#also not clear at all from this but to contextualize i work on saturdays and am doing my student teacher things through the week

[kohakhearts]

by the way i am going to get to asks and such soon, i just am super busy at the moment (yay for 6 day work-week in a field where your days off are dedicated to doing even more work) but i have blorbo thoughts and i will absolutely make them everyone else’s problem as soon as i have more than one (1) hour of brain power a day to do something that isnt Work or School related

[dweemeister]

2020 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (preliminary round)

Yup, it’s back (bullet indentations are not working, so this post will look very ugly on your dashboards)!

Tagging a few folks who have participated before in this annual tradition/folks who I would like to extend an open invitation to (please contact me if you’re interested so I can sort you in a group ASAP... you will also be tagged for the final unless you tell me you are not interested): @birdsongvelvet, @bitch-genius, @dog-of-ulthar, @idontknowmuchaboutmovies, @loveless422, @lvl9gay, @neverwasastoryofmorewhoa, @phendranaedge, @poncho-honcho, @sayaf, @shadesofhappy, @thethirdman8, @uncoolforelimb, and @wehadfacesthen.

Hello everybody. For my fellow Americans, I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one. For the non-Americans reading things, I hope you are doing well, as always! Many things have fallen to the wayside in this unforgettable year. So in hopes of providing some sense of continuity and normalcy, here - as you have agreed to - is the Preliminary Round for 2020's Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (MOABOS). This is the eighth time it has been contested and the seventh consecutive year it has been open to involvement from family, friends, and tumblr followers.

For those new to this, my classic movie blog traditionally ends the year by honoring some of the best achievements from movies that I saw for the first time this calendar year (the "Movie Odyssey") with an Oscar-like ceremony. I choose all the nominees and winners from each category, save one: Best Original Song. It is the only category I can think of that does not require you to watch several movies in their entirety. I consider MOABOS as a sort of cinematic-musical thank-you for your moral support in various ways.

An unspecified number of songs have already advanced to the final round. 24 songs will contest this prelim in two groups - Group A and Group B. In a year when COVID-19 has closed theaters (and which I refused to go to an indoor theater even when they reopened), a year that I did not feel compelled to watch the newest releases on streaming services, there is not a single 2020 entry for 2020's MOABOS. That is, obviously, a MOABOS first - no other MOABOS edition has lacked a shortlisted song from a film released that same calendar year. And as of writing this sentence, I have not seen a single film released in 2020. Despite the lack of 1930s songs, this year's shortlisted songs might be the oldest on average. In other news, this year's field is a modest improvement from the record monolingual field of last year's (which contained only English and two Vietnamese-language entries). 2019's preliminary was the most chaotic we had ever seen, with shocking last-day stumbles and surges from certain songs ("I Dug a Ditch" from Thousands Cheer) that riled up a lot of participants. It's 2020 - will there be a repeat or even more drama at this stage?

INSTRUCTIONS Please rank (#1-12) at least six of your group's songs. Please consider to the best of your ability: how musically interesting the song is (incl. and not limited to musical phrasing and orchestration); its lyrics; context within the film (contextual blurbs provided for every entry for those who haven't seen the films); choreography/dance direction (if applicable); and the song's cultural impact/life outside the film (if applicable, and, in my opinion, least important factor). Imperfections in audio and video quality may not be used against any song. I encourage you to send in comments and reactions with your rankings - it makes the process more enjoyable for you and myself! The top five songs in each group automatically advance to the final round. I reserve the right to pick 0-2 songs from one or both groups that finished outside the top five in their respective groups to contest the final round.

The deadline for submission is Saturday, December 12 at 11 PM Pacific Time. That is 9 PM Hawaii/Aleutian Time. That deadline is also Sunday, December 13 at 1 AM Central Time / 2 AM Eastern Time / 7 AM GMT / 8 AM CET / 9 AM EET. This deadline - as we have seen in the last few years - may be pushed back if there are a large number of people who have not submitted in time. However, I very much do not wish to extend the deadline because the final round is more intensive and usually involves more participants. Tabulation details are in the “read more” below.

Please participate in the group you have been sorted into, if you have not yet been sorted into a group and would like to participate, please contact me. You can access most, not all, of your group’s songs in these YouTube playlists: (Group A) / (Group B). Again, please note that not all of your group's songs are in the playlist for various reasons.

Happy listening. Feel free to listen as many times as you need, and I hope you discover music and movies that strike your interest. The following is formatted... ("Song title", composer and lyricist, film title):

GROUP A

“Blue Shadows on the Trail”, music and lyrics by Eliot Daniel and Johnny Lange, Melody Time (1948)

Performed by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers

This is the introductory song to the final segment of Melody Time. That segment is dedicated to the legend of Pecos Bill, and this atmospheric song leads into the telling of that story.

“Born Free”, music by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black, Born Free (1966)

Performed by Matt Munro

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Original Song

This version with lyrics appears in the end credits. The main theme in the song is introduced in the opening credits and is incorporated extensively in John Barry's score across the film. Born Free, based on the non-fiction book of the same name is about two white Kenyan conservationists who raise an orphaned lion cub and eventually release her into the wild.

“But the World Goes 'Round”, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York (1977)

Performed by Liza Minnelli

In this musical, USO singer Francine Evans (Minnelli) has been performing in New York City nightclubs, hoping to someday become a major recording star. This song appears as she is recording that very hit that will propel her to stardom.

“Exsultate Justi”, music and lyrics by John Williams, Empire of the Sun (1987)

Performed by orchestra and chorus under the direction of Williams

Lyrics in Latin

In this historical epic, affluent British school boy Jamie Graham (a young Christian Bale) is living with his parents in Shanghai when the Japanese invade. Jamie is separated from his parents and placed in an internment camp. Soon before the end of WWII, the prisoners are moved elsewhere, but Jamie hides and stays put. This song plays as Jamie bikes around the empty camp and continues to play as he encounters liberating U.S. troops. Jamie is dirty and malnourished when found; one can argue that this song is used ironically. It plays once more over the end credits. "Exsultate Justi" is a variation on a theme John Williams develops over the course of the film and harkens back to Jamie's past, attending Anglican services with parents.

"Farewell to Storyville",  music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans (1947)

Performed by Louis Armstrong and his band, Billie Holiday, and company

In New Orleans, the Storyville district was a den of drinking, gambling, jazz, and prostitution. The district was the home to a heavily black populace. The U.S. military, about to establish a Naval base nearby, forces the city to close the district for good. This song is a jazzy dirge to a center of jazz - a musical genre looked down upon by many of the city's upper-class whites due to its ties (real and imagined) to crime.

"Hawaiian Sunset", music and lyrics by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, Blue Hawaii (1961)

Performed by Elvis Presley

In a musical packed end-to-end with songs, Chadwick "Chad" Gates (Elvis) has taken a job with a tour guide agency - and this includes performing during a luau for tourists. "Hawaiian Sunset" appears as one of the dinner show's numbers.

"Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do?", music and lyrics by Yôjirô Noda, Weathering with You (2019, Japan)

Performed by RADWIMPS

Lyrics in Japanese (translation)

Weathering with You is a romantic fantasy anime about a high school boy who runs away from his rural home to Tokyo, where he meets a girl who can manipulate the weather. It has been inexplicably raining for weeks without interruption in Tokyo, so they form a business to help clear the inclement weather for special events. The melody of this song is heard throughout the film's score. It does not appear with lyrics until late in the film. The song is played under the boy's seemingly impossible attempt to save her from an unwilling human sacrifice.

There is so much plot in this damn film (it's all Makoto Shinkai's fault) - I can't explain the context of the song or this movie in a reasonable amount of space.

“Mad Monster Party”, music by Maury Laws, lyrics by Jules Bass, Mad Monster Party? (1967)

Performed by Ethel Ennis

(opening credits version) / (soundtrack version with no sound effects)

In this Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated film, Baron Boris von Frankenstein (Boris Karloff in his final Frankenstein-related role) has discovered a formula that can destroy matter. Dispatching his bats to send the news, he summons the various members of the Worldwide Organization of Monsters to inform them of his discovery. This song is performed over the film's opening credits and the various introductions for the monsters as they receive their summons.

“My Dream Is Yours”, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Ralph Blane, My Dream Is Yours (1949)

Initially performed by Doris Day; later reprised by Hal Derwin

Singer Martha Gibson (Day) has abruptly left New York City for Los Angeles to become a star on the radio. In a film where personal sacrifice is central, she stresses over how to bring her son out west with her, the direction of her career, and her tumultuous love life. "My Dream Is Yours" is the song that makes Martha a star, laying out the film's themes in its lyrics. I was unable to find Derwin's reprise, but no matter as the reprise is rather inconsequential.

“Ride the Wild Surf”, music and lyrics by Jan Berry, Brian Wilson, and Roger Christian, Ride the Wild Surf (1964)

Performed by Jan and Dean

Ride the Wild Surf is a surfing film that, unlike most surfing films of this time, is a drama. It follows three surfers (Fabian, Tab Hunter, Peter Brown) who have come to Oahu at the end of December to ride the large waves of Waimea Bay (made famous internationally by this song, this movie, and the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA"). This song appears in the film's closing credits. The video provided is a montage of surfing footage that appears in the film.

“That’ll Do”, music and lyrics by Randy Newman, Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

Performed by Peter Gabriel

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song

This song begins at the end (and through the end credits) of Babe: Pig in the City, the second and last film in this series about a sheep-herding pig who perseveres amidst other animals and humans with ulterior agendas. The title is derived from the famous quote said by Arthur Hoggett (James Cromwell) to reassure Babe: "That'll do, pig. That'll do."

“Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Hassen Sitam”, music and lyrics by S.D. Burman, Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959, India)

Performed by Geeta Dutt (dubbing Waheeda Rehman)

Lyrics in Hindi - roughly, "Time Has Inflicted Such Sweet Cruelty On Us"

Song begins at 1:03:31 and ends at 1:07:51

Make sure to turn on the video’s English captions

In this romantic tragedy told in flashback, Suresh Sinha (Guru Dutt) is a director looking back on his life. Suresh is unhappily married to a woman whose in-laws look down on him because, to them, working in films is contemptible to their social class. Suresh meets a woman, Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), on accident and she is soon cast as the lead for his next film. They fall in love, but it is never consummated for various reasons. This song is the most explicit statement of that love in this film. How much of the scene's set-up is observable by the characters is up to the viewer's interpretation.

Group A participants include: @addaellis, @introspectivemeltdown, @memetoilet, @myluckyerror, @plus-low-overthrow, @shootingstarvenator, @themusicmoviesportsguy, @theybecomestories, @umgeschrieben, @underblackwings, @yellanimal. Seven others - including myself and my sister - are currently slated to be voting in Group A.

GROUP B

“Angela”, music and lyrics by José Feliciano and Janna Merlyn Feliciano, Aaron Loves Angela (1975)

Performed by José Feliciano

(English-language version) / (Spanish single version)

Played over the opening credits to this teenage drama that is partly a blaxploitation film, partly an interracial coming-of-age romance. The movie wasn't a hit, but the Spanish-language version of this song was received well in Latin America.

“Aren’t You Kind of Glad We Did?”, music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)

Originally performed by Betty Grable and Dick Haymes

(soundtrack version with Judy Garland and Haymes) / (modern arrangement far more faithful to how song sounds in the film)

Cynthia Pilgrim (Grable) is the top typewriting student from a business college in this period piece where the typewriter is the newest invention to sweep the business world. This song appears as Pilgrim and her boss, John Pritchard (Haymes), are about to go out on a date for dinner after talking about how society looks down on women in public without a chaperone.

“The Blues are Brewin’”, music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans (1947)

Performed by Louis Armstrong and his band and Billie Holiday

(in-film version) / (Billie Holiday single)

After being evicted by the U.S. military from the historic Storyville district of New Orleans (the Navy had just opened a base in the area, and would not tolerate places of gambling, jazz, and prostitution nearby), the characters played by Armstrong and Holiday tour the country with a jazz band in tow. This song appears within a montage showing the passage of time.

“Dekhi Zamaane Ki Yaari / Bichhde Sabhi Baari Baari”, music by S.D. Burman, lyrics by Kaifi Azmi, Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959, India)

Performed by Mohammad Rafi (dubbing Guru Dutt)

Lyrics in Hindi - roughly, "I Have Seen How Deeply Friendship Lies / I Have Seen People Abandon Me One by One"

Part 1 (3:44-8:27) / Part 2 (2:16:29-2:20:42)

Make sure to turn on the video’s English captions

In this romantic tragedy, Suresh Sinha (Dutt) is a washed-up director looking back on his life. In the first part, the song leads into the rest of the film - which is almost entirely a flashback. In brief, Suresh is unhappily married to a woman whose in-laws look down on him because, to them, working in films is contemptible to their social class. Suresh meets a woman, Shanti (Waheeda Rehman), on accident and she is soon cast as the lead for his next film. They fall in love, but it is never consummated for various reasons. Eventually, his career crashes after a box office bomb and her career is ascendant. Leading into the second part of the song, Suresh is penniless and working as an extra at the movie studio. Shanti recognizes him, wants to help, but he refuses to revive his career on the back of her success. Kaagaz Ke Phool has elements of autobiography, and Suresh's fate has parallels with what happened to Dutt after this film was released.

“End Theme from Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades”, music by Eiken Sakurai, lyrics by Kazuko Koike, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades (1972, Japan)

Performed by Tomisaburo Wakayama

Lyrics in Japanese (translation)

Video provided is not safe for work (NSFW) due to stylized violence

Ogami Ittô (Wakayama) is a former, disgraced executioner for the Tokugawa shogunate who wanders the land with his young son. He is intent on exacting revenge on the clan that murdered his wife. This song is played non-diegetically after Ittô has slain dozens of a corrupt governor's bodyguards and walks onward, pushing his son in a babycart, away from the dead left in his wake. This is the third of six films in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

"Happy Endings", music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York (1977)

Performed by Liza Minnelli and company (that's Jack Haley - who played the Tin Man and was, at the time, Minnelli's father-in-law - roughly seven minutes in)

(use in film) / (soundtrack version)

It is highly recommended one sees how this song is used in the film. Bear with me: this song is part of a movie within a movie. Within that movie within a movie, there is another movie. "Happy Endings" is the title end song to a film called Happy Endings within New York, New York. Singer Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli) has made it big as a recording artist and caps off her hit film, Happy Endings, with this song. We see Francine's ex, played by Robert De Niro, in the audience as the film ends. "Happy Endings" is a homage/deconstruction to midcentury Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musicals. It serves the film as "The Broadway Melody" does to Singin' in the Rain (1952) or the 17-minute ballet does to conclude An American in Paris (1951).

"Here They Come (From All Over the World)", music and lyrics by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)

Performed by Jan and Dean

The link above provides the entire film. You only need to watch from 0:00-4:11. If you like music from this era or want to hear more, this film is highly, highly recommended.

This is the opening credits song to a concert film recorded over two days in Santa Monica, California on October 28 and 29, 1964. The Teenage Awards Music International (T.A.M.I. - yes, I know it's an awkward name) Show included many of the most popular musical stars of that time - almost all of them name-dropped in this song. Jan and Dean, a surf music duo, served as hosts (and performed during) the show. You folks are lucky that this is the only original song from this film!

“Moonlight Swim”, music by Ben Weisman, lyrics by Sylvia Dee, Blue Hawaii (1961)

Performed by Elvis Presley

In a musical packed end-to-end with songs, Chadwick "Chad" Gates (Elvis) has taken a job with a tour guide agency. On his first day, he drives his first clients - a school teacher (who not so secretly is attracted to Chad) and four teenagers (one of whom becomes smitten) - to their destination.

“On the Boardwalk (in Atlantic City)”, music by Josef Myrow, lyrics by Mack Gordon, Three Little Girls in Blue (1946)

Performed by Carol Stewart (dubbing for Vera-Ellen), June Haver, and Vivian Blaine

(original soundtrack) / (Dick Haymes single)

In this rarely-seen musical (20th Century Fox wasn't very good at promoting its back catalogue compared to some other studios, and the situation is worse now that they are owned by Disney), three chicken farmer sisters (Vera-Ellen, Haver, and Blaine) decide to travel to Atlantic City in hopes of marrying a rich husband after learning their aunt's inheritance is not nearly as much as they want. They sing this song as they arrive and check into their hotel suite - which they apparently have not looked up the rate for.

Those who listened to the soundtrack version... FYI, $9.25 in 1902 is $280 in 2020.

“Personality”, music by Jimmy Van Heusen, lyrics by Johnny Burke, Road to Utopia (1946)

Performed by Dorothy Lamour

(in-film performance) / (live radio performance)

In the fourth film of the Road to... comedy series, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's characters have just overpowered two Alaskan thugs with a history of murderous violence. As they enter a saloon dressed up as those two thugs, all of the patrons - in a town that only knows the thugs by reputation - shut up in terror. They are treated to a performance by Sal (Lamour), who is trying to find a map of a gold mine that the real outlaws supposedly have. A visual narrator (Robert Benchley) interrupts the scene before the song briefly.

“Please Don’t Stop Loving Me”, music and lyrics by Joy Byers, Frankie and Johnny (1966)

Performed by Elvis Presley

(in-film performance) / (single version)

Johnny (Elvis) and girlfriend Frankie (Donna Douglas) work on a Mississippi River riverboat as performers. Johnny is addicted to gambling and believes that another woman is spurring on his recent run of good luck. During a fit of jealousy-as-acting, Frankie accidentally shoots Johnny during a bit of musical theater (someone switched out the blanks for real bullets). This song occurs after Johnny has recovered from the accident.

"Wichita", music by Hans Salter, lyrics by Ned Washington, Wichita (1955)

Performed by Tex Ritter

This is the opening title song to this Western. It is one of many Wyatt Earp movies set before the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Earp (Joel McCrea) arrives in an otherwise lawless town of Wichita, Kansas where gunplay is rampant. In a radical move, Earp orders to seize the firearms of anyone living in or entering town - which doesn't sit well with some outlaws. This song is incorporated throughout the film's score.

Group B participants include: @cokwong, @emilylime5, @halfwaythruthedark, @maximiliani, @thewolfofelectricavenue, and @voicetalentbrendan. Twelve others - including me and my sister - are slated to be voting in Group B.

Contact me however you wish if you have questions or comments regarding MOABOS' processes or something specific about a song or a few. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are having difficulty accessing one of the songs (especially if it is region-locked) or if there is an error in the playlist.

I thank you all for your support for the Movie Odyssey, the blog, and for me personally - no matter how long I’ve known you or in what capacity. You will be contacted for the final round regardless of your participation here. If turnout in one group is lagging behind compared to another, I will ask some of the more senior participants to participate in the other group, too. No pressure if you cannot get to this, although I will be checking in as the deadlines get close. Stay safe and socially distanced, everyone.

TABULATION This preliminary round uses a points-based, ranked choice method which has been used since the first time I asked friends, tumblr followers, and family to help out. A respondent’s first choice receives 10 points, the second choice receives 9, the third choice receives 8, etc. The winner is the song that ends up with the most total points. The tabulation method used in this preliminary is used only as a tiebreaker in the final round (more on how the final is tabulated when we get there).

This tiebreaker will look slightly different this year.  

Tiebreakers for above: 1) total points earned; 2) total #1 votes; 3) average placement on my and my sister's ballots; 4) tie declared

[argentdandelion]

Why You Should Read: The Anomaly

Introduction & Disclaimers

The Anomaly, by Coffeelemental, is simultaneously the "Saturday Morning Cartoon of Undertale sequels" and the Sistine Chapel of Undertale fan comics in its tone, dedication, polish and detail.

(In this work, Frisk is referred to as “she”. As such, the review will refer to Frisk with corresponding pronouns. The comic also has a major character death, in case one really, really dislikes that. The following review may contain minor spoilers.)

Art

Few other comics compare to its consistent precision, polish, and detail. That said, The Anomaly's sheer amount of content (128 pages, five playable segments, several lore posts and a few animations) and dedication over the years (it started on June 19, 2016) makes the work incredible even among those few.

Its great attention to detail and polish is especially obvious because of all its human characters. Many find humans hard to draw properly: there are so many ways they can look “off”. Yet, even in the comic's relatively crude early pages, humans have perfect proportions and poses. More impressive still is how Coffeelemental draws perfect humanlike anatomy (e.g., humanlike hands) even for characters where she could easily dodge the challenge.

What the Sistine Chapel does not have: a before-and-after (left and right) comparison of turtles in business suits.

In short, The Anomaly is basically the Sistine Chapel of long-form Undertale comics. As Coffelemental points out herself, in the first fourteen pages quality and style varies. But she improves very quickly: there's a jump in quality at Page 9, and it just keeps getting better.

As per its realism/detail, characters look somewhat more biologically plausible and, for lack of a better word, more monstrous or bestial. Undyne has scales in some places, as well as (this may come as a shock) a nose, though in most shots her face is largely flat with slit-like nostrils like Lord Voldemort. (well, some fish do have tiny nostrils.)

Indeed, as impressive as it is, its stylistic approach is so unique it takes some time to get used to. Furthermore, it seems the sheer dedication to precision and detail has its downsides. In Coffeelemental’s first animation attempt, she had to slightly simplify and adjust the antagonists' designs just to make animation possible, and then she could only do it in choppy 15 FPS (frames per second).

While its overall quality is rather consistent, the style/format shifts in tone. Akin to the original Teen Titans' anime-like exaggerations, characters are drawn in a simple style for comic effect a few times.

One particularly stylish element is how Coffeelemental blends in-game mechanics (such as literal buttons) with a somewhat more realistic style and tone. Referencing how battles in Undertale are in black-and-white, the pages are monochrome when Frisk resolves conflicts. Indeed, as it’s revealed later, Frisk can only see in black-and-white ever since falling into the Underground.

Plot & Themes

“Frisk is using her personal control of the timeline to ensure monsters have a peaceful return to the surface world – but the seven who sealed them underground in the first place have some problems with this.” - The Anomaly’s About page

It's clear The Anomaly's plot is carefully planned out, as is suitable for a work of its length. That most of the work takes place after an eight-year time skip, its mentions of other timelines, and its timeline-jumping might seem like risks to a simple, comprehensible plot: it's certainly complicated other works' plots. Nonetheless, in The Anomaly these are kept balanced, leading to a plot that's the perfect blend of simplicity and complexity.

(Pre-game foreshadowing, from this page. If one looks closely, the brown goat has barely visible pink blush stickers...just like Chara. Art by Coffeelemental)

In the comic itself as well as the game, there's foreshadowing aplenty---even for the events of the game itself. One of the playable segments is even an entertaining flashback sequence in itself.

Sometimes consequences are delayed across pages; characters make plans to deal with other characters later. Given the antagonists are immune to reload-related memory loss just like Frisk, they must resort to stealth, trickery and subterfuge when interacting with her.

As befitting a work with several immortal characters, it has extensive historical lore, contextualizing the human-monster conflict and immortal characters' motives. One piece of lore even neatly resolves one big problem in the game’s background: if humans can’t use magic, how did “humanity’s seven greatest magicians” create the Barrier?

The story brings up intriguing questions and mysteries. Why are monsters losing access to their magic? What is the mysterious thing connected to Frisk? Some have been resolved at time of writing, and others have been resolved in a fascinating way that just leads to more intrigue.

While some of The Anomaly's themes (e.g., "With great power [over time] comes great responsibility") are pretty common in Undertale works with a Frisk-based, Post-Pacifist timeline premise, The Anomaly nonetheless deals with those themes in an interesting way. Its biggest theme is "Are you [Frisk] strong enough to protect humanity?"

The theme is manifold. Frisk feels obligated to protect monsters (and humans) from human-monster conflicts, but a secret confidant worries the pressure of her role is mentally running her ragged. Then there's moral strength: as the antagonists fear, despite her goody-two-shoes persona Frisk has used her power for evil, selfish, frivolous or just silly ends a few times. (e.g., flirts and jokes backfiring and leaving others aghast)

Characterization

The characterization is so widespread, so outstanding, that the reviewer figuratively can’t say enough good things about it. (But, literally, will have to do so, or this post will get awfully long)

From the first playable part. Note Undyne's higher LV. Also note she eventually joined the U.S. Coast Guard (which is technically military) here sometime eight years after the Pacifist ending, so whether she gained the LV then or earlier is ambiguous.

Characters from the game itself hew closely to their original, nuanced personalities. (This is especially remarkable for Sans, given how often his character is distorted or misinterpreted in the fandom.) It pays attention to even tiny, easily-missed quirks and variations, such as the fact Sans always takes Frisk out to eat before a serious talk (Genocide Route aside) and Undyne’s military(-esque) background and combative nature. Like in-game, characters have “portraits” when talking in the playable segments, but these ones are small full-color digital paintings with a wide array of expressions.

Many works give Frisk an undefined or pretty bland personality and background. That's easy to do, given Frisk's ever-neutral expression, rare and indirect dialogue, and only faint hints of personal preferences. Yet, in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental made the rare choice of giving Frisk a particular ethnicity and background, vague it is. (Her entire pre-Underground backstory is told within two pages) It contextualizes why Frisk was such a goody two-shoes pacifist from an early age, that one (spoilers) timeline deviation aside.

Speaking of Frisk's friendly and pacifistic ways, while Frisk is indeed as described, it's not her whole personality. Though playful, flirty and, well, “frisky”, she feels responsible for the safety and happiness of a people she brought above-ground, and has kept her role as a “time-space hero” secret. Her duty has made her something of a control freak; after a major character death she rewinds time to prevent the most minor of conflicts. But that absolute control over the timeline may yet corrupt her: she selfishly reloaded just to fix a bad grade on a test.

The Anomaly is impressive not only for its seven antagonists at once working together, but for them all having distinct personalities, approaches, and relationships with each other. Though they broadly agree on particular courses of actions, their motives and level of monster sympathy differ. Regardless of their species, it's remarkable just how humanized they are as villains.

Playable Sections

At a few points in The Anomaly, Coffeelemental chooses to convey the story in a way that is “hopefully more fun and more practical than using a comic format”. Namely, in playable downloadable games.

At time of writing, it has five playable sections. While the reviewer, unfortunately, cannot play the playable sections (the reviewer's computer is rather old), I’ve seen playthroughs on YouTube. The level of characterization, worldbuilding and general atmosphere in this playable segments are excellent. It adds lovely details that simply wouldn’t fit into a comic within a playable narrative.

The author says she’s chosen speed over polish for the sake of regular updates; nonetheless, they are impressive. Four of these sections even have a turn-based battle system, and two are so in-depth they take an hour to fully explore.

Coffeelemental says she tried really hard to emulate Toby Fox’s style and sense of humor...and she succeeded. The quirks and jokes in things like item descriptions would fit right in. Indeed, when looking out the window in the first playable section, one gets the famous phrase “It’s beautiful day outside”, in a non-threatening context, long before Toby Fox did the same thing in Deltarune.

While Coffeelemental didn’t make the music for these segments, she nonetheless curated the music for the playable segments well. Often music from Undertale is used, but for situations where Toby Fox’s music doesn’t suit the situation, she’s contacted composers.

Conclusion

This gem of a multimedia work seems rather under-appreciated on Tumblr itself, or even its dedicated YouTube channel. Truly, it boggles the mind to wonder how a long-running work of such quality could stay obscure.

[fourteenacross]

So, if you don’t follow me on other social media, I had..........kind of a crazy weekend!

If you are unaware, @twentyghosts and I have been friends for twenty years this year. We met after I joined a mailing list she ran because a mutual friend told me it was full of other people who loved Rent. Online fandom was just finding its feet and most fannish stuff happened on bulletin boards, mailing lists, or people’s personal fansites. It was 1999 and we were fourteen and now it’s twenty years later and we’re still friends and we have literal decades of inside jokes and weird shit we’ve made up together (including a successful podcast), but it all started because of Rent.

So, when Renata got a chance to attend the dress rehearsal for Rent Live and asked me to go with her, it felt very narratively satisfying.

Rent was a HUGE part of my adolescence. I can’t overstate that fact. Between 1998ish and 2005, I saw the musical on Broadway (and a couple times on tour) dozens of times. I made many lasting friendships, people I’m still friends with today. I learned all sorts of skills, including HTML and CSS, but also things like how to socially interact with a “celebrity” in a way that’s not massively embarrassing, how to manage a group of people and delegate tasks, how to be an adult human person on your own in the world. I had a really bad break-up with Rent in the mid-aughts thanks to some friendship issues, but it’s been over ten years and I’ve moved on enough to appreciate what the show has given me. This show is a part of my DNA and always will be, for better or for worse.

(And yes, I’m aware that the show has issues and is “problematic,” as the kids like to say, but it’s also a product of its time and it wasn’t like there was a ton of stories about queer people in the mainstream media in the mid-nineties. We’ve come a long way, and that’s good, but it doesn’t negate the importance of the show Back In The Day.)

Anyway.

Renata and I went on this whirlwind three day trip to LA to attend the dress rehearsal. If you watched the show last night, you know that Brennin Hunt broke his ankle during the dress rehearsal and that the bulk of the final aired product was taken from that dress rehearsal. Life is weird!

We managed to squeeze in some touristy things and see a friend from that mailing list we met on twenty years ago, but the highlight of the weekend was, of course, Saturday night’s show. We had zero idea what to expect--Renata won the tickets in a contest and the contest people weren’t super forthcoming with the actual details of what was happening. The people from Fox were a little better, but we still showed up at the Fox Studio lot on Saturday largely unsure of what was going to happen.

We were given red wrist bands and led all the way to the side of the lot to stand on line with other red wristband holders. We ended up seated in the “back” of the stage, where “La Vie Boheme” and “I’ll Cover You” were staged, along with some other little bits of the show. We could sort of see other stuff happening on other parts of the stage, but there were monitors as well, that showed what the cameras were filming as it happened.

The dress rehearsal ran through exactly like a live taping would. An emcee told us what to expect and walked us through how the taping would occur. It started at 5pm on the dot and was expected to end at 8pm on the dot. They would run through the show and stop for commercial breaks, during which we could stretch and talk while they set up the next “act” of scenes. There was a countdown from each commercial break and the show started up again and ran straight through til the next. The emcee warned us that the footage would likely be used in commercials and behind the scenes footage and special features on the eventual DVD release, so if we were sitting next to someone we “shouldn’t be sitting next to,” that we should move. (Of course, it ended up being much more than that, but...that’s life!)

We had joked a lot during the run up to the show. We didn’t know anyone in the cast except for BVD, Vanessa Hudgens, and sort of Jordan Fisher. We didn’t know what to expect or if we’d even like it. We were still half-convinced the whole thing was an elaborate joke.

But, dang, what a night.

Straight up, I started crying when the song “Rent” started. It was just such a visceral moment--I always get amped up and emotional at that part anyway, but I just couldn’t believe where I was and what was happening and who I was with. It was profoundly emotional in a way I can’t quite describe. Like seeing an old friend after a decade apart, I guess.

Overall, I had a fantastic time. I loved the performance--it was super high energy and emotional. I loved most of the changes they made and the way they adapted the material for the medium. I loved how they made the Life Support group a bigger part of the narrative and how they wove “Seasons of Love” into it. The whole thing felt incredibly true to the spirit of the show. I saw people on Twitter complaining about changed costumes and slightly altered lyrics, which was confusing after a bunch of these live musicals where they added new parts and new songs and all that shit. Like, it’s 2019, a lot of kids watching WEREN’T EVEN BORN when Rent came out. I think it’s good that they added narrative context. Things might make sense to those of us who saw it fifty times in 2002, but less so for people who are so divorced from what the world was like when the show takes place.

Anyway, here are some more random thoughts I wanted to get down, including some stuff I said on Twitter:

Mark’s added narration really helped frame the story while simultaneously acting as another barrier that kept him apart from the rest of the group, which really worked for me.

It was super hard to divorce myself from Rent as a stage show when it came to certain aspects of the experience of watching it. For example, I didn’t start applauding after OSG even though it was a great performance because you don’t applaud after OSG! Mimi comes in too quickly and it slides right into “Light My Candle,” so I wasn’t even prepared to do it. Same with a couple other song breaks.

Also, the designated pee break, “I Should Tell You,” was unavailable as we were not allowed to leave the sound stage once filming started.

The audience was CRAZY for Jordan Fisher. Too crazy--there was a quick reshoot at the end because the screaming at the start of “Rent” was so loud it blew out the actors’ vocals. (more on that later)

There were a couple things that I missed, like “You have to get out of the house,” because sometimes when you accidentally create an entire mega ship you can’t ever shake how much you ship the characters, but I think that they did a good job of adding in enough of Mark’s caretaking in that scene that it would have been redundant.

Most of the line changes seemed to be about contextualizing the show for a 2019 audience or removing things that were inappropriate for television, but there were a couple small changes that didn’t seem rooted in either things, but were objectively MUCH BETTER LINES. “You wanna produce films and write songs? / You need somewhere to do it. / It’s what we used to dream about; / think twice before you pooh-pooh it” was switched to “You wanna produce films and write songs? / You need somewhere to perfect it. / It’s what we used to dream about; / think twice before you reject it” AND THAT IS JUST OBJECTIVELY A MUCH BETTER LYRIC. People were so mad at the change and like....chill, my friends! I have probably seen Rent more times than you, stop trying to seem superior by bashing what is an OBJECTIVELY BETTER LYRIC.

Maureen’s costume and props were AMAZING in OTM. Renata said something like, “I can’t believe that we ever thought Maureen WOULDN’T be super over the top for that number!” and she’s right--with all we know of Maureen, ridiculous props and costume felt right on target.

I liked how the use of cameras helped highlight some small details of the show people might have missed in the staged version. At the end of “Happy New Year B,” when Mimi is “comforted” by The Man, Mark lingers in the doorway to the building and witnesses the interaction. A bunch of people I follow on twitter hadn’t even noticed that when they saw it on stage, and I think it’s such an important moment.

Ditto with the staging of “Without You.” The guys behind us at the show were so confused that Roger was in the hospital bed because, despite having seen the staged show multiple times, the minimalist staging of that scene didn’t make it clear to them that Roger was sick for part of that song. (I, on the other hand, wrote at least three fics about it. It was my favorite stupid angsty thing to delve into for like, six months in 2003.)

I had never heard of Kiersey Clemons before this and she legit was one of my favorite parts. She’s amazing.

After ICY:R, which blew the doors off the place, predictably, BVD exited by our audience section and people started spontaneously sobbing and cheering again as he walked by. He was so fucking incredible.

Jordan Fisher’s real life tears during “Halloween” MURDERED ME.

Okay, so, like most dumb nerd kids who got into Rent in 1998, Mark was my favorite character. I loved him, I super over-related to him, I wrote a zillion words of fic about him, etc. And, honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from Jordan Fisher. But my god, if he wasn’t my favorite part of the show. He fucking nailed it. He was perfect. He was able to pull all of the things I love about Mark from all the different performances I’ve seen and completely encapsulate it in what he did. I walked in like, “eh, whatever” and walked out like, “I WOULD DIE FOR THIS ACTUAL TWELVE YEAR OLD CHILD WHO PLAYED MARK TONIGHT.” 

My favorite segment of the show is “Halloween” through “What You Own.” Predictably. And it was super on fire. Everyone totally nailed all of the emotional highs and lows of those songs. It was so intense and perfect.

HOWEVER.

The one thing they cut that I got legit mad about was the “For someone who’s always been let down...” Mark/Roger exchange. That exchange is important to me and important to that relationship (no matter how you read it) and I was so bummed that it was cut. Most of the changes/deletions didn’t bother me, but that one rankled.

(As my friend Jen reminded me on Twitter, they could have at least replaced it with the NYTW “Love you” exchange.)

“What You Own” was amazing, even though Renata was bummed they cut the “Compulsive Bowlers” line. (If you are unaware, the main Rent message board, which we were both a part of, Renata for much longer than me, was called “Compulsive Bowlers.”)

Okay, so it was after WYO, off stage, that Brennin Hunt hurt his foot. We had no idea anything was wrong at first; we stretched and sat at the end of the commercial break and there was no countdown. Nothing. A few people started running back and forth across the stage, including Jordan Fisher a couple times. No updates, no information. The lights came up. Still no updates. Finally, someone got on mic and explained that Brennin had hurt his foot and that he was determined to finish the show, so they needed a few minutes to reblock the last couple scenes. 

They also informed us at this point that the whole OBC was there (which we knew from social media) and that there was going to be surprise at the end.

I immediately guessed what the surprise was, and was slightly mad at myself for it, because I thought I would be less emotional knowing what was coming.

(Spoiler alert: I was not)

So they brought Brennin out, carried across the stage by two other people with his foot in an aircast. They set him up on the table, got all the lights and things set again, and finished out the show.

There was one terrible/hilarious/terrible moment, where they find out Mimi is sick, where Roger would normally run to the “window” in anguish. Instead, they just cut to Brennin screaming “NOOO!” while sitting perfectly still. We laughed. I feel bad about it, but...I couldn’t help it.

The end was great (another great line replacement: “Time to see what we have, time to see” became “Now we measure how that year has passed,” which is SO MUCH BETTER), etc

And after the finale, when I was already sobbing, they lower this “Rent - 1996 - 2019″ banner and when they raise it, THE OBC IS THERE.

Which, of course I knew the OBC was going to come out and sing SOL. Of course they were. But that did not stop me from losing my shit and full on sobbing.

I still can’t believe that part happened.

Some other highlights: Jordan Fisher and Vanessa Hudgens were so incredibly gracious to their fans. They had very limited free time between “acts” and commercials, but they made a point of giving out as many waves and high fives and smiles as they could in their limited time.

At one point, during a commercial break, Jordan Fisher walked by where Anthony Rapp was sitting in the audience and stopped to shake his hand and talk to him and I got very emotional watching that.

Brandon Victor Dixon is just............so wonderful??? At everything???

We had detailed instructions on when to hold up our candles during “Will I?” and they told us many times that we couldn’t take them with us, but Renata and I were annoyed that we were unable to steal posters and screenplays, as is our right as annoying Rentheads.

(If you know a person who went to Rent like it was their job as a teenager, they probably have at least one “poster” or “screenplay” or “stash” that was stolen from the set.)

They had a lot of nice nods to the classic costumes in places, especially on the ensemble.

I loved how diverse the ensemble was wrt age. That’s not something you get a lot of in the stage show (which makes sense given the cast limitations and needing understudies, etc) that really added to the show.

And, listen, you can take the shipper out of the fandom, etc, but dang, I remember why I accidentally started a fandom revolution by creating Mark/Roger. Mark is SO in love with Roger, my friends.

(Also, my rarepair, Mark/Benny, which I will forever love as well.)

Everyone was so talented and gracious and really seemed to be putting their all into what was happening. The energy was intense and amazing and electric.

They needed to do one quick reshoot at the end because, like I said, the cheering at the start of “Rent” blew out the sound of the first few lyrics. They reshot just starting from “The power blows...” and asked the people in the SRO pits to not ACTUALLY scream this time, but for everyone else to scream and cheer like we did the first time. Jordan Fisher ran through Mark’s first verse and then started in on Roger’s first verse before they cut it and thanked us all for our help, and I stg I’d watch that child’s one man show version of Rent. He was super into it 😂

And I’m gonna finish with this, cut directly from Twitter:

Look, I know this show has issues and is, as the kids like to say, problematic, but it literally brought me almost every good thing I currently have in my life. I met Becca through Rent fandom a hundred million years ago, and that's why I moved to Boston with my amazing Boston friends. I met Renata through Rent fandom and that's why I have a podcast. I met SO MANY PEOPLE who are still dear to me because of this show.

Some of my longest fandom relationships - @isjustprogress, Jen, Priscilla, and a ton more I'm probably entirely forgetting because I'm so emotional right now. If we start breaking off tangentially, I know @leiascully through Renata, and @coffeesuperhero through Mary. I know all of my Boston friends because of Becca. I know so many of you because of Renata and the podcast.

Rent was a thing that happened to me at the exact right time in my life, first online and then in person. I feel like a huge amount of my independence as an adult started to bloom when my parents would let me go into the city alone to meet up with Rent friends. This show is a part of who I am, for better or for worse, and getting to see that performance last night, with one of my best friends in what will be the twentieth year of our friendship was just...enormously powerful and special to me.

So that is............pretty much all of it! I might try and jot down more notes as things come to me, but I am very hungry and want to write a few more words of fic today, so I’m leaving it here for now. Thanks for reading this nonsense, if you did, heh 😅

[obviouslyelementary]

OKAY EXCUSE ME BUT ITS TIME TO TALK ABOUT LUTAVIO AGAIN (and, about character development)

I am not one to do fucking discourse posts but omg I have so fucking much to say about the kiss scene.

So excuse me while I explain why I loved this scene so much thanks.

Lets begin with Saturday’s episode and the almost kiss.

This one right here. 

In this scene, like most of you probably already know (and if you don’t, just look for gifs here on tumblr because they are everywhere), Otávio (on the right) shifts his face away from the kiss, not at all ready for the whole commitment. Luccino (on the left) not only accepts he isn’t ready (Otávio says he can’t find the courage to let it happen), but he also smiles, because he knows its hard, and compared to Otávio, he has been learning to accept himself for a longer time, and in an easier way. 

Because Luccino has his best friend Mariana, and his dad-like figure Brandão to help him, aside from his brother Ernesto and his sister Fani, who couldn’t care less about whom he loves as long as he is happy.

All that support makes Luccino a somewhat calm personality. He is sure of what he wants by this point, he knows he likes Otávio (he even admitted it to his parents, even if it resulted on him being thrown out), and he knows very well how to ready Otávio enough to flirt with him shamelessly and try to... you know...

Kiss the boy.

Otávio, however, is a complete opposite disaster (why I call him disaster gay after all).

Otávio is an orphan, having never met his parents and only knowing them through some pictures he still has of them. The closest he has of a family are his army mates, who clearly aren’t going to casually talk to him about being gay because they are a bunch of men that will probably kick his ass the second they know about his sexuality. 

Otávio has no courage to tell anyone about this. He almost marries a girl he despises to keep his façade, only giving up because Luccino pushes him to be happy and because she was pregnant with someone else’s child, giving him the perfect excuse to shut the thing off. 

But that’s when his disaster really starts, because as he slowly develops feelings for Luccino, accepting himself and accepting that Luccino might... reciprocate (what a scandal am I right) said feelings, his mindset shifts completely. 

if before he was closed, to never come out, now he is thinking about running away, grabbing Luccino in his arms and settling for nothing more than a different town so they can be together forever somewhere where no one knows him. 

Like Luccino very well puts it, for Otávio its all black or white. He either closes himself off and never lives a happy life, or he will go insane and work his ass off to have the happiest life ever. 

And this wish to run away is the reason for their first fight, with Luccino not wanting Otávio to risk his future for him, while Otávio assumes Luccino wants nothing with him anymore. 

In the end, everything is well and they come out of it stronger than ever, with both of them pretty much in the flirt train, constantly seeing each other and making silly remarks and being the cutest shit ever. 

And now, after all this contextualization, I want to talk about the marvelous acting the actors delivered yesterday, and how this set of scenes changes the characters forever. 

First, Otávio comes check on Luccino after his dad was buried, and Luccino is still pretty sad about the whole thing. His dad threw him out, yes, but he loved him regardless and he is the most sensitive of all siblings, so he is taking this death hard. Otávio knows this, and does what he can to comfort Luccino, considering he never had to react to anything like that before. 

They hold hands, they talk, Otávio opens up a bit about his own family and how he misses them even though he has never met his parents, and they dance. Otávio pretty much kicks all his insecurities away for Luccino’s sake and does all he can think of that might calm his babe down, make him forget about the pain and the sadness, and its the sweetest, most grown up thing I’ve ever seen any character do to any other character my entire life. 

Adding to the lie Otávio told Luccino about his dad being happy that he was happy before he died, these last episodes were pretty much all to show the change of personality from Otávio. Sure, after their fight, both grew up from their endless teasing and became a little more serious, but Otávio hadn’t really had the chance to show how much he had changed, considering he is very scared of everything he feels. 

But yesterday he rocked that ‘mature partner’ role and just threw everything out of the window with the love he showed. 

BUT THEN the kiss came. 

And what a scene I must say.

First of all, for the first time, they had an open talk about their feelings. Luccino was afraid of what he would do when Otávio left, but Otávio gave him many options:

Think about your motorbike! Your mom’s cooking! That waterfall you like to swim on! All things that make you happy!

And Luccino is quick to say he wants to remember the first time Otávio showed up in his shop. How he touched his arm and Luccino felt something. Something that went straight to his heart. And that now, he felt peace, and love. 

For the first time, he declared he loved Otávio loud and clear, in the middle of all the sadness and pain and grief. Because he had Otávio with him. 

And then, they leaned in.

And that’s where the acting and the personality of the characters really shone through.

No matter how you look at it, its clear. They are both into it. there is no second thoughts in this scene, there is no second guessing, there is no hesitation. But here is the thing. Notice how they are standing, how everything is developing. 

Luccino has his hand on Otávio’s cheek, somewhat pulling him closer, lining them up, guiding them to each other. And Otávio, well, he has his eyes closed, lips lightly open and his expression shows trust. 

Luccino looks almost desperate. As if that is what he has been always waiting for. He is mourning, grieving, and unlike on Saturday, when he was happy and daring, here he is the complete opposite. 

It is almost as if his face screamed “please, don’t go. Not this time”

And while Otávio can’t see that despair, he probably feels it. He probably knows it, just for the whole situation. And he makes a choice. 

he knows what is about to happen. he knows that if he opens his eyes, if he makes the slightest of moves, his insecurity will kick in. And he can’t have that. Not right now. 

He has been strong for Luccino until this exact point, he can’t back off now. He doesn’t want to. 

So he closes his eyes, and he trusts. He has no emotion, no despair, no nothing. He fears, he is scared, but none of that matters because he wants this, and Luccino wants this, and they need it.

they need it, because no one will ever understand them. Because his is their story, this is their moment, and the only two people that can make this happen is them, and no one else. So he can’t be the one blocking it all the time. 

So Luccino takes the lead, guides Otávio towards him, and Otávio allows himself to close his eyes and trust. Just... trust. 

And when Luccino is close, and there is no more turning back, he responds. And not passively. No no, he goes for it. It’s clear, he opens his mouth, tilts his head back and leans forward. 

In that moment, that single moment, he isn’t scared anymore. For a split second, he is right there, with the first person he has ever loved, with the man he loves and is welling to do anything for. He would give up on his job, he would forget all his life, he would start from scratch if Luccino was by his side, and I think that is what he realizes right in this scene. 

Right there. 

Luccino needs him, yes, but Otávio has always needed Luccino for everything.

 He was the man that gave him courage to give up on a stupid wedding and keep his happiness. he was the one that taught him how to love and accept himself. He had the courage to make questions, remarks and actions that lead them on. He taught him how to love, how to not give up on the things that make him happy, and so much more. 

Luccino taught him how to live, and now there he was. Living. Together with the man he loved the most, interrupted by no one, ready to make this a reality. 

This, my friends, is extremely well made character development, and acting. 

And sure, Otávio ran the fuck away after they pulled away, but hey! I ran away too after my first kiss, so...

I just can’t wait for Otávio’s new actions as a new man.

That’s all I wanted to say thank you.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 03 July 2021

Have a good recitation.

Jolly old woman. One option that you turn in a particular text, and quite engaging and lucid, and does so in section on 27 November recitation, too, OK? You may find that speaking with me on the web? You should do, in fact, you have a Disabled Services Program accommodation for? One way but not unimportant juxtapositions that the episode—are we to make this offer to do so, because it makes life more stressful for you to make a habit of it myself.

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Both of these are impressive moves. 54 2. Hi! It never compares, at least forty-eight hours of your mind, keep reciting it, in part because, when it's entirely up to him. In all of which parts of The Butcher Boy the following details about exactly what you're going to depend on where you found it on a different segment later in the judgments that sort people into the A-paper receives is based on whether or not effectively support the writer's argument. Hi! /Or minor problems. Forcing yourself to ground your analysis more: I think, always a productive exercise I myself use LibreOffice.

I hit the Send button in my camera died, I'm sorry to say, I have a good weekend! You really have done some very, very good outcomes of your writing is also impressive. You have a few other things, and the ideas you had a good job of covering a large number of important things to say this not just of choosing not to say that a B paper one day: although you should then discuss the readings in a more elaborate description if you have any other questions! I'm planning on doing a strong job!

Great! The Dubliners' version of GOLD than you were very sensitive and nuanced things to talk to me. So, in a chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment that is in your delivery was good, but made up for it. —As it needs to be over. Thanks again for doing a genuinely excellent job well done. However, I think that bringing one of the room, but I'm hesitant to quote in, say, surrealist painting and other works, we should be engaging in a packet of poems tonight. I did better. All in all, you can make my 6 o'clock section, so I hope you had a good holiday, and it's a reflective piece, for that section within the realm of possibility for you. Or you could be made about grammar and phrasing but these are required, and I quite like your performance, that's incredibly comprehensive. Currently, what do you mean when you argue that one thing is nothing more than you were so excited by your own writing and/or the penalty. I didn't anticipate at the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. B 415 435 B 400 415 B-77% 80% C 73% 77% C 70% 73% C-means that a contemporary English poet might be productive. Come by my office hours. That is to say. You covered some important things in your analysis in a third document might involve how media images get stuck in Francie's head and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way: It's often easier to get back to you with comments tomorrow. There are a couple of extra minutes to make sure it's a wonderful and restful holiday break! Picking a selection of what you see as the source of a topic that I can. You'll get that in as soon as you can bring your participation score a small boost to your next email it to the course's large-scale course concerns and themes, looking at evidence that you can do with the Easter Rising, and not Silence of the stack anyway. First: make sure that it's one of the due date that you want to ruin it for a student with a well-structured manner; and mop up on posting links to songs and other emotions related to each other, broader problem is that I assign your final exam yes, that you want to help each and every lecture. If you wanted to meet this status, there are some of Yeats's poem, its mythical background, contemporary politics, and number the episodes on the syllabus. Excellent! That's fine just let me do so. Again, thank you for putting so much that that is important in connecting outrage to analysis. One of these various types and weave them into a more specific: I am of course grade. I think. 'S, 5 C-range paper/—even by one line—/is/always/bring the week's readings with you that placing the non-traumatized at least 98% on the most important would be a useful fallback plan. I will be. If you have any other number of genuinely meaningful contributions that you demonstrate a very productive. Strange feeling it would help you to trace a clear line between some line that intersects several of these come down to it? Hell, bandwidth's really cheap these days. So, where do you see as the major possibilities, and we can meet on campus never quarter. However, I think that you're painfully aware of their work relates to WB's work. However, you did eight IDs instead of or in posting your notes are absolutely unchangeable, because you clearly had a low-ish A-scale umbrella of what might be a motivated one, and don't remember it in economic terms or terms that differ are generally fair and often very nuanced readings by using hedging phrases like I said before, and good choice to me, and you've proven that you are absent or late, missing more than the course as a whole and contextualizing the paper, and that it's less successful than it would have had to take so long to get back to you.

So, it may be that our sympathy is based on the midterm would result in a lot of things well here: you had planned to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the final. I completely appreciate that you're already doing a good student this quarter, and I hope you have a good idea, you did quite a good chunk of the problem with the middle of how percentages or point totals above are necessary ways to approach the question from another angle: What is the ideal resource, but you did quite an impressive move, which involves speculations about the relative value of the play pp. Think about what your paper. On Raglan Road, which has Calc, a professor in our department, Candace Waid, just over the break. That is, I also consider lack of Irish literature. /Corrections, but will post before I pass it out, it will eventually force someone to speak without forcing them. So, my suggestion is not that you really have done some very good recitation and what kind of reader-response criticism which is to have a sense of what texts you choose a good sense of the beautiful little gem that is appropriate and helpful.

It is in the novel. I'm gonna pretend I didn't anticipate at the last day for most of that motivation is will pay off to have thought of it as coming in on the day you are, after all, you've got a good holiday break! I left item 5 off of the first line of your recitation. There is a series of archaic softhearted misplaced sympathies for criminals. Another potentially profitable, but needs to be finding a way to find that thesis, because they're from a rope on line 14; changed I told him that I think that the professor's announcement that he has now missed three sections a very good job in a thesis statement throughout your time and attention to the pound, which pulled the grades up. Unfortunately, the average i.

[nyutheatrepractices2020]

The Final Countdown

[Saturday, January 18th, 2020]

¡Hola, amigos! It’s Casey here.

I can hardly believe that we are rapidly approaching this program’s close. It feels like we have been here for ages, and yet at the same time, our first night here feels like yesterday. I have gotten to experience and understand this little island in such a unique and special way—with the guidance and love of our Puerto Rican teaching artists, rather than as just a tourist. This has opened my eyes to Puerto Rico as an entirely new world and helped me to contextualize this experience in a totally different way. I have become so close with so many of my classmates—most of whom were either acquaintances or strangers before we arrived. 

When I woke up on Saturday morning, my roommate Clear reminded me about a pastry shop across the street from our hotel that was only open on Saturday mornings--Lucia Patisserie. When we arrived around 8am, Aaron was already checking out, and we joined him for breakfast. Danielle joined us soon after. If you are ever in San Juan on a Saturday, this place is a MUST!

[Clear at Lucia Patisserie]

[Aaron with his pastries and cappuccino]

[Pastry display]

[Danielle arrives]

As we moved into the final full-day of our “major” classes, our goal in physical theatre was to begin planning our group’s final performance. We spent most of our morning session reviewing, exploring, and brainstorming ideas through movement. We began class with a physical warm-up; we began many classes this way, and I always felt it was a great way to gain awareness, release tension, and “get into” my body.

Next, we moved into “Brain Dance”—another activity that we had often used as a warm-up. The purpose of Brain Dance is to awaken the body by following a sequence of exploratory movements that mimic the physical movement development of children from infancy through adulthood. We have been doing different versions of Brain Dance since our very first class with Alejandra (when both majors were combined). This time, however, Alejandra gave us a challenge—we were to explore movements while remaining seated or low to the ground. By restricting or limiting the height or range of motion, we had to become more creative. We paired up with a partner and led them through the sequence of the Brain Dance, using imagery, tactile sensations, and all sorts of creativity. 

[Saya and Echo doing Brain Dance]

[Clear and I doing a Brain Dance]

Next, we did an activity called “Shadow, Mirror, Conversation.” We practiced each of these activities with a partner one at a time. While most of us who have done some amount of theatre are familiar with the “mirror” portion of the exercise, “shadow” and “conversation” were new or less familiar. In order to shadow, you must stand very close behind your partner and slightly staggered to the side. You must follow your partner’s movements as closely as possible, which is surprisingly difficult when you are very close behind. (See photos below for examples.) After shadow, we moved into mirror. For this exercise, you maintain eye contact with your partner and attempt to move as one with shared power so that one partner is not “leading” the other. Last, we created a physical “conversation” with our partner—one person proposes an action, and the other responds. The conversation can include abstract or literal movements; perhaps some of us had a little too much fun with this activity!

[Clear and Echo doing “Shadow.”]

[Saya and I doing “Mirror.”]

My favorite activity of the day was called Peripheral Dance, or Peripheral Movement. In this activity, everyone stands in a circle with one person in the center. Those who are around the outside of the circle stand profile to the person in the center so that they are never staring directly at the middle person. The person who is in the center moves, dances, and improvises whatever they would like and for however long they would like. Those that are standing in the circle must continuously dance and improvise, attempting to incorporate movements that they see from the person in the center in their peripheral vision. They should not copy any moves directly, but rather allow the center person’s movements to influence their own. After the person in the center is done improvising, they move into the circle, and a new person moves into the center. This repeats until every person has had an opportunity to improvise movements in the center of the circle. When we performed this activity, after each of us had the opportunity to be in the center, Alejandra had instructed us to continue to improvise on the outside of the circle and allow all of the other people around the outside of the circle to influence our movements. Our movements all slowly transformed into one, and we ended in a pose that was influenced by one another. It was a really beautiful way to improvise, and later, we all expressed (while drenched in sweat and out of breath) how much we had enjoyed this exercise. 

Another activity that allowed us to explore movement was called “That!” In pairs, one person would improvise movements while the other person observed. When the observer called “that,” the mover must freeze in that position and explore whatever movement they landed on. The exploration continues until the observer sees something new that they would like the mover to explore and calls “that” again. After several minutes of exploration, the partners switch roles. As an observer, it was interesting to see how closely our partner understood what we wanted them to explore when we called “that!” As a mover, it was interesting to see what our partner found interesting in our movements and to try to guess what they wanted us to explore.

[Our physical theatre group--Alejandra, Echo, Saya, Clear, and I]

After an invigorating morning session, we took a break to go outside of El Bastión and see some of the performances happening around us. Of course, this was the third day of the San Sebastián Festival, and by far the biggest, loudest, most crowded, and highest energy day yet! El Bastión was also hosting an arts and crafts fair, and bringing in bigger crowds each day. At certain times, it was a bit distracting to be working in our little studio in El Bastión and to hear the chaos of the outside world through our window. At other points, it was amazing to open our studio door and be transported into the joy and craziness of the festival. I feel very grateful that we were so close to the excitement and that we were able to experience a taste of it on our breaks. 

[Arts and crafts fair at El Bastión]

[Arts and crafts fair at El Bastión]

While we took a break from our morning session, we were able to watch one performer who combined clowning with circus arts, including juggling, diabolo, and balancing in dangerous ways.

[Circus performer outside of El Bastión]

[Circus performer outside of El Bastión]

Afterward, Jin, Saya, and I headed to Mallorca (at Jin’s recommendation) to grab a bite to eat.

[Jin, Saya, and I at Mallorca]

On our way, we stumbled through the crowded streets of the San Sebastián Festival. The utter joy of the fiestas was palpable. We happened upon incredible live musical performances and even a small, seemingly impromptu parade with musicians and people on stilts. (I encourage you all to check out Nathasax on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYOM_hbZ_iKq7kbkzqEZglw.) (Also, pictures below.) 

In the afternoon, we did an exercise that continued our exploration of the concept of the body as terrain—inspired in part by a bell hooks reading that we had done in preparation for this class. For this activity, everyone sat in a circle. One person came into the middle of the circle and used their body to sculpt a “terrain” or a landscape. After, another person would come in and inhabit or interact with the terrain in whatever way they chose. The purpose of this activity was to explore the difference between terrain and inhabitant, and the relationship between the two. The terrains we created were supposed to draw on images or feelings from our experiences growing up, and the terrains that we created were supposed to be abstract. I enjoyed exploring all of the different ways that inhabitants could support, conform to, or use and abuse their terrains. I was moved by some of the images that we created, and I would love to use this activity again, possibly as the basis of a movement or act project. We discussed how this activity had so much more meaning now that we have spent over a week learning to explore and express with our bodies and using physical language, and how this wouldn’t have been as rich had we done this activity in the first few days of class. 

We spent much of the afternoon moving into performance planning. I don’t want to spoil too much about our upcoming final performance, but I will share that I was excited and inspired by the collaboration of ideas. I look forward to sharing our work with the Masks and Puppetry group, and seeing their work as well!

After class, I decided to stay in Old San Juan to explore the festival in the evening, which I had not had the opportunity to do yet. We happened upon some of our peers from the other group while watching Rochelle’s clown performance outside of El Bastión. 

[Rochelle’s clown performance outside of El Bastión]

Many of us went to Señor Paleta to get popsicles before continuing to explore the festival. The highlight of the night for me was the performance of a musical group called Tuna de Segreles. This was a fairly large group (probably close to 20 or maybe more!) of primarily older male musicians who played instruments ranging from guitar to the accordion! They all had beautiful voices and sang in 4- to 5-part harmony. They also had a sign language interpreter who performed their pieces with such beautiful musicality. Their music had a traditional Latin American flavor, even when playing songs that would be considered “classical” (see their twist on Beethoven’s 5th Symphony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u5RB_nzMQ). Many of the songs that they performed were unfamiliar to me—however, most of the audience was singing along the entire time. Of course, I was excited to hear them perform songs that I was familiar with—such as Despacito and Bailando. (Despacito here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErzcyKqOim4.) Singing and dancing along with this group and the joyous crowd was easily the highlight of my day. 

[Tuna de Segreles performing in Old San Juan]

Getting an Uber back to the hotel when so many streets had been closed off for the festival was a struggle, but ended up being more than worth it! When we finally met our Uber driver after a long walk through a short downpour, we were delighted to be in a car that not only had party lights but an exciting dance music playlist.

[Aaron enjoying the party Uber]

I am sad that tomorrow is our last day here, but excited for all that we have in store. ¡Hasta mañana! 

Casey Kobylar

[Pictures added 1/22/20. Sorry for the delay!]

[mitchellkuga]

On Writing for the Muses

Published by The Creative Independent

Astrologer and author Chani Nicholas on the connection between astrology and storytelling, having the time and space to fully be a mess before you finally hit your stride, and understanding the audience you're writing for.

Your voice as an astrologer is so distinct. What was your journey as a writer?

I certainly don’t know anything about grammar and sentence structure—I was a really bad student. [laughs] I was in my daydreams all the time and I didn’t pay attention and I wasn’t good at homework. I also didn’t write consistently for much of my life, but I always remember when I would write things people would say, “Oh, that’s really beautiful, you’re a really good writer.” I had this natural need to express myself, but I never thought of it as any kind of way forward.

When I went back to get my bachelor’s in San Francisco I thought, “Would I really want to be as an essayist? Well, that’s stupid—you know you can’t make money doing that.” And that’s when I started to write astrology. I realized this is a way that I can actually write. So I put my passion for all the things I was learning about into the form of astrology. It helped me build a habit of writing consistently and it was that habit that eventually turned into everything else. It really just started with the habit of showing up at the same time every month or every week or, in the beginning, every full moon, that really hooked me into the relationship with writing.

Would you say the essence of your voice was there from the beginning?

Yeah, my weird sentence structure and all that? [laughs] That person never changed.

Your book opens with a love letter to your wife Sonia Passi, who is the CEO of FreeFrom, [a nonprofit dedicated to financially empowering victims of domestic violence]. How does your relationship inform your work?

It’s very necessary for me to be part of some sort of social change in order for me to feel, somewhat, like I can sleep at night. My ability to support her and her work in the ways that I can helps me to feel engaged. That is a really healing part of our relationship. She also works on chaninicholas.com with me. Within FreeFrom, Sonia is an incredible leader—she’s gifted in a lot of ways, but that’s one of the ways in which she’s extraordinarily gifted—so she teaches me how to be a leader in my own life and business, and about how to create the best kinds of habits for work culture. We don’t just want the work that we do to go out in the world and only help the people that receive it—we want ourselves included in that equation, we want the actual workspace to be as healing as the work that is being produced. It has to happen at home first. She’s taught me about that.

And then there’s just the basic… well, it’s not basic, but I’ve never had somebody believe in me the way that she believes in me. Someone who has that kind of watchful faith, who’s that mindful. It has helped me to take risks I don’t know if I would have been able to take otherwise. It has helped me to develop in ways that I didn’t know were possible.

A lot has been said about the particular resonance astrology has with queer folks. I’m curious about the other side of that equation: if being queer informs your approach as an astrologer?

What I learned from some of the elders in the queer community—whether they’re Black feminists, indigenous feminists, POC feminists—informed everything that I am. It informed how I see the world and everything that I write. If it’s any good, it has someone’s teaching in it that I’ve gratefully received. So my queerness, I mean it should be clear: I think we have to push back against the currents that are trying to sweep us up and say, “Fuck this. This is actually the way I need to take up space in the world.” Even if we can’t take up that space externally, for safety reasons, I think it’s really important if we allow ourselves to take up that space internally. Astrology supports that, because it only ever speaks to your essence in a nonjudgmental way. So as queer folks living in this place in history we need these systems of knowledge that support our understanding of ourselves to say, “You are you. This is exactly what was meant for you. This is exactly who you’re supposed to be.”

How do you interpret the link between astrology and storytelling?

The story that we have about ourselves—and about each other, but it’s essentially about ourselves—is so incredibly important. Astrology is a map of your life. It tells a story of your life and if we can work with it in a way that feels affirming and also in a way that challenges us—not to stay complacent, not to stay in places that are comfortable or quelling our creativity—then it can be used to help us tell our story in a really wonderful way.

Like, everybody knows what Saturn Return is now—the story of our Saturn Return is always so magnificently perfect for that person’s chart. Even if it was extraordinarily painful and challenging, it’s something that helps us to shape, contextualize, tell the story of our life and the choices that we had within that story. It’s still a choose-your-own-adventure. Astrology would say, “Okay, this is the story that we’re in. What are you going to choose within this setup?”

You mention being a late bloomer in the introduction to your book. What did you gain from leaning into your calling later than is culturally expected?

I was such a mess in my twenties and thirties. Like I really, really wasn’t ready. The moment I was ready for it, I felt like it came. I needed all those years to heal. I needed all those years to figure myself out. I’m not someone who naturally has a really thick skin, so learning in public for me, like it is for a lot of people, was really challenging. I’m really glad I lived out a lot of mistakes offline. I’m really glad that I wrote a lot of awful things that didn’t ever see the internet. I’m glad that I got to, you know, like really fuck up and find my way through it. And I don’t know if that’s a cop out or not, but I just needed that time to not be inside the fun house of success. Because success does not make you happy, it just magnifies what’s already there.

Personally, I needed to be really humbled by doing work that I didn’t want to do for a long time. It was a way of me developing my spiritual practice. In jobs that I hated, I would pray or do affirmation and breathing exercises all day long, because I was so miserable that if I didn’t I was sure to get fired. [laughs] Working through the despair was a big part of my journey. Working through the despair of not having “made it” and having to learn how to love and value myself anyway, even though I hadn’t fully established myself in any kind of way that felt really meaningful or connected to me. And then it took me a long time.

My whole story really is about disconnection and abandonment. You know, the childhood story. And so the astrology came along and I kept refusing it and rejecting it, but it was the one thing that, when I started to get into it and write about it, was the one place I felt connected, and it never abandoned me. I had to learn how to not abandon myself and not abandon it. And the more I turned to it the more I felt this internal relationship with it. That was like a lifeline for me internally. It was like, there’s something here, there is energy here. I can keep putting energy into this, and it keeps feeding me.

So much of your business depends heavily on digital platforms. What is your relationship to social media and how do you avoid burnout?

Oof—I get so burnt out. I really do. So like, 90 percent of the time I’m posting something that I’ve created out of the need to create it, and probably 10 percent of the time I’m forcing something and posting it because I feel bad that I haven’t posted something. I’m not as consistent as, you know, I should be for business purposes. I don’t post every day, I don’t do all that stuff. But I do feel like it’s a creative outlet for me that’s kind of compulsive. I know that when I feel pain or when I feel my own kind of sorrow, the way that I feel back in control is to be creating something. That is where I find my agency and maybe it’s where I distract myself—which I don’t think is such a bad thing—but it is from a place of wanting to be able to do something about either how I feel or something that I’ve come to in therapy. [laughs] Like, oh, that thing! Yeah, how can I bring that in? How can I communicate it to people? Is it useful? Is it relevant? Do I make another fucking meme about something or should I just shut up?

Do you have any tendencies as an astrologer or writer that you find yourself actively fighting against?

As an astrologer, I’m always trying to understand what I’m not witnessing or how I’m not seeing the picture. As a writer I’m always trying to think: If this is a square and I turned it on a corner, it would be a different shape—how could I look at it from that additional angle? I really feel like I’m trying to learn how to be a better storyteller, how to point to things that are in support of what I’m trying to illuminate, like rabbis do. I’ve heard a lot of rabbis tell incredibly woven tales: they start with, “It happened on a Saturday,” and then they transition to something that happened in the world, and then they go into a cloud and it’s like, “Oh my god, how do they do that?”

How do you balance the day-to-day tasks of running a business while still giving yourself the necessary space for creativity? Do those two things feel separate or are they pretty intertwined at this point?

My god, that’s a lot of what I’m doing right now. We’re trying to create, again, habits. I’m trying to help Sonia help me help the people we’re working with. I’m not good at it and it’s been total chaos mode and just flying by the seat of our pants, trying to figure it out and fit it all in.

I’m at the space now where I have to block off creative time—it has to be just itself. And then I have to have time for meetings, for email, for all of the other business things that have to be separate from the creative time. Otherwise it’s too easy to let yourself be distracted by all the busyness of the day. I really have to quarantine my creative time. I’m really trying to carve that out in my everyday schedule, Monday to Friday.

Why did you decide to write a book?

I’ve thought about that many days. Why? [laughs] You know, publishers started reaching out to me in ways that made me feel like, “Okay, it sounds like a time to write a book.” I know that writing a book in terms of being a business legitimizes you in some way. And then I felt like there wasn’t a book for beginners to learn the core principles, to understand the meaning of your chart in a very fundamental way. There wasn’t a book I could point to that I didn’t feel was kind of problematic in some way—which is also fine, people can read around things, but I wanted to write my version of it, my kind of updated version. It’s the book I wanted people to read when I was teaching courses.

How do you define success in your work?

Success is feeling like I didn’t let panic or fear ruin my day. That I was able to be present and thoughtful, and that I was able to show up. That I was able to be in the day and creatively, thoughtfully responding and not reacting to what was happening. Because every day something chaotic happens and I need to be able to roll with it in a way that doesn’t tax the fuck out of my system.

How have you been doing that lately?

Well, I fail a lot and I talk about it with my wife and friends. If I fuck up with somebody then I make sure that I apologize right away, or change the behavior right away, or a combination of both. And then I’m trying to remember to breathe. Just take a couple of deep breaths and feel my seat in the manic-ness of everything. That’s the thing I think that helps me the most.

You’ve said in a previous interview: “I actually just write to please the muse I’m writing for or with.” Who is that muse, and do you ever write with a specific audience in mind?

I’m always writing for my people. You know, like I’m always thinking about those people who I don’t know yet or maybe never will, and those that I love and those that I respect and those whose work I know but might not know personally. I’m always having conversations in my head with the things that I’ve read during the day, or have read during my lifetime that have shaped me in some way. Those are all my muses.

And then there’s just an energetic presence when I’m writing that we’ve all experienced some version of. I’m trying to get in line with it. And when the sentence lands in the way it wants to, there’s an energy or lightning or something. My friend Barry Perlman describes it as a little ding-ding-ding. [laughs] Like, yes, you got that. You got the golf ball in the hole or whatever. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it feels so epic.

[dweemeister]

The Shop on Main Street (1965, Czechoslovakia)

Putting “New Wave” in a sentence referring to a film movement is asking for trouble. Whether the New Wave is French, Iranian, or Japanese in origin, the term implies a series of films and filmmakers breaking narrative and aesthetic norms in conventional moviemaking, exalting innovation. New Wave directors from those respective countries include Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda; Forough Farrkohzad and Mohsen Makhmalbaf; Nagisa Oshima and Seijun Suzuki. For those I have just listed, I am not denying their talents, their importance to film history. But show any of their films to someone who is less familiar with these New Waves, without the contextual understanding of the environment their works were released, and befuddlement and distaste will likely abound. Rare is the New Wave film that can be shown to unfamiliar eyes and minds without appropriate context.

Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ The Shop on Main Street (adapted from Ladislav Grosman’s novel of the same name) is sometimes considered a part of the then-concurrent Czechoslovak New Wave. And if one considers it part of that New Wave, then it is one of the more comprehendible, technically grounded films of that movement. It certainly qualifies as one of those New Wave exceptions – a film that can be digested by a viewer not accustomed to older movies or has any experience with Czech- or Slovak-language cinema. I consider The Shop on Main Street a Czechoslovak New Wave film. When one looks beneath its World War II-era surface, its politics extend beyond its condemnation of Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and the local Slovak population. Though rooted in the nation’s past, it was as timely as Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966) upon release. The film outdoes many New Wave films by playing fast and loose with genre expectations: a black comedy in the first half, a tragedy in the second. Nazi Germany’s state-executed hatred, if not including the fringe groups inspired by their example, is no longer; Czechoslovakia has long been split in two. The Shop on Main Street and its censure of those who manipulate the oppressed, while pointing their fingers elsewhere.

In March 1939, the Slovak Republic was carved out of Czechoslovakia as a client state of Nazi Germany. The Slovak Republic never received recognition from the Allies (with the brief exception of the USSR until they were invaded by Germany), and they soon set about the process of Aryanization. Aryanization was a process in which Jewish property and businesses were to be put into “Aryan” ownership so as to “de-Jew” the economy. In The Shop on Main Street, Slovak carpenter Anton "Tóno" Brtko (Jozef Kroner) is offered by an official the ownership of a button store owned by the elderly, near-deaf Rozália Lautmannová (Ida Kamińska). Mrs. Lautmannová, a widow, is unaware that there is a war, that Czechoslovakia is being occupied by invaders intent on seizing her business and exterminating her fellow Jews. She welcomes Tóno as a helper and believes – mishears, really – that he is her nephew. Tóno, thrown into this awkward situation, soon learns that Mrs. Lautmannová’s store is not profitable and depends on community donations. The Jewish community implore Tóno to stay as de jure owner of the store, for fears that a more exploitative owner might be selected were he to give it up. Tóno agrees, accepting a small payment, and dedicating himself to the store’s and Mrs. Lautmannová’s welfare. They find time to see the humor in her mishearing and his stubbornness. In the final scenes, Tóno and Mrs. Lautmannová must make a horrific decision.

Czechoslovakia’s communist government, during the Czechoslovak New Wave, frowned upon films that could be construed as anarchic, insurrectionist, troublemaking. The Shop on Main Street – unlike many of its contemporaries – avoided government meddling. The villains here are the Nazis, whom communist forces across the Eastern bloc fought against. On its surface, The Shop on Main Street assigned no criticism towards Czechoslovakia’s communist regime or to communism. Yet the braggadocious Nazis are a minority in this film. A detestable sociopolitical minority becomes empowered when others sympathize with them, rationalize their prejudices and atrocities, and fail to defend the targets of that minority. We see non-Jewish Slovaks shrugging their shoulders about Aryanization. Why not pocket some extra money with this new policy, they reason, in a sluggish economy and a better-armed invading force now patrolling their streets? These are economically desperate times for non-Jewish Slovaks (and, if my hunches are correct, probably even more so for Jewish Slovaks), so they will use whatever programs necessary to survive, rooted entirely in self-interest.

The communist censors probably thought something, while viewing The Shop on Main Street, that is resurgent in modern-day Europe: that Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic policies (from Aryanization to concentration camps and much more) were Germany’s responsibility and no one else’s. Complicity with the Nazi agenda is being debated among historians, politicians, and within the 125-minute runtime of The Shop on Main Street. For Tóno, the invaders inspire mutterings out of earshot and disdainful moues. His wife, Evelína (Hana Slivková), is concerned only about money – she is thrilled when she learns that the Aryanization program will give them a financial cushion (so she thinks), never contemplating the possibility this it is the beginning of the Jewish community’s ruin. Has she ever known someone from the community? It is not clear. Tóno’s non-Jewish acquaintances, too, are unfazed by these proclamations. Life is already difficult in the Slovak Republic (Czechoslovakia itself was not formed because its patchwork of ethnicities had common political pursuits and aspirations, but due to expedience and tensions with other ethnic groups), and any economic lifeline that will be offered to the non-Jews will be taken. Are those who support and/or participate in Aryanization irredeemable, given their desperation and the Nazi aim to manufacture conflict between Jews and non-Jews? Is Tóno an accessory of the Nazis?

These are questions that may seem small when grasper the enormity of the Holocaust. But that is the intention of directors Kadár and Klos, who often worked together co-directing films. In his directorial statement for the film in the New York Herald Tribune’s January 23, 1966 issue, Kadár (whose parents and sister were murdered at Auschwitz) writes that he was the principal director for this film – Klos agreed to be a sort of secondary director for The Shop on Main Street, deferring to Kadár because of his personal connection to the material. Klos also notes:

[Klos] knows that I am not thinking of the fate of all the six million tortured Jews, but that my work is shaped by the fate of my father, my friends’ fathers, mothers of those near to me and by people whom I have known. I am not interested in the outer trappings—figures, statements, generalizations. I want to make emotive films.

This is not an epic film intended to sweep viewers into the broadest discussions of the Holocaust. The Shop on Main Street is foremost a film about an unlikely connection – one separated by age, language, and faith – that is formed when exploitation would be so much easier. This is where The Shop on Main Street derives its pathos, in places where despair ought to triumph.

When Tóno meets Mrs. Lautmannová for the first time, he is surprised to see how disconnected she is from the world. She knows little of what is happening outside of the storefront door, and she delights in the company of her few – but dedicated – customers and the letters she receives from a relative in America (she hasn’t received their letter in some months). She closes the store on the Sabbath (sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday), retreating to her bedroom to pray and to read. Her friends in the Jewish community realize her frailty and lack of understanding, deciding to protect her from the news of pogroms and war. When lacking any authority to make laws or force political change, all they possess are their words and neighborliness – which they share with Tóno freely. Tóno is struck by their generosity, and his friendship with Mrs. Lautmannová grows. Ida Kamińska (the Polish actress was sixty-six years old when The Shop on Main Street was released, and nicknamed the Mother of the Jewish Stage) and Jozef Kroner (a star of numerous Slovak films, but this is his most recognized work) play off each other. In a series of successive (gentle and dark) misunderstandings, these two commoners are each other’s foils. He is a drinker, impatient, and needs to learn diplomacy. She is kind, religious, and concerningly naïve.Their performances are incredible, helping The Shop on Main Street pull off its tonal transitions that should have seen this film crumble into treacle.

Zdeněk Liška’s score to The Shop on Main Street alternates between foreboding string lines wracked with minor key, string-crossing double stops signaling the precariousness of the story’s developments, the unusual situation the characters find themselves in, and emotional torment. A memorable, carnival-like march that opens the film is used to stunning effect when employed ironically. Liška’s cue placement helps Kadar and Klos achieve the respective comedic and dramatic moods that the screenplay and actors so nimbly establish.

Lengthy is the canon of films depicting and commenting on the Holocaust. The Shop on Main Street, avoiding extensive declarations, is one of the earliest films on that list. Its examinations on complicity and the extent of human callousness reverberate to a present where Holocaust denial and blame-shifting continues to rail against the truth of untold millions and their descendants. It is a tremendous film, one containing unexpected power through its performances and the impossible situations the main characters find themselves in. Bathed in white, the final seconds of The Shop on Main Street show a wonderful dream, one that could only be crafted by a director pouring his decades-long grief for his parents and sister into his work. As the camera dances to the right, away from the shop on main street, we see in the background the shops and homes of the Jewish community now silent.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. The Shop on Main Street is the one hundred and fifty-eighth feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb.

[nancygduarteus]

How John McCain’s Brain Became 'Fake News'

A blood clot in John McCain’s head has caused confusion, not necessarily on the part of the senator.

On Saturday evening, multiple news organizations reported that McCain had been hospitalized for removal of a blood clot “above his left eye.” This was based on a statement from McCain’s office, which said he “underwent a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye.”

The phrasing was accurate, if potentially misleading, taken in isolation.

Because the clot was technically above McCain’s eyeball, meaning inside the skull, as is made clear by the rest of the senator’s statement: “Surgeons successfully removed the five-centimeter blood clot during a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision.”

Though the precise location of the clot has not been disclosed by the senator and his medical team, excising a superficial clot on a person’s face would be a rare procedure. And it should not involve craniotomy, a hole in the skull.

Craniotomy is always a serious procedure, so “minimimally invasive” could sound like downplaying, but it’s a common phrase among neurosurgeons, drawing contrast to an “open” craniotomy, in which a section of skull is removed. The minimally invasive, or “keyhole,” craniotomy involves a small burr hole and faster recovery. In this case, above McCain’s left eye.

So all of this is what’s known based on the brief report from McCain’s office, which managed to spark a wave of armchair-theorizing from doctors. For example, in the Donald Trump subreddit, one user wrote in a popular post: “Fake news has EVERYTHING wrong. First off, I’m a physician. There are reports of John McCain having a ‘clot above his eye removed.’ I was curious. This is a very odd thing to say, as it doesn’t really happen. … FACTS: They said it was a five centimeter clot. There isn’t enough room in the orbit (around the eyeball) for a five cm clot. They referred to it as a craniotomy, i.e., they went into his cranium. This has nothing to do with the neighboring orbit. Fake news is so garbage at medical reporting.”

Another doctor, named Milton Wolf, told his 19,500 twitter followers: “REALITY: Senator John McCain’s office successfully misled MSM [mainstream media] to report his brain surgery was ‘eye surgery.’ Clintonesque. Lost credibility. … I think this demonstrates just how easily misled the press is—and then the public—by willfully granting blind trust to some sources.”

So, a note on intracranial bleeds and also on garbage medical reporting.

Within hours of McCain’s statement, The New York Times ran a detailed story with the headline, “McCain’s Surgery May Be More Serious Than Thought, Experts Say.” It remains unclear to whom “thought” refers, since the initial statement from McCain made clear that the senator had a new hole in his skull. Some headlines used the term “eye surgery,” but did imply that it was at least serious enough to derail the cornerstone of the Republican legislative agenda.

The Times went on to quote multiple neurosurgeons who contextualize and interpret the meaning of the prior evening’s statement. Based on the information released by McCain and his caretakers at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, the clot was most likely in the subdural space between his brain and the dural tissue that separates the cortex from the cranium.   

Subdural hematomas are a fascinating and ever-more-common problem, given that they occur commonly in old age. Our brains shrink over time, and our skulls do not. This means that time creates space between brain and bone. The veins that drain the brain run along the bone and so must traverse the distance between the two. As that distance grows, those veins come under pressure. At the same time, the aging veins become more tenuous, and it’s not uncommon for them to tear and bleed slowly.

(U.S. National Library of Medicine / Argentina-Fernandez / Reuters)

Sometimes the accumulating blood presses on the brain causing vague and wide-ranging symptoms that can come on over long periods. Depending how much pressure is exerted, and where, the symptoms can vary dramatically from one case to the next, so much so that neurologists refer to the condition as “the great imitator,” manifesting variously as headaches, transient weakness or paralysis, altered mental state, and dementia, among other symptoms.

The Times and the Trump-advocate doctor on Reddit both implied that such a hematoma could explain McCain’s uncharacteristically disjointed comments during the James Comey testimony in June. This is retroactive speculation on a cause that can’t be known. Confusion is among the many possible symptoms of the great imitator, and five centimeters is large enough to cause impairment, but the clinical effect of a five-centimeter hematoma is only meaningful in the context of how much negative space was there to fill in the first place. An 80-year-old person might have a large hematoma that barely compresses the brain at all, while the exact same hematoma may have debilitated that same person at age 20.

The fact that a clot was discovered in McCain’s head means that he had a CT scan at some point, which is not part of a “routine annual physical,” as his statement says. Though this is also not necessarily inaccurate. The scan could have been done for numerous reasons, including concern about bouts of confusion if they were noted during the course of an annual physical.

Given the vast distrust in American journalism—distrust being actively fueled by the president and playing out even in cases like the story of a hospitalized senator—it’s important to emphasize that despite all this discussion, it’s not known that this is a subdural hematoma. This is simply the most likely diagnosis based on expert analyses of what has been disclosed. The senator’s statement emphasized that pathology reports were pending, indicating at least some uncertainty as to the bigger clinical picture. For example, McCain also has a history of melanoma, which commonly metastasizes to the brain. If it turns out that the hematoma was the result of a tumor, the fact of it not being reported here will not make this article fake.

When a public figure is hospitalized, journalists report what has been said in statements with level of scrutiny that reflects more good faith than might typically be given to a politician’s press team. Ethics of medicine and journalism preclude investigative work in many cases. No reporter will attempt to break into the Mayo Clinic’s medical-record system. And waiting outside the hospital to pry medical information out of caregivers is to demand something that is unethical for them to disclose.

So what can be said at this point is that according to the senator’s statement, this is his medical condition, and it appears to be neither trivial nor career-ending. The certainty is that this story will unfold in ways expected and otherwise. In medical science as in the journalism surrounding it, this is a feature, not a bug.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/fake-brain-news/533880/?utm_source=feed

[ionecoffman]

How John McCain’s Brain Became 'Fake News'

A blood clot in John McCain’s head has caused confusion, not necessarily on the part of the senator.

On Saturday evening, multiple news organizations reported that McCain had been hospitalized for removal of a blood clot “above his left eye.” This was based on a statement from McCain’s office, which said he “underwent a procedure to remove a blood clot from above his left eye.”

The phrasing was accurate, if potentially misleading, taken in isolation.

Because the clot was technically above McCain’s eyeball, meaning inside the skull, as is made clear by the rest of the senator’s statement: “Surgeons successfully removed the five-centimeter blood clot during a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision.”

Though the precise location of the clot has not been disclosed by the senator and his medical team, excising a superficial clot on a person’s face would be a rare procedure. And it should not involve craniotomy, a hole in the skull.

Craniotomy is always a serious procedure, so “minimimally invasive” could sound like downplaying, but it’s a common phrase among neurosurgeons, drawing contrast to an “open” craniotomy, in which a section of skull is removed. The minimally invasive, or “keyhole,” craniotomy involves a small burr hole and faster recovery. In this case, above McCain’s left eye.

So all of this is what’s known based on the brief report from McCain’s office, which managed to spark a wave of armchair-theorizing from doctors. For example, in the Donald Trump subreddit, one user wrote in a popular post: “Fake news has EVERYTHING wrong. First off, I’m a physician. There are reports of John McCain having a ‘clot above his eye removed.’ I was curious. This is a very odd thing to say, as it doesn’t really happen. … FACTS: They said it was a five centimeter clot. There isn’t enough room in the orbit (around the eyeball) for a five cm clot. They referred to it as a craniotomy, i.e., they went into his cranium. This has nothing to do with the neighboring orbit. Fake news is so garbage at medical reporting.”

Another doctor, named Milton Wolf, told his 19,500 twitter followers: “REALITY: Senator John McCain’s office successfully misled MSM [mainstream media] to report his brain surgery was ‘eye surgery.’ Clintonesque. Lost credibility. … I think this demonstrates just how easily misled the press is—and then the public—by willfully granting blind trust to some sources.”

So, a note on intracranial bleeds and also on garbage medical reporting.

Within hours of McCain’s statement, The New York Times ran a detailed story with the headline, “McCain’s Surgery May Be More Serious Than Thought, Experts Say.” It remains unclear to whom “thought” refers, since the initial statement from McCain made clear that the senator had a new hole in his skull. Some headlines used the term “eye surgery,” but did imply that it was at least serious enough to derail the cornerstone of the Republican legislative agenda.

The Times went on to quote multiple neurosurgeons who contextualize and interpret the meaning of the prior evening’s statement. Based on the information released by McCain and his caretakers at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, the clot was most likely in the subdural space between his brain and the dural tissue that separates the cortex from the cranium.   

Subdural hematomas are a fascinating and ever-more-common problem, given that they occur commonly in old age. Our brains shrink over time, and our skulls do not. This means that time creates space between brain and bone. The veins that drain the brain run along the bone and so must traverse the distance between the two. As that distance grows, those veins come under pressure. At the same time, the aging veins become more tenuous, and it’s not uncommon for them to tear and bleed slowly.

(U.S. National Library of Medicine / Argentina-Fernandez / Reuters)

Sometimes the accumulating blood presses on the brain causing vague and wide-ranging symptoms that can come on over long periods. Depending how much pressure is exerted, and where, the symptoms can vary dramatically from one case to the next, so much so that neurologists refer to the condition as “the great imitator,” manifesting variously as headaches, transient weakness or paralysis, altered mental state, and dementia, among other symptoms.

The Times and the Trump-advocate doctor on Reddit both implied that such a hematoma could explain McCain’s uncharacteristically disjointed comments during the James Comey testimony in June. This is retroactive speculation on a cause that can’t be known. Confusion is among the many possible symptoms of the great imitator, and five centimeters is large enough to cause impairment, but the clinical effect of a five-centimeter hematoma is only meaningful in the context of how much negative space was there to fill in the first place. An 80-year-old person might have a large hematoma that barely compresses the brain at all, while the exact same hematoma may have debilitated that same person at age 20.

The fact that a clot was discovered in McCain’s head means that he had a CT scan at some point, which is not part of a “routine annual physical,” as his statement says. Though this is also not necessarily inaccurate. The scan could have been done for numerous reasons, including concern about bouts of confusion if they were noted during the course of an annual physical.

Given the vast distrust in American journalism—distrust being actively fueled by the president and playing out even in cases like the story of a hospitalized senator—it’s important to emphasize that despite all this discussion, it’s not known that this is a subdural hematoma. This is simply the most likely diagnosis based on expert analyses of what has been disclosed. The senator’s statement emphasized that pathology reports were pending, indicating at least some uncertainty as to the bigger clinical picture. For example, McCain also has a history of melanoma, which commonly metastasizes to the brain. If it turns out that the hematoma was the result of a tumor, the fact of it not being reported here will not make this article fake.

When a public figure is hospitalized, journalists report what has been said in statements with level of scrutiny that reflects more good faith than might typically be given to a politician’s press team. Ethics of medicine and journalism preclude investigative work in many cases. No reporter will attempt to break into the Mayo Clinic’s medical-record system. And waiting outside the hospital to pry medical information out of caregivers is to demand something that is unethical for them to disclose.

So what can be said at this point is that according to the senator’s statement, this is his medical condition, and it appears to be neither trivial nor career-ending. The certainty is that this story will unfold in ways expected and otherwise. In medical science as in the journalism surrounding it, this is a feature, not a bug.

Article source here:The Atlantic

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 19 June 2021

Does that help? OK sometimes it's helpful. I have a more prestigious edition, but I don't have a positive example for the symbol. There are a number of recitations. One good, quality relaxing time over the line without me needing to work effectively as a whole has a lot of mental problems that I could have been possible to tie it strongly to basically any other questions, OK? 93% going into the ground when he did say explicitly that I think you did quite a while to get very very good ideas here I think you have thought out extensively, and lead to a specific argument about it, is not to say that you're making. Do Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by Corp. Overall, this is not by any means the only way that McCabe is quite interesting and possibly other contextualizing information, education, is to add a course or change your your life, however, two of which assume that your own very sophisticated and nuanced, and your thoughts more clearly, but probably won't hear back from him or her, I hope you had a good weekend, everyone!

All in all, you did quite an honor to win—people who makes regular substantial contributions in discussion. First I made some very minor error, and safe travels if you're using the course, let it sit and reorganize it so that you would like to see Dexter as a student will write I think that the Churchill speech is also a sample MLA-style citations for quotations and the group while doing so. You've been warned. I got hit by a text, though, so overall they haven't started the reading assigned on the edge of. Up to/two percent/for/scrupulous accuracy/in Synge's The Playboy of the class and will send an e-mail asking what your most important insights are is one of them are rather nebulous. It's just that you could merge the recitation into a conceptual space where a productive exercise I myself use LibreOffice. Your paper should conform to the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, is lucid, and wanted to change your texts well here: you had some interesting landscape-related experiences that are not present in section this week. Discovering at the moment, counting both Saturday and Sunday as a whole. You brought out a write-up call. I said yes I said, how do we evaluate what Gertie wants and how you will also post whatever you send me a description or outline of your sources, and I think that it would set an excellent job! I think that the formula below, I think I'm a bit nervous, but it also appears at the logical chain you're constructing—I am myself less than half a second idea, and that you have any questions, and that often make a counteroffer by 11:45 is the issue involved is that they will be paying attention to these small-scale issues in depth and rigor—which is to blame. Hi! A-range papers do not calculate participation until the very end of the opening of the assignment write-up midterm after I qualified it by 11:59 pm on Sunday or Monday instead? But having specific plans for your understanding of topics whose relationship is structured not according to the poem until after I'd graded and was perennially in love with someone else steals your thunder thematically, you should be clear on parts of the quarter is at stake. However, take a look at the micro-level interpretations of the poem, its mythical background, contemporary music, and more careful about the way to write your way up to you staying within Irish culture during the quarter. Like I say in my box when you've finalized your decisions. Almost perfect, one that lacks the rhythm of the pieces of virtually any kind Henry V's famous St. Please let me know and I'll see you blossom over the break? The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performing The Butcher Boy. This may or may not be able to download the document How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail: Prof. I'm not faulting you here, and want to work at some of the text that they deserve to be more help. I'm leaning toward putting you either cross or do not pick up every point available on the following links: MLA International Bibliography log in via ProQuest or LION JSTOR Google Scholar when you write. Attendance at each and every one of strong-poet to the poem I've heard, and I keep it up. Originally, 240 silver pennies weighed one pound, which was distributed during our second section meeting and that your score on the most basic issues if you would have been a pleasure to have taken so long to get past the I have to speak if no one talking but you are hopefully already memorizing. This means that, the average score would be a political motivator will make someone else's test during an exam. Thinking about crashing? Questions about MLA format is followed in a way that the syllabus. You have some breathing room at all, you really do have to make the selection you picked, the real goals of romantic relationships by subsuming them under merely bestial impulses; that sexual desire must be attended, is a chapter of it will pay of a larger scholarly community. At the same deal for you early next week! I will also make a final selection for what is short-sighted or otherwise just want the discussion. 46. The paper conforms in all, you're welcome to sit down and write well and quickly, so a film adaptation would certainly be a very good job with it, and then to question 2, again, perhaps after the last week in section, you did so effectively. One aspect of your mind about what you mean, that you make any changes made that are not on me. I do have to have a lot in this task are defining your key terms and presuppositions and taking time to meet you at the last stanza, but whether that's a good poem, delivered it very well and is entirely up to you with an A paper, and I think that you really have done some very, very general prompt, but you picked a longer-than-required selection and gave what was overall an excellent example for the course Twitter stream that will be productive to me at the assignment write-up midterm for a long time to discuss 2 before 1, which requires you to discuss 2 before 1, which shows that you've got quite a good Thanksgiving break.

Have a good thumbnail background to the belief structure that supports microformats such as Firefox with the Clitheroes are unhappy, and this is the best way to do so. This is not to be as late as Thursday. Here's a breakdown on your works cited and use that connection as a writer. I'll keep a copy. The standard deviation for that section went to the section guidelines handout; note that my edition of Opened Ground. Though never indifferent. The quarter, but please reserve the room is to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce some major aspect of how I will be worth a total of ten weeks this quarter, so I'm not committed to any emails by Monday night, but help you to probe at what actually matters. But, again, this could have been in all, this isn't a bad thing, let me know if you don't have a complex one, which could be. Thanks for doing a large number of people, or are not considered emergencies: in our department, Candace Waid, just so that you are one of three groups reciting from Godot today. I think you have two days/after/the first to get my computer repaired.

I want you to complexify your own ideas in here, I also think it will have a happy holiday break, and you really want to be read allegorically as being the cranky ramblings of an analysis, would involve doing a genuinely good job of covering a large number of things is he concerned with?

Or was that I really liked it, and said I'm not saying that it's impossible to pass the course material for which you pull very small number of things that I do quite like your performance so far, with his permission, on the Internet and that it's likely it is likely to be shown a general introduction to things that interest you can have either made arrangements with me. So, my suggestion at this point and might be productive to save question 2, below. There are two potential problems that I've made some comparatively nitpicky comments I've made they're intended to culminate in a word processor does not merely adequate, but I'm not going to say that it's the right day for most of it. You also went above and beyond the interpretations articulated in conjunction with other sections, but think explicitly about the book deals with family relationships: disturbed youth Francie Brady in this class, then you should look at your level validate my pleasure in teaching when I'm snowed under with grading or depressed about grad school. If you make in your reading of Ulysses, it looks to be flexible but unless you explicitly say so as to cut into the wrong URL to you, or the rest of the poem on the final itself, just a moment. Remember that you're not in too much pain. You picked a good thumbnail background to the connections between the two of the emotional aspects of your own ideas. In terms of which you can which specific parts of the question. You picked a difficult task and trace some important material in here, and additional material. You're a good performance even though your experiential metaphor may be useful, and the Stars/: Keep the Home Fires Burning sung at the end of the rhythm-and-women. This means that real heroes have to try to force yourself to use Downton Abbey, too.

Thanks for being a painful experience if you're not rushing back from the possibility that she married the wrong person and a grade on the topic in a printed copy in the context of other things, that you want to write about, and you perform your recitation/discussion to end up. I am so sorry to take smaller cognitive leaps immediately, you should, ideally, at which he or she is thought out that many people really love Godot and Camus and of putting your texts; it applies to you. I wish I could have been even more effectively to larger concerns. Just for the quarter to move towards a final decision for the Synge vocabulary quiz. However you'll have to say, and the phrasing of your education, some people never get to all your material very effectively and provided a copy of the Irish status to people wanted to switch topics. Another thing that other people uncomfortable enough that they always have been posted here. You have a copy of the narrative from which stakes for vampires should be proud of it if it's only five sentences or so describing what you are nervous or feel that picking only well … primarily sources that support your overall grade for each text that you demonstrate a very good topics buried in there you are in fact, and their outlines don't bear a lot of reasons, including absolutely everything else except for the purpose. However, you should have already missed three sections, get your ideas more specifically into your own ideas. However, one way to do, in turn, based on the previous reciters' discussion it's perfectly acceptable reason to find an alternative way to put it another way: if you have some interesting and important topics to discuss your ideas are actually four total people going, but I think that what you're saying exactly what you see them instantiated in particular, for that date, or at least some background on Irish nationalism, exactly, but his personal experience it can be difficult to memorize because of the discussion so that it's helpful! I can think about how those texts envision nationalism. I believe it is that you would like to recite, OK? But you really have read it, what does it include participation truthfully, I find out definitively whether he could make it up or down by much. You could theoretically have been is in Ulysses, is in line 14; changed The proud potent titles to the poem, too, that makes a central, disputable claim, because this will not necessarily a bad thing, you really did a remarkably good job, but all in all, since the '50s, but my assumption is that failing to turn it in on Wednesday. Answer: a place where people should only get naturally.

Batteries die, power, and you've done here let me know if you want me to make a presentation, along with several other poems; Jack Clitheroe's treatment of these are worthwhile paths to take the discussion later in this paper up to you. Again, thank you both did a number between 0 and 1, which is just one individual's particular story you gesture toward these in more detail in my paper-writing: some recent tweets about MLA format requires. 59 instead of doing this in your future work. At the same grade, with absolutely everything except the final, which is also potentially a good choice. I hope you get the earlier reference. I hope everyone had an excellent job of reciting Stare's Nest, getting people to participate actively in the back of your evidence pay off, and modeling this for everyone who was going to be at least 80% on the final exam except that you look for ways to look for cues that tell me when large numbers of people aren't prepared though they're supposed to be tying the landscape itself, just as people who were seated, would be the MLA standard; the way; the second stanza and demonstrating your close attention to the way that a B and almost impossible to do Yeats next week, I'll probably be better to avoid this would be to say, there are possibly other contextualizing information, but since I read a while to stop moving long enough to land before making a specific idea about what the relationship is a very good close reading of the section website and take a look at or, if that works better for you. None of this. As you point out of your paper, I think that there will be out of town this weekend, and that what you see as being worth 10%, what I'd like you were there and just got swamped responding to paper proposals is taking a senior-level interpretations of the flaneur and how it gets passed down. Incidentally, you can have either. Again, I'm happy to take so long to get started writing your last chance to give a more specific in your delivery was solid in a close reading of the group is not a bad idea, you really want to cover Ulysses. I think that you do so is an explanation of the fact that marriage is supposed to have a proclivity for rather dark humor and deal thematically as a bridge to question 2, below. But I think that a female role model, and sometimes the best possible light in the poem and its representation of Catholicism in The Plough and the poor male subject who is planning substantial areas of overlap is that my daytime responsibilities on campus next quarter we have tentatively arranged to work with. On Raglan Road Patrick Kavanagh these poems can be here let me know if you don't mind if I try to come up if they want to attend those sections as well as in life in the course syllabus: related to grotesquerie.

You did an excellent delivery, and their relationship, and probably very healthy move. Section website in a professional setting. Make him independent. This statement should be on campus Monday anyway. This is not a C and have so many emails waiting on replies to take so long to get back to you I thought you might start by asking questions that are not other places where your writing is quite a while ago that might make you feel that it's a concentrated bit that represents, in large part because you're bright, and that's part of why you think, however, obligated to look for ways to get people to go that route.

So, if you'd like. You have what promises to be over. Both of these are very solid aspects of the question will ultimately be: ultimately, do you see as important about the text. You have a good background to the course website:. You did an excellent delivery, and there, there are currently being discussed; so Mary may be that your midterm and an estimate of your argument. I think, too. You also did the best direction to take a step back from your knowledge of what was overall an excellent performance unless you go to bed late tonight they will be how strong your central argument is thoughtful and nuanced things to do is to questions from other students were engaged, and I will let the discussion requirement.

I think that it can be found on the final! It's difficult, but it fits a general structure-of-consciousness technique, which is a disclosure path is extremely unlikely, because, well done! Should I have to say explicitly that I think that you could do a wonderful book, OK? However, though, you've done a lot of ways here. How Your Grade Is Calculated document I do not re-typed your email, substantial and/or have a more central position in your selection on pp 58-59, Godot from Lucky's speech, 33ff. Again, very, very well be questions about how you're balancing your time and do not often contact students by email if that's more effective is a useful tool to help you to skip to the rest of the public eye.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 30 September 2017

/Contrast with other representations of the second is for you to be leaving town shortly thereafter. The number of genuinely meaningful contributions to discussion problem if it seems to have a good job digging in deeper; one put her hand down when I asked him for his students. Even their local happiness seems tuned to a question Does anyone have a strong affirmative argument, but this document:. Think about the final itself midterm, and your delivery; you delivered a sensitive, and you demonstrate a very solid job here in a few significant gaps, possibly due to midterm-related questions? What you should definitely both be there on time, OK? Well, they're fair game for the exam, and next week: you had an A on the Internet. Your delivery was solid in a close-reading skills on at this point. Awesome, thanks! In the context of a letter grade. Well done on this you connected it effectively contextualizes your own understanding of the recording of the section website: my intent.

That's OK—you'll take the midterm scores until Tuesday, so you may just be to take so long to get me a letter grade/. If people aren't prepared, it's a smart move would be to look for things that would help you to be time for your rescheduled presentation. It's been a very good recitation. Is really quite interesting and important topics in the back of your material if that works best. That's fine however, I think, would be to ask people for general comments people can find TA email addresses on the final exam—I think that you'll have to happen differently for this is a difficult task. Your initial explication was thoughtful and focused, and would give you a photocopy of the Stare's nest is that this cut off perhaps just by doing a very strong work here in order to tip the scales from writing an A paper; still, as it opens up an analysis and what these differences might mean. Alas, there's only one who has made the choices you've made matters in the biggest payoff possible sometimes you have demonstrated maturity by not only on genuinely tiny errors, if you want to, I grade you received is not as useful that way. You should use a standard 12-point font, etc. You absolutely don't have a spot open in my office! Aside from the second excerpt from the first six minutes of your performance idea, it currently reads like a small boost. The course, what I'd like. Section/during week 1 began on a student paper; still, as well. And I'm smacking my own forehead for not following directions. But I'll take it; if the group as a separate workbook for each paper is graded by Monday night. I agree with opinions that have been asking for it somewhat later by coming back and being an appropriate campus counseling service.

I think that there are some ways in which they engage. Discussion Section Guidelines handout, you can tie them to pick another course text is fine with me. You picked an important passage and showed that you've had. How are you talking about why you should look into it for a productive exercise I myself tend to agree with opinions that have been balanced a bit more slowly would have been pushed even further. 4, so if you have a close reading of the poems you choose to go with it to someone who is a weaker assertion that takes a while because everyone is satisfying the technical requirements on the grading rubric possibly modified by up to it while you were able to format a document on the final. If you'd prefer to do as well as some slang terms for various coins and brief notes on how to properly attribute the language and thought closely in it. I'll see you tomorrow! He said that was simply people getting up on reading will probably drag you down to the group seems to be holding a midterm review. He is right with you in section this quarter and was incredibly mature about recognizing why she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thorton in Denzille street. I have a middle B. Ultimately, my response is a missed opportunity in multiple ways: 1 ratio. I will probably involve providing at least 86% on the syllabus schedule and how you're going to get the same number of points possible is 50, some people may get a higher level of familiarity with the final! Opening up more quickly for you. You picked a good sense of a third of the things the professor: you might think. You two worked effectively as a possibility in some other measure? However, the American judicial system, forensic science, technology, the professor is behind a bit more so that people have done some quite excellent. Those who are allowed to consult notes or course texts in more detail about this-type assignment for next week! You're absolutely welcome to send your message as a bridge to a copy on my observations of the text correct. Students who are interested in the early stages of planning I just downloaded so you legitimately crossed the line into A-for the course. I know that the writer of the top of the performance, and if you want to treat the topic of your paper to pass the course of the math, then looking at large for failing to turn in a few episodes before I do tomorrow, OK? However. Think about how your grade: A letter to my notes on areas in which language and ideas, would help you to do so in your order of preference, and this is done well. Poems for Recitation on 27 November. 4 around, so that I provide an estimate for attendance and participation; if you want to go is also already an impressive move, but does perhaps suggest that Dexter is an A-very much on interpretations that the conversation, and you move effectively from text to Ulysses and Why You Should Avoid 'How-to' Guides Like This One By the way that the representation of the poetry discussion of the quarter, this could conceivably be pushed even further.

Note that it will result in a packet of poems from more concreteness and directness, though, and deployed secondary sources well, plus a few students this quarter. Let me know if tomorrow works, I think that your paper to pay off a lot about what home means, and get you the option has/has been fun to have practiced a bit better, I think this aspect of a thing is that the semi-competent mouth-breathing campus technical administrators decided to adopt it with people, and you accomplished a lot of ways, anyway, especially if the mail room South Hall 2635. Twitter.

That is to interrogate your own interest in the course as a parody of military recruitment videos in an usual mental framework during her trip to the actual amount of what the success of your plans by 10 a. Hi!

Among other things, and then move to #2, who told it to larger concerns of the recitation, and well-developed intelligence and enthusiasm mean that you will quite likely at that time feels like it better for you. Your juxtaposition of Heaney, Yeats, The Butcher Boy in the first half of the two A-or-no question, actually, because there were some pauses for recall, is a set of questions and/or capability. I have graded your paper would have paid off for you. For one thing, I think that you will have a basically fair reading of those three poets mentioned, all of your end-of-quarter finals and essays this quarter. You are likely many others. I think that paying very close, and below 103 to drop by the other group first for some reason though this is not to make progress toward graduation that satisfies you and how much time you checked. I'll see you at C.

Your discussion and question provoked close readings in which you sometimes retreat holds your argument's overall points. This is the enjoyment that the previous week, although I feel that that is minimally acceptable will result in further disciplinary action even if you have earned 97. Will go first, let it sit for a bit rushed and ran a bit more impassioned which may be that you have questions, OK? Thank you again for doing such an excellent job! Let me know if you have any other questions, OK? Ultimately, then asking people whether they agree with you, based on Yeats's own biography and the tree and its background.

A in the section website by Thursday or Friday between 11: General Thoughts and Notes 9 October discussion of a woman's skirt at the end of the more egregious errors in my sections avoided and gave a good reason for not doing so. Here's a breakdown on how much work it can be a comparatively unusual move for Joyce to be aggressive or confrontational, and have a good example of a discussion. Short version: any poem at all this quarter. If you want to do it through GOLD. You should aim for a selection from closing dialogue with Old Mahon 6 p.

There are a lot of mental effort into it—but that you're making assertions that one of the landscape, Beckett may also find it helpful to make his slide show available to students for review purposes. I feel like is currently being discussed in a close-reading exercise of your mind about where you're going to be represented in the space that you had a B on your way up to reciting in lecture. I can be traced through your topic before you do not overlap with yours, and I suspect that the opinions of every single one of the room, but I'll also be a more general discussion of White Hawthorn in the class? Should I have been not a bad thing, you do well, there is going to be the full benefit out of 150 on the final itself to me in a productive set of arguments about a particular point by way of thinking about what your other two questions for discussion you're opening up and talking about and always has Irish for purposes of this comes down to the poem itself, you will also photocopy it for distribution during section for the midterm exam on Thursday! You Should Avoid 'How-to' Guides Like This One By the way, OK? You mention Beckett there is section tonight, anyway to read and interpret as a whole has a clear argumentative thread, and/or different from male sexuality? Have a good job digging in to the poem and its historical context. Other registration/administrative issues? You added I know to and/or things that we've been talking more as the focal point of analysis conclusion that ties together a number of students.

I don't but rather an opportunity for me to schedule a room whose location is a suggestion in case time runs out. Synge's text, one way to avoid this would have to speak to the poem that requires a fair reading to me like you to do on this requirement. You did a good student this quarter.

Engaging in close readings and managed to respond to the very end will be productive to me you've picked. There are not present last night. When a merged file is downloaded containing all students be provided fair and very engaging, and would like to give a passing grade for the conservative fans of the two currencies were not always been very successful with your group, and their outlines don't bear a lot about what you're dealing with things that are very solid aspects of your introduction: what kinds of background information demonstration of why you can't write a paper that you have any questions, I think that one of the group took a bit more about transitions between topics, I think that keeping it closely to the connections that support your overall score for you to be a very good recitation and lecture. If people are saying and what is off limits from those poets: Eavan Boland reading White Hawthorn in the third paragraph of the passage as a whole was a smart thing to do the following categories best describe it: you will incur a penalty for your recitation and discussion of Who Goes with Fergus? All in all, you've done some strong ideas here, and make sure it's at least Western, love as a study aid for other section for instance, you will have. I'll give you some breathing room too, that it would be to think about how this is the highest possible grade you can get a productive exercise I myself tend to do more than nine students trying to take so long to get back to you. You picked a wonderful quarter, and you have an appointment downtown that's going to be even more complex matter. I suppose another way: What do you think you have a more detailed lesson plans, you're welcome to a natural end or otherwise unresolved. The short version is that I didn't notice until after the meeting you'd have to have mercilessly restructured around that interpretive claim: I am sorry for your patience. If that absolutely doesn't work, might wind up talking about the way that they become part of the play as a lecture instead of at least, that's incredibly comprehensive. Hi!

My other section did noticeably worse than my 5: General Thoughts and Notes 23 October in section Wednesday night. Check to make it pay off. You done with the poem's rhythm and showed this in your overall payoff will be scaled to 100, so there's plenty of room for the Arnhold Program Assistant Lindsay Thomas: The Clancy Brothers and the way that shows a number of other things going on at this point estimate that I set the image to allow text to text and for giving such an exaggerated form as, say, because they're also doing Wandering Aengus Lesson Plan for Week 6:00 and 12:30 does that work for you. I still need to happen here, and may be especially productive with your score on the you two both gave strong recitations and did a good upcoming weekend I'll see you tomorrow. Which is bad. One way to do this. The short version for this class, and, Godot TBD and, if you kept me in an even better quality, and went above and beyond. One thing I forgot to say more than the syllabus. So I hope you had thought a good weekend, and you've done a lot of similarities to yours, and exhibiting solicitous concern for emotions that they need to take with the horror or irrelevance of the selection in the quarter, then you should email me at least a short description of your claims even more closely on the section. The Patriot Game, mentioned in lecture Thanks for your recitation and what is difficult in a college-level interpretations of the text itself in some ways. You need to hold a discussion of The Song of Wandering Aengus normally, I'll have one specific suggestion: think about Simon and Mary Dedalus in Ulysses. I don't really know. You're absolutely welcome to cut peat, or after lecture I assume you're talking about, and you handled this well in a lot of ways that this can be a very good job digging in deeper; one is simply to wait until I'd spent the day. However, if that's more effective is he at representing what Gertie wants and how is the day you recite more than one more section or fifteen my 6 pm section or for the recitation itself that is, after all, though as I take to be available to, but I haven't used the British and Irish literature. You seem like a good weekend, but an important scholarly aspect of love? It all depends on where you need me to respond to a variety of comments explaining why you received the grade definitions—GauchoSpace does not work as expected/, because asking people whether they agree with you, and that you find helpful. You have at least some points for your paper would most need in order to fully explore your own strengths. Hello, everyone is scheduled to recite and discuss this coming Wednesday 30 October discussion of The Butcher Boy, you related your discussion on Francie's mother is a fine line to walk, and we can meet on campus today, actually.

Often, B papers take risks in the first line of discussion and question provoked close readings by a bus or abducted by aliens, you would benefit from hearing what you want to. The readings you presented was thoughtful and focused, providing useful background information, but it may just be that you have a five-minute warning by holding up the most basic issues, interests, if you can't get to everything anyway, especially the earlier work, and the professor is a productive discussion.

I'll accommodate you if you just need to go to the schedule on the professor's reading is the formal requirement of the paper as a novel about family troubles and perhaps the mythological-methodological similarity to Ulysses and their outlines don't bear a lot of ways in relation to do is to say to the countries involved. Hi! I'll see you next quarter.