#biebs you can walk like that every time

[annie-banks]

Adore You - Harry Styles (2019) // you’re wonder, under summer sky // All About That Bass – Meghan Trainor (2014) // every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top // Alone Again – Betty Who (2014) // when it rains it pours and you drown me out // Anything Could Happen – Ellie Goulding (2012) // letting darkness grow, as if we need it's palette and we need it's color // Bad Girls - M.I.A. (2012) // leaving boys behind ‘cause it’s illegal just to kill // Bitch Better Have My Money - Rihanna (2015) // your wife in the backseat of my brand new foreign car // Blank Space – Taylor Swift (2014) // darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream // Bloodbuzz Ohio – The National (2010) // I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees // Bo$$ – Fifth Harmony (2014) // boss. Michelle Obama. purse so heavy gettin' Oprah dollas // Boy Problems - Carly Rae Jepsen (2015) // I think I broke up with my boyfriend today and I don't really care // Boys - Charli XCX (2017) // I wish I had a better excuse like I had to trash the hotel lobby // Butterflies - Kacey Musgraves (2018) // I was hiding in doubt till you brought me out of my chrysalis // Call Me Maybe – Carly Rae Jepsen (2011) // before you came into my life I missed you so bad // Call Your Girlfriend – Robyn (2010) // don't you tell her how I give you something that you never even knew you missed // Canyon Moon - Harry Styles (2019) // doors yellow, broken, blue // Chandelier – Sia (2014) // I'm gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry // Cherry - Harry Styles (2019) // I confess I can tell that you are at your best, I'm selfish so I'm hating it // Circles - Post Malone (2019) // we couldn't turn around, 'til we were upside down // C’mon - Panic! At the Disco and Fun. (2011) // feels like I am falling down a rabbit hole, falling for forever, wonderfully wandering alone // C’Mon – Kesha (2012) // feeling like a saber-tooth tiger sipping on a warm budweiser // Cruise (Remix) - Florida Georgia Line ft. Nelly (2012) // she was sippin' on southern and singin' Marshall Tucker, we were falling in love in the sweet heart of summer // Daddy Lessons - Beyonce ft. Dixie Chicks (2017) // it’s your song // Dark Fantasy – Kanye West (2010) // too many Urkels on your team, that's why your wins low // Death of a Bachelor - Panic! At the Disco (2016) // the lace in your dress tingles my neck, how do I live? // Demons- Sleigh Bells (2012) // They're gonna stand em up six by six by six // Diane - Cam (2017) // And all those nights that he's given to me I wish that I could give them back to you // Diane Young – Vampire Weekend (2013) // you torched a Saab like a pile of leaves // Downtown - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Moe Dee (2016) // neighbors yelling at me like, you need to slow down going thirty-eight, Dan, chill the fuck out, mow your damn lawn and sit the hell down // End of the Day - One Direction (2015)// I told her that I loved her, just not sure if she heard. the roof was pretty windy and she didn't say a word, party died downstairs, had nothing left to do just me, her and the moon // Fireproof – One Direction (2015) // riding on the wind and I won't give up // ***Flawless – Beyonce ft. Nicki Minaj (2013) // mayday, mayday, earth to bitches // Follow Your Arrow - Kacey Musgraves (2013) // if you save yourself for marriage, you're a bore. if you don't save yourself for marriage, you're a whore-able person // Formation - Beyonce (2016) // always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper // Forrest Gump – Frank Ocean (2012) // my fingertips and my lips, they burn from the cigarettes // Freaks and Geeks – Childish Gambino (2011) // I have worked all winter, I will not fail summer, in the back of the bush, like Gavin Rossdale's drummer // Gay Pirates - Cosmo Jarvis (2011) // and I hope they didn't tie up your hands as tight as mine. I'll see you on the bed of this blue ocean, babe, sometime // Get Lucky – Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams (2013) // the present has no ribbon, your gift keeps on giving // Glory - Bastille (2016) // and then you put your hand in mine and pulled me back from things divine, stop looking up for heaven, waiting to be buried // Good Grief - Bastille (2016) // caught off guard by your favourite song, I'll be dancing at a funeral, dancing at a funeral // Green Light - Lorde (2017) // I whisper things, the city sings them back to you // Grown - Little Mix (2015) // no regrets, it's a lesson learned 'cause what you think ain't my concern // Hayloft - Nickel Creek (2014) // young lovers with their legs tied up in knots // Holocene – Bon Iver (2011) // and at once I knew I was not magnificent // I Believe - Original Broadway Cast (2011) // and I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri // I Like It - Cardi B, Bad Bunny, and J Balvin (2018) // I like those Balenciagas, the ones that look like socks // I Love It – Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX (2012) // you're from the '70s, but I'm a '90s bitch // Judas – Lady Gaga (2011) // I'm just a holy fool, oh baby he's so cruel, but I'm still in love with Judas, baby // Juice - Lizzo (2019) // I be drippin' so much sauce got a bitch lookin' like RAGÚ // Just Hold On - Steve Aoki ft. Louis Tomlinson (2016) // feels like you're standing on the edge looking at the stars and wishing you were them // Laura Palmer – Bastille (2013) // what a year and what a night, what terrifying final sights put out your beating heart // Lemonworld – The National (2010) // I gave my heart to the Army, the only sentimental thing I could think of // Love on Top – Beyonce (2011) // I can see the stars all the way from here, can't you see the glow on the window pane // Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe (2018) // it's like I'm powerful with a little bit of tender, an emotional, sexual bender // Making the Most of the Night - Carly Rae Jepsen (2015) // baby I'm speeding and red lights, I'll run // Meet Me in the Hallway - Harry Styles (2017) // just let me know I'll be on the floor, on the floor // Menswear – The 1975 (2013) // well, who's this? going for the kiss, I'm probably gonna yosh in your mouth // Mirrors – Justin Timberlake (2013) // if you ever feel alone and the glare makes me hard to find, just know that I'm always parallel on the other side // Monster – Kanye West ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, and Bon Iver (2010) // you could be the king but watch the queen conquer // The Mother We Share - Chvrches (2012) // I'm in misery but you can't see, as old as your omens // My Church - Maren Morris (2016) // I just keep the wheels rolling, radio scrolling 'til my sins wash away // N****s in Paris - Jay-Z and Kanye West (2011) // Prince William's ain't do it right if you ask me 'cause I was him, I would have married Kate and Ashley // Oh, What a World - Kacey Musgraves (2018) // did I know you once in another life? are we here just once or a billion times? // Old Town Road (Remix) - Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus (2019) // cowboy hat from Gucci, Wrangler on my booty // Otis – Jay-Z and Kanye West (2011) // luxury rap, the Hermes of verses, sophisticated ignorance, write my curses in cursive // Pineapple Girl - Mister Heavenly (2011) // I am besieged by the vagaries of power. I'm all alone and lonely in this tower // Primadonna – Marina and the Diamonds (2012) // I know I've got a big ego, I really don't know why it's such a big deal though // Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People (2010) // he's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth he's a cowboy kid // Radio - Lana Del Rey (2012) // pick me up and take me like a vitamin 'cause my body's sweet like sugar venom // Raising Hell - Kesha ft. Big Freedia (2019) // hungover, heart of gold, holy mess. doin' my best, bitch, I'm blessed // Rivers and Roads - The Head and the Heart (2011) // been talking 'bout the way things change // Royals - Lorde (2013) // we don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair // S.O.B. - Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats (2015) // I'm going to cover myself with the ashes of you and nobody's gonna give a damn // Satisfied - Original Broadway Cast (2015) // it's a dream and it's a bit of a dance, a bit of a posture, it's a bit of a stance. He's a bit of a flirt, but I'm 'a give it a chance. I asked about his fam'ly, did you see his answer? his hands started fidgeting, he looked askance? he's penniless, he's flying by the seat of his pants // Sex – The 1975 (2013) // and she said use your hands and my spare time, we've got one thing in common it's this tongue of mine // Shake It Out – Florence + the Machine (2011) // our love is pastured such a mournful sound, tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground// Shut Up and Dance - Walk the Moon (2014) // my discotheque Juliet teenage dream // Silly Love Songs - Darren Criss (2011) // how can I tell you about my loved one // Some Nights - Fun. (2012) // this is not one for the folks at home, I'm sorry to leave, mom, I had to go. who the fuck wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun? // Someone Like You – Adele (2011) // we were born and raised in a summer haze, bound by the surprise of our glory days // Sorry - Justin Bieber (2015) // *dolphin noises* // Spaceship - Kesha (2017) // I knew from the start I don't belong in these parts. there's too much hate, there's too much hurt for this heart // Stars - Fun. (2012) // some nights I rule the world with bar lights and pretty girls, but most nights I stay straight and think about my mom // Stitches - Shawn Mendes (2015) // needle and the thread gotta get you out of my head // Sunflower, Vol. 6 - Harry Styles (2019) // *gasp* your flowers just died, plant new seeds in the melody // Super Bass - Nicki Minaj (2010) // and he ill, he real, he might gotta deal. he pop bottles and he got the right kind of build. he cold, he dope, he might sell coke. he always in the air, but he never fly coach // Take Me to Church - Hozier (2013) // I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. I'll tell you my sins, and you can sharpen your knife // Thank u, Next - Ariana Grande (2018) // she taught me love, she taught me patience, how she handles pain // The Pachanelly Canon - Gentleman’s Rule (2012) // I'm getting pages out of New Jersey, from Courtney B telling me about a party up in NYC. can I make it? damn right I be on the next flight. payin cash. first class. sittin' next to Vanna White // The Wire - Haim (2013) // I just know, I know, I know, I know that you're gonna be okay anyway // Theme From “Cheers” - Titus Andronicus (2010)// I'm sick and tired of everyone in this town being so goddamn uptight, but don't you worry, I'll do all the talking when they turn on the flashing lights // Thieves – She & Him (2010) // I'm not a prophet, old love is in me. new love just seeps right in and makes me guilty // This is America - Childish Gambino (2018) // tell somebody, you go tell somebody. grandma told me, get your money, black man // Trouble - Neon Jungle (2013) // lights up let's have a toke, pour more whiskey in my coke .. Truth Hurts - Lizzo (2017) // you coulda had a bad bitch, non-committal // Uma Thurman - Fall Out Boy (2015) // and I slept in last night's clothes and tomorrow’s dreams, but they are not quite what they seem // Wetsuit – The Vaccines (2011) // with a cool, cool breeze and dirty knees, I rest on childhood memories // What a Feeling - One Direction (2015) // when the air ran out and we both started running wild, the sky fell down // Wilson - Fall Out Boy (2018) // I'll stop wearing black when they make a darker color // Wolves - One Direction (2015) // I feel the waves getting started, it's a rush inside I can't control // You Need Me, I Don’t Need You - Ed Sheeran (2011) // melody music maker, reading all the papers, they say I'm up and coming like I'm fucking in an elevator // You’re in Love With a Psycho - Kasabian (2017) // I'm like the taste of macaroni on a seafood stick

Songs that would have made the list were they on Spotify: We Can’t Stop - Bastille // I Love Clothes (Deadbeat Summer) - Childish Gambino //  G.O.O.D. Friday - Kanye West ft. Common, Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Big Sean & Charlie Wilson // Driving in Cars with Boys - Lana Del Rey // Blurred Lines - Vampire Weekend // a number of mashups (Office Musik, What Makes You Da One, Live While We Die Young, Brush Your Bittersweet Shoulders Off, We Are Complicated)

[theswiftarmy]

#19 - 6000 Headphones, 12 Mobile Phones, SOO Many Shoes, And An Earworm Inside The Biebs’ Head

What better way to fight a war than with love?  And what better way to rule the world than with love?  Because how do you fight back against love?  How do you?  What’s that lawn sign?  Love trumps hate—Or, what did Taylor say?  Hater’s gonna hate (hate x3), is my math right on that?  How many times does Taylor say the word hate in Shake It Off?  Or, if you live in the south, Gators gonna gait….  Get it?  Because there are gators always walking around in the south and the word gait is another word for how a person walks, although, I don’t know if it can be applied to an alligator walking around because I’m pretty sure they crawl instead of walk.  Although, perhaps one might describe alligators as slithering around like snakes, then again, if you ask a snake, they’ll be like… WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?  Alligators don’t slither, don’t even try to steal my mode of mobility, they saunter, and maybe alligators do saunter about.  But, let’s just pretend alligators gait, because it rhymes with haters gonna hate.  There’s a lot of pretending going on in this story.  Just remember that, play pretend and you’ll follow along just fine.

           Stay with me here for a quick second and a hot minute before I get back to the story—suppose that this Elvis sound were real, obviously it’s not because it’s just a story and not real, remember we’re just playing pretend, unless… it IS real and I’m coincidentally writing fiction about something that DOES happens to be real, I just don’t happen to know that it is real, I suppose there’s always that highly unlikely scenario—but just for a moment, let your imagination run wild and really think about it.  Back in the day when Rock and Roll first came into existence it changed the world, or so I’ve been told, it changed everyone who encountered it, again, not from personal experience, just what I’ve been told, the groove made you move, brought people together in a new and different way.  It’s hard to know what that experience was like if you didn’t live through it, especially since it’s all part of our society and history nowadays.  But, there was a time before it existed when no one even knew something like it could exist, and then ears at the time were infected with infectious melodies that they couldn’t get enough of, they hungered for more of this new and incredible musical genre, of course it wouldn’t be the last time a new genre was created and ears hungered for more.

But an interesting side effect of it all was that it created cultural icons, as the new genres continue to do.  It created idols, you know, like those with the first name of Billy, it created nice days for white weddings, and to start again.  And of course, these days there’s a new Billie in idol town, but I’ll get to why I bring her up later on.

Early rock stars and pop icons became immortalized, living on long after death, they’re gods and goddesses, a new era of decorated war heros or royals, as Lorde so eloquently put it, the weapon of choice a microphone or a guitar, or maybe both, or sometimes a keyboard, or a plethora of other instruments, insert instrument of choice here, maybe even a ukulele!  Mostly, though, early on the rock and roll army was a guitarmy.

These rock gods and goddesses all image and no human being, especially true of those who are no longer with us, the human being may be gone, but the image lives on, and we still look up to those who can sing and dance and gel their hair back in slick new ways.  Fantastic fashion abound, and the preferred weapons around, like I said, musical instruments, maybe some guitars, and guitar solos the ammunition.  Some would argue, not me, but some would say that’s what has gone wrong in our modern society, we mourn the loss of great guitar solos from these songs at the top of the charts.  

Could one correlate a graph with a rise in violence directly inversely correlated with solos in rock music?  Maybe.  But anyone can correlate anything if you tried hard enough, which is the point here, like fictionally connecting modern day Billy Porter in Taylor Swift’s music video for You Need To Calm Down, to back in the day Bill Porter, the sound engineer with the golden ear that recorded with Elvis in The Sixties.  But it does seem as though the guitar solo has been quietly replaced, those wailing solos instead becoming a bank of samples on which most music is now based.  Samples upon samples spliced in and layered over top of loops and mashed together with other samples and loops, but where did the samples originate?  So many musicians use samples in music without knowing anything about their origin.  It’s the wild west of sampling.  Anything that sounds good can be put in a beat or a hook.  And of course top it off with “The Drop”.  Ah yes, The Drop—the silence before a storm of melody, and perhaps that silence is what does it, what makes you anticipate the hook, what makes you addicted to the noise.  It sucks you in, and holds your ears hostage, note after note after note.  Making it so hard to turn the song off, we simply can’t get enough of the stuff.

           Suppose the sound were real though, go all in with suspension of disbelief, and samples upon samples of it were layered into songs you listen to, some of your favorite songs of all time, the ones you can’t get enough of and press repeat again, and again, exposing your ears over and over to the sound… Changing your brainwaves and playing with your mind and emotions… each new track artists put out an even more potent version to pull fans in, the only choice the fans have is to follow, unable to break away from the influence of our favorite icons and idols as we hang on their every word.  I mean, is it so absurd?  We continue to break streaming records, sell out stadiums, and fans are willing to fight for the right for their favorite artist to part ways with a record label, if you were an artist or a band, and in the market for fans, wouldn’t you sign up for it too?  What’s the harm in a little bit of sugar and spice to make everything already nice… Well, even more so, maybe twice or thrice that spice?  

And is it really all that hard to believe?  How many times have you pushed the back button on a song and listened to it again, a third time, a fifth time in a row?  How many times have you done something you wouldn’t normally have done because of a song?  How many times have you turned yourself around because a song changed your mood or mind, or your heart, asked someone to dance, or texted someone you probably wouldn’t have texted because of a tune you heard playing out on the town, or while shopping, or a song playing in a movie or TV show—how many times was just hearing the slightest snippet of a certain song taken as a sign and changed the course of your entire life?  I’m willing to bet more than a few of you out there just raised your hand.

Oak Felder finished making another point, “…but all that is lost to history and now pop stars are using it to control their fans.”

“Lure them in with love.”  Ariana said smiling.  “I mean, it works!”

“This is like, really blowing my mind right now.”  Scooter said.  “This just keeps getting even crazier!  It’s like, be careful what music you listen to because you have no idea what might happen to your mind…”

Scott reminded Scooter.  “And especially in Justin’s case, yeah—because his mind could be wiped if he hears the wrong song while he’s earwormed.”

Oak looked over at Pop, “Well, hold on to your seat, Scooter, because I found something else noteworthy!  We took Ariana’s suggestion to Shazam the sound, and—though I didn’t exactly do that—while we were analyzing it last night I did extract the sonic footprint of it, and Pop here was able to cross reference the footprint against the Shazam database in its entirety.”

“Yeah?”  Scooter responded, bracing for something extremely mind numbing.

“It seems as though Scott’s mystery Porter Pyramid noise, AKA ‘The Elvis Egg’ sound, may be in a lot more music than we thought.  It seems to show up across the Shazam library as small bits and pieces, or as these small pieces of music are more commonly referred to as, samples.”

“Wait, you mean sampling?”  Justin said, sitting again beside Ariana Grande but this time in a small but fun looking and colorfully designed IKEA-esk chair right beside the oversized beanbag chair, since Ariana had already called perpetual fivesies on the bean chair Justin had to find a new seat from the last time the group was in the studio.  Fivesies, for those not in the loop mean you have a claim to your seat after getting up, but that claim lasts for no more and no less than five minutes.  Although some people don’t always adhere to the rule, I won’t name names, but you know who you are.  Was that ten years ago?  Yes.  Am I still bitter?  That was my seat and you know it—Whatever, I’m allowed to be upset, how could anyone reading this possibly know what it’s like to have something that used to be yours suddenly in the possession of someone else.  It was mine, and then all of a sudden someone else is sitting on it, and wouldn’t let me have what was rightfully mine—even after I called fivesies!  It’s frustrating when someone takes something that was yours.  I mean, Taylor gets it, she called Fivesies on her back catalog of recordings and someone else, I won’t name names, totally took it from her.  Sorry, I digress, I’ll get back to the story—I’m in one of those writer’s moods, if you couldn’t tell.

Oak responded very matter-of-factly.  “That’s right Justin, sampling.  You know it as beats, grooves, drum breaks, horn sounds, and guitar riffs, just to name a few examples.  Most listeners have no idea that the original source of the sounds isn’t a direct recording, but a mashed up copy of a copy of a copy, sometimes many times over.”

“So, does that mean there are bad samples in music?” Ariana said swooping in and stealing the response directed at Justin—maybe you should have called fivesies on the convo, Justin.

Scooter scooted into the conversation too, taking some response time as well, being that it was there for the taking, like how Taylor’s masters were, so why not?  Why buy a vowel when you can buy an entire sentence in the form of a question, “What, like, you’re telling me that music is infected?  How?  Is it all music?”

That was three questions Scooter; you were only supposed to have asked one, you only bought one question, not three.

“No, not all music.  Just certain samples—“ Pop Wansel replied very Goldblum-y.  It was his turn to be Jeff.  Everyone gets to be Jeff Goldblum at least once and you can’t call fivesies on being Jeff Goldblum, only Jeff himself can do that.

Oak leaned forward in his Spaceship command chair.  “What’s the most sampled song of all time?  Does anyone know?”

“Umm…”  They all unknowingly blinked their eyes in the same cadence of the Capitol Records light and shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, Justin’s cats moved their tails back and forth as they sat sleepily on the laps of two humans in the room, I’m not at liberty to disclose which two laps the cats sat upon, but they sat on two laps.  No fivesies were called, cats don’t need fivesies, they just sit wherever they please.

“No one knows the answer?  Well, the year was 1969.  A funk soul band named The Winstons released a single called ‘Color Him Father’.  The B side of that record contained a funked up version of a gospel song named ‘Amen, Brother’.  Now, of course, Color Him Father would win a Grammy for best R and B song after hitting number seven on the Billboard hot 100 charts, but the B side to that record?  Well, no one really paid it much attention for years… Eventually it would become the most sampled drum break in all music, it’s called the ‘Amen Break’.  It was first added to a compilation named Ultimate Breaks and Beats, which was popular with Hip Hop producers and DJs during the early days of Hip Hop.  The breakthrough hit Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A. most likely propelled it into the mainstream, Straight Outta Compton contained a slowed down looped version of the Amen Break in its entirety, although it was used on other songs at the time as well.  I believe the first track to sample it was I Desire by Salt-N-Pepa.  Eventually it was broken apart, spliced up, and bits and piece of it were used in thousands of songs.”

“So, are you saying sampling is bad?”  The lawyer asked, his red pen poised and ready to make a new note on his notepad.

“No.  Oh, of course not.  There are a lot of great songs that contain samples, but as with any tool, or invention, it’s in the way that you use it, like Eric Clapton says.  Same is true with any sign, or symbol, or any product of a culture, or subculture, it’s the way you use it, or more importantly, what meaning becomes attached.  Musically speaking, it’s about what hooks on to those catchy hooks.  Brands are a whole other ballgame and a conversation for another time—Sometimes just by wearing a certain brand, or putting a sticker on the bumper of your car, you can say a lot about what you stand for, without using any words at all.  Without going really deep into the meaning of life, for whatever reason we humans have a way of creating things that represent the good in the world, the bad in the world, and additionally, the indifferent—or one point of view over another—like I said, conversation for another time.  But the meanings shift, something that had absolutely no real meaning can become a symbol of power, or a movement.  A heart symbol could say love, but it could be a declaration of war depending on the context and who sends it to you.  How many individuals took a knee before Colin Kaepernick did?  Did the gesture of taking a knee change in its meaning after Colin did it?  How about when Nike made a deal with Colin, how did that change the meaning of the Nike symbol?  I’m going to let you think about the answers to those questions.  Music, brands, gestures, bumper stickers are simply what they are, but in the context of society and culture in a specific place and time the meaning can be so much more.  Music isn’t just music, it’s so much more.  Every person will tell you his or her personal attachment to any song, and it can be a shared experience, or a singular one.  I’m sure we can all think of a song that takes us back in time, and maybe it’s a memory you share with millions, or an experience only you know about.  Humans have a tendency not to start out making anything to be a symbol of a moment, that usually happens later on, we make things, usually with the best of intentions, but sometimes just because it’s something that we are passionate about, what starts out as innocent, or cool, or just something to do, can become a beacon of hope, in the right hands, or a nightmare down the road should it fall into the wrong hands.  The future of anything can’t be predicted.  Rock and Roll had a start with a small group of musicians who probably didn’t even know it was Rock and Roll at the time, and that it would eventually spread through the entire world.  The Amen Break started with one single drummer Gregory C. Coleman, and later would be used in thousands of songs.”

“And that’s causing this war with the Swifities?  The war with Taylor?”  An Arianator asked.

“We aren’t at war with Taylor…” Oak replied, his tone of voice turning very serious, “We’re at war with an unfortunate scenario.  Taylor isn’t fighting a war because she wants to, she’s fighting it because she needs to.  It’s not her fault, she’s a victim of circumstance... as so many other innocent people on this planet have been and continue to be.”

Scott grabbed his share of the conversation as well, “Trouble’s gonna follow where she goes…”

Oak took it back, “Trouble follows us all, we are all victims of circumstance.  And we’re all fighting wars made of personal battles.  Just some of us more than others.”

“She’s a victim of her own music holding her hostage, like how I’m a victim of this earworm in my head.”  Justin said solemnly.

Ariana turned to Justin sitting beside her, “Since you don’t want to talk about what happened, I may be out of place by saying this, and I hate to have to say this Justin, but if you hadn’t broken up with Selena like twenty times, you might not have her earworm in your head right now.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  Justin said back.

Ariana stifled a growl of frustration with her hands, turning her attention to Oak instead.  “So we’re fighting to free Taylor from her old masters?  Or specifically, from that egg sound—from samples used… We’re fighting for her, not against her?”  Ariana asked for clarification.  She reached for her phone in her pocket and gave it a squeeze.  With the masters tracks back in Taylor’s hands, she now held the only recording of the easter egg track should they need it.  She decided to keep its existence a secret.  If they found out they may take it from her.  For a minute she felt a rush of power wash over her, like some energy from the past or another dimension was trying to come to her and take over.  The power pulsed through her for a brief moment, chills down her spine, before she was able to push back against whatever it was creating the rush inside her.

“As long as I still get to own her.” Scooter said, “I mean, own her old masters, sorry, that’s what I meant.  A deal is a deal and I bought them fair and square.”

Everyone glowered at Scooter.

“What?  I mean, after this is all over of course.”

Everyone continued to glower.

“Why am I the bad guy in this?”

Flower power was big in the 60s, but in these modern times glower power is where it is at.

“Okay FINE, once this is over I’ll work with her to figure out a way for her to buy back her masters, or something.”

Glower power for the win.

Scooter uncrossed his fingers from behind his back.  You sly devil you.

“The Elvis egg sound isn’t good or bad in itself, just like The Amen Break isn’t good or bad, Rock and Roll and Hip Hop are music, but to paraphrase Clapton, it’s in the way that she’s using it.  See the egg sound in itself makes you feel trippy; Which makes sense, it’s from the 60s.  The Elvis egg sound is from the start of the decade, and the Amen Break is from the end of the decade.  The egg sound makes you feel good.  But, as we’ve come to learn, when it interacts with specific sound samples, such as The Amen Break—that’s when you get… Well, it seems you get side effects.  But those side effects used in a specific manner, like what was done to Justin here, can be used as a weapon—” Oak told them as much as they needed to know.  It’s a bit like when scientists first invented the atom bomb, too much knowledge about something with that much power can be dangerous.  Musical genres have more power and are more influential than anyone could possibly fathom.  “It’s a weapon of war.”  He said plainly.

“That’s where the earworm came from.  You combine specific samples together… and anything is possible.  It can be used to push viral content, or addict and hook fans, or you can disarm your opponents, make them unable to fight back.”  Pop clarified for the ears in the room.  “When you combine new and old samples, things get really tricky.  Take, umm… Old Town Road, for example, that song took off seemingly overnight, but why?”

“Well it obviously took off because of me when I shared it on social media for all my Beliebers.”  Justin said. He tried to sing the song and do the dance… “Gonna take my love to the love love road to love love, I needed to lose you to love me… “  He stopped trying and sat there lost inside his head again.

“That’s not quite how it goes, but I’m fascinated by the mashup of music going on in your head.  Does anyone else want to comment on the song, does anyone know the origin of the track used behind the vocals?”  Oak asked.

“Didn’t he just find it online, Soundcloud, or YouTube or something, and then… Lay down his vocals over it?”  One of the Arianators offered.

“No, I think he bought it from a beats site for 30 bucks.  Wait, let me Google it.  Okay, it says here ‘The hook was originally purchased for $30 on BeatStars, a rap-focused beats marketplace.’ That’s cool.”  The other Arianator replied back.

           Oak stepped in, his voice soothing and constructive, “Well, so the original sample in Old Town Road is actually a Nine Inch Nails song named 34 Ghosts IV.  And it was placed over a trap beat and posted online for sale by a Dutch teenager Kiowa Roukema, who also goes by ‘Young Kio’.  Now, when you consider the entire Old Town Road song together in final form you have various tracks recorded at various times and places using various microphones and instruments, and other recording equipment including effects processors and such.  Each individual sound recording and sample was layered on top of one another, even the original sound sample from Nine Inch Nails had already been mastered, yet it was mastered again when it was posted for sale as a beat, and then mastered another time when Lil Nas X posted his version online, then the remix was mastered yet again.  It’s like Scooter said, an omlette of eggs.  If any piece of it contains the egg sound, you have a very complex variation of the original sounds that has been manipulated and mangled many times over with every sub master, the same has happened over the years with The Amen Break.  For all we know the Amen Break could be in that song, as there isn’t a clear source of every sample used to make the trap beat.  It’s a potent mix that when played into someone’s ear can have some very strange effects—”

           “Love love… To love love… I needed to lose you to love me… Dammit Selena!  Get out of my head!”  Justin erupted cutting off the conversation.  “It’s GETTING WORSE!”  He shouted then kneeled down on the floor holding his head between his hands he hummed Selena Gomez’s song Lose You To Love Me, softly at first, then yelled out, “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”  He started to cry, just for a few tears, before wiping them away and sprawling out on the floor looking up at the ceiling fan.  His tears of anguish continued, flowing from his eyes and running down his cheeks.  “I give up.” He said quietly, his lower lip quivering.  “I can’t stop hearing it.  It’s just there on repeat—over and over again.  I just give up.  I want it to stop.  Make it stop.  I can’t take it anymore!  I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!  SELINA GOMEZ MAKE IT STOP!!!  I WANT OUT OF THIS!  I DON’T WANT YOU IN MY HEAD ANYMORE!!!”

“Oak you gotta help him.  Can’t you do anything?”  Ariana begged rushing to Justin’s side.

           Oak looked over at Pop.  They nodded to one another.  Justin couldn’t wait any longer.

           Pop got up and walked over to a Star Wars movie poster on the wall.  He turned around and held his hand out, Oak tossed the replica light saber at him, Pop caught it without flinching and then stood in front of the poster mimicking the stance of Skywalker.

           The poster began to roll up revealing a door.

           “No way!”  Scooter gasped.  “What the?”

           Oak smiled.  “Shall we?”

           Ariana helped Justin up and walked with him.  Her two Arianators rushed over to help carry him.

           Everyone walked over to the doorway previously hidden behind the poster and one by one they walked through it.

           The doorway led into a passageway that resembled the engine room of a spaceship—It was something out of every movie you’ve ever seen that takes place in space.  Hidden LED lights glowed spreading a soft even light, a blue hue that matched a humming sound, the engines of the spaceship.

           Oak Felder and Pop Wansel piloted the crew through the copious amount of twists and turns.  Several times forks in the tunnel shot off to the left or right of them.

           “How much money did it cost you to build this?”  The lawyer asked at one point.  Oak didn’t answer until they reached their final destination.

           “I didn’t build it for me, it was initially my wife’s extended shoe closet for shoe’s she refused to throw out, even though she knew she would never wear them again.”

           Scooter laughed.  “My wife would be jealous, her shoe collection is taking over the house!  I used to think ‘why would you keep shoes if you’re never going to wear them again?’  Ah, I was so young and naive.  I know better now.  But why?  Why so many shoes!”

Ariana responded “It’s just a thing.  It’s like keeping photos, memories of the past.  Also, you never know, there MIGHT be an occasion when you need that EXACT shoe!  And then if you had previously owned that pair and thrown them out you’d be kicking yourself.  Also, if you can afford that many shoes, why not spoil yourself? Whoever said money can't solve your problems, must not have had enough money to solve 'em, they say, ‘Which one?’ I say, ‘Nah, I want all of 'em’, happiness is the same price as red-bottoms.”

Oak stopped the group at a large door.  The door glowed amber around the edges outlining its silhouette.  He pulled out a key.  He inserted the key and turned the key clockwise.  While still holding the key in its turned position he pressed a large button, the first few seconds of a song began to play then it stopped.  He named the artist and the song.  Another song played, then stopped, again he named the artist and the song speaking out loud towards the door.  This continued for three more songs, after which a sixth and final song played for a little longer than the first five.  It played long enough for a few song lyrics to be heard before stopping, he continued singing the next line picking up where the song left off.

A small display beside the key and button read, “You win this round of trivia tunes!”

With that the door opened.

“SO that’s how you’re soo good at the audio round when we go to trivia night.”  Ariana said jokingly.

“You got me.”

With that Oak ushered everyone through the door.

“Whoa!” Scott shouted out after the motion sensor lights turned from a low amber glow to a bright and cheerful yellow, fully illuminating the room.

Half the room was filled with rows upon rows of headphones—All different kinds, vintage, modern, big clunky over ear headphones, sleek new sport Bluetooth ear buds that slipped inside the ear, every different type anyone could possibly imagine, there were thousands upon thousands of headphones, the collection seemed to go on forever, endlessly.  The other half of the room was filled with an equal amount of shoes, which also seemed to go on forever.

“Yeah, my wife really likes shoes.  What’s that phrase?  Happy wife, happy life.  All those songwriter royalty checks mostly go to two things, new toys for the studio, and my wife.”

“Oak, I was saying whoa about the headphone collection, but the shoe collection is equally as impressive as well.” Scott scanned the room with his eyes. “How many headphones are in here Oak?”  Scott asked out of curiosity.

“Hmm, I’d say at least six thousand.  I’ve lost count.”

“Six thousand headphones!”

“I had more, but my wife made me get rid of some to make space to move more shoes in.”  He shrugged as if to silently say, what are you gonna do about it?  Nothing.  “Okay, let’s see what we can do for Justin.”

Oak held his finger in the air and wiggled it towards him indicating for the group to follow.  They walked down a few rows of headphones as though they were walking through the aisles in a headphone only thrift shop.  Headphones clung neatly to hooks as low as a few inches off the floor all the way to the ceiling three stories up.  Ladders like one might find in an old bookstore ran along the shelves for access to the upper levels.

Oak picked up one pair and handed the headphones to Justin.  They were super vintage, 70s or 80s maybe? Well worn, large and clunky.  He plugged the audio cable into the same device he had used to diagnose the earworm playing a sound through the headphones.  “How about that?”

Justin stood for a minute with the headphones on his head then shook his head no indicating that the worm was stronger than ever.  Taking the headphones off he handed them back to Oak.  They walked a to the end of an aisle then down another, “AH HAH!”  He took another pair off a hook.  This time the pair was Bluetooth capable modern and flashy, customizable and comfortable with an over the ear fit.  He carefully placed the headphones over Justin’s ears and tapped on the digital touch screen of the earworm device after syncing the Bluetooth connection. He cycled through various settings.

“Anything yet?”

“No.  I don’t think so.”  Justin shook his head, and then shifted the headphones to fit better.  Oak continued to tap through various settings.

“Wait!”  Justin smiled slightly.  “Go back!”

Oak tapped the screen again.

“There!  I mean, I can still hear it slightly, but it’s barely even noticeable just soft background music.  I can deal with it like this.  Whatever these headphones do, keep doing it.”

Oak searched for the right response, “Umm, well it’s complicated science, let’s just say they’re emitting a phase cancelation noise that is close to what the earworm sound is.”

“Works for me!”  Justin said in an upbeat voice.

Ariana high fived Oak and then low fived Justin.

           Just then the lawyer’s phone rang.  He walked away for privacy.  “Uh huh… Oh, interesting…”

           “That’s not good.”  Scott said staring at the lawyer.

           “How do you know?”  Scooter asked.

           Scott shook his head.  “He only says ‘oh, interesting…’ when it’s something bad.  He’ll never say anything is bad, just ‘interesting’.”

           “How does he get cell service down here?”  Oak asked.  “Even I don’t get cell service!”

           “With him, it’s better not to question such things, just accepted it.”  Scott replied.

           “Okay then.”  Oak said, backing off the subject.

           After the call ended Carl, the lawyer walked back over to the group.

“What is it?” Scott asked.

“Just got off the phone with… Well, I’m not at liberty to disclose who the caller was… but let’s just say they had an interesting piece of information.”

“And that information is?”  Scott said in a coaxing voice.

“Taylor is going to place the porter egg sound behind her song Lover during her performance tonight at the American Music Awards, she’s using the string arrangement as a guise.”

“She can’t do that, we have to stop that!”  Scooter screamed out.  The room fell silent aside from the humming of a few air ventilation fans.

“There may be a way.” Oak finally said, breaking the silence.  “It would require getting two specific individuals to join with us—we’ll need someone on the inside who can get access to the equipment in order to swap the sound a second time with a placebo track, and we need someone to interrupt Taylor Swift right before her speech, long enough to swap out that backing track she’s going to play during Lover.”

“I can think of two people who might be perfect.” Justin’s spirits were picking back up, he seemed to be closer to his old self and less distant.

“Who?”  Scott asked.

“Well, the insider will already be there… Billie Eilish.  We’ve been chill ever since Coachella, you remember, Ariana,” Ariana nodded, how could she forget Coachella.  Justin continued, “and of course more recently she let me record a vocal track on another version of her ‘Bad Guy’ single.  I’m pretty sure she hasn’t made an alliance with Taylor yet.  I know, I KNOW, I was wrong about Ed Sheeran, but I think we can trust Billie.”

“Okay, that would work.  What about the other person?  We need someone to interrupt Taylor before the song, we need someone who has experience, who can get it right, we’ll only get one shot at this…”

They glanced at each other, not saying a word.

Scooter smiled, “Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?  There’s only one person with the skill and experience to interrupt Taylor Swift at precisely the right moment.”

“KANYE WEST!”  Everyone yelled together.

The helicopter blades spun up as the group climbed through the open doors.  Scott told his ‘Where we’re going we don’t need roads, because we’re in a helicopter!’ joke again.  Oak laughed.

“See, Oak gets my humor.”  Scott said, satisfied that his joke was finally a hit.

Sushi and Tuna could be seen sitting in a window of the house looking out.  They were to stay at the spaceship studio in the care of the Defenders just in case Taylor tried to make any further kitty cat kidnapping attempts.

Pop was the last to climb on board, a Defender handed him a large black duffle bag after he was safely inside the helicopter.  He then handed the bag to Oak.  Oak unzipped the bag to make sure the contents were all there, enough gold headphone cases for each one of them.  He passed the cases out.  “Don’t lose these.”  Oak instructed them.  “There’s a set of over ear Beats by Dre headphones, special grade custom made Solo Pro with Active Noise Cancelling technology.  They’re linked with an integrated communication system so we can communicate with each other.  Works up to five miles away in a mesh network, so as long as each one of us is within at least five miles of another person, we can all talk.  Battery runs off kinetic energy, as long as you’re breathing, the headphones will work.  Unfold them to turn on, fold them to turn off.  There’s one mode for active cancelation with communication and another pre programed mode matching Justin’s frequency in case you get earwormed.  We don’t know if they have one strain of the Gomez earworm, or multiple, but right now, it’s the best we have.  This does mean Justin won’t have communication with us through the headphones, someone’s going to have to stay with him should the need arise for us to use these.”

“What are these little ones?” Scooter asked picking a smaller set of ear buds from perfectly cut-to-shape spaces within the foam.  They sat snuggly inside the case beside the Beats Solo Pro headphones.

“Lookalike AirPods—although, they aren’t Apple, Taylor’s been handing out some kind of custom set to her Swifties, they call them SwiftPods.  These will work in a pinch to protect you from both the Swift sound, and possible exposure to an earworm, but they contain no communication and it’s hard to hear anyone trying to talk to you, the noise cancelation is complete and contains no filters.  They basically work like earplugs, but they look like SwiftPods so you won’t blow your cover in close proximity to a Swiftie.”

“We won’t be needing these,” Ariana grabbed Scooter’s case out of his hands and handed it back along with her own case.  “Can you drop Scooter and I off at LAX before we stop at Kanye’s house?  My private jet is waiting—we’ve got a show to make…”  She looked over at Scooter disapprovingly.

“Better do as she asks.”  Scooter said to everyone.

“But that’s out of the way!”  Scott exclaimed.  Ariana stared at him, her eyes piercing through him.  He quickly backtracked,  “Yeah, we can do that.  Sure thing, not a problem Ms. Grande.”  Scott said to her after looking to the lawyer and getting a nod of approval from the lawyer.

           “Will you two be alright out there?”  Oak asked.

           Scooter shrugged.

           “We’ll be fine.”  Ariana said in a decisively powerful tone.  “My Arianators will protect us from any Swifties if they try anything tricky, it’s Justin that you need to look out for, they’ve already used him twice in this war game, first with the kittynapping and then the earworm weapon, they’re likely to strike again to get to Scooter.”

           The helicopter lifted into the air headed first for LAX and then to Kanye West’s house.

[lucidnebulous-blog]

A Night at Will’s Pub

(June 18, 2018-11:27 am)

It’s the space between the words that matter. As a writer, I supply a few choice details and the reader must complete the picture and fill that empty space. In that way, every reader is unique and yet one text supplies the foundation for everything.

I have similar thoughts towards music. I don’t just love music, I absorb it like Spongebob Squarepants absorbs fun and laughter. During my brief stay in Orlando with family this summer, I made it over to Will’s Pub for a show.

The website, like the bar, has a good sense of humor. Their bio reads: “Sure, the thousands of children who’ve allegedly been conceived as a result of the joint’s carnal formula of loud-ass rock ‘n’ roll and free-flowing beer is a mildly interesting footnote…Will’s Pub is basically a neighborhood bar that was colonized by the music community as soon as it opened in 1995. And that now-institutionalized culture and ethos have turned it into one of the Sunshine State’s most established live music venues and an anchor of the city’s creative district.”

As I was walking in, some already drunk guy with a size-too-small Gatorade blue blazer asked the bouncer “there’s no re-entry rules right? I’m tryna find a bar.” The bouncer, with recently dyed snow white hair, chided “bar’s inside, where you should be, and where you should stay.” Hey, I’m just here for the music. Let that guy take care of the free-flowing beer.

My first impression of Will’s Pub was that it was an arcade. I tickled with the idea of becoming Orlando’s pinball wizard but I didn’t want to make any of the locals salty. Plus, I had some music and people watching to take in. In the background, I could hear some Matt & Kim playing and I felt like hitchhiking to Maine.

Being tall at concerts has its pros and cons. Pro #1: great view from anywhere. Con #1: every short person in the venue hates your guts because if you’re not standing in front of a wall, you’re blocking somebody’s view. It’s never personal but drunk people at concerts always think it is so I just mosey my way on to the back, where I can see, and where I don’t obstruct anybody’s view. I think venues should sell an obstructed view ticket for areas behind me. They could charge like half price for indoor shows or double price if it’s an outdoor concert and people want shade.

Anyway as I looked at the latest Urban Outfitters catalog, aka the crowd, I thought that I recognized the entire cast of Superbad. Jonah Hill was doing shots with Dave Franco as they debated on what was the craziest thing James Franco ever did. Jonah said “Michael Cera.”

I was feeling as random as Christopher Mintz-Plasse at this concert, waiting for the show to begin. I wasn’t drinking and I was alone so I started writing. I was at this show under professional journalistic responsibility. I wasn’t like the guy wearing hiking boots for all of the snowy mountains in Orlando. I also wasn’t about to do some magic like Draco Malfoy who I saw in the corner. I was there in pink shoes, gray pants, purple glasses, and a trippy George Harrison shirt that really made me look like I wanted to protest the Vietnam war. I wanted to protest how long they give people in between concert sets. Going to a concert, you can get tired of standing and it takes away from your experience. You gotta work out for shows. Leading up to this show, I would go to the grocery store and stand in front of the bread aisle for hours. An employee came up to me and asked if I needed help finding anything. I told her that I knew where to find the sourdough. I was just practicing for standing at a concert.

I was nailing a caricature of someone who looked like a burned-out Justin Bieber in a knit cap when I thought that maybe I was being too mean with my descriptions. First, I think it’s a compliment for this dude because he looks like every girl’s crush from the late 2000s and it could’ve been JB himself. I don’t know what the Biebs looks like today but if he were in Orlando, a knit cap would be a good disguise. And for the record, I was looking like an awkward giant who doesn’t drink or socialize at bars but rather just writes in a little pocket notebook. Yes, we’re all freaks.

Despite the delay, by the time the show started, I was tuned in and ready to groove. As Gayle (Gay-l-e) took the stage, I started wiggling my knees, then came my hips, wrists, and the most important part: the neck. For somebody just starting out, Gayle captured my critic’s heart. She has the potential for star power and really locked into a vibe. She was a one-woman show that used the power of her voice and acoustic guitar to sound like what I imagine an Alanis Morissette concert sounded like. She was like an amateur fusion of Janis Joplin and Tracy Chapman. Yeah, I know, big praise. But she may be on to something. Her songwriting was incredibly compelling and reminded me of Courtney Barnett. She incorporated a call and response element to a few of her songs. One shout went “You can take my money / Give me your CDs.” Pretty cute and catchy.

After Gayle’s set, I hit the bathroom where I saw a mini prayer alter dedicated to Pabst Blue Ribbon. A flag of blue majestically waved at my back as I did my business. When I went to wash my hands, I saw a graffiti tag name in the mirror that said “Earth B. Flat.”

I briefly fantasized about getting pizza and watching Nickelodeon with this guy who looked like the perfect combination of Drake and Josh when suddenly the next band materialized in the corner of the stage. A woman dressed in black emerged from a guitar amp, followed by a stripped-sweater wearing, long hair having man. The two hi-fived, jumped, and tapped their heels twice. Then two more people came out of the same amp and the music started to play.

Sugar Plum’s lead singer had a very delicate accent when she sang. While she was singing, it was as if she was on the brink of losing her accent but she always held on to it. At one point it started floating up but the drummer threw a drumstick (the ice cream cone version) at it and it came down before she finished the song. Sugar Plum was a fun opener but nothing too special. Just good songs, a fascinating singer, and a great drummer. He laid down a few solos and beat-breaks that had some heads turning from beers and significant others to look at the noise.

This whole time I’ve been writing this I haven’t even mentioned who the headliner was. How rude of me! The headliner was TV Girl, a little dream synth-pop outfit outta Cali. Their brief catalog is pretty fun. They describe their music as being “something you can along to, but wouldn’t sing around your parents.” Fair enough but the music is something that I think a lot of people could agree with. The choruses were agreeable in the way that New Yorker comics are. It takes a second to get it and then once you do, you’re happy, amused, and confused in a muted way. The best thing going for TV Girl was that they turned the crowd into a dancefloor. Their biggest setback was that they were not playing music. Fred and Carrie from Portlandia showed them how to “act-play.” They got up on the stage and stood in front of fancy DJ equipment with lots of lights, switches, and buttons. They were convincing and the did actually sing. I think my favorite part was when they said that they don’t know the term puppy love in France. One of their songs, “Seven Days Until Sunday,” has the same chorus as the title. Sounds like a worthy pop chorus, doesn’t it? They’re the type of band to feign irreverence and I’m the type of writer to feign seriousness.

Because my legs felt like angel hair pre-boiling water, I decided to leave. When I opened the door, a cat ran out of a crack in the sidewalk. A sunflower instantly grew right from the same crack. I looked at the door that said “if you are racist, sexist, homophobic, or an asshole… don’t come in” with approval, made my exit, and then made some pasta.  

[aliovenshine]

No one tagged me because I have no friends but I’m just gonna do it anyways so that my 4 followers can get to know me

1. Nicknames? Ali, falz, al

2. Gender? female

3. Star Sign? Taurus

4. Height? 5′7”

5. Time? 12:07am

6. Birthday? April 30

7. Favourite Bands? Walk the Moon, the 1975, the lumineers, one direction, the Maine, little mix, the summer set

8. Favourite Solo Artists? Niall Horan, Liam Payne, shawn Mendes, Rihanna, Sam smith, Ariana Grande, ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran, Halsey

9. Song Stuck In My Head? Rum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum da bum. (Drummer boy - justin bieber)

10. Last Movie You Watched? Never say never (sarah requested it but also no shame I love the biebs)

11. Last Show You Watched? House hunters international LOL

12. When Did You Create Your Blog? Oh god idk like 2009

13. What Do I Post? Photos, life updates, I mainly just yell about how much I love Niall

14. Last Thing I Googled? Feb 19th zodiac

15. Do You Have Any Other Blogs? Nope

16. Do You Get Asks? every once in a while I get a shitty anon! They’re usually big brother related

17. Why Did You Choose Your URL? Because it’s my name and I like to keep things simple

18. Following? 142

19. Followers? 547

20. Favourite colors? Mustard, olive green, Heather Grey, maroon, deep purple

21. Average Hours of Sleep? 6-7 on a good day but maybe usually like 5

22. Lucky Number? 9

23. Instruments? Ehhh I played clarinet when I was like 10? And I can play 3 chords on the guitar

24. What Am I Wearing? My Nial sweatshirt and leggings

25. How Many Blankets Do I Sleep With? 3, two quilts and one fuzzy blanket

26. Dream Job? Communication advisor for some realm of politician

27. Dream Vacation? Australia

28. Favourite Food? Thai

[yewtongue8-blog]

The Year in Celebrity Bagel Drama

Despite the wild popularity of crepe towers, banana split sundae croissants, and Russian honey cakes, the humble bagel was the breakfast option that kept making headlines throughout 2018. Some celebrities attracted the attention of gossip sites with their unusual bagel-ordering habits, while other famous people told surprising stories on late night shows that involved the old roll-with-a-hole. Here’s a look back at the year in celebrity bagel drama.

Kendall’s New Year’s bagel revelation

Getty Images

As the clock ticked down to midnight on New Year’s Eve 2017, model/reality TV star Kendall Jenner was embroiled in a bagel-related controversy. The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star had shared a photo of herself wearing a tight, midsection-hugging party dress, prompting some Instagram users to question whether she was trying to tell the world that she was pregnant (this is often how members of the Kardashian clan announce these big life changes). During the last moments of 2017, Jenner shared a message to her fans, setting the record straight: “i just like bagels ok!!!” This oddball intersection of celebrity drama and bagel fixation would set the tone for the year to come.

The time Jim from ‘The Office’ got bagel bombed

America’s TV boyfriend, John Krasinski, had an incredible year, becoming both the new Jack Ryan in a televised Tom Clancy series, and the writer/director/star of one of 2018’s biggest hits, A Quiet Place. But things weren’t always so rosy for the Hollywood hero. Many years ago, when he was a lowly intern at 30 Rock in New York City, the Boston native was the victim of some carbohydrate-related bullying from a complete stranger. “I was wearing a Nomar Garciaparra jersey,” Krasinski told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show in April. “I was walking along about to get lunch and just something hit me in the back of the head. It was a full, cream cheese bagel.” The actor concluded that the bagel bomb was hurled from a “taxi going like 20 miles an hour.” Clearly, this incident still haunts Krasinski till this day.

Bieb’s sad Brooklyn bagel run

In August, Sleazcore couple du jour Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin surprised guests at Frankel’s, a neo-delicatessen in Brooklyn, by gracing the bagel shop with their mopey presence. After placing their order, the couple proceeded to shuffle around the store, their arms draped around each other in a loose embrace. Guests were clearly weirded out by their demeanor, and Instagram users also questioned why they looked so sad and/or zonked out during this bagel run, prompting one commenter to remark, “They look miserable.” But, strange though it may seem, this might just be what true love looks like between an international pop mega-star and a runway model in 2018: Justin and Hailey got married just a few months after these photos were taken.

The bagel order heard round the world

Getty Images for PRIDE MEDIA

On Sunday, September 9, Sex and the City actress-turned-politician Cynthia Nixon placed an order at famed Manhattan market Zabar’s that would send shockwaves throughout the bagel-loving community. In an interaction that was surreptitiously caught on camera by Gothamist, Nixon ordered a cinnamon-raisin bagel stuffed with cream cheese, capers, tomatoes, onions, and lox. This combination, which she referred to as “a full load,” only has one element that throws people off: the sweet bread hugging all of those traditionally savory ingredients. And yet, the New York Post found this melange of textures and flavors to be outrageous enough to earn the title of “strangest bagel of all time,” while a Food & Wine staffer called it ”basically criminal.”

Nixon tried to change the conversation by owning up to the order on Twitter and urging her fans to donate to her campaign for Governor of New York, but this move didn’t stop the Twitter snarking about Nixon’s breakfast of choice. Later that week, she lost the primary race to Andrew Cuomo.

The bagel surprise of the year

Getty Images for IEBA

Although Ice-T has spent much of the last two decades filming a New York-based cop procedural, last month, the rapper-turned-actor revealed that he somehow had never tried one of the quintessential NYC foods — the bagel — until he filmed a recent scene on Law and Order: SVU. This detail was revealed on Twitter, when the celebrity responded to a fan’s inquiry about his favorite bagel variety by tweeting, “Lol. I’ve never eaten a Bagel in my life...” A few hours later, after many Twitter users had expressed their shock and disbelief at this revelation, Ice-T told fans, “White people.. Don’t lose your Fn minds because I’ve never eaten a Bagle [sic].. Take it easy.... lol.” During a Tonight Show appearance a few weeks later, Ice-T explained why he’d never tried a bagel before this year: “I’m from South Central. Can you imagine Snoop singing, ‘Rolling down the street smokin’ indo eating some lox and bagels?’”

And in other bagel news...

Twitter users found the original sketch of the bagel emoji to be hilarious, but the revised edition — which featured cream cheese and a craggily surface — was a much bigger hit. Former New York Times critic Mimi Sheraton incurred the wrath of Montreal bagel lovers by tweeting that eating their local speciality was “like chewing broken glass.” And speaking of Montreal, that city’s Plateau-Mont-Royal borough imposed a ban on wood-fired ovens, but thankfully, ancient bagel shops like St-Viateur (pictured above, with Adam Sandler and his family) and Fairmount Bagel are exempt from this piece of legislation — long may they reign.

• All Year in Eater Coverage [E]

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2018/12/19/18146004/cynthia-nixon-ice-t-bagel

[kaceybruce]

catch up..

major catch up over here.. April was kind of amazingly crazy.. 

for the first time of the year.. Aldous got in the car from school and instead of answering “nuffin” he said “AMAZING”  I turned around and said AMAZING!?!?!?! he said uh huh.. 

and pulled out this shaving creme cloud conception.. “ I put it on the fridge” 

I have been trying to figure out what to do with him next year for school.. there are a few options coming up for September and I am trying to figure out the best one for us before he heads off to Kindergarten full time.. 

The Biebs lost a front tooth.. it had been really wobbly for weeks.. and at bed time I go.. let me see it.. knowing I wanted to give it a little tug.. not knowing it would come out super easy.. I was screaming with joy more then she was.. Ive never ripped out a kids tooth before.. 

now on top of those beautiful brown eyes.. she has that lisp.. 

Ive been making some big life decisions in rooms that have this view.. cryptic I know.. 

as Bad always says.. its the shit that creeps up on a Tuesday morning that gets yah.. We were having a particularly rough Wednesday morning getting out of the house.. and I asked Olive to help this guy get dressed.. I saw him laying down and looked over and his junk was inflamed and swollen! 

WHAT THE WHAT

I am writing about this because no one talks about it.. and had I read about it i would have flipped the F out and started screaming.. ITS HIS PENIS! I WANT GRANDBABIES! 

not even kidding.. I went straight there.. my future grand babies from this brown eyed boy..

ree ree ree ree

psycho.. 

i will leave you with this.. his penis looked like it had an inner tube around it.. not painful.. and it apparently happens.. even with circumsized penis’’

I think this is the most I have typed the word penis on the blog.. TMI.. sorry not sorry.. 

turns out a day off work and some momma snuggles cleared it right up.. well.. that and the antibiotic ointment I picked up from rite aid.. 

loves to fix things and tinker.. he has even started doing this thing with his tongue when he's concentrating that reminds me of my passed grandpa.. 

lunch date with my man.. 

Ive been busy this month and grocery shopping and online delivery fell to the bottom of my to do.. my bank account / take out bills have been extra high this month.. so I decide that 5:40 on a random wednesday night was the perfect time to take 3 crazy kids out.. 

this kid also refuses to get hair cuts now.. umm.. no bueno buddy.. I strayed from the cute places where they sit in airplanes etc .. to just normal places.. and apparently he was over this.. I found a new gem in Mill Creek that had an airplane for him to sit in and toys for him to play.. and we walked in after him saying no 10 more times.. and goes.. “see! kids don't like mommy chairs! they want kid chairs!” and walked right in with out a squawk.. 

he likes more hair on the sides of his head he said.. 

uhhhh.. ok.. 

Olive had a school concert that we almost didn't go to.. and by almost.. we weren't going to go to.. and then she got off the bus at 4 INSISTING she had to go because her teacher and friends would be there.. so we got ready last minute.. I snapped this.. and I kind of love that its blurry.. she's getting so much bigger now.. her mannerisms mostly.. and i can barley handle how much I love it.. 

moooooooooooom…

my brown eyed boy.. now I can actually see his eyes again with a hair cut.. his shanks were long .. 

the sun came out this week and we chased it as long as we could.. they wanted to go to their favorite park .. one of the first ones we had gone to living in this area.. and we just soaked the vitamin D.. arrived home too late.. and no one cared.. fresh air wins every time. 

they found a bunny.. 

washing my car is on my ever growing to do list.. 

my moms friend tagged me in this gem.. I remember those nighties.. they buttoned in the back and I loved the rainbow.. Im the one on the right.. my kids couldn't guess it.. it is still hard for me to find myself in some twin photos.. unless Tiff is smiling.. 

I worked so late last night for Cinco.. woke up early to hit the Mill Creek Garage sales.. and went to a birthday party / kentucky derby party.. had a heavy handed mint Julep.. yum.. sat in the sun and my kids climbed some trees.. Brixton literally wouldn't come out of the tree.. well.. except to get a cup cake.. She reminds me so much of me.. esp her heart.. I see so much of how I care about things in her when she cares about things.. attachments and things she loves.. I was/am/is a tom boy at heart and seeing her in a tree holding a kids bow and arrow with a smile on her face.. well it made my day.. 

 mooooom.. 

they love when I take their pic.. 

oh Olive.. I have a feeling she may be an indoor girl.. even though I am trying to make her an outdoor girl.. 

the best part of today May 06th, 2017.. Brixton showed us how she can ride a bike.. 

“who taught you B!?” 

* shoulder shrugs* uhh.. myself!

April.. you were full.. May.. I expect more sun from you please.. especially when my middle child turns 6 in a few weeks.. 

[fedoranonymous]

Drake & Josh & Justin

Dear Tumblr, I have had the most delightful daydream and I just had to write you about it . ETA: I now have regrets but I spent a lot of time on this

Okay so back when my baby sister lived at home and I could peep her YouTube history, she showed me a video of Drake Bell and Josh Peck hanging out, and they talked about a potential D&J reboot. So that's an idea that's been percolating in my skull for years now.

Also, I don't follow any of the people I'm about to mention at all, but I think Drake was cancelled for a while? Or at least, Josh is way more popular now, that's why (according to my sister at the time) he was on Josh's channel, but for narrative purposes he was Cancelled (tm), and he's trying to have a Redemption Arc, and the show reboot is, in his mind, and Essential part of that arc.

Now, have any of you Star-ving? With David Faustino? The whole point of that show is that David plays himself as an out of work actor making an ass out of himself doing anything BUT going to auditions to try to get the fame and money he thinks he deserves. One episode has him feeling like his chance has come when the sitcom he was on, Married with Children, gets optioned for a reboot, only for him to go and read his first line... And Seth Rogan (I think, IMDb has failed me) also reads it. And Seth has the fall to be like "you know, my friends always said I reminded them of Bud Bundy, so this is like me coming full circle, and getting to play myself" in a line that hase scouring the writing credits of the show because I hope to GOD Dave wrote that himself. The show is genius, you kinda need to be familiar with Married with Children, at least "oh this actor was on that" kind of way, but it's hilarious.

Anyway, we open on the totally legit Drake and Josh reboot and... It's a table read? And, you know, you get the joke, Drake's the last to read and when he does, reading the exact some joke in the exact same tone is... Justin Bieber?!

(I'm starting to think I put enough thought into this to publish it, either on AO3, or by changing the names and selling a casual ebook.... Hmmmmm)

Anyway, Drake starts off with "how could you not tell me you were recasting me? I wrote episode 3." And of course Biebs thinks that this will be a hit because the original D&J is such a hit with his fanbase. I can't in good faith repeat the It's Just So Personally Meaningful bit, but definitely Biebs is trying to be a main character if he can't be Drake.

On the other side of the room, Josh and Miranda are debating which Problematic Fave is more Problematique.... But it's exceptionally petty. "I once saw Drake jaywalk." "One time, I was on the phone with Justin, and he didn't even say goodbye when he hung up." "Fake gasp! Wait, did he hang up without saying goodbye, or did he get disconnected? Because that's an important distinction." "Well he didn't call me back, so." "Fake!!! Gasp!!!"

The conversation eventually turns from which of them is more Problematic to which is more Fave... At which point the obvious solution to have both of them is unanimously agreed upon, without input from Justin or Drake.

So the show within a show, that is to say, the "Drake and Josh Reboot" that "Drake" and "Josh" and "Justin" and "Miranda" are making during the show that we're watching, goes full Two and a Half Men; The Ashton Kutcher Saga. There is NEVER sufficient justification for why Biebs is there. Sometimes he's Drake's roommate, until Drake moves back home? Maybe? And he's just. Still there. He gets the least funny jokes (because Drake is still a writer and they have a Rivalry) and when they do try to use him for plot, it just comes off as weird.

I'm not really sure how to beat utilize Josh, but Miranda? She's not evil. She's not at Fault for the things that befall Drake & Josh & Justin, but she is Responsible.

The last episode features the trending hashtag #MirandaTrustsCops, prompting "actual" Miranda to post a moving essay about how the real world is so much more complicated than any sitcom can hope to convey in it's 22 minutes, but she hopes that at least their show can help lighten the load for a half hour of people's lives... And then it turns out that the reason Meagan called the cops is because Josh, on his way to bail out Drake and Justin yet again, sarcastically deadpans at her "I'm going to kill everyone in this family, and save you for last" while grabbing a chainsaw, prompting Meagan to confess to every nasty thing she did to her brothers as a kid to the cops while crying and insisting Josh has a chainsaw.

The cop thinks Meagan is crazy and is about to arrest her, when.

"ah, well, you see officer, I did say those things, and I did have a chainsaw, but you've got to understand. They're my siblings."

The cop doesn't understand. "Maybe I'm just a only child, but that can't be healthy."

Smash cut!

"Drake?"

"Yeah Josh?"

"How is it that I'm the only person in this family who hasn't broken any federal laws this month, and yet I'm the one that's in jail?"

"well Josh," says Drake. "That... Is a very good question. That the cops can hear. Byee." Drake slips through the bars of Josh's cell and the through the bars on the window. Josh stares at the gaps between the bars, a disgusted yet intrigued look on his face. Justin walks into view.

"Let's get out of here," says Justin.

"You bailed me out of jail?"

"Didn't have to." A shrug. "Unlike Patrol Officer Jameson, Jessie has a brother. Namely, me."

"That explains simultaneously everything and nothing about you."

[commentaryonhowwelive]

November 2015. Age 23. Inside the Womb of Apathy

My older brother was in town looking for a job in Denver, so he was staying with me in Boulder during the search. He was just as clueless as me in regards to what he was trying to do with his life, which was kind of nice. Misery, or rather, cluelessness loves company. Kind of like in a folie a deux, no matter what you’re doing, if you have another person doing it with you, it makes whatever you’re doing just a little bit better. 

He used to work at a local brewery so we all decided to go grab a few drinks there one night so he could catch up with some old chums. My roommate, Freezerp, and I were incredibly cheap. In fact, thinking back on it now, it was laughable. So naturally when my brother said we’d probably get hooked up with free beers if we gave him a ride over, we were up and out.

We were a couple of bohemians when it came to craft brews, so we stood there and stared at the rotating tap for a few minutes before my brother and his old coworker came by and asked us what we wanted. We grabbed a “Weeeeeeee!” which is a dark scottish ale and he grabbed a “North Star” which is a very high ABV porter that was just about to run out, so he jumped on it. It was “Geeks Who Drink” trivia night so it was packed, but we found a nice spot in the sitting area where we settled in next to a cute girl drinking alone.

“I’ve been at a Yoga seminar all day, and it’s been all about health, so I just want to do something that’s unhealthy and have a nice beer. I’m not from here so I just typed in ‘brewery’ to google and I found this place.” She said with yoga pants on that were actually being utilized.

“Oh yeah, I mean.” I said slightly slurring, “Twisted Pine is just like the OG place to go around here.”

It’s amazing how easy it is to just strike up conversations with a girl, or anyone really, when you’ve both had a drink or two. We talked about species of bananas, my buddy’s rap project, jokes about me being a substitute teacher. She left after just a few drinks, and I never even caught her name.

I remembered that I had to drive home so I wanted to sober up a bit before driving home. We had a swear jar at home which was a joke in itself, but in addition to it being a joke, we decided to use all of the money in the swear jar to buy beer with, which we wouldn’t count swears that we said while drinking the beers we bought with the swear jar. Perfect right? I know it’s perfect, thanks. 

Anyways, we realized that we had probably $15 or so in the swear jar, so Freezerp and I decided to walk to the liquor store to buy some more beer. We figured that we’d sober up enough before having to drive home, but just enough to drive, then when we got home we could keep on drinking. We went to the liquor store and in our usual goofy stupor to fill up a “You-Pick-6”. We searched and arrogantly yet superfluously judged the beers based on the labels and ABV. 

“The guy on this bottle has a fuckin’ attitude and I like it.”

“Look at those muscles too. He does, in fact, lift bro”, Freezerp replied. He stopped the conversation and looked around, dropped and did 20 push ups, then popped back up again. We continued as if nothing happened.

“He probably just drinks eggs for breakfast.”

“Paleo. Just like this beer. We’re getting one.”

We ended up with the same shit we probably would’ve bought if we were completely sober, with the exception of the $5 stout from Fort Collins because we wanted to see whether it was 3.5 times better than the other beers.

On our way back to the brewery, Freezy yelled “LAST ONE THERE LOSES” and when I’m drunk and I’m sucker for challenges, so I started sprinting, even though I was carrying a 6-pack of beer. I realized that I probably looked like I was stealing the beer, but I didn’t even give a shit because I was too busy laughing so hard and running as fast as I could that I literally couldn’t focus on anything else except for how absolutely hilarious it was and how incredibly tired I was, even though I’m a long distance runner.

I texted Sophia when we got to the bar. “Hey giiiirrrlrlllll wanna come over?”

She usually didn’t respond quickly, but when it came to sleeping in my bed with me, she was all over it.

“Yes! When?”

“I’m at the Twisted Pine but were about to leave. Meet me in funbarrel at 10?”

“K :))”

Allow me to explain, I don’t live in a town called Funbarrel. It’s actually Gunbarrel, but we call it Funbarrel because we’re just a couple of kooky crazy kids. 

“Woo!” I exclaimed and did a little jig as my phone vibrated in my pocket on the way to my car.

“Do I bring beer?” Sophia texted me again.

“We just got more beer after the bar but if you want to bring more I will never say never.”

“Ok biebs. Sweaty Betty it is.”

Sweaty Betty is our favorite craft beer.

I started dating Sophia a few weeks prior and thus far it’d been pretty great. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, nor the smartest, nor had the greatest aspirations, but she was who she was and I appreciated her for who she was. We vibed in a way that I had never vibed with anyone before, and that was good enough for me. I knew I could’ve probably found someone better if I tried, but I was too tempted to stay with her because of that good knob slobbin. Ew that’s gross sorry you just had to read that. But anyways, we pretty much just got together every night, got drunk and had sex. It was casual as fuck, and sure it was probably super unsustainable and we knew we were gonna crash and burn, but fuck it, I was gonna ride that shit out as long as I could because for the time being, it fuckin rocked. Plus, since I was on Lexapro, I wasn’t freaking out about the constant sex all the time. 

My first girlfriend panicked any time our gonads were even semi close, calling me a few days after hooking up when I had gone back to Orlando for the week for class, absolutely sure that she was pregnant, even though we never even had sex. It was absurd and kind of scarred me to the point that I started freaking out every time I had sex with anyone afterwards. Kind of like when you’re a little kid and your mom tells you that if you stop making that face it’ll stay that way. Somehow I let some constantly freaked out girl convince me of how easy it was to get someone pregnant (subcutaneous semen absorption I guess?). But Lexapro fixed it all. It seemed like this little white miracle pill let me have sex all the time and not worry about pregnancy. I mean, come on, I pulled out and used a condom anyways. Ok enough with the detailing my sexcapades, I promise. 

----------

I was chilling pretty hard at that time in my life. I kept thinking about what I wanted to do and accomplish and whatnot, whether I wanted to go back to graduate school or not, but it always ended up with the same conclusion.

“Fuck it”

I did whatever the hell I wanted, I had a job that, yeah it wasn’t glamorous, but I looked forward to going every day. Not everyone can say that and I felt blessed. My brother was talking about some courier job he saw in the newspaper that night before Sophia came over.

“That’d be the perfect job because you’re just doing normal things.” He said describing the courier job. 

That’s how I felt about the delivery job I had: I drove around town bumping tunes, then when I’m back in the shop I’m usually just working with a few other people. Plus I never had to be at work until 10:30 A.M., so I could drink any night of the week and be fine by the time I had to be at work. In addition to that, it wasn’t like I had to use a whole lot of brain power at work anyways.

Goddamn, things were pretty alright. Right as I finished my 2nd beer after getting back home, I heard a knock on the door. 

“GET THE FUCK OUT” I yelled. 

Sophia daintily walked in with her typical awkwardness that she hid so well behind a veil of confidence. Her silly half smile made me want to take her to bed immediately, but I knew we couldn’t for at least another hour or so until everyone else started settling down too.

I got up and gave her a foot-lifting-off-the-ground-hug. Our hips pressed together hard and I looked into her eyes devilishly. I put her down and walked toward the fridge while she put her stuffed backpack which whatever the hell she kept in there in my bedroom.

“PORTER OR IPA”, I yelled across the apartment.

“Ummmm, I don’t care whatever you have more of”, her soft voice struggled to carry from the bedroom into my kitchen. 

I had more porters than IPA’s, but the IPA’s were 7.5% and the porters only 5.2% and frankly I wanted us both to get drunk quicker. I cracked open an IPA and brought it directly to her.

We were both two beers in within 20 minutes. We cracked into the Sweaty Bettys, going in for number three with no hesitation. My little brother who had just turned 21 started pouring shots for him, Freezy, my older brother, me, and Sophia. I looked at Sophia and gave her a quick double eyebrow raise. 

At this point, it wasn’t a question of whether we were going to hook up that night. In fact, it was virtually never a question of whether we were going to hook up when she came over to stay the night. The only question was how ok I was going to be with it while we fucked. The more drunk I was, the more I was able to pretend like there was love, instead of two directionless early twenty-year-olds attempting to fill the void with shallow dopamine. 

-------------

I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards me. As she did an assisted sit up, she lifted her arms up for me to lift her shirt off. No bra. Perfect. I remembered she didn’t shave her arm pits but luckily I had successfully drank myself to the point of benevolence toward anything that wasn’t perfect, which was everything.

We don’t have to fall in love, in love, in love

We don’t have to feel the touch, the touch, the touch

We can do it for the rush, the rush, the rush

I’m waiting for you

Breathe Carolina sang out of my phone on my bedside table

I took my shirt off as well and pushed her back down; as I did she grabbed me and took me with her. The teasing hip thrust I gave her the moment she walked into my door came back ten fold. I pushed into her crotch with mine, both of our pants still on, taunting her because I knew she wanted me more than I wanted her. Holding my breath followed by audible exhales accompanied my thrusts as I was getting off just from knowing how full of lust she was. It didn’t take long for us to be completely naked and send ourselves into a hermaphroditic entanglement, but I’m not sure what happened from there because that’s when I blacked out.

-------------

A few nights later and we were sitting on the couch watching Samurai Gourmet on Netflix. I was eating a sweet potato and drinking malt liquor. She was knitting. 

“I’m going on a date with a girl from Bumble tomorrow,” I said nonchalantly. 

Sophia’s eyebrows furrowed, “What?”

“I told you, we’re not exclusive,” I said not looking up from the conversation on my phone with the little 21-year-old blonde girl. 

“But, like...that’s just, like..shitty,” she said starting to cry. 

I ate the last bit of sweet potato, “Oookay, I’m going to bed.” 

She slept on the couch that night and I didn’t care.

[thesinglesjukebox]

JUSTIN BIEBER - YUMMY

[2.68]

Well, we thought about the Yummy, we said “Biebs, you’re fucking high...”

Alex Clifton: Why are straight boys like this? [2]

Leah Isobel: Justin Bieber's greatest strength as a vocalist is - was - playing very dumb phrases extremely straight, investing them with almost overflowing, doe-eyed emotion. This quality could turn a one-word chorus into poetry, or he could U-turn into knowing comedy when the phrases and ideas got dumb enough. On "Yummy," though, Bieber meets his match in a title phrase that's too winkingly juvenile even for his reformed child-star tenor. More than that, he sounds tired, like he doesn't even want to be playing this game anymore - his high notes have turned nasal and yelpy, his low register more empty air than resonance. I can imagine the Bieber of "Boyfriend" or "Beauty and a Beat" really feasting on this track, but 2020 Bieber needs more than vapid concepts to regurgitate on a semi-trendy beat. Those doe eyes have turned dead. [2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: This would be a generous [6] if it were 2013 and this was one of the lesser tracks on Journals. More than six years later, and "Yummy" just sounds like... nothing? People complained that Ciara singing "yummy" was a mistake, but Bieber does something infinitely worse: he makes it devoid of any and all feeling. [3]

Ashley Bardhan: What can I say when Justin already said it all himself -- "you got the yum, yum-yum"? This song sounds like it would be Noah Centineo's ringtone. [1]

Thomas Inskeep: "Yeah, you got that yummy-yum" -- is Bieber trying to sound like an idiot? Because guess what, he succeeds. The production's generic pop-trap, and the lyrics are moronic beyond measure. About as yummy as food left in a dumpster at the height of summer for a week. [1]

Brad Shoup: Yummy is a fine word, acceptable even: couples are (or usually are) goofy. Things like yummy tend to slip out. It's the shiver he puts into the line "never runnin' low on supplies" that truly haunts. Wild how a couple years ago, the vocal manipulation would be front and center. Now, the up- and down-pitched yummies are practically invisible. Maybe by 2021 they'll be gone. [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Justin Bieber choruses work best when framed around a question: "What do you mean?" "Is it too late now to say sorry?" "Can we still be friends?" "Can we keep each other company?" "Where are yoü now?" See, Justin has never been the sexiest or suavest pop star in the world, but these big, pontificating questions sound nice. Fill in the blank answer with whatever you want; Justin is just the handsome chauffeur taking you to your destination. It becomes a problem, then, when he's asked to sell something more direct; he just sounds silly and unconvincing. "Yeah, you got that yummy-yum, that yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy" is already a weak chorus to begin with, something even a Bruno Mars, Childish Gambino or Drake would have difficulty pulling off. Here, we have Bieber: selling this positive statement with the enthusiasm of someone politely pretending to like something they don't. [3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The beat of "Yummy" sounds like a horny remix of the Wii Shop theme. It is by a wide margin the best part of the song. [2]

Alfred Soto: As abstracted a signifier of post-adolescent yearning as Bryan Ferry is a holy spirit of divine melancholy, Justin Bieber could be Swae Lee or Arthur Lee. He chirps over this here trap beat because he can't chew on it -- where are the yums? I smiled only at the line about walking in house slippers. [3]

Nortey Dowuona: The problem with Justin Bieber is that he's not interesting enough to really write about, musically, gossipcally or at all. The smooth, loping bass with sweeping, swallago synths and dispassionate synth progressions or the dull, flat drums are too interesting for Bieber to dully fumble over while not being able to play around with his limited range in the slightest the way a Frank Ocean or a Dappy or even a YBN Cordae could. At least it's short. [5]

Ian Mathers: Every day Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping inches closer to being a documentary. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: OK, but I can go listen to Usher's "Lemme See," Chromatics' "Lady" and Ciara's "Dance Like We're Making Love" and get the same nocturnal streetlights-on-rain mood without also hearing Justin Bieber sing "yummy." [3]

Scott Mildenhall: Whether or not this is a song whose authors think is commercially astute, it is fantastically stupid in a way that seems too witless to have been so engineered. It was awkward enough when Harry Styles pressed the "belly" button, but to hang a whole song on the word "yummy" is both comical and, to extend the juvenilia further, icky. Though perhaps this is a path to follow. Bieber will already have fans who weren't born before "One Time" (or were babies as of "Baby"), so why not go an eenie meenie bit further and make the video a toy unboxing? Children are the future! [4]

Will Adams: Somehow less convincing and more juvenile/slightly creepy than when Bieber called his girl an "eenie meenie miney mo lover" ten years ago. [3]

Oliver Maier: Justin Bieber spent his teens trying to sound grown-up, then spent his early 20s trying to sound like a teenager. Purpose's singles posited him as a golden-hearted hottie grappling with adolescent naivety, who hurts your feelings or doesn't quite get it but is still trying, dangit. There was naturally a manipulative subtext to that cluelessness, but for whatever reason -- maybe that tension is interesting, maybe the songs were just catchy -- he remained compelling, and still felt out of our league. These days, I guess he's content to sound like nothing whatsoever. "Yummy" surrenders a few too many brain cells both in composition (this doesn't sound like a song anybody cared about writing) and execution (Justin Bieber sounds like the most tediously simpering man on the planet). There are shadows of good melodies here and there, if you're feeling generous, but it is simply too half-formed, and so cutesy and content that it nukes Bieber's sensuality altogether. I can't decide whether to cringe or take a nap. [3]

Will Rivitz: Three points to this as a conceptual exercise -- I didn't think it possible to sanitize "Hotline Bling" even more than the original. That's all it gets. [3]

Kylo Nocom: Awful metaphors and unsexy sex talk as bait for detractors to publicly (and correctly) declare awful. It's the same strategy as "Earth" and as the bizarre lead singles of other stars' comebacks: get the fans liking it, and the haters furious at how stupid it is. What "Yummy" does have is plenty of melodic tricks, and a beat like this would've popped off in 2016. Yet giving this any credit feels like rewarding a transparent cash-in when he's had far more attractive come-ons. [4]

Kayla Beardslee: Obviously "Yummy" isn't good. Obviously I was never personally going to like it. Obviously we as a collective are going to hate it. But what am I actually supposed to do with it? The Justin Bieber hate train has whirred back into full force -- the video is 15% disliked, and articles (plus offhand internet comments) criticizing him, the rollout, and the music are already being pumped out. He took over four years to come back after Purpose, but has been dropping a steady stream of features in the interim: Bieber has simultaneously faded from the public eye as a solo artist and overexposed himself as an inconsistent, practically anonymous guest feature. There's no hype for his return, except among diehard fans who would assemble no matter the timing or quality. It feels like being force fed. And yet, although "Yummy" is a joyless combination of beige and sleaze, I'm still hesitant to gleefully condemn it. As a song, sure, it's unpleasant and Purpose-less and not what he needed to kick off a successful era. But, let's be real, "Yummy" is such a nothing that trashing of the music can easily transfer onto Bieber himself, and so much of the hate is not (for lack of a better term) in good faith. If you're going to criticize Bieber, call him out for things like idolizing Chris Brown and patronizing Hillsong (deciding whether the latter is actually bad is complicated, but it's certainly been a topic of conversation around him). But how many people in a social media crowd are going to provide balanced criticisms of difficult topics like these? Bieber's music has been marketed toward teen girls, he has a pretty voice that some might judge as feminine, he just dyed his hair pink, he's making trendy pop and chasing traditional masculine and commercial markers of success: these are all fodder for cheap shots and knee-jerk hate across a variety of communities. I've seen people (a friend, a relative) react to mentions of Justin Bieber with mild disgust -- literally just his name is a repellent. Of course, Bieber carries himself with a cocky attitude that's easy to hate (probably what happens when you're forced into the ridiculous freedom and unique restrictions of celebrity when you're a naive teenager). Of course, he's built a reputation for acting like a terrible person many times in the past. Of course, Bieber is a straight white man who has a layer of security against harassment that artists like, for example, Lizzo don't have. And yet I constantly remember that Bieber has spoken out about battling depression, and I feel uncomfortable joining the pile-on. And really, what is there to enjoy about trashing him or "Yummy"? The track is bland and unambitious, except for when it's actively repelling ("get litty, babe"; the entire fucking premise of "yummy"). Bieber doesn't even sound like he cares. At first, I thought his team must have chosen a song named "Yummy" as a lead single for the same reason scammers still send Nigerian prince emails: immediately weed out the people who have no patience for it, and focus instead on reaching the sympathetic (his fanbase) and the oblivious (the general public bogeyman that passively consumes hits through playlists). And then I learned that the bridge namedrops Bieber's own house slipper brand, in a dumb, out of touch move that only a rich celebrity would approve of. That single moment makes me think his team is, in fact, desperate enough to coast on soulless music and hope to profit off Bieber's previous reputation and work alone. We're all just tired, aren't we? [1]

Jibril Yassin: Justin Bieber, a generational vocal talent, is trying to channel Post Malone here and all that comes to mind is a xerox of the Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme. Can we get Usher to come back and fix this? [1]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[virginiamurrayblog]

A Comprehensive Guide to Cambridge, Ont. (a.k.a. Justin & Hailey’s New Home)

(Photos: Splash, iStock)

I grew up (and currently live) in Cambridge, Ont. As a child it was fine, as a teenager it was boring, and for a few unfortunate years in my early-to-mid twenties, it was the bane of my temperamental existence. It is surburban, it is quaint, it is strip malls, it is history. And while I’m allowed to make fun of it whenever I want, if I hear any of you talking shit about my hometown, I will fight you in the same parking lot the boys I loved once skateboarded in.

Which is why I’m the only person qualified to map it out for our newest additions, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin. Having just purchased property outside the city limits—and with Justin reportedly wanting to make Canada his homebase—my precious son and his soon-to-be bride are in need of a guide to Cambridge that’s honest, accurate and will ensure that we run into each other frequently. And while I guess the rest of you can follow it too, I also couldn’t care less. This is for J-Biebs, Ms. Baldwin, and a future in which I hang out with them regularly. See you soon, precious fam.

Langdon Hall

Finished in 1902, the restaurant/spa/hotel was formerly a country home but is currently the closest I will ever get to living in Downton Abbey. Naturally, the food is unparalleled, the high tea is tremendous, and the photo ops are spectacular. But most importantly, Drake shot album art for Views on the driveway a few years ago, which brings us all nearer to the dream of Aubrey, Justin and myself bonding over scones and clotted cream. That, or seeing ghosts of the former owners.

I’ll take either.

Downtown Galt

A fact I like to scream into the faces of strangers is that The Handmaid’s Tale films in a part of Cambridge called downtown Galt. (Specifically, the scenes in which Offred and friends walk by the river.) This typically earns a half-hearted, “Wow, really?” while I nod smugly, as if I scouted the location myself. I did not. But should Justin and Hailey want to look at old buildings and churches that back onto the Grand River, this is where they can do so. Provided they invite me.

LA Frank’s

And since we’re in Galt, we might as well take advantage of LA Frank’s—the seasonal hotdog/hamburger/ice cream stand that I personally can’t order anything from (I have the digestive system of a small infant), but will happily stand awkwardly near as my friends consume food like normal adults. A right of passage. A fast way to make me feel sad and jealous.

iBowl.ca

Years ago, Cambridge was a city brimming with bowling alleys. (There were three. Maybe four.) Today—and until the construction of the bowling alley/arcade/restaurant in the mall is finished—there is one. And while I don’t know the origin story of this Galt-based mecca’s name, I do know that when I was 21, I wasn’t paying attention on my way out and fell down the stairs, spraining my wrist as my friends stifled laughter. I also learned that black lighting makes one’s tears glow. Biebs and Baldwin deserve to see this for themselves.

The Cambridge Centre

Behold! The mall I worked at from 2005-2009. Is it worth going without being able to see me fold jeans at American Eagle? No. But maybe Hailey likes Marshall’s. Perhaps Baby Biebs adores Bootlegger. And if all else fails, there’s still a movie theatre inside. So let’s just meet up after the 7:10 screening of Little Italy, and take it from there.

Value Village

Thrifting in Cambridge (and the Waterloo region) is better than in any other region and in any other city. Last week, I paid $49 for seven pieces that will make me look exactly like Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. (Exactly. I will look exactly like her.) And why wouldn’t two kids saving for a big wedding want to wade into the waters of previously owned and loved clothing? Why wouldn’t Justin want to pick up a few new Hawaiian shirts? Why wouldn’t he want me to push him around in a cart like the caring mother I am? Why wouldn’t he look up at me from between ’90s-era sweaters and tell me how proud he was to be my son?

Rising Dough Bakery

Of course, after burning through calories trying on pleated pants, we could and would descend on the Scottish bakery in Preston (another area of Cambridge—please don’t worry about it, unless you grew up here, you won’t care and it doesn’t matter) where the pasties and pastries are equal parts prevalent and delicious. Once, I bought a week’s worth of cookies and and ate them in about two days. I felt deathly ill, but it was worth it. And guess what: I’ll probably do it again.

Fashion History Museum

And then there’s Hespeler. (Okay, fine. Here’s the history: Cambridge consists of three parts that used to be former towns. They amalgamated in the 1970s, but some of us grew up in families who do not acknowledge said amalgamation. Thus, Hespeler, to me and my family, is superior in every way.) Located in the old post office, the Fashion History Museum is, in a word, the fucking bomb. The two owners have a collection that spans centuries, continents and historical narratives, and the exhibits are well thought-out and interesting. It’s also not-for-profit, so only good things can come from visiting. Which is why Hailey and Justin should go. Also, because I’m specifically ordering them too.

Ernie’s Roadhouse

This is the restaurant I grew up eating chicken wings at. It’s also older than time. I’d be ashamed to find out Biebs and Balds didn’t go. I’d also be ashamed if they didn’t order me chicken wings.

The Hespeler Arena

No, not the actual arena. (I mean, sure: hockey and figure skating happens there, but also welcome to southern Ontario where there are no less than 46 arenas per person per city.) Instead, let’s focus on the parking lot. And, since we’re talking about paved spaces ideal for parking, standing, and talking shit, let us also branch out to include the McDonald’s and Food Basics plaza parking lot, where much of my young life was shaped by standing, by sitting, by drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade, by smoking Players cigarettes, by watching skateboarders.

Frankly, you will never “experience” Cambridge until you experience it in a parking lot. Which morphs this guide into a straight-up challenge: when Justin and Hailey find their own lot to loiter in, Cambridge will finally be home.

Anne T. Donahue is a writer, podcaster and person on the internet. Her memoir, Nobody Cares, comes out on September 18.

More from Anne T. Donahue: What Buck-a-Beer Feels Like to an Alcoholic How I Get Shit Done Working from Home How to Use Professional Jealousy to Figure Out What You *Really* Want #HowIMadeIt: How Anne T. Donahue Became a Writer Even Unf-ckwithable Women Need Help Sometimes

  The post A Comprehensive Guide to Cambridge, Ont. (a.k.a. Justin & Hailey’s New Home) appeared first on Flare.

A Comprehensive Guide to Cambridge, Ont. (a.k.a. Justin & Hailey’s New Home) published first on https://wholesalescarvescity.tumblr.com/

[safyresky]

1, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 23 for the three songs ask!

OOOWWWWEEE THIS IS A NICE BIG AMOUNT LET’S DO THIS

(I’ll be using the good ol spotify for this first one :D)

(Also, I uh,,, cheated at some and put a bonus 4th bc I couldn’t decide eheheh whoops)

1. three songs that come up when you put your phone on shuffle

Lindsey Stirling-Take FlightOwl City-Super HoneymoonOwl City-Fireflys

6. three songs you wish you could erase from history (because they’re terrible)

Kiesza-Hideaway: Okay, like, the parts that aren’t OO AAA OOO AAA AAAA are gr8 but I can’t like the song because I cannot STAND the oo aa aaa oo part it bugs me THAT MUCH. it hurts my ears when I drive anyway 

Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe: This one is pretty self explanatory I think but if ur wondering why it’s. Ugh. I just hate it, it gets stuck in my hand and I can’t stand biebs so like. URGH. I refuse to even link it bc it will get stuck in my head and i h a t e it

Push and Pull by July Talk: it was way too overplayed and also what exactly does fighting over dignity in the parking lot of the lcbo even mean 

9. three songs that get you in the Christmas Mood

(breathes in deeply) boOOOIIIII!!!!!!! tHIS IS A HARD ONE!!! But I got it narrowed down to 3 B)

Owl City-Peppermint WinterCarly Rae Jepsen-MittensTransSiberian Orchestra-Christmas Eve/Sarajevo

BONUS: Aly and AJ-Greatest Time of Year

10. three favourite Halloween/spooky songs

Monster MashGhostbusters Theme (the WALK THE MOON version is a jam. Or bop. Both? Both. Both is good)This is Halloween (I like the P!atD one but that’s cuz Brendan Urie’s voice makes me feel things, i love his voice. Also the intro is v creepy, the music box bit gives me chills heck)

13. three songs you want at your funeral

MCR-Dead (yes for the pun, not necessarily for the lyrics)P!atD-This is Gospel (if you love me let me gOOOOOOOO as I’m lowered into my grave)Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars-Uptown Funk (for the reception bc it’s my fucking jAM celebrate my life by shouting I’M TOO HOT! (HOT DAMN) PLEASE!)

15. three songs you want to dance with your love to

Phil Collins-You’ll Be In My HeartRob Thompson-Little WondersP!atD-There’s A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought Of It Yet

18. three songs that remind you of your best friend(s) (I added the s I, uh, cheated,,,and did,,,multiple)

Victorious-P!atDOwl City-Hey AnnaFall Out Boy-My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)

(whenever FOB goes on literally ALL my closet friends go BE CAREFUL MAKING WISHES IN THE (hit closets object to self twice v hard) DARK, DARK so I went with that one heh

Also the owl city one isn’t because of the lyrics it’s just because every time i tell  my sister “I’m talking to Ana” she immediately goes HEY ANNA, HE’S JUST A BOY YOU WON’T UNDERSTAND so now I can’t think of Ana whenever I hear that song. it’s. it’s not even one of my fave Owl City songs like. What have u done, sister of mine)

23. three songs that never fail to get you pumped up

Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer-He’s a Pirate (I know it’s a 14 minute version but ah, I can listen to it over and over again I love it so m u ch)WALK THE MOON-Work This BodyWhere No One Goes-Jónsiand John Powell

[brookegerhart]

Lions & Bears

I love when God brings those “Aha” moments where the stories in the Bible suddenly become so relatable and powerful. When we realize that these “stories and ideas” were actually real people that felt and experienced countless undocumented details and emotions within every historical example. The moments when we put skin and bone to a simple sentence in the Bible that represented years of intricate and complicated interactions.

I had one of those moments the other day while thinking about the story of David. Most people know him as the musician shepherd boy that famously defeated the giant-sized, make-an-entire-army-wet-their-chainmail, soldier named Goliath.

Here’s how it went down... Essentially it was Justin Bieber vs. “The Rock”. Two armies, the Israelites and the Philistines, were supposed to send their best fighter out to settle the matter with less blood. The problem was, NONE of the Israelites wanted to smell what The Rock was cookin’...because this guy was massive. In strolls Justin, delivering lunch to the real soldiers, when he realizes they’re all paralyzed in fear. The confident Biebs called the rest of the army a bunch of babies, then grabbed his slingshot and strutted out on the battlefield while humming “Despacito”. With one sniper sling between the eyes, Dwayne fell to the ground with a rock wedged in his skull. Both armies stood with their jaws on the floor. Then a deep voice yelled out from the crowd, “Finnnish himmm!” So the slender little guy walks up to the invincible battle machine and lobs his head off. I don’t care who you are...that’s badass.

Sounds like a cool movie, but not very realistic...how can I possibly apply that to my life? As I was reading the details leading up to this event, one quick passage (that could easily be missed) changed everything for me.

34 But David persisted. “I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,” he said. “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, 35 I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth. If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. 36 I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine, too, for he has defied the armies of the living God! - 1 Samuel 17:34-36 (NLT)

Wait a minute...what? When a LION or a BEAR comes to steal a lamb from the flock, this kid goes after it, grabs it by the jaw and clubs it to death?? Are you freaking kidding me? He didn’t have a high powered rifle...not even a sword? That’s insane!!

Yet even that experience wasn’t the result of just one moment, perfectly blended with luck and bravery. I couldn’t help but think of those moments that David experienced leading up to the lion victories...put myself in his shoes. Imagine the first time he heard a startling noise and looked up to see a LION lunging at his sheep. Absolutely terror. His heart racing. “What if that thing sees me?? I can’t believe this is happening! Oh Lord, keep me safe! Am I going to die today? Ok, breathe. What if it kills the whole flock? If I somehow survive, am I going to lose my job and all respect? Oh God, what do I do! Help!!”

How many times did he think God had abandoned him and his life would be over? How many times was he paralyzed with fear during an attack? How many sheep were stolen before he chose to be brave and try fighting back? How many deep bite and scratch wounds did he take along the way? How many weeks of healing? How many swings of that club? How many stones did he fire with his sling shot to get THAT good? How many times did he miss?

Years of work. Years of fear. Countless mistakes. Scars and pain. Doubt and uncertainty. Belittling comments and disrespect.

I think I’m starting to understand what it really took for David to defeat a giant and become a king...so much more than a few impressive sentences.

Pain. Perseverance. Grit. Discipline. Bravery. Humility. Trust. Patience.

He faced the same emotions I have...he battled the everyday struggles and the overwhelming attacks, yet God used him to accomplish history-changing things. He became a king. He’s remembered and described as “a man after God’s heart”. It’s so fascinating and inspiring to me.

So what can I learn? Whether we’re “tending the flock” in our mundane jobs or facing giants on behalf of an entire nation, character matters most. We will experience attacks and pain at every stage, but what we do in those moments will determine the impact of our lives. What we choose to do every day in the pastures will prepare us for the battlefield.

Maybe you feel like what you’re doing is boring and doesn’t matter...pick up a slingshot and start practicing. This could be a season where God wants to train you for the next step. Know you’re not alone and your character is never wasted.

Or maybe what you’re going through right now feels like the claws of a lion or the teeth of a bear. Lean into God and fight through the fear...you will make it out the other side! You’ll see that it was all training for even bigger victories in the future. Keep fighting.

And when the time comes, you’ll be standing over a headless Goliath in victory...and everyone will see that God can use a shepherd boy like you to bring a nation to its knees.

[mentorup]

2017 MentorUp | Session #4

Session Outline | 60 minutes

Introduction | 2 minutes

Mentee’s Perspective | 4 minutes

News | 8 minutes

Work | 8 minutes

Our Work | 8 minutes

Trend & Hot Topic | 10 minutes

Dialogue | 10 minutes

Flex-Time | 10 minutes

Introduction | 2 minutes

Brilliant colleagues! It’s hard to believe that we’re already in the last month of Q2 with our first 3x3 check-ins in the rearview mirror. Not only that, but this session will complete our first semester of MentorUp 2017! Where is this year going?!

Rather than sitting bewildered by the year being half over, let’s take a moment to a) take a deep breath (you most likely deserve one) b) think about what’s been keeping you curious or inspired lately and c) take a quick inventory to ensure your work goals are being brought to life (that’s where keeping that 3x3 updated comes in handy!).

Now, this MentorUp is no normal MentorUp but instead it’s an...

Why exactly are we doing this? Well, simply put, Influencer Marketing is at the point where we need to be educated and well versed at an agency wide level. This thing called Influencer; it’s huge and only going to get bigger.

Now I’ll back the big statements up. Factors such as the increased use of ad blocking software “have led to the increasing popularity of native advertising and sponsored content” not to mention that “92% of people trust strangers more than brands.” With Influencer Marketing growing faster than digital ads and 84% of top markets launching at least one campaign in the next 12 months… this is something we can’t just blink at anymore, but instead need to learn from, understand fully, and then with full knowledge … strategize.

Our Sr. Director of Influencer Marketing, Lisa Singelyn, captured the reasoning behind Influencer’s expansion in recent years by stating, “The massive growth of Influencer Marketing in the past few years is predicated on one basic desire – trust. Trust is trending. Consumers today are questioning what’s real and what’s not, and that includes brands’ traditional advertising tactics. Millennials place their trust in peers and those they respect, and by partnering with complementary influencers — those who have the same world view we do — brands build meaningful relationships with consumers. Simply put, influencers help marketers create authentic and trustworthy stories and humanize a brand."

No matter what clients you’re working with or what type of business you’re working on, this industry trend and TMA capability deserves your full attention.

Mentee’s Perspective | 4 minutes

Before you begin your session, don’t forget to gain the valuable perspective of your mentee(s). Their mindset and perspective should be a guiding force in how you present this material.

For some starter questions on how to do this… here are a few.

1. What is going on with their clients and their clients’ business?

2. What are their focuses right now?

3. What are your initial thoughts on Influencer?

4. Has your client ever done an Influencer program?

5. Where is the Influencer opportunity with your client?

With their perspective in mind, let’s now embark on this month’s session!

News | 8 minutes

1) Instagram Stories Is Now Bigger than Snapchat Stories

Ephemeral stories… that’s Snapchat’s thing right? Well, not anymore. They may have started it back in 2013, but Facebook-owned app Instagram launched their own story function last August and in under a year have managed to surpass Snapchat in daily active users. How many exactly? Instagram (as of mid-April) has 200 million active daily users which easily surpasses Snapchat’s 161 million.

When Instagram launched this feature last year, the big question was… “will people actually use it?!” Well, the answer is a big YES. As an article citing this news put it, Facebook’s new motto seems to be “move last and take things.” The stories function is not the only thing they’ve copied, it seems that with every software update, Instagram feels and looks more and more like Snapchat.

How does this update affect Influencer Marketing? Simple. With new updates (like Instagram Stories) coming to the platform every couple of weeks, the amount of growth Instagram has seen is huge, making Instagram “one of the most far-reaching and highly engaged social media networks in existence today. It’s also become one of the largest pieces of the nascent influencer marketing industry.”

The below visual does a great job of showing the growth of the Instagram Influencer market size. What’s even more interesting is the brand sponsored Influencer growth. From last year to this year, there’s 49% (projected) growth (in just one year!).

How do you see brands that you work with utilizing the power of Instagram influencers? How do you think you can stand out amidst the noise inside Instagram?

Further… how many influencers do you follow on Instagram? Are you on Instagram?

To learn about Influencer Marketing… a great way to start is by consuming a bit of their content and search for things like #ad or #sponsored. Walk your mentee through it on your Instagram if they’re interested!

Instagram Bonus: For those curious about Instagram Pods… here’s the lowdown!

2) FTC Crackdowns

Now with all this #sponsored content comes a whole lot of legal. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) recently sent letters to over 90 Instagram influencers and brands “reminding them that relationships to brands must be clearly disclosed when promoting or endorsing products on their social accounts.”

With Instagram influencers often trying to downplay a sponsorship, the FTC is strongly encouraging influencers to use “easily noticeable” wording so that the brand connection is clear to consumers. They have even gone as far as to ask that influencers use the #ad or #sponsored part of their post at the top of the post so that long posts don’t inhibit consumers from missing that it is in fact an ad.

With hearing all this warning talk, has there been a brand that’s gotten in trouble? Of course… plenty! Click here to see a few.  One that we will talk about directly is Lord & Taylor. They didn’t “disclose to consumers that Instagram posts and a magazine article were paid promotions.” To read more about the penalties from the FTC, click here.

Our influencer team watches FTC changes and is on top of it in regards to the rules because with this new frontier, the rules are ever changing.

Have you ever read a post and then realized it’s advertising? Do you think the FTC’s rules affect influencer’s ability to appear genuine?

What’s your initial reaction to this? Be honest… have you ever been annoyed? 

Influencer Successes & Fails | 8 minutes

Let’s look at some work! Instead of just celebrating the great ones… we’ll look at both sides of the coin.  

Success #1:

Axe Tapped 30+ Influencer for “InstaGroom” Campaign

Axe found from various insights that men are often hesitant to use product in their hair. They’re “apprehensive” and “stall out over what sort of look to adopt in the first place.” Those quotes are from Instagram influencer, Rudy Mancuso, who has over 5 million followers and is even friends with the Biebs. What is he well known for? Having epic hair.

Axe partnered with Mancuso, as well as 29 other “style-conscious and influential dudes,” to create “Instagroom.” What is this (besides a really great play on words)? “Instagroom” is a video series to help men navigate the world of hairstyling. Unilever’s Haircare VP, Piyush Jain said, “This is the first time male influencers from all different walks of life are coming together to inspire guys to start styling.”

The influencers were given quite a bit of freedom to develop whatever kind of content they wished. According to Jain, “their Instagrams were [conceived], directed and produced entirely on their own,” he said. “Each creator authentically and comically shared [his] own easy, daily styling routines—and the confidence that comes from it—to encourage their millions of fans to style every day.” 

Overall the videos for all 30 influencers were very successful and have had hundreds of thousands of views.

What do you like about this campaign? What can we learn from it?

Success #2:

Stella Artois’ Oscars Campaign

We’ll just say right up front that this campaign had over 9 million impressions. #wow Now how did they do this?

Stella decided to create their Oscars strategy by making a marketing cocktail with “influencer marketing, cause marketing, and a brand partnership.” With one celebrity and six influencers, this campaign was pure influencer magic.

To raise awareness for their “Buy A Lady A Drink” program, Stella created a limited edition chalice where purchasing one for $13 will provide 5 years of clean water to someone. To promote the chalices and their cause, Stella partnered with Olivia Culpo and Marchesa Fashion as well as other female fashion influencers for a variety of approaches. The first is that the dress that Olivia Culpo wore to the Oscars was “designed by Marchesa, featured beads made from Stella Artois chalices.” Both Culpo and Marchesa shared the dress and photos with the chalices “reaching 1.6 million followers each.” Secondly, Stella used other female fashion influencers to promote the chalices with sponsored posts.

What were the results?

· In just one week, the hashtag #1Chalice5Years generated nearly 200 pieces of content (posted by both influencers & users), and over 24,000 likes and comments

· Approximately 9,000,000 impressions on 20 sponsored posts

· Spike in search popularity for “Stella Artois” on the night of the Oscars, February 26th, and in the weeks leading up to it (Google Trends) 

[from Mediakix]

By capitalizing on a major event like the Oscars, partnering with cause marketing, and using well-chosen influencers, Stella was able to crush their goals of driving sales, building brand awareness, and increase the engagement and raise support of their cause for water.org through #1Chalice5Years.

What do you like about this campaign? What can we learn from it?  

Struggle #1: 

Emily Henderson with Airwick

This clearly sponsored Airwick post by style blogger Emily Henderson went south quickly when there were some big misses in the post. 

When she first posted, this post wasn’t disclosed and people jumped on her for it. She later added in the #ad after getting called out in the comments (check them out!). Due to even more negative feedback, she took out any mention of AirWick from the caption and then she added in mention of #AirWick scented oils” per a lot of feedback. With the inauthentic tone in the post, her followers hated it. Consumers are smart and aren’t easily deceived. When an influencer knows that and speaks to their consumers respectfully and authentically, respect from the consumers will follow. Being upfront with consumers is important, especially in light of what was discussed above with the FTC’s more strict regulations.

What can we learn from this fail? What would you have done differently?

There’s a whole lot of struggle Influencer work there, and the common theme between them all is that what’s shared is tone-deaf and the disclosure isn’t well done or done at all. The result? Irritated followers who loose trust and comment calling out the influencer. 

Have you ever seen a struggle Influencer post before? Have you even gone as far as calling them out? 

What do you think we can do to avoid work like this? 

Our Work | 8 minutes

We’ve talked about great work and some ones to learn from, but what about what we’re doing? Here are two recent examples of branded influencer campaigns that we did!

1) Chili’s (by CAR Digital)

Haley Oefinger who worked directly on this campaign perfectly captures our approach here.

“We kicked off the first two quarters of 2017 with an ongoing multi-post influencer campaign. To generate reach and awareness of Chili’s as part of a “fun and hip” lifestyle, we partnered with 8 hand-selected Instagram influencers to spread this messaging through a series of authentic lifestyle shots, which were also repurposed as evergreen content on Chili’s Instagram channel. Each influencer took a different creative approach that was authentic to their brand and resonated with their audience. Influencers know their audience best, and enabling them with creative control to tell the brand story through their own eyes and voice produced high-quality and engaging content.”

This campaign was so successful that Chili’s hired us for 2 more rounds of influencer! 

Interested in seeing more of these great posts? Explore below!

Post #3

Post #4

Post #5

2)    Herbal Essence (by Entertainment)

Our very own Jordan Lee summarizes the campaign beautifully in the below statement.

“We signed 10 influencers in celebration of Herbal Essence’s re-launch, known as the “Herbal Squad.” This was a priority for the brand as it was the biggest launch since their original launch in the ‘70s. Each influencer created editorial style content that captured the “let life in” thematic that ranged from adventure videos to blog posts and even to in-store events. The key to success was having a range of influencers who were diverse in content focus, lifestyle and hair type to effectively talk about the new range.”

What can we learn from our work featured here? What questions do you have? 

Perfect timing for those questions... hopefully Chris Gannett in our next section can answer those for you! Read on people! :) 

Trend/Hot Topic | 10 minutes

This month’s Trend/Hot Topic segment is BOTH a trend and hot topic! Since Influencer Marketing is such a large trend in our industry in that it’s changing the attitude and expectation of how our consumers wish to hear from brands and because of that a hot topic with our clients and within TMA, we’ll be covering this topic from both perspectives.

Chris Gannett, our Influencer capability lead, is going to give us a look at the trend of Influencer Marketing and a peak into what’s going on with influencer at TMA.

A treasured member of CAR Digital, Chris Gannett has a unique variety of experience that he’s brought to TMA ranging from investment banking and tech start-ups to media and reality TV. He’s leading our Influencer capability with tenacity and a thoughtful approach as we navigate the ever-changing waters of Influencer Marketing for our clients.

Here is his informative and strategic perspective and approach on Influencer!

by Chris Gannett ->

We know you know what “Influencer marketing” is, and that it’s an increasingly important element in today’s modern marketing mix.

Influencer Marketing is about beloved personalities and thought leaders who are active on today's social platforms sharing with their fans and followers what they love and why… and sometimes when/where/how to buy.

It’s a HUGE industry and a huge opportunity. Today's influencers are some of the most valuable and viable media channels, and brands know it – and they’re placing more and more budget against Influencer initiatives every quarter, which is creating a total global market opportunity for the category that exceeds $1.6 Billion by our calculations.

And although there is rapid evolution occurring daily with much speculation around whether a “bubble” is brewing in the Influencer Marketing industry, one thing is certain: The industry will continue to grow and is here to stay.

A shorthand to keep in mind, is that these players run a spectrum from providing less to more ownership over influencer relationships and from less to more automation and accountability.

Strategic tradeoffs of each:

The industry understands how effective and pervasive Influencer Marketing has become.

For instance:

 Influencer Marketing is not only the fastest-growing consumer acquisition channel - beating organic search, paid search and email marketing - but…

84% of top marketers will launch at least one campaign in the next 12 months

84% of CPG, Food & Beverage, Media, and Retail marketers and their agencies used Influencer Marketing

94% of those who used it found it effective

47% of online consumers use ad blockers

70% of consumers rely on online reviews and the influence of social figures and friends before making a purchase

There’s a case for Influencer Marketing at every turn!

More relatable 70% of teen YouTube subscribers say they relate to YouTubers more than to traditional celebrities

Authentic Consumers can't stand ads. 47% of online consumers use ad blockers

Trustworthy

People make more purchasing decisions based on the influence of social figures and friends

Influential

When a social media personality we follow wears something, drinks something, shows us something, we pay attention. Attention.

We believe that Influencers of all shapes and sizes can have a major impact, providing the opportunity to micro-target consumers and drive engagement more precisely. With influencers now reaching so many diverse audiences, there’s more value to create than ever before.

But remember: disclosure, disclosure, disclosure! The Federal Trade Commission is watching… and it maintains that many brands and influencers are not doing enough to disclose paid partnerships in social media. Disclose or pay the price. 

TMA does amazing – and legal – influencer work. We can help.

Did you know?

Think of TMA Influence as an expert boutique offering, underpinned by the resources of one of the planet’s most effective consumer engagement agencies. Our team is dedicated to Influencer Marketing, and our principles are recognized thought-leaders and advocates among the influencer elite and community at large. Our clients pay us to be “coolhunters” and that’s just what the team is. We live and breathe this stuff…uncovering the latest in design, tech, style, travel, art and culture. Surfacing undiscovered trends, discussing who’s emerging and confirming who’s over, long before the general market has a clue. SO far, we’ve proven to be pretty good at it.

And we’re always looking out beyond the horizon for what’s next. We hold a few things to be true of the path forward:

This industry is changing and evolving rapidly. Brands that value the authentic human connection that influencer marketing offers will be a key part of the evolution of this industry, and enjoy the spoils.

More variables impact campaign success than ever, such as FTC regulations, influencer agreements and pricing. That’s why it’s crucial to work with creators and agencies that understand this market inside and out.

The future of influencer marketing isn’t just about “the biggest brands” working with “the biggest influencers,” but about brands establishing genuine partnerships with influencers who engage and inspire action.

Look who agrees! Many AOR clients already rely on TMA to lead this important strategy on their behalf, and new business is coming trough the door on a weekly basis.

Here’s how it works:

Unlike claims from our competition, TMA is not “reimagining influencer marketing.” We’re not transforming life as we know it, and we prefer to avoid jargon and bombastic claims.Simply put, over the past 30 years we’ve just become very good at this.

Our processes and practices power our competitive advantage:

Agnostic approach to tech, talent and social platform to deliver the most effective and unbiased campaigns

Industry insight & relationships,

Scale, stability (and goodwill among Influencer community), and

Suite of best-in-class tools and platforms to help clients make better decisions, design and implement more effective Influencer Marketing campaigns, and generate desired returns.

All our work happens under one roof with our team of experts: performance marketers, cultural anthropologists, content specialists, and data analysts. We stay close to the action so we can prototype, iterate, roll-out and optimize faster and more effectively.

We don’t deal in platitudes. We deal in real-world marketing challenges and develop strategic yet practical, creative yet achievable, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done solutions that solve our clients’ most urgent goals.

“Our goal is for TMA to ‘OWN’ Influence – its inspiration, its creation, its leverage and its distribution – not just “Influencer Marketing.” Our approach gives us permission to stay ahead of this rapidly evolving industry. We’ve been doing just that for the last 30 years, since Davie Brown was founded and began pioneering celebrity seeding and product placement for Pepsi. We know what is considered “Influencer Marketing” today will look very different in a few short years; we will continue to experiment and push its boundaries forward.”

Conclusion

Pat yourself on the back because you’ve finished session #4! We’re halfway through the year! Stay curious and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to these folks for... 

Questions related to our Influencer capability/offering:

Chris Gannett @ cgannett@themarketingarm.com 

Questions about an Influencer opportunity or working with the Influencer team: 

Chris Bristol @ cbristol@themarketingarm.com

Questions related to TMA Labs: 

Claire Murray @ cdelachapelle@themarketingarm.com

Reminder! 

MentorUp takes July off for a much needed bit of summer fun, so you won’t be hearing from us until August!

Thanks!

... Especially to the Influencer team for working alongside the MentorUp team to create this session! #ad #sponsored 

[trendingnewsb]

The Weird Origin Story of the Viral, Dangerous Hoverboard

A few weeks ago, I bought a new toy. $595 on Amazon, Prime shipping, showed up 36 hours after I clicked buy. It weighs 22 pounds, and, after about an hour of practice, I had it going top speed, about 6 mph. (It feels faster than it sounds.) I’ve fallen off it a million times, often after it does this weird seizure-crash thing that I cant figure out how to stop or predict.

My new toy is called a Two Wheels Smart Self Balancing Scooters Drifting Board Electric (blue), and it’s kind of like a Segway—but with no handlebars. It’s not a skateboard, but it’s kind of like a sideways skateboard? It’s like a scooter, ish? The world has mostly decided to call it a hoverboard. I don’t know what to call it.

Whatever it is, I love it. And it’s all Justin Bieber’s fault. It just looked so fun in his Instagrams.

All it took was one Instagram of Kendall Jenner on the board for the PhunkeeDuck to blow up.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen it before. It’s sort of a phenomenon. Here is a (very) partial list of celebrities who have tweeted, Instagrammed, or YouTubed themselves riding one in the last couple of months: The Biebs himself, Chris Brown (who is awesome at it), Nick Jonas, Zedd, Soulja Boy, Kendall Jenner, JR Smith, Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, Nina Agdal, David Ortiz, Karim Benzema, and Skrillex. It’s been on the Tonight Show, and showed up at the NBA Finals.

Every time anyone uploads a video or picture of this scooter, the commenters all want to know two things: What’s that called, and where can I buy it?

That’s where it gets weird.

What’s in a name?

In late May, in front of a Fleet Week audience of military members, Jamie Foxx rolled onto the Tonight Show stage on a scooter. Once he figured out how to get off it, Foxx explained to Jimmy Fallon, “It’s, uh, a PhunkeeDuck,” as he rolled the board toward himself to make sure he had the name right. Fallon got on it, and did what everyone does their first time: wobbled jelly-legged for a minute, and then slowly inched around before getting comfortable.

That whole scene really annoys IO Hawk’s Curtis Hedges. Because, he says, that scooter was not a PhunkeeDuck. It was an IO Hawk, his companys product. Hedges tells me to look closely at the wheels, where there’s clearly an “IO” logo in the center. He’s laughing, too, as if he can hardly comprehend the idea that PhunkeeDuck isn’t stealing. And he’s right: PhunkeeDucks look just like IO Hawks, right down to the IO logos on their boards and wheels. That, Hedges says, is because they’re exactly the same thing. “Put a sticker on it, call it a totally different name, and start selling.”

That’s exactly true, actually. The PhunkeeDuck guys don’t even deny it. But they’re quick to dispute the idea that theyre rebranding IO Hawk’s board. “The owner of IO Hawk went around telling everyone he was the inventor of this product,” PhunkeeDuck co-founder Matthew Waxman says, referring to IO Hawk CEO John Soibatian.“That’s just completely false.”

PhunkeeDuck and IO Hawk are the two biggest players in this nascent scooter market, but there are many others. There’s Oxboard, Cyboard, Scoot, Future Foot, Monorover, Airboard, Freego, Esway, Airwheel, iEZWay, Overoad, and a hundred names more along the lines of Two Wheels Smart Self Balancing Scooters Drifting Board Electric (blue).

The real story doesn’t begin with IO Hawk or PhunkeeDuck. It begins, as just about any modern technology story does, in China.

Depending on which one you buy, you’ll pay anywhere from $600 to $1,800 for a scooter. But make no mistake: They’re all the same. The designs may vary slightly—sometimes the faux hubcaps are shaped in Mercedes-like triangles, sometimes there are five or six spokes—but like painting tiger stripes on your kitty cat, nobodys getting fooled here.

The real story of the scooter doesn’t begin with IO Hawk or PhunkeeDuck. It begins, as just about any modern technology story does, in China.

Made in China

Before we go any further, I need to admit that I don’t know, positively, where the scooter comes from. The Chinese manufacturing industry moves so quickly and with so little documentation that it’s basically impossible to fact-check any company’s cries of “first!”

But here’s what I think I know: Theres a company called Chic Robotics, which is also known as Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd, and I think it invented the scooter. (There’s a scooter called the Hovertrax that predates it slightly, but it’s not quite the same thing.) Chic’s logo—the horizontal line on top of an oval that just so happens to look like “IO” when rotated 90 degrees—is plastered all over most versions of the board. And Chic’s name keeps coming up when you talk to the people selling the thing.

The company was founded in 2013, born in connection with China’s Zhejiang University. It was created to make stuff, obviously, but also to champion IP protection in China, to improve patents and copyrights and and foster what the company calls “sustainable innovation.” It holds a series of patents related to the scooter, and has diligently (and apparently pointlessly) attempted to protect them.

Chic’s first scooter was called the Smart S1. It debuted in August of 2014, with a goofy commercial that almost certainly isn’t meant to be goofy. It shows a man walking down the hallway, laden with heavy books and a heavy heart, before finally being saved by the smooth ride of the Smart S1. It’s like a bizarro take on a heartwarming Coke commercial.

In the fall of 2014, Chic took the S1 to the Canton Fair, China’s largest trade show. This semi-annual extravaganza attracts more than 180,000 buyers from around the world, there to see tens of thousands of Chinese exporters hawk their wares.

In China, the reward for being first is still just being first to be copied.

Chic’s supply of scooters disappeared quicklyeverybody wanted one. Soon, people were riding them all over the gigantic convention center. The hordes of buyers and suppliers were all over the Smart S1. Distributors across the world noticed, and so did other factories in China. Before long Alibaba was littered with manufacturers offering the same board—often using the same images and promotional videos, their logos hastily Photoshopped over Chic’s.

If you’ve seen one…

This manufacturing virality, where as soon as something is created it is immediately everywhere, isn’t unique to two-wheeled self-balancing scooters. It’s how Chinese factories make and sell everything from iPhone chargers to televisions to headphones. Or e-cigarettes, another recent favorite Justin Bieber accessory: Just about every brand is the same thing with a different label. “All you have to do is make a phone call to one of the six manufacturers or so in China that are producing these e-cigarettes,” says James Monsees, CEO of e-cigaretteer Pax Labs, “and youd say how much? And oh, I want it to be an orange tip on the end and say Orange on the packaging. Its an hour-long conversation…and youre in the e-cig business.”

In many ways, that’s one of China’s greatest assets as an industrial country. From iPhones to Harry Potter to Starbucks to basically the whole country of Austria, China’s ability to take anything and build it faster, cheaper, and maybe even better, is without equal. But China has made clear that it doesn’t just want to copy Apple anymore—it wants the next Apple to be Chinese. That would require better patent protection, and better regulation from the government. “The political economic institutions and system in China make it so entrepreneurs cant make profit by developing novel innovation,” then-Georgia Tech professor Dan Breznitz told the New York Times in 2011. As it is, the reward for being first is still just being first to be copied.

Because the Chinese manufacturing industry is so centralized, anything new spreads like crazy through the supply chain. One manufacturer creates a product; another reverse-engineers it and makes it too. And that next company can make it cheaper and faster, because it has no R&D costs. In most cases, this endless game of product-telephone makes the product worse.

Jeff Wells, who sells a scooter he calls The Scoot, ticks off a number of corners he’s seen factories cut. “Weaker motors, not as reliable batteries, gyro boards, improper motherboard design,” Wells says. “There are a lot of areas where they can shortcut.” He laughs when I tell him about my board’s nasty tendency to randomly start shivering uncontrollably, before spinning completely out of control and shutting down.

The PhunkeeDuck costs $1,499.99, and there’s a waiting list to get one.

“You probably, right now, have five manufacturers in China that are beginning to make these,” Wells says. He’s been importing products from construction materials to medical equipment for years, and says the key is quality control. “Youve got to tour the facilities, youve got to see them manufacturing over the long-term basis.” Because when factories take shortcuts, the problems that crop up can be hard to see in an online listing, and they can be devastating.

That’s why the Scoot costs $695, when you can buy a seemingly identical device on Alibaba for $200 or so. (He thinks the magic price is somewhere in the $500 range, though, and says we’ll be there by Christmas.) The craziest part? Wells is actually leaving a lot of money on the table. IO Hawk, an LA-based company with a virtually identical story (and product), sells its scooter for $1,799.99 and still can’t keep up with demand. The PhunkeeDuck costs $1,499.99, and there’s a waiting list to get one.

Lets talk about the PhunkeeDuck. Its sold by PhunkeeTree, a New York-based company that began as two guys repackaging and re-branding phone cases and chargers for stores like Nordstrom and Forever 21. Last year, the guys went to the Hong Kong Electronics Show, to talk to their existing suppliers and to see what else they could add to their selection of chargers, cases, and cables. “While we were there we actually found this other factory that for the first time debuted this product to a select few,” Waxman says. “And we happened to be in the right place at the right time, so we started working with them to customize our own version of it.”

“Customize,” at least in this first version, consists of putting PhunkeeDuck stickers on the board and its box. Waxman and co-founder Maxx Yellin say they’re working with the factory—which they won’t name—to modify it in more significant ways, and says patents are a-pending. But they won’t share details yet.

Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

IO Hawk is a step ahead, having launched first—at CES in January—and already offering a few improvements in its model. Theres a metal frame, for one thing, which can take a heavier load. It can handle up to 400 pounds, though they don’t advertise it as quite that high. The company is also developing custom firmware for the device to make it run better. And, like PhunkeeDuck, IO Hawk claims it has big ideas it’s not ready to share for fear they’ll be stolen.

While they wait for patents to be granted and modifications to be implemented, though, this scooter just keeps popping up in unexpected places under new names. And with every celebrity appearance, every Instagram of Chris Brown dancing or Nick Jonas rolling into a pool, the pace picks up even more. After PhunkeeTree managed to get Kendall Jenner a board, thanks to a well-placed friend in LA, all it took was one Instagram of her being a little bit too confident on the board for the PhunkeeDuck to blow up. (That gram alone netted 1.1 million likes.) Celebs starting hitting them up left and right for samples, and as they shared their adventures on social media more people wanted to try them too. “We didnt have to ask them to post,” Waxman says. “They just loved it so much that Chris Brown was riding it around, and Wiz Khalifa was using it onstage.”

One of their most consistent askers was the rapper Soulja Boy, who finally got a PhunkeeDuck after months of pestering. A couple of days after his board arrived, a new device hit the market: The Soulja Board. $1,500, available in green and red. Its site, souljaboard.com, was put together so quickly there’s still dummy text on the About page.

“He starts posting, hey guys come buy my Souldja Board,” Waxman says. “And he’s standing on our PhunkeeDuck!”

Read more: http://ift.tt/2esRPIZ

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2oLFm7k via Viral News HQ

[thedesperatehousehusband]

Not Super on Time at this Point but Whatever

Sometimes I am not able to be as timely as I prefer with my posts. This is one of those times. I am still going to pontificate on the Super Bowl even though it was four days ago.

The outcome was appalling. I don’t care for the Patriots. I think Tom Brady is a douche. I think Gisele is the worst. I think Bill Belichick is smug and homeless looking all at the same time. That Julian Edelman is a stud though and even though Rob Gronkowski is dumb as a box of rocks, he’s really pretty funny. But more than that the Falcons should be deported. How do you blow a 25 point lead in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl? You will never, ever live that down.

The Schuyler Sisters singing America the Beautiful was a delight. Look, y’all, more than just white people can sing patriotic songs! It’s like there’s diversity in this country or something. In stark contrast, white as fuck Luke Bryan sang the National Anthem. It was fine. He’s not the world’s best singer but he’s not the worst. I’m certain he’s helping to make America great again.

Halftime, halftime, halftime. Bring it, Gaga. I will not hear it if you don’t agree with me. That was the BEST halftime show in years and years. Certainly since Prince, may he rest in peace. Like her or not, the woman is a talent. I’m sure there was a backing track somewhere but for the most part ol’girl was singing. I feel like you could tell by how she was breathing. The dancing was kick ass. There were gays and brown people and all sorts of funky folks. Loved it more than my luggage.

Let’s discuss commercials. In a nutshell, they sucked donkey balls. There is nothing worse than mediocrity when it comes to Super Bowl ads. Most were mediocre at best.

1.       Google Home…a little overwrought.

2.       Michelin…been there, done there.

3.       Avocados from Mexico…the secret society has nothing to do with avocados. I laughed. But not for the right reasons and not having anything to do with the product being advertised.

4.       Mobile Strike with Arnold…I’m not a gamer. Maybe it resonates with the target. Maybe Arnold’s ratings are down. Maybe he released his taxes when he was governor of California. Maybe I just don’t care.

5.       H&R Block with IBM Watson…get every last deduction. Get errrry one. This one was decent. In the grand scheme of things, I’d give it a B+.

6.       Skittles…Romance? Is that what it was? Terrible.

7.       Busch Beer…Buschhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh was very clever. But Busch? Really? How fucking white trash. At least AB didn’t rag on the craft beer industry. So there’s that. I’ll give it a B.

8.       American Petroleum Institute…Yep. I get it. Oil is a part of our lives and more that that, it makes things better. But ethanol is going to catch on. Bless my corns, I believe it to be true.

9.       GoDaddy…Rick Astley is trying to make a comeback. Good luck. D+.

10.   LifeWtr…I guess basically introducing a new product on the Super Bowl will generate awareness.  That’s a bazillion dollar gamble. Bully for you for taking a risk.

11.   Intel with Tom Brady…don’t care. D+.

12.   AirBnB…#weaccept. Sharp, sharp, sharp. Makes a nice statement but still feels on target and based on an insight. I’ll give it an A. One of the only A’s, in my opinion.

13.   World of Tanks…Fuck off.

14.   Yellow Tail…Another shitty booze brand. I get it though. Mass market products make sense. Honestly, Yellow Tail isn’t that bad. It was fun and was pretty cute. A-.

15.   Pirate’s Life…I’m not sure how you judge a movie trailer as a Super Bowl ad so I’ll just say I have NO interest whatsoever in this movie. Let the ship sink, Johnny. It’s over.

16.   Pistacchios…Who doesn’t love elephants? It was decent. Final grade = B-.

17.   Buick…with Cam Newton. I guess it was fine. I don’t really like him. He’s kind of a brat. Sack up and don’t whine, you big baby. One must be careful with celebrities. They can be polarizing.

18.   Logan…another trailer. I’m intrigued. I like that it’s rated R. Maybe that means a little full frontal from Hugh Jackman. I wouldn’t complain.

19.   T Mobile…with the Biebs, Gronk and TO. T Mobile is trying to make themselves happen. Who uses T Mobile? It reminds of the final few holdouts who wouldn’t give up their Blackberrys.  Meh,

20.   Honda CRV…chasing dreams. I get it. Potentially overly aspirational for a pretty affordable car but at least it had some sort of strategy behind it.

21.   Bai Bai…with JT and Christopher Walken. At this point all I can remember about Bai Bai is the celebrs in the spot. I think it’s food or beverage. Or maybe feminine hygiene or maybe toilet bowl cleaner. Fail.

22.   Transformers: Rise of the What the Fuck Ever…nope.

23.   Tide..with Terry Bradshaw. I didn’t hate it. That’s saying a lot.

24.   Sprint….I can’t read my notes so I don’t know what this ad was about. My bad.

25.   Coca Cola…tying it all back to food makes sense. I have very strong correlation between eating at McDonald’s and Coke. An A- for sure.

26.   The Handmaid’s Tale…should I know what this is? I’m slightly intrigued and slightly nonplussed.

27.   WeatherTech…America. Fuck yeah.

28.   Febreeze…something having to do with halftime. I don’t remember anymore. I should have written this sooner.

29.   Alfa Romeo…I guess we’re trying to make Alfa Romeo happen in the US. Good luck. I’m not sure now is the best time to introduce a foreign product in this country.

30.   Michelob Ultra…95 calories and you can still do Crossfit when you drink it. Feels like a streeeeeetch.

31.   TurboTax….Humpty Dumpty. A decent attempt at humor. But I have no interest in seeing this spot 100,000 times. Hopefully they don’t run it as part of their regular ad rotation.

32.   Lexus…nothing interesting or different or new. Could have been any Lexus add on during any other show. Make it special. Or at least try.

33.   Fate of the Furious…money talks and that’s why Charlize Theron is in this movie.

34.   Squarespace…with John Malkovich. I don’t really understand what one does on or with Squarespace. Maybe that means the ad wasn’t meant for me.

35.   Wendy’s…othrguys.com. Decent. But Wendy’s will never be chosen ahead of McDonald’s in my world.

36.   Xfinity…I don’t care.

37.   The Hammer Insurance…WTF?

38.   Kaplan University…Really?

39.   Arby’s…2 for $5. Seriously? An offer during the Super Bowl? That’s just dumb,

40.   Menard’s…save big money. This was probably a regional insertion that not everyone saw.

41.   Audi…equal pay for women. This has caused quite a stir because apparently Audi as a corporation has a pretty shitty track record with female pay and female representation at the senior exec level. Ooopsie poopsie. Don’t try to take a social stand when you can’t internally back it up.

42.   Mr. Clean…the man who cleans. In my opinion, this was the very best spot of the Super Bowl. A VERY clear insight. A VERY clear benefit. A VERY clear target. A+++++++++.

43.   Snickers…the live spot with Adam Driver was a gimmick. Gimmicks rarely work. This did not work.

44.   Anheuser Busch…immigration and August Busch coming to the states. I liked it. It told a nice story. Was ironically very topical and relevant even though AB shot the spot 3 months ago and couldn’t have possibly known about the whole travel ban insanity. But, of course, August Busch was white and that makes it OK…..no offense to AB. That’s a dig on errrrything else.

45.   T Mobile…with Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg. Can-o-bisque or cannabis? Get it? That’s almost clever. But what does it have to do with cell phones? Nothing. Fail.

46.   Persil..with Bill Nye the Science Guy. I guess we’re still trying to make Persil happen in the States. I’m not sure this spot is going to push them over the edge.

47.   Kia…with Melissa McCarthy. She’s comedy gold. This sorta kinda worked.

48.   Stranger Things 2…we just watched the pilot episode. Loved it. This is apropos of nothing.

49.   The Walking Dead…They need to bulk up the ratings since people fled like crazy given the completely bleak first half of this season. I concur that it was all a bit much but there ain’t so sunshine and rainbows in the zombie apocalypse.

50.   Fiji…earth’s finest water. I see what you did there. A solid B.

51.   Baywatch…apart from Zac Efron’s body this movie just looks terrible.

52.   Alfa Romeo…see number 29.

53.   T Mobile…with 50 Shades of Grey or Darker or Whatever. Make it stop!

54.   Wix.com…with Jason Statham and Gal Gadot. I do not know what one does with or on Wix.com.

55.   Turkish Airlines…moving free. Not bad and by this point, I’m pretty much over the whole thing so anything that even makes sense is going to be viewed favorably.

56.   Alexa…with My Girl. Not horrendous. That’s positive when considering the amount of dreck.

57.   T Mobile..data limits. I literally can’t even with T Mobile.

58.   Nintendo Switch…I don’t care about video games but this looked relatively cool.

59.   Spuds McKenzie…Bring that dead dog back to life, Bud Light. Nothing better than a recycled icon and the ghost of a deceased pit bull.

60.   Mercedes…I don’t really remember anything about this spot except that it featured Patty the Daytime Hooker who was a character on My Name is Earl. I love that actress. She is simply the best actress working in Hollywood in her ability to play white trash.

61.   Alfa Romeo…the third time is the charm. Except it’s not. No more. See number 29 and 52.

62.   Sprite…with Lebron James. Much as I love Lebron James, I am nearly positive this was not a new spot and the Coca Cola Company can pony up for a new spot for the Super Bowl. That’s cheap.

63.   KFC…something having to do with gold. Meh.

64.   Tide…another go. That’s a lot of Tide for one Super Bowl.

And that’s that. Super Bowl LI is in the books and we have a few months without football. But that’s OK because March Madness is juuuuuuuust about to knock on my door. That shit is my jam.

[virginiamurrayblog]

A Comprehensive Guide to Cambridge, Ont. (a.k.a. Justin & Hailey’s New Home)

(Photos: Splash, iStock)

I grew up (and currently live) in Cambridge, Ont. As a child it was fine, as a teenager it was boring, and for a few unfortunate years in my early-to-mid twenties, it was the bane of my temperamental existence. It is surburban, it is quaint, it is strip malls, it is history. And while I’m allowed to make fun of it whenever I want, if I hear any of you talking shit about my hometown, I will fight you in the same parking lot the boys I loved once skateboarded in.

Which is why I’m the only person qualified to map it out for our newest additions, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin. Having just purchased property outside the city limits—and with Justin reportedly wanting to make Canada his homebase—my precious son and his soon-to-be bride are in need of a guide to Cambridge that’s honest, accurate and will ensure that we run into each other frequently. And while I guess the rest of you can follow it too, I also couldn’t care less. This is for J-Biebs, Ms. Baldwin, and a future in which I hang out with them regularly. See you soon, precious fam.

Langdon Hall

Finished in 1902, the restaurant/spa/hotel was formerly a country home but is currently the closest I will ever get to living in Downton Abbey. Naturally, the food is unparalleled, the high tea is tremendous, and the photo ops are spectacular. But most importantly, Drake shot album art for Views on the driveway a few years ago, which brings us all nearer to the dream of Aubrey, Justin and myself bonding over scones and clotted cream. That, or seeing ghosts of the former owners.

I’ll take either.

Downtown Galt

A fact I like to scream into the faces of strangers is that The Handmaid’s Tale films in a part of Cambridge called downtown Galt. (Specifically, the scenes in which Offred and friends walk by the river.) This typically earns a half-hearted, “Wow, really?” while I nod smugly, as if I scouted the location myself. I did not. But should Justin and Hailey want to look at old buildings and churches that back onto the Grand River, this is where they can do so. Provided they invite me.

LA Frank’s

And since we’re in Galt, we might as well take advantage of LA Frank’s—the seasonal hotdog/hamburger/ice cream stand that I personally can’t order anything from (I have the digestive system of a small infant), but will happily stand awkwardly near as my friends consume food like normal adults. A right of passage. A fast way to make me feel sad and jealous.

iBowl.ca

Years ago, Cambridge was a city brimming with bowling alleys. (There were three. Maybe four.) Today—and until the construction of the bowling alley/arcade/restaurant in the mall is finished—there is one. And while I don’t know the origin story of this Galt-based mecca’s name, I do know that when I was 21, I wasn’t paying attention on my way out and fell down the stairs, spraining my wrist as my friends stifled laughter. I also learned that black lighting makes one’s tears glow. Biebs and Baldwin deserve to see this for themselves.

The Cambridge Centre

Behold! The mall I worked at from 2005-2009. Is it worth going without being able to see me fold jeans at American Eagle? No. But maybe Hailey likes Marshall’s. Perhaps Baby Biebs adores Bootlegger. And if all else fails, there’s still a movie theatre inside. So let’s just meet up after the 7:10 screening of Little Italy, and take it from there.

Value Village

Thrifting in Cambridge (and the Waterloo region) is better than in any other region and in any other city. Last week, I paid $49 for seven pieces that will make me look exactly like Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. (Exactly. I will look exactly like her.) And why wouldn’t two kids saving for a big wedding want to wade into the waters of previously owned and loved clothing? Why wouldn’t Justin want to pick up a few new Hawaiian shirts? Why wouldn’t he want me to push him around in a cart like the caring mother I am? Why wouldn’t he look up at me from between ’90s-era sweaters and tell me how proud he was to be my son?

Rising Dough Bakery

Of course, after burning through calories trying on pleated pants, we could and would descend on the Scottish bakery in Preston (another area of Cambridge—please don’t worry about it, unless you grew up here, you won’t care and it doesn’t matter) where the pasties and pastries are equal parts prevalent and delicious. Once, I bought a week’s worth of cookies and and ate them in about two days. I felt deathly ill, but it was worth it. And guess what: I’ll probably do it again.

Fashion History Museum

And then there’s Hespeler. (Okay, fine. Here’s the history: Cambridge consists of three parts that used to be former towns. They amalgamated in the 1970s, but some of us grew up in families who do not acknowledge said amalgamation. Thus, Hespeler, to me and my family, is superior in every way.) Located in the old post office, the Fashion History Museum is, in a word, the fucking bomb. The two owners have a collection that spans centuries, continents and historical narratives, and the exhibits are well thought-out and interesting. It’s also not-for-profit, so only good things can come from visiting. Which is why Hailey and Justin should go. Also, because I’m specifically ordering them too.

Ernie’s Roadhouse

This is the restaurant I grew up eating chicken wings at. It’s also older than time. I’d be ashamed to find out Biebs and Balds didn’t go. I’d also be ashamed if they didn’t order me chicken wings.

The Hespeler Arena

No, not the actual arena. (I mean, sure: hockey and figure skating happens there, but also welcome to southern Ontario where there are no less than 46 arenas per person per city.) Instead, let’s focus on the parking lot. And, since we’re talking about paved spaces ideal for parking, standing, and talking shit, let us also branch out to include the McDonald’s and Food Basics plaza parking lot, where much of my young life was shaped by standing, by sitting, by drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade, by smoking Players cigarettes, by watching skateboarders.

Frankly, you will never “experience” Cambridge until you experience it in a parking lot. Which morphs this guide into a straight-up challenge: when Justin and Hailey find their own lot to loiter in, Cambridge will finally be home.

Anne T. Donahue is a writer, podcaster and person on the internet. Her memoir, Nobody Cares, comes out on September 18.

More from Anne T. Donahue: What Buck-a-Beer Feels Like to an Alcoholic How I Get Shit Done Working from Home How to Use Professional Jealousy to Figure Out What You *Really* Want #HowIMadeIt: How Anne T. Donahue Became a Writer Even Unf-ckwithable Women Need Help Sometimes

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