從來便是民進黨極為重視的權力基礎，要想實現思想控制，當然必須從教科書著手。

歷史的詮釋權在李登輝執政時期，已藉由教育改革的名義，實踐了使台灣去中國化的脈絡，賦予台獨理論正當化的基礎。自此而後，國民黨從未成功奪回話語權，馬英九執政時期試圖對教科書內容做出些微調整，果然遭到民進黨的頑強抗拒。這是台獨教育實踐的果實，當時的孩子，已成為民進黨潛在的棋子。

民進黨對教育和思想控制的迷戀，除體現在民進黨長年於校園發展政治組織，更顯而易見的是對中研院和台大的執著。中研院和台大作為台灣最具指標性的學術機構，早已失去獨立自主和兼容並蓄的精神，資源分配端視立場異同，而政治正確大行其道。因此中研院院長一職，爭奪的再醜陋，仍必須掌控在自己人手裡；因此台大校長一職，即便遴選合法選出管中閔，管中閔仍無法就職。

因而，諸如校園自主、大學自主、學術自由等，作為全球普世價值的基本內涵，對民進黨而言，仍只是政治的另一種策略與工具。當國民黨在威權時期得以介入及掌控校園時，這些普世價值便被端了出來，用以驅逐國民黨的影響力。當民進黨進而掌控校園後，便主張學校不是化外之地，政府有權控制。

對民進黨而言，早年呼籲國民黨的「黨政軍退出校園及媒體」，雖用普世價值加以包裝，但當國民黨順從退出後，民進黨的政治力量立即長驅直入校園和媒體。普世價值既是工具，許多校園和媒體如今直接或間接地，受到民進黨的控制和影響，當然不足為奇。民主與自由，從來就不是預備落實的普世價值。

校園如此，媒體自然無法例外。在普世價值中，言論自由和新聞自由作為民主最重要的基石，民進黨既視價值為工具，言論及新聞自由當然理應受到限��和控制。從陳水扁到蔡英文，對言論自由的箝制益發大膽而具體，從早期動員群眾包圍電視台，到全面執政後藉由立法院多數，落實可控制言論的立法，也只是時間問題。具體嘗試為針對不利於民進黨的「假新聞」，對人民行拘留關押。

對民進黨而言，自陳水扁意外實現首次政黨輪替後，實現永久執政始終是目標。簡言之，換掉國民黨的威權，使民進黨取而代之，本是民進黨的策略。然而，陳水扁的貪腐和外交上的莽撞躁進，在台灣內部造成民進黨的形象大傷，對外更激怒美國的小布希政府，美國轉而支持親美的馬英九則是關鍵的變數。

然而，馬英九帶領國民黨重返執政，違背民進黨原先期望在台灣實現永久執政的目標，奪權自是當務之急。蔡英文領導的民進黨為實現奪權，不只需要新的政治能量來推翻國民黨，更急於修補與美國的關係。民進黨在野時對美國的許諾為何，外界無從知曉；但以現在來看，蔡英文是無條件的順從美國的意志。

普世價值既是工具，民主與自由作為掩飾民進黨法西斯內涵的外衣，難免顯得單薄，因而，尋找新的普世價值轉換為政治能量，以新的工具維持自身的道德高度，方能符合民進黨奪權的需求。自蔡英文任民進黨主席後，在野的民進黨於是標榜「進步」的價值，重新包裝如廢死、同性婚姻、環保等左派思想。

自此，進步的價值，再次轉化為民進黨全新的工具和策略，而國民黨的帽子則越戴越高，威權、獨裁、專制的舊符號尚未去除，隨之又戴上保守、反動、反改革的新標籤。民進黨從此更加豐富其普世價值的工具箱，重新獲得龐大的政治能量，吸引大批具有高度理想性的年輕人，共同投入推翻國民黨的行列。

進步的普世價值，和民主和自由一般，既然僅是民進黨奪權的工具，因此當綠營的支持者批評民進黨背棄理想，反而突顯其天真和愚昧。理想自始就不曾真正存在，背叛當然便無從談起。民進黨為實踐台獨，踐踏及凌駕民主、自由、人權、法治的手段，不過是使工具為其政治理念而服務，至於綠營支持者因仇恨而生的縱容，存在諷刺的雙重標準，只突顯普世價值作為工具，本身並不存在真正價值。民進黨支持者的心態，不過是投射所屬政黨掩藏的法西斯內涵。

曾經標榜的普世價值，面對權力與金錢，早已喪失殆盡。台灣人再也看不到民進黨曾經存在的理想，只能藉由持續仇恨國民黨，宣洩民進黨價值上的空洞。因而，憎恨國民黨始終是民進黨在台灣賴以生存的原動力，必須存在威權的國民黨，使之和專制獨裁連結，綠營支持者才不必面對民進黨���想盡失的現實。

長年來，國民黨向來是民進黨汲取政治能量的來源。這種政治能量汲取的形態，本質上迴異於正常的兩黨政治，也和世界各國的在野黨，必然從執政黨的失敗政策中獲利不同。對民進黨而言，國民黨的存在有其階段性的必要，國民黨唯有存在於台灣政壇，民進黨方能在選舉架構裡有效動員綠營支持者，藉由仇恨情緒的煽動獲取選票。反之，民進黨若下定決心朝戒嚴和獨裁的方向走，試圖建立新的威權政府，徹底消滅國民黨，則會轉而變成優先的施政目標。

至於轉型正義，不過是另一種便於使用的價值工具。轉型是否正義，從來就不是重點，實現民進黨單方面的轉型與正義，本身就是推動轉型正義的目的。

從民進黨的角度看，民主是手段，自由是手段，進步是手段，大學自主是手段，教育是手段，黨政軍退出校園和媒體是手段，言論自由是手段，轉型正義是手段，改革是手段。進一步說，奪權是目的，永久執政是目的，掠奪人民私有財產是目的，建立取代國民黨的新威權政府，更是其實踐台獨的終極目的。

我們如今還能在媒體上發表批評政府的言論，完全建立在民進黨的猶豫不決，始終還不敢邁出獨裁的最後一步，尤其蔡英文仍在觀望美國的態度。民進黨想拿台灣利益和美國交換的，絕非僅是短期或有條件的支持，而是希望換取美國支持民進黨建立新威權政府，或徒具形式民主的不自由政府，共同對抗大陸。

如今，蔡英文和民進黨已將台灣完全徹底的籌碼化，對美國投懷送抱，自願成為美國馬前卒的政治表態，明目張膽至路人皆知。目前的情勢，台灣不應再擔憂自身是否可能變成籌碼或棋子，因為美國已經一邊掌握住民進黨當局主動獻身，親手奉送的台灣前途，一邊琢磨如何利用台灣牌來與北京政府展開博弈。

沒有棋子會擔憂，自己是否可能成為別人的棋子。無論如何，台海戰事若起，台灣人不用奢望民進黨會躲進衡山指揮所與台灣共存亡。民進黨高層絕對會按歷次演習所模擬的那般，以最快的速度逃離台灣，並在美國成立流亡政府。

從台灣的利益考量，國民黨固然死不足惜，但台灣的老百姓必須審慎思考，為了台灣的民主自由，為了台灣的安全福祉，倘若民進黨成為新的獨裁政府和威權政體，是否仍願意無條件的支持民進黨走完這最後的一哩路？台灣的年輕人必須仔細思考，是否已做好因應台海戰爭而從軍的準備，是否具備為實現台獨理念而戰死的意志，是否願意嚴肅地走上戰場，來捍衛民進黨和美國的利益？

這���是蔡英文口中，台灣最後的一哩路。這才是台灣真正必須完成的答卷。

★更多Yahoo論壇文章 華郵引述觀察家：台灣有「受虐婦女症候群」 「無」部長滿月 失憶的蔡總統 蔡、馬總統過招「九彎十八拐」 當政府立法搶奪民財 一切都是原生家庭的錯？解脫自己的藉口

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【Yahoo論壇】係Yahoo奇摩提供給網友、專家的意見交流平台，本文章內容僅反映作者個人意見，不代表Yahoo奇摩立場。有話想說？不吐不快！>>> 快投稿Yahoo論壇

[mandibierly]

'The Magicians' postmortem: Summer Bishil on that crushing boat scene

Margo (Summer Bishil) has a heart-to-heart with the Muntjac (Photo: Syfy)

Spoiler alert: This week, the third episode of The Magicians‘ third season, “The Losses of Magic,” returned to a subject the series has dealt with before: sexual assault.

This time, after Eliot’s boat, the sentient Muntjac, was taken over by pirates, Margo (Summer Bishil) convinced the Fairy Queen to transport her and her advisors there. Eliot and his family had already escaped, so Margo was left to negotiate alone. She was told the pirates’ ship wanted to have sex with the Muntjac. If it didn’t get what it wanted, the crew of the Muntjac would die. A torn Margo then had a heartfelt conversation with the Muntjac‘s heartwood about consent and the stakes.

“As a woman, as a person, as a living being, it’s instinctual to want to ground a conversation about rape, essentially. So the work is already done for you if you are connected with reality,” Bishil says of filming the emotional scene. “As far as it being an inanimate object, and having to work with that, and wanting a response from it, I’m glad they left in the moment where I reach out to touch the heartwood, because it’s like, ‘Oh, you can’t respond. But you are living.’ So that sort of plays already, too, because it is weird talking to a piece of wood. But sometimes you don’t get a lot from actors.”

“How often do you go into an audition and you’re basically reading with a sack of bricks?” her co-star Hale Appleman (Eliot) says.

“You don’t always get people who are invested in story, either. Not on this show. But you are trained to deal with that,” Bishil says. “So I just drew on that. But that was just a beautiful episode. The writing for Margo is just endlessly inventive, and it’s there — it’s in the writing, really.”

Margo crushing her eye, in her own hand (Photo: Syfy)

The Fairy Queen overheard Margo’s conversation with the Muntjac and was touched, in her own way —  she massacred the pirates. She also, however, realized that one of Margo’s minions had stolen back Margo’s eye, which the Fairy Queen had been wearing as a bracelet. Rather than return the eye, which had become a spy for the Fairy Queen, Margo crushed it in her hand. It was a powerful moment.

“It’s almost like there’s two Margos,” Bushil says. “There’s the Margo in the edit, and then there’s the Margot that I experiment with. I come from the school of thought where you just try everything on the day. You try as many things as possible. You know, instinctually, what choice is probably going to be chosen in the edit, and what is probably going to resonate, but I played that scene completely different at first. I played the horrors of seeing all of these people dead, and the pirate king, who I had some sort of physical-sexual connection with, and the atrocity of what the Fairy Queen’s done, and the shock, and the devastation, and the real fear. The director — who I love working with, [James L. Conway], he’s fantastic, and he just makes me feel really supported on the set — and I think it was [co-producer] David Reed on set that day, were like, ‘Margo’s fearless, she’s not broken, she’s not afraid.’ So I quickly transitioned into what is played in the edit. And it was hard, because I wanted to break down and be like, ‘It’s my eye!’ But it’s so much more powerful [for her to crush it more stoically]. Because she’s basically deciding who she is in that moment. I don’t think Margo knows how fearless she is in that moment. That’s life, right? You don’t know who you are ’til you’ve made the decisions that you’ve made. We surprise ourselves, and I think Margo surprised herself at this detachment. She’s crushing this eye, and she’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’m really crushing this eye.‘”

She’s always tried to play against the vanity, Bishil says. “Because Margo really could’ve fallen into that category of superficial, and I never wanted her to be that, and I always tried to carve out something more interesting and not as cliché,” she says. “I don’t think Margo really cares too much about what people think about her appearance. She enjoys her appearance as performance. She celebrates it. It’s her own; it’s all hers, it belongs to her. She doesn’t do anything, appearance-wise, for anybody else.”

The Magicians airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Syfy.

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[lisabelkin-yahoonews]

Trump isn't the first president to politicize the census

California is suing the Trump administration over its decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. Census. (Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP)

A simple count of everyone in the country. What could be so hard about that?

In the 23 times that count has been done in the United States since the Constitution first required it in 1790, it’s become clear that there is almost nothing simple about the decennial census. The announcement this week that at least a dozen states would sue the Trump administration for adding a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census is but the most recent fight over what seems like should be a straightforward mathematical enumeration, but has almost always been an emotional and political one.

“Of course it’s political, it is the underpinning of the entire political system,” says Margo Anderson, distinguished professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and author of The American Census: A Social History. “It is always controversial.”

But if the fact that the census regularly results in a political fight is news to you, Anderson is not surprised. “Issues of race and region, growth and decline, equity and justice, have been fought out in census politics over the centuries,” she writes in the introduction to her book, “though because decades may pass between flare-ups of particular issues, the participants are often unaware of relevant earlier debate.”

Mandated by Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the census decides the population of each state, which in turn determines how much representation that state gets in the House of Representatives, how many votes each state has in the Electoral College, and what percentage of federal funds a state receives. A change in a state’s population, therefore, results directly in a gain or loss in that state’s political and economic clout.

In fact, the first political tussle over the census came during the writing of Article 1 in 1789. Southerners wanted slaves counted in their tally, as it would increase their numbers and their power, while Northerners wanted the opposite. The compromise was that slaves counted as 3/5 of a person, a choice that would haunt the nation well beyond the Civil War.

The Constitution only requires a population count, or “enumeration.” Which questions are asked during that count are decided by the census bureau, and over time form a snapshot of what issues felt important to the nation every 10 years. “The questions change with whatever is salient,” Anderson says.

In 1920, for instance, it felt time to take out the question about whether each household member had served in the Union or Confederate armed forces. That same year, questions were added that asked each U.S. resident when they naturalized, as well as for their own mother tongue and those of their parents.

The 2020 U.S. Census will add a question about citizenship status, a move that brought swift condemnation from many Democrats, who said it would intimidate immigrants and discourage them from participating. (Photo: Ross D. Franklin/AP)

By 1940, there were questions trying to gauge the impact of the Depression, asking about the need for housing, employment and unemployment, income and how often and where a family had moved in search of work.

In 2010, same-sex married couples were allowed for the first time to mark their spouse as “husband” or “wife” on a census form, and a box for “unmarried partner” was also available.

Sometimes the flare-ups over the census are caused by doubt about the results. Both George Washington and Alexander Hamilton thought the first census — which found that 3.9 million people lived in the young nation — was an undercount.

In 1840, an argument erupted over the accuracy of an apparent spike in “insanity” among the nation’s freed black population — at a rate of 1 in 162 in the North and 1 in 1,558 in the South. Advocates for slavery seized on those statistics to show that slaves went insane when freed; abolitionists countered that the data were simply wrong, the result of a confusing design of the census form that allowed elderly white members of a household to be counted in the column for “colored” and for some of those “insane” blacks to be attributed to families that had no black members. “The historical consensus is that the data were in fact wrong,” Anderson says.

In 1930, the fight was over unemployment, since the count took place so soon after the stock market crash. By the time the data was processed, the jobless figure was attacked as being too low by legislators who had hoped for higher numbers to justify a larger federal response. Congress in fact authorized a special 1931 census just to measure unemployment, and that number was much higher than it had been the year before.

Miscounts did not end with the modern era and its introduction of computer questionnaires in place of handwritten tallies by door-to-door enumerators. In 1990, for instance, 10 million Americans were somehow “lost” and 6 million were apparently counted twice. As most of those lived in poverty, the states where they resided could not qualify for the federal funds that might otherwise have been available for services.

Other controversies took place before the counting even began. In response to the 1990 miscount, the Clinton administration announced 10 years later that it would use data sampling to estimate the population rather than counting each individual. Republicans feared that this would result in an increased representation of minority groups, which would in turn result in election districts more favorable to Democrats. Newt Gingrich sued the Census Bureau, and a federal court struck down the sampling plan.

Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

And now there is the uproar over citizenship. The question has appeared periodically on census questionnaires over the years, but has not been included since 1950. The Department of Justice, which in January of this year asked for it to be added again, says that in order to enforce the Voting Rights Act, there must be a count of citizens who are old enough to vote. Those opposed to the addition argue that it will increase a trend toward individuals refusing to reply to all census questions for fear of exposing private information. A September 2017 memo written by bureau staff described “a recent increase in respondents spontaneously expressing concerns about confidentiality” in some pretest studies on the upcoming form, creating a “new phenomenon … particularly among immigrant respondents.”

If response rates are in fact depressed, history shows, the eventual count will be inaccurate, and in this case would increase the power of states with fewer undocumented immigrants.

Rather than remain a dry argument over the efficacy of sampling a wary population, however, the debate over the citizenship question has taken on some of the same emotional tones common to census arguments throughout history.

Since the Commerce Department confirmed Monday night that respondents in 2020 would be asked if they are citizens, state attorneys general began to fight back. Eric Schneiderman of New York called it a “reckless decision to suddenly abandon nearly 70 years of practice,” and warned the change would “create an environment of fear and distrust in immigrant communities that would make impossible both an accurate census and the fair distribution of federal tax dollars.”

The Trump/Pence campaign, in turn, sent out an email blast on Wednesday afternoon asking supporters to sign a petition to “Defend the President: 2020 Census Questions.”

“President Trump has officially mandated that the 2020 United States Census ask people living in America whether or not they are citizens,” the letter read. “And the sanctuary state of California is now SUING the Trump Administration to stop this commonsense order.

“We cannot let a few Hollywood special interests speak for the rest of our country,” it concluded. “It’s time to fight back. It’s time to once again reclaim our voice in America.”

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[gwynnew]

How much does Jennifer Lawrence love seeing her co-star in a Speedo?

Joel Edgerton goes out of his comfort zone to play a sexy leading man in Red Sparrow, and Jennifer Lawrence is here for it. Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment, Lawrence, who plays a Russian spy assigned to seduce Edgerton’s CIA agent, said that the Australian actor made a memorable first impression on her. As seen in the trailer, their characters meet at a pool, where they turn one another’s heads with body-conscious swimsuits.

“I think that was like his first day on set. I was like, ‘Hiii,‘” Lawrence recalled. (Watch the interview above.)

While Lawrence is often cast as a romantic lead, Edgerton is known for more offbeat roles, including an orc in the Netflix fantasy-crime film Bright and a creepy semi-stalker in his 2015 directorial debut, The Gift. 

“Look, sexy doesn’t sit well with me,” Edgerton admitted. “The spy part, loved it. Loved the whole idea that I got to live out and plug into a childhood fantasy of being a spy, but do it from the safety of my Winnebago-and-latte acting world. Because I would make, in real life, a terrible spy.”

Nevertheless, he looked the part in Red Sparrow, Speedo and all. “I’m so happy they keep bringing up the Speedo because then I get my memories,” Lawrence joked. “Sorry, am I making everybody uncomfortable?”

Red Sparrow opens in theaters on March 2.

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[ethanalter]

How to make a sexy sea monster and other 'Shape of Water' secrets revealed! (exclusive)

Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fairy tale The Shape of Water represents a breakthrough in human-fish relations. That’s not just because this lovingly crafted homage to classic ‘50s creature features is up for 13 Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. It also pushes the envelope well past love stories like Splash and The Little Mermaid, where men and mermaids enjoyed relatively chaste romances. In contrast, The Shape of Water’s lovers — mute janitor, Elisa (Sally Hawkins, a Best Actress nominee) and South American river god (Doug Jones) — get hot and heavy during the course of the film, instantly making them one of the most memorable interspecies couples in movie history.

Del Toro recognized early on in the production process that his love story hinged on audiences finding the Fish-Man as attractive as Elisa does. So, he devoted more than a year — and hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own funds — towards sculpting a version of the creature that was, to put it bluntly, a total stud. “It needed to be very attractive, a creature you could fall in love with,” the director remarks in this exclusive behind-the-scenes clip that Yahoo Entertainment is premiering today. (Watch the video above.) Del Toro handed that challenge off to top creature designer, Mike Hill of Legacy Effects, who built a suit for Jones that was further enhanced in post-production by Dennis Berardi, head of the visual effects company Mr. X, which oversaw the effects work for The Shape of Water.

Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones as the lovers in ‘The Shape of Water’ (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Courtesy Everett Collection)

The technique was pure hybrid,” Berardi explains to Yahoo Entertainment in a separate interview. “Generally speaking, when you see the body and head movements of the Fish Man—or the asset as we called him — that’s Doug Jones in a suit. But whenever you see him underwater, then he’s animated. I would also say that every single shot where you have the creature onscreen, the eyes and brow area are digital, because the way the mask worked, the eyes were a thick resin plug that didn’t articulate. Our methodology was to work from the eyes out, preserving as much of Doug’s performance as possible. But every single shot has varying degrees of visual effects in it, from micro-expressions like eye blinks to full-body animation.”

Unfortunately for Berardi, visual effects was one of the few Oscar categories in which The Shape of Water missed out on a nomination, with nods instead going to Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and War for the Planet of the Apes. But he and his team absolutely share a role in the movie’s success, infusing the creature’s costume design (which is up for an Oscar) with additional life. Having collaborated with Del Toro on both Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, Berardi has regularly enjoyed a front-row seat to the director’s creative process. Read on for additional trade secrets behind The Shape of Water and its strapping Fish-Man.

It started with a sketch. Berardi’s first glimpse of The Shape of Water‘s aquatic heartthrob was as a two-dimensional sketch in one of the notebooks that Del Toro always has on hand to jot down ideas and images as they pop into his brain. (Some of those notebooks have been published in anthology collections.) “He showed me a sketch of their embrace,” the effects supervisor remembers, referring to an early version of the clinch between Elisa and the “asset” that appears on the movie’s poster. “It was such a romantic image, and he told me, ‘This is a movie that’s in love with love.’ You had a creature that had to be a leading man that Elisa had to fall in love with and that the audience had to fall in love with. He told us right at the beginning that this wasn’t a monster — it’s an intelligent being with a soul, and eyes that had to be soulful and deep.”

The creature also had to be a top-notch swimmer whose movements read as pure poetry in the water. To aid with that, Berardi had his team study Olympians like Michael Phelps as a starting point. “Those guys are powerful and swim somewhat gracefully, but nothing as graceful as what Guillermo really wanted. So then we looked at dolphins, sea lions, otters and seals, and settled on this hybrid of a humanoid swimming, with a bit of a dolphin kick. Seals actually became a lot of inspiration as well, because they move slipstream through the water very gracefully.”

Junk in the trunk In one of The Shape of Water‘s standout sequences, Elisa and her lover act consummate their powerful attraction in a bathroom that she transforms into a makeshift water tank. It’s an erotically-charged moment and del Toro takes full advantage of his R-rating, allowing the two to see, and touch, each other’s naked bodies like any homosapien couple would. Boundary-pushing as this scene may be, it stops just short of the final frontier: merman genitalia. And that’s just fine for Berardi, who would have been responsible for helping imagine what the creature’s junk might look like. “Guillermo’s got too much taste for that,” Berardi remarks with a laugh, pointing out that Elisa and her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) instead discuss her lover’s size after their intimate encounter. “His inspiration for the movie was when he was six years old watching Creature from the Black Lagoon and hoping that the creature gets the girl.”

That’s a note that del Toro passed along to Hill as well. “This thing has to be attractive to a woman,” the creature designer remarks in the above clip. “My directive was that I wanted to make him handsome.” For his part, Jones clearly appreciated the matinee idol physique that Hill crafted for his aquatic alter ego. “My lips are a little fuller, there’s a strong jawline and the body they sculpted on me is very athletic. He’s handsome in a fish-like way.”

Hawkins and Jones in an embrace in The Shape of Water (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Everett Collection)

The shape of (digital) water If the Fish-Man was a hybrid of practical and digital effects, the water he calls home is almost entirely digital with one notable exception — the aforementioned love scene in Elisa’s bathroom. “That’s the only scene where we had the actors in water, ever,” Berardi reveals. “We had a water tank that we built and submerged the bathroom set, with the actors, in the tank. It was done in such a safe way that they could just be hovering around the surface with footholds and handholds. They’d film for 20 or 30 seconds, and then come back up easily because the water level was just above their heads. Sally and Doug were both game.” Everywhere else, though, the H20 was all CGI, and even with all the advancements that have been made since The Perfect Storm — the movie that Berardi cites as a breakthrough for digital water effects — simulating water is still one of the most difficult jobs for an effects house.

Interestingly, the most challenging shot involved another tank of sorts, the iron lung capsule that serves as the creature’s prison as he’s transported from South America to the Baltimore research facility where the film’s events unfold. “There was no water in that capsule,” Berardi says. “It would have been way too unsafe to have Doug in there. But we had to see water sloshing around through the glass while the asset is in there. The creature also had to slam his hand on the glass, so his digital hand would have to come through the digital water and hit the glass. All of that is 3D and volumetrically rendered. That was the shot that kept me up at night.”

Richard Jenkins and Jones in The Shape of Water (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Everett Collection)

Here kitty, kitty Cat fanciers will be happy to hear that no real felines were harmed in the making of The Shape of Water. The same can’t be said for the computer-generated cat that the creature chows down on while hiding out with Elisa and her friend, Giles (Richard Jenkins). And the Fish-Man is a messy eater, too, getting blood all over the floor and himself. That may sound like a big turnoff, but del Toro felt it was crucial to showcase his hero in his less glamorous moments. “Guillermo didn’t want to make a traditional Beauty and the Beast-type story where the beast can’t really be himself. He’s eloquent, strong and heroic, yes, but he also needs protein!”

For the first part of the scene, Jones worked with an on-set cat wrangler to provoke a flesh-and-blood feline into a hissing fit. When the time came for the creature to open the cat’s head like a Pez dispenser, Berardi’s team took over. “We put a green sock puppet in Doug’s hands, replaced that with a digital cat and then severed the head. We went through about 25 iterations about what the cross section of the neck needed to look like, and showed Guillermo the grossest ones we could devise — anatomically correct with the spinal cord, nerve endings and all that stuff. We totally went there with it. That was also a moment where we took over Doug’s head and did it digitally: we fluttered the gills and had water spray off of them. That was probably one of the most fun things for us to animate.”

The Shape of Water is currently playing in theaters and available on digital services. The film arrives on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on March 13.

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[kevinpolowy]

'Ready Player One': That huge [SPOILER] scene was almost set in 'Blade Runner'

Warning: Ready Player One spoilers ahead!

There was no way they were going to get everything. What Steven Spielberg and his Ready Player One team pulled off in scoring the rights that basket of Easter eggs was a gargantuan task. Understandably, there were certain intellectual property hurdles they couldn’t clear.

Included among the misses was Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, which RP1 screenwriter Zak Penn told Yahoo Entertainment was at one point targeted to be the cinematic world that Parzival (Tye Sheridan) and friends enter for the second challenge in the OASIS. (The challenge ultimately became set inside The Shining instead, which worked out: It has been lauded as the film’s best sequence.)

“They went into Blade Runner at one point in the movie,” Penn said of the film’s early drafts (watch above). “There was a whole action scene set in Blade Runner.” The scene, according to Penn, included Rick Deckard’s car and gun, and the Voight-Kampff Test, used to determine if a subject is human or replicant.

Blade Runner, like Ready Player One, is a Warner Bros. property, so you’d think Spielberg would have an easier time securing the rights with corporate synergy at play. But RP1 was in production at the same time Warners was shooting 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 starring Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling, and the studio wasn’t keen on having the former film steal any of the latter’s retro thunder. (While Blade Runner is never referenced directly in RP1, there are still some sly nods to it.)

“But we ended up with something much better, I think, which is really probably my favorite sequence in the movie, ” said Penn, who was carefully instructed by Spielberg not to mention The Shining’s name during prerelease publicity rounds to avoid spoilers. “It was pretty exciting to get to go into that movie and use it.”

Of course, even though they were able to use elements of Stanley Kubrick’s chilling Stephen King adaptation, there was one element they weren’t able to secure: star Jack Nicholson‘s likeness, which, per Penn, involved a whole other layer of subrights clearances.

Ready Player One is now in theaters.

Watch Zak Penn discuss two of the film’s more surprising Easter eggs:

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[mandibierly]

'Good Behavior' Season 2 finale: What that final scene means

Michelle Dockery and Juan Diego Botto in ‘Good Behavior’ (Photo: Brownie Harris/TNT)

If you’re hoping we haven’t seen the last of Letty (Michelle Dockery) and Javier (Juan Diego Botto), especially after that final moment of Good Behavior‘s Season 2 finale, you’re not alone. Creator Chad Hodge is still waiting to hear if TNT will order a third season of the drama, but he made sure fans knew exactly where the story would head next — to L.A.

After finally succeeding in burning the bodies of the two men Letty had murdered, the duo decided it’d be best if they disappeared for a bit. That will be expensive. Luckily, they have the late Teo’s cocaine to sell. “Given everything that’s happened to them, or that they’ve created in this whirlwind tornado, they have to be somewhere else. I was thinking, where do you go to sell cocaine, and where would Letty kind of want to go? L.A.,” Hodge tells us. “There’s lots of pop-culture references that she’s always dropping and Javier is never understanding them, and I thought it would be fun to put them in L.A. I’ve also talked a lot about how we call the tone of our show ‘poetic noir,’ and Los Angeles is where noir was born. It’s not that it’s them on Rodeo Drive; it’s them on the outskirts of L.A. — the Valley, downtown, East L.A. — getting into trouble, and there’s a big overarching story.”

And because we know you’re wondering: yes, he’d definitely find a way to work Estelle, Rob, Jacob, Christian, and Lashever into the story.

Though he wasn’t going to force it, Hodge had the image of Season 2’s last scene being Letty and Javier in a pool floating on inflatable swans since he began work on it. Why were they dressed up in that final shot? Because it looks hella cool? “No, that’s the secondary reason,” Hodge says with a laugh. “The scene you see [before that is] them driving away from the storage facility in Georgia with the cocaine. Now they’re in Arizona or wherever they are on the way to L.A., and it’s daytime and they’re in definitely nighttime evening wear. What did they just come from? In my head, they had just come back from a night of doing something that didn’t really work out.”

Though they seem content in that moment, Letty’s murder of the innocent security guy (guest star Brian Baumgartner) continues to weigh her. “I think it would always weigh on her, for sure. In fact, there was a thing that we shot where when they’re in the pool on the swans, she actually has a vision of him on the bottom of the pool, but it felt like that was going to say, ‘Oh, all of Season 3 this guy is going to follow her around,’ which isn’t the idea,” Hodge says. “But she’s not going to forget that this is something that she did, and you know, she says it to Javier when they’re watching the van burn with the bodies. She’s like, ‘I’ve done this now, and maybe I wasn’t so bad before. I mean, so I stole some shoes and drank too much. Now I’ve killed two people.’ That’ll never go away.”

Asked about the scene that opened the finale, in which Letty begged Javier to let her kill herself, to let her be good at something, Hodge admits it was difficult to watch Dockery film it. “She’s always so 150 million percent in, and she just went for it as she always does in such a real way, which is the reason the show works. And it was heartbreaking to watch, because obviously I’ve been with Letty as long as Michelle has. We’ve been through it together, and seeing her from the pilot to now, this character take this journey, and then it’s just like, ‘I just give up,'” he says. “She talked about trying to kill herself in the very first episode [of the series] when Javier finds her in the motel room. She says, ‘Just shoot me, just do it. Just kill me. Just get it over with.’ In some way it would be just easier for her to be dead. And in this moment [in the Season 2 finale], she just wants to be good at something. There’s a line that we cut from it, because it was a little too funny in the moment. But she said, ‘Let me be good at one thing. I have very good aim, obviously.’ She’s just like, ‘Let me do this and be good at this,’ and it’s sad.”

Another of the finale’s most memorable moments: when Letty’s lighter won’t work as they’re about to burn the bodies. “We arrive at things sometimes in a very surprisingly linear way,” Hodge says, “because we were talking about, ‘Oh, she should be smoking a lot and Javier’s really annoyed that she’s smoking a lot, but of course she’s smoking a lot because she’s nervous and she’s freaking out and she’s stressed, and he’s just going to let her smoke because at least it will keep her calm.’ Then we were like, ‘Oh my God! When they go to burn the bodies, he doesn’t have a lighter. He needs her lighter and her lighter is out of fluid!’ We came to that naturally, and that’s always fun when that happens. The same thing happened with the cactus, where in episode eight, Javier’s brother brings a little small houseplant cactus as a housewarming gift, and then I was like, ‘Oh, she can use that cactus to hit Teo, and then get the gun’ [in episode nine].”

It’s those kind of payoffs that we’ll miss if the show isn’t renewed. Perhaps second only to the lighter: the moment in Season 2’s penultimate episode when Letty told Teo, who had control of her phone, to text Javier that he should bring her back a mixed greens salad from the diner where Teo failed to meet him. Like Javier, the audience knows Letty is more of a burger girl, so we understood she was trying to tip him off that Teo was with her — which is why it was so satisfying when Javier immediately bolted the diner.

“A lot of the fans noticed that, which was fun,” Hodge says. “I was actually talking to Lenore [Zion], who wrote episode eight and co-wrote episode nine, and she goes, ‘You know, all those little details that you make us put in there are the things that the fans really pick up on and it’s fun when they do.’ I was like, ‘Really? Okay. I don’t know what they’re going to pick up on from this episode [9].’ Lenore goes, ‘I think it’s going to be the mixed greens salad thing. They’re going to love that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, maybe. We’ll see if they notice.’ Thank you for noticing.” Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

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'The Bachelor' episode 2 recap: Crash course in love

Photo: ABC

Warning: This recap for episode 2 of The Bachelor contains spoilers. 

Get your motor running rose lovers, because it’s week 2 and our Bachelor is ready to hunt down a wife, like a hawk stalking its prey. (Sorry for mixing my metaphors and similes, folks.) And even though the “ladies” seem to be getting along famously right now at Casa Bachelor, Chris Harrison is quick to remind them that that camaraderie will not last.

Photo: ABC

That’s for damn sure: When Becca K. gets the first one-on-one date, our resident single mom/villain Chelsea is not happy.

Photo: ABC

Becca, meanwhile, hops on the back of Arie’s (rented) motorcycle for a ride through the picturesque Southern California mountains. It’s all very romantic… except for the whole “donorcycle” thing.

Photo: ABC

Krystal’s dad, it turns out, was in a “serious” motorcycle accident, and she also knows lots of people who have died or “lost body parts” in bike accidents as well. Given all that potential awkwardness, I’m surprised Team Bachelor didn’t make Arie take Krystal on the motorcycle date. They love a good “forcing someone to confront a source of personal terror on camera” opportunity.

That said, there is something Team Bachelor loves more than making women fear for their lives, and that’s… the Pretty Woman Date™!!!

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Naturally Becca is THRILLED at this development — though as a grown-ass woman living in the year 2018 she should know that a man buying you expensive clothes and baubles on your first date is not romantic, it’s creepy and infantilizing. But who cares about that when everything is so SPARKLY???

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Vom. “Arie makes me feel very special,” gushes Becca. “I appreciate that he picked me to do this.” She appreciates it even more when Arie tells his little lady that she gets to keep ALL the pretty dresses, and he even has some sparkly $700 Louboutins to go with!

Photo: ABC

After poking some diamond Neil Lane earrings through Becca’s lobes, Arie goes in for the smooch, all the while keeping one hand on Becca’s neck. When Becca gets home to primp for part two of her date with Arie, she strolls in so laden with packages and shopping bags that the “ladies” can’t believe what they’re seeing.

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“Look at those shoes! Are those Louboutins?” shrieks Lauren G. “Eeeeeeeee!” The women vociferously demur when Becca admits she was nervous about bringing all her loot home — and even though the air is thick with jealousy and tension, most of it seems to be directed inward rather than at Becca herself. “Oh my God,” sighs Bibiana ruefully. “They’re gonna get married.” Oh gurl, look at the odds — that’s very unlikely.

Over dinner that night, Arie does a lot of the talking, telling Becca that he feels “wiser” since his last experience on TV and reiterating that his real estate career allowed him to “slow down” and get ready for romance. When Becca does get to speak, it’s to fill Arie in on her late father’s battle with brain cancer — which was, understandably, “the hardest time that I had ever lived through at that point.” The experience, says Becca, brought her even closer to her family — and she’s happy to hear that Arie has strong family ties, too. Of course, she gets the date rose… and some free Neil Lane earrings!

Photo: ABC

Also, I really wish he’d stop running his hands through Becca’s hair. It’s a little much.

The second date of the week is — hold up — another one-on-one date? With Krystal? Well I hope the fitness coach (or whatever) is ready to bring her A-game, because as Arie said, “Becca has definitely set the bar high.”

Krystal may not walk away from her date with a pile of bling, but she will have something to make the other “ladies” jealous: Arie’s taking her home to Scottsdale, Arizona! And she LOVES it.

Photo: ABC

Vom. Once in Arizona, Arie gives Krystal the nickel tour, showing her the Pizza Hut where he worked as a teen, the tree where he had his first kiss, his high school, and naturally his condo, where they pore through old photo albums and watch home movies.

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But why look at old photos when you can have an awkward encounter with the real thing? That’s right: Arie surprises Krystal with the news that they’re going to meet his family! Though Mr. and Mrs. Arie weren’t super warm the last time they met one of Arie’s dates on TV (see: talking in front of Bachelorette Emily in Dutch), they do their best to endure Krystal’s breathy questioning about how they met.

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“My mom loves you — I can tell,” Arie tells Krystal as they leave his parents’ home. As for his sister-in-law? I think this barely-repressed sigh speaks for itself.

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At dinner, Arie invites Krystal to speak (“I want this also to be about you”) — specifically about her family and growing up. As we’ve learned from numerous confessionals, Krystal doesn’t have a close relationship with her family, and she’s nervous about revealing this to the Bachelor. Still, she soldiers on: “My dad wasn’t a part of my life, and my mom was there but was so emotionally unavailable — and I just really felt like my parents didn’t want me.”

Dayum, that’s rough. Krystal goes on tell Arie about the day her brother called her from the hospital after getting beaten up, and she learned he had been living on the streets. The Bachelor assures Krystal that her difficult upbringing doesn’t “reflect negatively” on her, and that he’s not put off by her struggles. In fact, says Arie, he specifically brought Krystal to meet his family in order to ease his mother’s mind about the types of women he would be dating on the show. “You are amazing,” he concludes, handing over the date rose.

Did you have “awkward private concert by (mostly) unknown artist” on your Bachelor bingo game? Time to stamp that card!

Photo: ABC

Maybe next time, Connor.

On to the group date — which is so large Team Bachelor had to hire a tractor-trailer limo to fit all the women inside. Maquel, Marikh, Tia, Valerie, Annaliese, Lauren G., Kendall, Bekah, Jenny, Sienne, Jenna, Caroline, Brittany, Bibiana, [giant gasp for air] and Chelsea bounce out of the truck in their cute athleisure gear and are greeted by Arie, who drives up in a spray-painted beater

He briefs the “ladies” on demolition derby ground rules, and then sends them off to spray paint their cars. To their credit, some of the women get pretty creative with their designs. Winner:

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Runner-up:

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Unfortunately Annaliese can’t stop crying; it seems she had a traumatic experience with bumper cars as a child — which Team Bachelor promptly illustrates, nightmare-dream-sequence style.

Photo: ABC

“A bumper car trauma?” scoffs Jenny, one of the 17 blondes on the date. “I didn’t know that bumper car trauma is a thing.” Damn right it is, toots! Especially if it gets Arie to come over and comfort the still-weeping Annaliese one-on-one. The girl’s no fool.

Naturally Chris Harrison is there — along with racecar driver Robby Gordon — to do the color commentary for the “Bashelor Demolition Derby.” And damn, the host isn’t holding back. “So could this be the first time that Arie actually wins something on a race track?”

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When the air horn blows, the women hit the gas. Suddenly Annaliese transforms from a weepy wuss to a stunt driver in Death Race 2000: She rams into Chelsea, “t-bones” Kendall, and slams into Marikh, all while driving in reverse. “She’s crushing girls like it’s her job!” marvels Harrison. Several minutes of ear-splitting metal-on-metal action later, Seinne emerges victorious in the derby, beating out Raven 2. “Second place sucks d***,” she groans.

Though she didn’t last the longest, Brittany’s derby run was apparently so violent that she upset her own equilibrium, because by the time the after-party rolls around, she is not in attendance. “Brittany smashed everybody with her car,” explains Jenna, “and unfortunately can’t be here.” Hmmm… if Brittany’s going to let something like whiplash or a possible concussion stop her from competing for Arie, maybe she doesn’t really want to be married after all.

Immediately after the toast, Chelsea pulls Arie away for a private chat. It’s time for her to reveal her big secret: She has a 3-year-old son, Sammy! The Bachelor is unfazed, as he once fell for single mom Emily Maynard, and he even lived with a woman with two kids for over a year. “I know that it’s hard to be away [from your son],” says the Bachelor. “It makes me happy that you’re here and taking a chance on me.” Then he eats her face.

Photo: ABC

The women, on the other hand, aren’t so supportive. So what if Chelsea sacrificed time with her son to be here? All of them sacrificed something — like time away from posting on Instagram or posting homemade exercise videos on YouTube! “Everybody has a story,” notes Bibiana. Seinne’s, for instance, involves graduating from Yale, studying abroad in Brazil, and generally being far too good for this show/Arie. And he knows it: “I barely graduated high school and worked at Pizza Hut!” Of course, Arie isn’t going to let his insecurities stop him from macking on Seinne;  when she attempts to pull away from their “thanks for the chat” hug, he keeps his arm firmly around her neck until she realizes the only means of escape is to kiss him.

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As the night wears on, Bibiana — who was already irritable when the party began — grows ever more frustrated as woman after woman grabs Arie before she can. That is, if she’s even trying — we only ever see her sulking on the couch.

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“I’m done,” she says with a pout, before stomping out of the room and slamming the door. Meanwhile…

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“It was, like, really hot,” reports Bekah of her first smooch with the Kissing Bandit. Not hot enough, toots: Seinne gets the date rose!

Photo: ABC

Seinne is in it to win it, dawg.

Cocktail party time! Arie — who either is a true gentleman or just knows how to approximate one, I can’t decide — kicks off the night by seeking out Brittany T., to make sure she feels better after her demolition derby-related injury. She does, especially after the Bachelor gives her this:

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We interrupt this recap to remind you that fur is gross, folks. Here’s hoping Bekah the nanny’s coat is faux.

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“I lead with chemistry, and with Bekah, there’s a lot of that,” says Captain Obvious. “She’s bold and charismatic, and when we kiss, it was just apparent that she could be the whole package.” The whole package minus about 10 years, but why quibble?

After an intern surgically removes Arie from Bekah’s face, he gets accosted by Krystal, who feels it’s necessary to “follow up” with the Bachelor even though she already has a rose. As you can imagine, this does not go over well.

Photos: ABC

“I’m not worried,” breathes Krystal in her hyperventilating baby voice. “Some girls are a little weird, and some are very young, and some girls aren’t even there yet.” Which may be why she thinks it’s ok to interrupt Arie again while he’s talking to Bibiana, and you just know Bibi Gun is not about to lose her time tonight.

Krystal: “Do you mind if I step in for a moment?” Bibiana: “I actually do.”

The tension carries over into the house when Krystal foolishly (or as a calculated manipulation) comes and sits next to Bibiana. “I really think that you have a lot of balls just coming to sit down with us,” growls Bibi. “When you learn to speak to me like a normal human being and not with a fake tone, then I can actually respect you.” Then she does a dramatic interpretation of Krystal’s annoying personality.

Photo: ABC

When Krystal tries to protest that she was just “checking on” Bibiana, Miss Miami puts a stop to that real quick. “Baby girl, it’s not about checking. If I’m trying to talk to my man, you need to back the f**k up.” Naturally, Team Bachelor makes them stand next to each other at the rose ceremony.

Photo: ABC

Fortunately for Krystal, Bibiana — who warned that Krystal would have to “sleep with one eye open” if she got sent home — gets a rose. She joins Maquel, Jacqueline, Bekah M., Jenna, Chelsea, Lauren S., Raven 2, Annaliese, Lauren B., Kendall, Brittany, Ashley, Marikh, Caroline, Becca, Seinne and Krystal in the winners’ circle. That means we must say goodbye to Lauren G. (2 down, 2 to go!), Valerie, and Jenny… who takes it the hardest.

Photo: ABC

Ever the gentleman (or a jerk capable of impersonating a gentleman, I’m not sure), Arie goes after Jenny to comfort her in her time of nationally televised rejection. “I have to make tough choices,” he says. “And I just didn’t see it.” And Jenny’s all, Whatever, Old Man River. “I’m not sad about you,” she sniffs. “I’m sad about leaving my new friends.” Indeed, Jenny has never experienced rejection before, and she definitely does not enjoy it. “He literally picked a taxidermist over me,” she moans. “I just feel like I embarrassed myself.” Finally, Jenny and I agree on something.

And with that, rose lovers, we’re done with week two. (The “next week on” preview can be summed up in one word: Tears.) So tell me, do you think Arie’s a true gentleman or just playing one on TV? Does anyone else feel guilty about hating Krystal, given her tough upbringing? And why in the world would anyone ever want a pickled bat? Post your thoughts now! And be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s exclusive blog right here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get examined for whiplash… just in case.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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