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newyorkprelawland-blog · 3 years

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Kpop Group BTS Dodges the Draft--But What About the Others?

By Melanie Nolan, Skidmore College Class of 2023

January 12, 2021

Can pop culture shape our laws? Perhaps, but in South Korea, popular boy band group BTS recently dodged the country’s military draft due to a last minute law change, allowing them to delay their service by a few years. This law is a huge deal in South Korea, where the law states that every male citizen must serve roughly 20 months once he turns 28. Now, the oldest member has until he turns thirty (along with the rest of his bandmates) to continue to tour and further spead the “elevated global reputation” that BTS has given Korea. But what happens to the other Kpop stars, and what does this say about the draft in Korea? How have the laws defined some of the most famous men and women in the world?

On December 1st, fans of the Kpop group BTS breathed a sigh of relief. The Korean pop group was released from their compulsory military service, making sure that they would not be drafted into the Korean military right away, and would be allowed to delay it due to their contributions to the nation’s “elevated global reputation” through their art and worldwide musical popularity. This new law, sometimes called the “BTS Law'' saved member Kim Seok-jin from his enlistement into the military. As soon as he turned 28, he would have to enroll for about 20 months. Now, as the oldest member of BTS, he and the rest of the pop group can push it off until they turn 30, setting precedent for the rest of the band.[1]

This was huge news for fans of the immensely popular musical group, because if the members would be drafted, they would be losing almost all members of the group for an extended period of time in the next few years. The draft, a huge part of life for men in South Korea has loomed hard over the Kpop industry, and its impacts can be felt in American and beyond.

Just to give some perspective, Kpop is huge. The first Kpop convention, KCon was held in the USA for the first time in 2012. In California, a few hundred people and curious bystanders watched as devotees of Korean pop music gathered and celebrated their love for the music, tradingmechanisde and memorabilia. By 2018, Kcon had spanned two coasts and had over 125,000 people in attendance combined between both conventions.[2] And that was only just the beginning.

Kpop fans are loud and powerful. In 2017, they broke Justin Beiber’s six year streak of winning the fan-voted award of “Top Social Artist” from the Billboard Music Awards by voting for BTS, giving the group the award instead. The hashtag #BTSBBMAs was tweeted over 300 million times worldwide.[3] It is estimated that BTS alone contributed roughly 4.65 billion to the South Korean economy alone, estimated to have greeted roughly 8,000 new jobs.[4]

With the draft looming over the head of the popular Korean boy band, fans worldwide were constantly concerned and in limbo: what would happen if BTS was drafted and had to stop making music for a long period of time? The fans were right to be concerned. It had happened before.

Losing members of popular groups to the draft is something that is semi-common in the Kpop world. With many groups having young members, it is not uncommon for groups to lose and gain members due to the draft. However, Kpop groups typically have much more members than many American bands, so this system is slightly different. For example, one of the largest groups, Neo-Culture Technology, has 23 members.[5] In 2017, four members of the group EXO had to enroll, to the agony of fans around the globe.[6] Furthermore, the timeline of the draft varies from case to case and person to person, meaning that no one really knows when they will return, making planning and promotion difficult. [7] This was a problem already seen in Kpop, but it had never been seen on the scale with a group as vastly popular as BTS before.

Lucky for BTS and their army of fans, Korean ruling party member Noh Woong-rae pushed for laws on behalf of the group, saying that they had served the country in other ways outside of the military, some even agreeing saying that many South Koreans mention BTS when travelling to explain where they came from.[8]

But what would happen if a member of BTS, or any Korean citizen did not want to be drafted? What would happen if they didn’t? Well, South Korea has imprisoned more conscientious objectors than any other country. [9] Noth and South Korea are still technically at war, making the draft all the more important to the country and their government. South Korea’s Military Service Act states that there is a penalty of three years in prison for those who refuse the draft without “justifiable” reasons (such as injuries or mental health, not religon.) Many of these objectos are religious, and they are forced to work in prison for the period of their prison sentence. They are exempt fromguard and prisoner-escort duty, which involves carrying guns and other weaponds. However, they still live with eachother, and the system of the building and their duties is designed to mimic barracks. [10]

The laws in South Korea are still being changed, and sadly many of the “idols” (a world for Kpop stars) will still have to serve their time in the military if they were already enrolled while the law was past. However, one will have to wait and look to the future to examine the changing face of the draft in South Korea, and how pop culture will shape the laws and change the output of one of the largest drafts in the world.

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/world/asia/korea-bts-law-military-deferment.html

[2] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bts-kpop-albums-bands-global-takeover-707139/

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyblake1/2018/04/04/k-pop-numbers/?sh=5ebea72148ab

[4]https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/k-pop-group-bts-new-release-dynamite-can-add-1-4-billion-to-south-koreas-economy-2856115.html

[5]https://pudding.cool/2020/10/kpop/#:~:text=Neo%20Culture%20Technology%20(NCT)%20is,and%20Chinese%20pop%20group%20WayV.

[6] https://www.vox.com/culture/22082950/south-korea-military-conscription-law-bts-jin

[7]https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3101228/k-pop-icons-back-front-exos-xiumin-and-do-btobs-minhyuk

[8] https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2020/10/398_297098.html

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/world/asia/south-korea-draft-conscientious-objectors.html

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/world/asia/south-korea-draft-conscientious-objectors.html

Photo Credit: LG Electronics

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hogtown-socialist-alternative · 5 years

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East Germany 1989: The Berlin Wall Comes Down as Power Lay in the Streets

By Ingmar Meinecke -November 9, 2019

On November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall was pulled down in dramatic scenes. In the latest of our series marking the events of 1989 in Eastern Europe, Ingmar Meinecke of SAV (German section of the CWI-majority), who as a teenager participated in these events, explains what happened.

“Dear friends, fellow citizens, it is as if one has opened the windows after all the years of stagnation, of spiritual, economic, political stagnation, the years of dullness and stale air, of phrase-mongering and bureaucratic arbitrariness, of official blindness and deafness. What a change!”

With these words the socialist writer Stefan Heym began his speech on November 4, 1989 in front of more than half a million people on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. Just one year lay between the mass demonstrations in the former East Germany (German Democratic Republic -GDR) at the beginning of October 1989 and the unification of the GDR with the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3 1990. In this short time, the GDR’s government was overthrown, the Berlin Wall that had been erected in 1961 by GDR’s Stalinist rulers and had since served as a barrier between the two systems was opened and the then West German currency, the Deutsche Mark was introduced to the East.

Initially, it seemed the whole GDR population was passionately demonstrating, with the aim of creating a new society based on real socialism. Yet just a few months later, a new government led by the conservative CDU set off down the road of capitalist restoration and the GDR disappeared from the map. How was it possible that the train of revolution was diverted off of the tracks into the direction of capitalist restoration?

Growing discontent

Following the defeat of Germany in the Second World War and the division of the country by the occupying powers, a new regime was formed in the East in 1949. Although the GDR rejected the capitalist form of economy, the state itself was modeled on the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorship in the USSR. Calling itself socialist, it was far from being a socialist democracy, run instead by a group of elite bureaucrats. Their real nature was demonstrated by the brutal suppression of the heroic workers’ uprising in 1953. Even after 1953, society in the GDR was never completely calm. Yet the ruling elite did all they could to maintain control.

By the mid-1980s, there had been mass strikes in Poland, led by the trade union Solidarność. In the USSR itself, the new rhetoric of Perestroika and Glasnost had begun to appear and the news fell on fertile ground in the GDR. The GDR’s ‘communist’ leadership tried to stop this: when the Soviet magazine “Sputnik” criticized the pre-war Communist Party of Germany’s approval of the pre-war Hitler-Stalin Pact, it was banned in the GDR without further ado.

But three events in 1989 fueled the growing mood of discontent. It was widely disbelieved, when in May, the GDR’s ruling party the “Socialist Unity Party” (SED) claimed that 98.5% of the population had supported it in local elections. But people became angry when party leaders justified the brutal suppression of the workers and students protesting in China’s Tiananmen Square. And then, following the example of the Czechoslovak and Hungarian people, there was an accelerating wave of people fleeing the GDR. By the end of September, 25,000 had already left the country.

This wave of refugees started a discussion: why are so many people leaving? What kind of country is it that people just run away from, leaving their belongings, friends and family behind? The official reaction of “not shedding one tear for these people” disgusted many.

The opposition is formed

On Monday September 4, 1200 people gathered outside the Nikolai-church in Leipzig after the weekly “prayer for peace” for a demonstration. Their slogans were: “We want out” and “We want a new government”. Security forces intervened. This was repeated the next Monday. By September 25 there were already 8000 people and their slogan “We want out!” was replaced by “We stay here”!

In September the first opposition groups were formed. The New Forum issued an appeal, which 4500 people signed within the first fortnight, with the demand for a democratic dialogue in society. By mid-November, 200,000 signatures had been collected. But party leader Erich Honecker and the SED leadership did not want a dialogue. The demands of the New Forum were rejected. But that made the group even more popular.

The masses out on the street

When sealed trains of refugees from Prague travelled through Dresden to the West in October, there were serious clashes between demonstrators and the police at the station. On the evening of October 7, the 40th anniversary of the GDR, several hundred young people gathered on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, before moving towards the Palace of the Republic, where Honecker and Co. were celebrating. Two to three thousand people chanted “Gorbi, Gorbi!” (referring to Gorbachev) and “We are the people”! By midnight, special units of the People’s Police and the State Security had started to attack, arresting over 500.

This raised the temperature. Two days later, on Monday October 9, all eyes were on Leipzig. Would the GDR experience its own ‘Tiananmen Square’? Three days earlier, a threat had appeared in the Leipziger Volkszeitung: “We are ready and willing (…) to stop these counterrevolutionary actions finally and effectively. If necessary, with weapons.”

But cracks appeared in the state power. Three secretaries of the Leipzig SED district leadership took part in a call for de-escalation, which was broadcast in the afternoon on city radio. As a result, Leipzig experienced the largest demonstration to date with 70,000 people. The call “We are the people” sounded powerfully over the Georgi Ring. The Internationale was also sung. On the same evening 7000 people demonstrated in Berlin and another 60.000 in other parts of the country.

Now there was no stopping the acceleration of the protests. The demonstrations continued throughout the week: 20,000 in Halle and as many again in Plauen, 10,000 in Magdeburg, 4000 in Berlin. The next Monday brought a new record: 120,000 in Leipzig alone! Now even the official GDR state newspapers started, for the first time, reporting objectively about the demonstrators, who, just a week earlier they had called ‘rioters, hooligans and counter-revolutionaries’. On the same day, employees of the “Teltower Geräte und Reglerwerk” company resigned from the FDGB, the official state trade union federation and announced the formation of the independent trade union “Reform”, calling for others to follow their example. They demanded “the right to strike, the right to demonstrate, freedom of the press, the end of travel restrictions and official privileges”.

Erich Honecker resigned as General Secretary of the SED on October 18 and was succeeded by Egon Krenz. But this did nothing to calm the masses, rather they took to the streets in larger and larger numbers. Krenz was met with suspicion by the masses. On the Monday demonstration in Leipzig on October 23, attended by 250,000 people, the slogans were “Egon, who asked our opinion?”, “Free elections”, “Visa-free to Hawaii!” or “A leading role for the people”! But these were no longer just demonstrations. At the riot police barracks in Magdeburg, the conscripts elected a soldiers’ council. Pupils acted to annul disciplinary notes on behavior and timekeeping and abolished Saturday lessons.

The breakthrough

The demonstrations in Leipzig continued to grow – 20,000 on October 2, 70,000 on October 9, 120,000 on October 16, 250,000 on October 23, 300,000 on October 30 and finally 400,000 on November 6. There was also a demonstration of more than 500,000 (some say up to one million) in East Berlin on November 4. By the end of October, the protests had swept the whole country: in the North and South, large and small towns involving workers and intellectuals. The main demands included free travel, an investigation into the state violence of October 7/8, protection of the environment, an end to the privileges and monopoly on power of the SED. The government finally resigned on November 7. On November 8, the entire Politburo followed.

On the evening of the November 9, politburo member Günter Schabowski spoke to the press. Shortly before the end of his speech, at exactly 19:07, he announced that the GDR had opened the borders. Excitement spread. He explained that from eight o’clock the next day everyone could collect a visa. People, however, did not wait for visas, but began to besiege the border crossings to West Berlin. The border guards were surprised. By midnight, individual commanders were opening the crossings in the face of pressure from the masses. The Wall fell. Over the next few weeks the entire country travelled west.

The ‘Tug of war’ and the opposition’s hesitancy

Now a tug-of-war broke out between the masses on the streets, the opposition groups and the state bureaucracy. The question that nobody really dared to say out aloud, but which hovered over everything, was “who has the power?” The state and party apparatus increasingly lost influence, but the opposition groups did not take up the reins of power. At first, the masses expected that the leaders of the opposition groups, often accidental figures who ended up at the centre of attention, as well as some SED reformers, like the new head of government Hans Modrow, and well-known artists and intellectuals would do this.

When the full extent of corruption was revealed in early December, workers were more determined than ever to get rid of the whole of the old establishment. They had just seen how, in Czechoslovakia, a two-hour general strike quickly brought the Communist Party there to see reason. Now the New Forum in Karl-Marx-Stadt also demanded a one-day nationwide general strike on December 6. Immediately this call was condemned in unison by the FDGB, the official opposition parties and Bärbel Bohley, one of the national leaders of the New Forum. They were all afraid, that the situation could get out of hand. The call was withdrawn. Nevertheless, a two-hour political warning strike of workers in several companies in Plauen did take place on December 6 accompanied by independent strike actions in other places.

The Modrow government now tried to involve the opposition in order to stabilize the situation. On November 22, the Politburo of the SED spoke in favor of organizing a “round table” with the opposition. It met for the first time on December 7, issuing a statement which stated: “Although the ‘Round Table’ does not exercise any parliamentary or governmental function, it intends to address the public with proposals for overcoming the crisis. (…) It sees itself as a component of public control in our country.”

But control is not the same as governing. Surprised by the pace of developments, the opposition groups wanted to continue a dialogue with the SED and the state authorities instead of taking power themselves. Rolf Henrich, co-founder of the New Forum, said in an interview with the newspaper “Der Morgen” on the October 28 that for the time being the movement could do without a comprehensive program. Instead he advocated a topic-related dialogue that would no longer take place on the street alone.

This half-heartedness and indecision by the opposition evolved out of their failure to answer two fundamental questions. Firstly: how could the old top and the bureaucracy really be driven out of power? Secondly: what should the new society look like, especially its economic system, and what would be the role for the other part of Germany, the capitalist West-Germany? These questions were now permanently on the agenda and not always clearly defined, but interwoven.

Until November, the GDR revolution was clearly pro-socialist. This could be seen in the statements of almost all opposition groups, the banners, chants and speeches at the demonstrations. The writer Christa Wolf said on November 4: “Imagine a socialist society where nobody runs away” and got a huge applause for it. “Unlimited power to the councils” was written on a banner. But how was this “better socialism” or council rule to be achieved? There were no answers. Power lay on the streets. But the opposition of autumn 1989 left it there until it was finally picked up by the West-German Premier Helmut Kohl and Co., opening the way to capitalist reunification.

The economic situation proved to be decisive. From December, reports about the ailing state of the GDR economy began to accumulate. From then on, secret figures and facts about the country’s low productivity and indebtedness became known. Visits to the West made the GDR workers aware of the higher standard of living there. Social divisions in West Germany faded into the background. The mood grew against starting another ‘experiment’ after the ‘GDR experiment’. The self-confidence of the working class was severely weakened by the poor condition of the state-owned enterprises. Added to this was the lack of leadership as described above.

From December, the Federal government and the capitalist class in West Germany made a turn. Until then, they had been cautious about going too brashly in the direction of reunification. They had considered a slow transition of the GDR towards capitalism to be less dangerous. But it gradually became clear to them that a GDR with open borders could destabilize the Federal Republic. At the same time, they recognized the weakness of both the crumbling SED bureaucracy and the GDR opposition and saw an opportunity to enter this vacuum, integrating the entire GDR into the Federal Republic, and thus opening up a new market.

The majority of GDR workers did not want any more experiments in 1990. But then they were exposed to the experiment of capitalist counterrevolution, the smashing of a state economy that led to millions of unemployed as a result of factory closures, privatization and the devaluation of the currency. This has become an almost permanent state of affairs, in which the East is still disadvantaged in many respects in comparison to the West.

The missed opportunity

Until November 1989 and even after, many elements of the political revolution that the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky considered necessary to implement against Stalinism, this bureaucratic distortion of socialism were to be seen in these events. But in the end, the other outcome that Trotsky had considered possible developed: capitalist restoration. The decisive factor was that no opposition force had developed strong roots among the workers and employees that could point the way to a viable concrete and truly socialist society.

Stefan Heym summarized this missed opportunity a few years later: “Don’t forget, there was no group, no organized group that wanted to take power. (…) There were only individuals who had come together and formed a forum or a group or something like that, but nothing you need to make a revolution. There was no such thing. And so it all imploded and there was no one to take power except the West. (…) Imagine that we had the time and opportunity to develop a new socialism in the GDR, a socialism with a human face, a democratic socialism. This could have been an example for West Germany and the development could have been different.”

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bobbystompy · 4 years

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68 Quotes I Enjoyed From 2019

Below are my favorite quotes from 2019. Though most occurred throughout the year, some took place before but were encountered during.

1) “I don’t bitch about Millenials.

John Entwistle once complained that he didn’t understand rap. Pete Townsend said, ‘It’s not our job to understand it. It’s our job to get the fuck out of the way.’

New generations come of age. The older generation’s job is to shut up and adapt.” - @danagould

2) “I can’t do drugs with you until we kiss.”

3) “If you pay me $50 I'll show up to your funeral but stand really far away, holding a black umbrella regardless of the weather, so that people think you died with a dark and interesting secret.” - @DanaSchwartzzz

4) “A human being is a dangerous thing to let loose in a room with itself, when it cannot think.” - Roger Ebert

5) “There are no bad bourbons, only better bourbons.” - Dave Hernandez

6) “You can’t put a dollar in a kimono.”

7) “This is how it was.” - rampant takeaway from watching ‘Superbad’ several years after its release

8) “What if I had been born fifty years before you in a house on the street where you lived / Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike / Would I know? / And in a wide sea of eyes, I see one pair that I recognize” - Ben Folds, ‘The Luckiest’

9) “Learn the rules so you can break them.”

10) “Nobody makes chili for two.” - Stacy Massey

11) “‘Best city in the world,’ I mutter to myself, as i adjust my ‘driving blanket’.” - Chicago resident Deanna Belos, during the 2019 Polar Vortex

12) “Dude, no one’s ever got arrested for listening to Counting Crows.” - Ricky O’Donnell, justifying late night music volume at his party

13) Bill Belichick: We’re going to have fun tonight. Rob Gronkowski: Yes we are. We deserve it. Belichick: You’re damn right. Gronk: I haven’t stepped out in like eight months. I gotta step out tonight. Belichick: I’m with you, man. I’m even going to step out. Gronk: Oh, I like it!

A Super Bowl winning exchange.

14) Center David Andrews thanked Bill Belichick for giving him "a shot".

Belichick disagreed with it.

Andrews: Thank you for giving me a shot. Belichick: A shot? I didn't give you shit. You earned it! I don't give anything.

Another Super Bowl winning exchange.

15) “We elected one of the very worst living human beings to be President, and it's exhausting. Each and every day, it's an exhausting slog, just to exist in a world where that's true.” - Michael Schur

16) “Some of y’all always picked Odd Job when you played Goldeneye and it shows” - @thedad

17) “Any app is a dating app if you try hard enough.” - Z.W. Martin (though he says it’s lifted)

18) "Once you're as woke as I am, you learn to feel bad all the time.”

19) “Everything’s a balance beam when you’re 90.” - John Dingell

20) [I wake up in a world where The Beatles never existed]

Me: Check out this song I just wrote

[I begin playing “Ob La Di Ob La Da” without having first built up years of goodwill]

Crowd of people: Wow, this sucks ass

-- @seanoneal

21) “People change people.” - Corey Matthews, Girl Meets World

22) “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” - William Goldman

23) “Dan could be like a difficult uncle. I didn’t love his fire-breathing conservative politics. I didn’t love the transformation that came over his novels. In Semi-Tough, he created two benighted Texas jocks and laid their prejudices bare. He was declaring himself a member of the Mark Twain coaching tree. In later books, Dan seemed to be trying to prove he could still tell a racist joke. He insisted that his memoir—the last truly immaculate piece of writing he delivered—include a tirade against political correctness. When his editor said people might be offended, Dan said, ‘Fuck people.’

There are certain writers whose style you pilfer. Certain writers whose moral fiber you try to inherit. For me, Dan represented a third category: a writer whose aura you replicate—or, failing that, try to stand in for a while.” - Bryan Curtis, on Dan Jenkins

24) “Never marry anything. Never choose. Even in love, it's better to be chosen.” - La Dolce Vita

25) “An uncluttered, uncomplicated happy ending might sound wonderful, but it’s hardly ever satisfying. Because the value of great stories lies in the tension between desire and need, between the yearning for the ideal, and the unshakable conviction that ideals don’t really exist, at least not the way we want them to. A great story should hurt a little when it leaves us. There should be some hope, but that hope should remain somewhere just an inch beyond our fingers, because that’s the truth. Even if you had all the perfect moments in the world, you’d still be reaching.” - Zach Handlen, on the Futurama series finale

26) “You can’t see him because he has sunglasses on.” - Alissa Levy

27) “The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).” - Roger Ebert

28) “‘Are you gonna let politics ruin a friendship?’

Yes tf I am

People talk about politics as if it’s this isolated, abstract concept that only matters at election time. Somebody’s politics is their world view. It’s whether they think certain human beings deserve rights. It’s how they think the world should be. And if somebody thinks that the world should be colder, meaner, less accepting and downright hostile to people that are different to them, then sure as fuck is the friendship over.”

29) “Can the Supreme Court get me mushrooms?” - J-Papp

30) “Any song under two minutes already has a head start on its way into my heart. Just scream at me and then leave me.” - Drew Magary

31) “Long neck cold beers never broke my heart.” - Clemson Tom

32) “I’d just like to point out that the last spoken words of Game of Thrones were:

‘I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel.’”

- @Authoroux

33) “Just once before I die, I want to toss my keys to someone and tell them ‘Bring the car around’.” - Mike Skully

34) “For all the weight they're given, last words are usually as significant as first words.” - Grand Maester Pycelle, Game of Thrones

35) “The best remedy for unrequited love is a trip around the world.” - Cheers

36) [on switching from a hotel to a motel]

Manny: I don't like the sound of that. A lot of amenities disappear when an H turns into an M. Jay: Hey when I met you, you were eating cereal out of a bucket.

-- Modern Family

37) “You and Lindsey don’t want to be ‘estranged’. Estranged is the relationship we want to have with our mothers.” - MegFil

38) “Cigarettes are undefeated.”

39) “My toes are like my fingers on my feet. I can pick stuff up with them.” - Tracy Cunningham

40) “Republicans govern without shame, Democrats shame without governing.” - Bill Maher

41) Sam: I don’t understand the vagaries of the Internet Josiah: Post often, without thought, and you’ll either get cancelled or cancel someone else.

-- Blink-155

42) “Hang a lantern on your problems.”

43) “What a weird web we weave.” - The Situation, The Jersey Shore: Family Vacation

44) “Let the ocean worry about being blue.” - Alabama Shakes, ‘Hang Loose’

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45) “Honesty without tact is cruelty.” - Shelley Rokos

46) “My whole life is the wrong porn link.”

47) “One parent can take care of 10 kids, but 10 kids cannot take care of one parent.” - Joe Gestetner, via “an old Yiddish saying”

48) “There are no heroes in the room.” - Classics of Love, ‘Gun Show’

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49) “If I am a little dismissive, it's only because of my harrowing backstory.” - Mitchell, Modern Family (on why he doesn't like sports)

50) “Every time I’m wearing black, I meet a dog.” - Tracy Cunningham

51) “Shower sex? Why would I fuck in my crying chamber” - @chridollarsign

52) “My theory about quarterbacks, having written about some of them, is you either have to believe in god or think you are a god.” - Mina Kimes

53) “The contradictions of capitalism always manifest in our lyrics if you look deeply.” - Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker, Riot Fest 2019

54) “Got a ‘hang loose’ from the weakside bartender.”

55) “It’s Jennifer’s birthday always.” - Eric Hutchinson

56) “I can’t think of a less relevant artist in 2019 than Kanye West. A Jesus freak in a MAGA hat. Yeah, congrats dude -- you’re every grandma who watches ‘Young Sheldon’ and mails checks to Joel Osteen now.” - Dan Ozzi

57) “The past and future are in the mind. I’m in the now.” - Tom Brady, via someone else

58) “Sometimes you walk around boring places and you feel like the most exciting thing in it.” - Drew Magary

59) “Sitting is the new smoking.” - Modern Family

60) “I'll straight up fight folks at a book club and discuss books at a fight club I really don't give a shit anymore.” - George Wallace

61) “Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.” - Rose Garvey via wine country

62) “It’s all ‘ok boomer’ until you need someone who can drive stick shift.” - @OrdinaryAlso

63) “He likes the result of the math.” - Dad, talking about my worst subject frustrating during the process but satisfying in the end

64) Stepmom: Do you want a Bears urn or Alabama urn? Dad: Ask me after they play Auburn.

65) “A cold body carries a warm heart.” - Stefanos Tsitsipas’ Instagram, after his Iceland sabbatical

66) [preparing a dish called the Sandwich of Justice with his friend’s recipe]

"The fun thing about it is when you give it to someone, you can say 'Justice is served.’ That's, uh, Ryan's line. I built my whole life on the backs of my friends." - You Suck At Cooking

67) “Usually three people can keep a secret only when two of them are dead.” - The Irishman

68) “An artist can't control who consumes their content any more than a chemist can control how their chemicals are used once they're created.” - Brian Crooks

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marcmyworks · 6 years

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Radiohead: The Rankings

Over the last three decades one alternative rock band has stood the test of time as being one of the most influential and creative in terms of creative, styles and musicality. The band is the five-piece team from Oxfordshire, Radiohead. Though Tom Yorke does gain most of the credit for the sound of the group, and this is lyrically justified, the band as an ensemble has worked hard to establish their original and fundamentally important cohesion throughout their career. Today I reflect on each album and rank them accordingly.

9. Pablo Honey (1993)

For most artists, their first effort is the most iconic and captivating, however for Radiohead this seems more like a stepping stone into the mainstream. Their first single, ‘Creep’, remains one of their biggest hits, however the majority of the record is 1-2-step classic rock that, though good, is not very memorable.

Listen: Creep, Ripcord, Anyone Can Play Guitar, You Ignore: Pop is Dead, How Do You?, I Can’t

8. The King of Limbs (2011)

While though the concept of King; being a website exclusive mini album with theme of nature of music being intertwined; is strong, the album itself feels a bit cliché. Upon retrospect its more of the little brother or sister of such strong albums as Kid A or In Rainbows. The sound is very much 21st century Radiohead; a manic collision of instruments that somehow formulates a cohesive sound. Overall the album works, but just doesn’t have enough of a voice.

Listen: Little by Little, Lotus Flower, Bloom, Codex Ignore: Separator, Feral

7. A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

An album that brings Radiohead fans a glimpse of their radio-friendly days. Overall a very strong release that is a beautiful combination of what made the band great, and what now makes them great. I like to call this Radiohead’s orchestral folk album because of the abundance of simple acoustic guitars, drums and strings. The only thing that may have made this album better was inclusion, even if subtle, of some electronic beats, however I do love that they finally released the studio version of ‘True Love Waits’ as a bonus track. Though a great album, its just not as important to me as what follows on this list.

Listen: Ful Stop, Burn the Witch, True Love Waits, Decks Dark

Ignore: The Numbers, Daydreams (put down your pitchforks, it’s just not my favourite)

6. Amnesiac (2001)

A few of you may have issue about me placing this album above AMSP but I have a great affinity for Amnesiac, to the point where I even have a tattoo of the logo. Thom Yorke once described this album as the fire burning inside Kid A, and if you listen, it truly is the companion piece. The experimentation is less dramatic and more simplistic than its predecessor but is still impactful and beautiful. The result is a blend of odd tracks that feels like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. A cool tidbit is that ‘Packt Like Sardines in A Crushd Tin Box’s production is inspired by ‘Believe’ by Cher

Listen: Pyramid Song, Knives Out, I Might Be Wrong, Packt Like Sardines in A Crushd Tin Box

Ignore: Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, Hunting Bears

5. In Rainbows (2007)

What I love about In Rainbows was the band let the fans decide what is was worth and how much to pay for it. I remember at the time I was a broke gallery intern in London, UK and I managed to scrape together £5 to support the band. What also made the album special was the ability to remix two of the singles and submit for contests. I still listen to the remixes I created (found here and here), though of course the original tracks are far superior. In Rainbows is a strong and wonderful piece of (dare I say it) colourful art, which is why it is considered to be a fan favourite.

Listen: Videotape, House of Cards, Nude, Bodysnatchers Ignore: Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

4. Hail to the Thief (2005)

In 2005 Radiohead went back to their more rock-oriented sound to create the amazing Hail to the Thief. What I respect about this album is that it doesn’t succumb to nostalgia but is a valiant tour-de-force that stands well enough on its own. With some of the band’s strongest singles (’There There’, ‘Go to Sleep’, ‘2 + 2 = 5′) mixed in with experimental songs and piano driven ballads, the overall effect is brilliant. The lyrics are a commentary on celebrity culture and the Hollywood lifestyle the band witnessed while recording the album in Los Angeles.

Listen: We Suck Young Blood, There There, 2 + 2 = 5, I Will, Go to Sleep Ignore: Where I End and You Begin

3. Kid A (2000)

One of the most important albums to ever be released in music history. Kid A changed the way we as an audience appreciate rock music, breaking the rules of what is mainstream sound and what can be done in the studio. The band had become complacent to traditional sounding mainstream records and promotion and knew the internet was influencing music, though record labels were hesitant and still could not track online album sales.

During the time of release, Kid A was polarizing to a mass audience with fans turning on the band for deviating from what made them successful to critics lauding their efforts. Radiohead was also one of the first bands to not release any singles or videos to promote their album, instead choosing the album to speak on its own. Though it only sold about half of what their previous studio masterpiece OK Computer, it still managed to sell millions Worldwide.

Listen: Idioteque, Everything in its Right Place, Optimistic, Motion Picture Soundtrack, Morning Bell Ignore: Kid A

2. The Bends (1995)

Though probably my favourite Radiohead album I know it isn’t their best. Radiohead’s second album is probably the one of the best rock albums ever released, incorporating the mood of the popular grunge movement but mixed with beautiful melodies and hard-hitting guitars. Though their first hit ‘Creep’ from Pablo Honey made the band famous, this album proved they were not a one hit wonder. Tracks from The Bends are still being played on radio for almost 25 years after its release and having its singles being featured on the soundtracks of films such as Clueless and 50/50 proves its importance in the history of rock music.

Though this record sounds effortlessly clean, it actually was one of the hardest for the band to write as they felt immense pressure from their label to achieve the same success they had with ‘Creep’. Overall it took a mini-break and singer Thom Yorke recording demos on his own to finally bring the final track-listing and singles to where the band felt they had achieved their goals. The result is a 12-song masterpiece that really shaped my musical interests and love for alternative music.

Listen: All of it. Ignore: None of it.

OK Computer (1997)

AKA: Duh, of course this was number 1 as the third time is still a charm. OK Computer was the first album in which Parlephone, Radiohead’s former label, finally trusted them to create music without an RA (Record Associate) breathing down the band’s neck. On a budget of £100,000, Radiohead went back their studio in Oxfordshire, purchasing equipment, such as plate reverberators to create odd and unusual sounds to mix with their classic rock sound.

OK, though still radio friendly is an extremely experimental, and is obviously an F-You to the music industries demand for The Bends part deux, proving that the same formula does not need to be repeated to be successful.

Listen: All of it. Ignore: None of it.

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comicsbeat · 6 years

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Why can’t the world just be ruled by cabals of mighty librarian queens? Organizing to create policies, looking out for the marginalized, fighting censorship, advocating for the education and literacy of all – we’d be led into a golden age of knowledge and peace.

Or at least that’s the fantasy I conjured after attending my very first American Library Association annual conference this past weekend in New Orleans.

Okay, maybe it’s just the exceptional people who I hung out with – the librarians driving the growing acceptance of graphic novel collections around the world. Whip smart and passionate about their advocacy, I soon came to realize the thing that was most powerful about this group: not only do they love reading, they love it when YOU read, too, and they do everything they can to help more people enjoy reading.

https://twitter.com/librarylandia/status/1011285466560237568

This was undoubtedly a banner year for the graphic novel pavilion at ALA. Perhaps it was the lure of the exotic New Orleans setting – supposedly attendance geos up whenever the ALAAC is held in the Crescent City. But maybe it was destiny. Not only was it my own first ALA (something that shocked everyone I told) but the number of publishers attending for the first time or returning after a long absence was much remarked upon. Titan, Rebellion, Humanoids, the French Comics Association, Europe Comics, Zenescope and several other were set up for the first time. Fantagraphics and Boom were returning after long absences. And even DC, long represented by distributor Random House, had finally returned with a booth promoting their Ink, Zoom and Black Label lines.

The only publisher missing in action? Marvel Comics, a fact often noted that drew some tough talk from librarians. But that will be returned to.

It wasn’t just publishers – the people who were attending for the first time, besides me, Berger Books; Karen Berger, Black Crown’s Shelly Bond, Lion Forge’s Carol Burrell, Aftershocks Steve Rotterdam, Dynamite’s Alan Payne and many, many others were experiencing the library market first hand for the first time, joining such veterans as our own Torsten Adair, and Random House Graphics’ Gina Gagliano.

They all came together in NoLA’s voodoo tinged fever swamp perhaps to present an alternative to the twitter culture wars and comics shop vs Wal-Mart narrative that was keeping everyone else busy. And it was also the cusp of a milestone obscure outside the library world but momentous inside it; the establishment of a Graphic Novel Round Table. In the hierarchy of the ALA this classification allows for membership dues, budgets and greater resources for organizing projects. The drive was spearheaded by Tina Coleman, who’s been organizing the graphic novel pavilion and the artist alley at ALA for several years, with a bold squadron of graphic novel library knights behind her as shown in this photo.

The effects of this new roundtable may not be seen directly outside the library world, but we’ll feel its influence in future endeavors. It also marks a momentous trek from the base camp that began back in 2002, when comics first invaded the ALA with a presentation by Neil Gaiman, Colleen Doran, Art Spiegelman and Jeff Smith, four swashbuckling creators whose talents and charisma could not help but win over the library world.

Anyhoo, I know I’m waxing rhapsodical over a conference. Maybe it’s just the effects of dehydration and overheating as I wandered the 97-degree swamp of Chartres St – maybe it’s destiny.

So let’s go back! I arrived in New Orleans back on Thursday. Looking around the gate at Newark airport, most of my fellow passengers were women reading books. It was a very ALA bound crowd.

The event kicked off with a reception for the French Comics Association at the French Consulate in New Orleans. That was as swell as you might imagine, a huge, gracious mansion opened for the evening to the library cabal plus a few publishers and the French comics contingent of Barroux (Alpha), Cati Baur (Four Sisters), Aurélie Neyret (Cici’s Journal), Benjamin Reiss (Super Tokyoland), Julie Rocheleau (About Betty’s Boob), Eve Tharlet (The Wild Cat: Mr. Badger & Mrs. Fox) as well as French BD industry folks.

Flore Piacentino of the French Publishers Association gave a little talk and mentioned the influence of manga, bande desinee and “comics” coming together. I’ve often heard the three great branches of world graphic literature around the world categorized like this, and maybe it’s time for us in the US to accept the “comics” name with pride for our bombastic yet fantastic strain of storytelling. Standing in the hot backyard of the manse, with its mix of Haunted Mansion moldings and mid-century furniture, it was fun to hear of the panels and meetings to come.

After the reception, I grabbed some dinner with Karen Berger, Eva Volin and Robyn Brenner, Berger Books and the library world exchanging information over some super tasty shrimp and grits. Not only was this to be a weekend of smart talk, but a food marathon of surviving crusty bread, butter drenched fish and the occasional vegetable.

The next morning the conference kicked off. Here it must be mentioned that a teeny little con war broke out, GraphiCon vs Library Con. The first is a forum organized by the ALA GN interest group – and this year focused on adult graphic novel collection, a frontier topic where best practices are still being developed. Library Con was held across the hall and in somewhat the same time period and is organized by Random House. There was some grumbling about the timing, although both programs were arranged to fill up the time before Michele Obama’s keynote and the exhibit hall opening at 5:30. There were some great panels on both programs, and certainly a lot to do. Random House did stack the deck a bit by offering a free boxed lunch. I decided to eat half of an egg salad sandwich from Starbucks instead. This delicacy is no longer available in NYC – probably because it’s too fattening for diet conscious New Yorkers – but one half made a great breakfast and the second half made a good lunch!

Graphic Con kicked off with a panel on “Building and Justifying Adult Graphic Novel Collections in Public and Academic Libraries” with Andrew Woodrow Butcher, Amanda Melilli (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) Marcela Peres (Lewiston Public Library, ME), and creators Ezra Claytan Daniels and Eric Shanower.

The main point of all the programming is that just as kids and YA collections – now well established at most libraries – started out slow, adult collections need to build on the success of those other age groups. Shelving remains a problem though. A recurring villain was “741.5” the Dewey Decimal category where graphic novels are shoved into one big blob. How to organize within this number – by author or series or age rating – is an ongoing issue.

Also what to collect is hard to pin down since there are more lists and awards for juvenile categories. (The Beat was mentioned several times as a resource for more information on graphic novels, giving me a serious case of “must do more!”) Adult collections are still built on a case by case basis. “Going online to find titles is not the best approach. One size doesn’t fit all since libraries don’t all have the same users and needs,” said UNLV’s Mellili. “You want it to be a reflection of the rest of your collection.”

Peres had a few success stories. She said the adult collection at her library has grown from 300 check outs a year to 1300 over the last five years. She’s also used innovative marketing approaches, such as a GN reading group held at a local brewery.

Shanower noted that his Age of Bronze was still finding an audience in libraries. “I don’t think there’s resistance like there might have been in 20th century, but there is still education that needs to be made.” Asked about whether his book has ever been challenged he joked “I wish it would be!”

Subsequent panels delved more into the topic from the publisher and creator sides. Image has a robust library program, led by Chloe Ramos Peterson, a former librarian herself, and the importance of catalogs, lists, newsletter and other resources for librarians was repeatedly mentioned. For creators, sometimes it does become a content issue – one scene may push a title from a comfy home in the YA section to an uncertain future in the adult collection, and it’s a decision creators have to weigh.

Reader resistance was also mentioned a few times. “Some adults are just embarrassed to be seen checking out comics,” said one librarian (sorry my notes don’t say who.) Overcoming this resistance with events and education is a slow but necessary step.

After the library conferences wrapped up everyone but me went off to see Michelle Obama speak. People had been lined up since 9 am – a different kind of Hall H indeed – and I didn’t want to get caught in a long line.

The exhibit hall for ALA has a kind of mini preview night – very mini as it’s only 90 minutes long – and after the keynote, everyone filed in. A big topic when I was around – maybe because I kept bringing it up – was the announcement of DC’s Wal-Mart exclusive. I had a lively discussion of the topic over dinner with retailer Brian Hibbs who, like myself, had been brought to the show by Lion Forge to liaise with the library world. (Brian promises he’ll have one of his epic columns about the experience next week.)

As lot of our discussion can be seen in the piece that I wrote the next morning. Brian feels strongly that exclusives that the DM can’t get are the wrong way to build a bigger audience for comics, but that’s his story to tell and I’ll leave him to state his own case.

Saturday, for me, was more of the same, wandering the vast hall to find the comics folks, and chatting them up. The Ernest Morial Convention Center – a place I haven’t been since before Katrina – is very very long and narrow and the show floor had the GN stage and pavilion at one end, with long stretches of library tech in between, studded with pockets of publishers.

Despite all the excitement over books, many exhibits at ALA are given over to actual library tech. I don’t really know what all those scanners and conveyor belt sorters did, so I will leave librarians to explain what they were looking for. Fantagraphics had set up with Norton, D&Q with McMillan, Uncivilized and Iron Circus in Consortium, Dark Horse and DC set up side by side in the Random House aisle. Some publishers made the decision to be in the distro area, but many other stuck it out in the GN pavilion, notably IDW/Top Shelf, Boom and all of the manga publishers on hand, Viz, TokyoPop, Yen Press and Udon. While it was all the way at the end of the hall, the Graphic Novel Stage served as a focal point.

There were many creators on hand, including a host of the DC Zoom and DC Ink writers, and of course the whole artist alley, which was small but significant. Due to the size of the hall, crowds would tend to come in waves. Much like BEA there were often long lines for signings, and librarians love free stuff just like everyone else.

I did attend the presentation DC Zoom and DC Ink lines led by VP Michele Wells and featuring writers Mariko Tamaki, Danielle Paige, Shea Fontana, Ridley Pearson, Kami Garcia, Meg Cabot, and Lauren Myracle. Unlike the long ago Minx (which this is often compared to) these lines feature veteran YA and kids authors who bring their own followings to an initiative aimed firmly at bookstores. It’s funny how retailers aren’t worried about THESE comics, isn’t it?

The mood was very different from the usual superhero hype panel, which usually consists of something like the following. “Remember issue #327 of Amygdala Man, where he finds a pair of underpants on the beach? Well in issue #600 we’re going to find out who they belong to and how it fits in with what Sprawlmeister has been up to.”

Instead the plans all spoke to the aspirational and emotional state of the young superheroes, with their motivations and family issues being covered to show how they overcame – or didn’t – problems to be heroes. Basic stuff really. The giveaway booklets for both lines featured sizable previews of most titles, and the art is sharp on these! As mentioned on twitter, DC Superhero Girls is the real disruption in the superhero biz, with thousands and thousands of copies sold and a whole generation of girls coming to love these characters.

Saturday night saw a sort of comics social event of the ALA, the Will Eisner Library Grant Reception, led by Carl and Anne Gropper and John Shableski. Grants were presented to two libraries for their projects, and a few speeches were made. Jason Latour (above) delivered a key note, noting how styrange it was “for a kid who spent a lot of time in detention to be talking to a room full of librarians.” Olivier Jalabert of Glenát also delivered some very funny remarks.

The event was another one where the spirit of Will Eisner was conjured. In a display of unique clairvoyance, he foresaw the rise of the graphic novel. Perhaps New Orleans was the place for his ghost to appear and see that his works were good.

Sunday was pretty much just more of all of this. I did the “Underrated and Overrated graphic Novels” panel, a terrifying chance to go on the record with some disses, but I won’t reveal what was said. My fellow panelist Gene Ha did repeatedly ding Chris Hart, whose “anatomy books” for artists are cheesy and full of mistakes, so I’ll go along with that: Christopher Hart isnogood!

I also popped into a panel featuring Mark Siegel in a panel discussion with First Second star authors Vera Brosgol and Ngozi Ukazu. At one point in the free-flowing conversation, Vera and Ngozi were asked why their artwork connects with readers both inside and outside the comics ‘geekdom’. Vera answered with a tip for young artists: “make the eyes bigger.” And the conversation went on into why humans are hardwired to love baby features, and sometimes cartooning might just tap into that – the appeal of “neoteny” in current comics styles hasn’t been much explored, so here’s your cue!

Also the great Raina, so often mentioned, was in attendance, although just to hang out, and led to this epic photo.

https://twitter.com/goraina/status/1010976229065940992

Sunday afternoon was also the big day for the presentation to the ALA governing board about the Graphic Novel Round Table. The librarians presenting the proposal had been nervous about it all weekend. Honestly no one thought it wouldn’t be picked up. When a call for interested parties went out they hoped for 200 responses but got 1000.

And that’s really the bottom line about the ALA. Librarians love comics not because it’s a secret hobby they try to fob off on other people – graphic novels are highly circulated books in libraries. There is an avid readership and a growing need for more information about all of it. I think a lot of first time ALA attendees thought that their job would be trying to persuade librarians to give comics a try, but the reality is that curators are way ahead of that – they’re always looking for MORE information about the publishers and authors their patrons are interested in, and more information to justify their purchasing budgets. They are hungry for more books that people can read and enjoy.

Far from the roil of the DM, graphic novels were clearly on the upswing “Graphic novels are big and they’re just going to get bigger,” someone at the Disney booth, of all places, told me.

Creator Frank Cammuso had an even more blunt assessment. “I think libraries saved comics,” he told me. Looking back at how comics emerged from the wreck of the post speculation market into the manga-fueled era of bookstore comics, and the recovery following Borders going under, library sales have risen steadily, an invisible but integral part of the business for publishers smart enough to get in on it. The numbers don’t lie: There are an estimated 119,487 libraries in the US, including 16,000 public libraries and nearly 100,000 school libraries. A hit in this market dwarfs the direct sales market, and doesn’t even show up on Bookscan.

So yeah, it was a good time. Despite all the shit going on in the outside world, I couldn’t help but feel optimistic as I made one last stroll through the feels-like-105-degree sauna of New Orleans. Perhaps I was just infected with a swamp dream, maybe it was just the low-stress experience of spending a whole weekend surrounded by smart, literate people. Maybe I was just bathed in the smiles and fellowship of people talking about the thing they love. For me, the ALA in New Orleans was the time and place to be feel good about what we’ve accomplished and look forward to doing even more.

https://twitter.com/marcelaphane/status/1011631881396391936

ALA 2018: Graphic novels shine in a very different Hall H Why can’t the world just be ruled by cabals of mighty librarian queens? Organizing to create policies, …

#alaac 2018 #First Second #gnrt #Graphic Novels #hall h #librarians #new orleans #tina coleman

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d2kvirus · 3 years

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Dickheads of the Month: February 2021

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of February 2021 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Let it not be said that Republican senators know what is best for their country. And what is best for their country? Putting their party ahead of the country, because it’s far more important to show the country that Republicans stick with one of their own even when “one of their own” isn’t one of their own but stood on a Republican ticket, even though they just so happened to incite a riot at the Capitol having lost on said Republican ticket

The High Court ruled that Matt Hancock acted unlawfully when doling out contract after contract to his mates no matter how unqualified they are, and not only did he not resign, but we had the BBC burying the story with as little a mention as they could get away with when it broke while Keir Starmer said he did not believe the public wanted to see Hancock resign. Gee, I wonder why the UK is so fucked up?

...and then Matt Hancock went one further by saying that the British public should be thanking him, because apparently we should be grateful for 130,000 dead, his mates making off like bandits on lucrative contracts, multiple spikes in death rates due to gross incompetence by him and his bosses, and him gaslighting the public by saying there was never a PPE shortage while telling the public they should be thanking the greedy, useless, sociopathic cunt

It appears that Dido Harding is the only person on earth who is unaware that viruses mutate. That sound you just heard was the collective screaming of every biologist, virologist and epidemiologist on earth screaming in unison at the combination of her making such a profoundly moronic statement as if it was an adequate defence, and the fact she was not only given £10bn to be in charge of Serco’s test & trace but is spending £1000 a day on consultants fees in spite having less knowledge of how viruses work than a peanut

Remember how Keir Starmer said he’d unite the Labour party? I have to ask, as it appears that Starmer has forgotten about that considering all three candidates for the Liverpool mayoral election were dropped from the ballot without any reasoning given short of some vague and meaningless wording of a vague and meaningless statement, something which Starmer has been issuing a lot of lately

Smirking bully Priti Patel seems to have finally cottoned onto the fact her role is to allow boneheads to point to the one non-white person who agrees with them and claim that means everyone agrees with their boneheaded views, which she demonstrated by making some patently absurd comments about the Blame Lives Matter movement while moaning about footballers taking the knee before every match - which no doubt had at least sixteen people named Gary tweeting in support of her within the hour

The fact that several LAPD officers decided that the discussion about both police brutality and endemic racism in policing wouldn’t get in the way of their being a bunch of edgelords and send valentine’s cards mocking the murder of George Floyd in the most twattish way imaginable sums up exactly why the “orL lYfeS mAttUH” knobheads are so far wide of the mark that they don’t even know what the fucking mark is

So the defence which Anne Sacoolas gave in the inquest into the death of Harry Dunn was that she worked for US intelligence, which somehow justifies driving over the speed limit on the wrong side of the road, before legging it out of the country at the earliest opportunity - with the full support of the UK government to make sure she got out of the country

Similarly, apparently it did not occur to Gina Carano that tweeting out all manner of batshittery, culminating with her saying that being a Republican in 2021 America is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany, is the sort of thing that has repercussions for your career. Such as getting fired from your high profile acting gig while also having your agency drop you like an ice cold turd

Something which escaped the Tory government during their joyous pronouncement that the R number for Covid has dropped below 1 for the first time since July 2020: in doing so, they not only revealed that they pushed ahead with numerous plans, such as getting children back into school, removing employment protections for people who didn’t feel safe trudging into the office, and bribing people into restaurants with a £10 voucher when they were fully aware that the R number was above 1 - which, of course, was also missed by the supposed journalists at the BBC when joyously pronouncing the R number was below 1 for the first time since July 2020

It’s reasonably clear that Ted Cruz isn’t a champion of self-awareness, what with his response to Texas being hit with heavy snowfall and widespread power outages at the exact same time by legging it to Cancun (during a pandemic...) without realising how that made him look and sound remarkably like Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons - and he abandoned his poodle at home to do so

...and sticking with Texas, the image of Fred Meyer posting armed guards outside of their stores to prevent people from taking the produce that the store had dumped outside was one for the Capitalism family photo album

...just as Texas’ power outages led to Tucker Carson trying to blame wind turbines for the outages in spite of the fact wind turbines provide less than 15% of Texas’ power, meaning that Carlson found an entirely new way to blame minorities for problems

While it was incredible to see the ERG doing something that could be classified as research for the first time since their formation in 1992, their “research” involved them demanding that Westminster scrap Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol - the same Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol which every single member of the ERG voted for last year

Professional victim Rachel Riley came under such a vile and sustained attack when she gleefully claimed that Aaron Bastani has finally been booted out of Labour - a claim that would have a crumb of credibility if it wasn't for the fact that Bastani willingly cancelled his Labour membership a year or so ago

How nice of Oliver Dowden to put forward the idea of all British universities installing a Free Speech Champion, whose role is to shout down criticism of Britain’s less than savoury past because statues of slave traders need to stay up because statues have more rights than people these days

It was remarkable how Andrew Neil managed to spell out exactly how the media have aided and abetted the right‘s bastardisation of the word “woke” into an insult of its original meaning - and somehow failed to notice that is exactly what he was doing as he was tweeting it

The journalistic integrity of Sarah Smith took an absolute battering when she claimed in a report on the story of Nicola Sturgeon and ministerial code - a story which the BBC are giving so much more coverage to compared to the seconds they gave to Matt Hancock being found to have acted unlawfully, by the way - when she stated that Alec Salmond asked for Sturgeon’s resignation. Except that simply is not true, as Salmond never asked for that, which makes it look uncannily like the BBC have the knives out for Sturgeon because Scottish lady made BoJo look bad

Man of the British people Richard Littlejohn chimed in from his gated community in Florida claiming that a statue of Captain Tom Moore that currently does not exist would soon be pulled down by BLM protesters that he has made up, which definitely doesn’t read like sixteen different kinds of bollocks to preach to the pig ignorant converted among the Daily Mail’s readership who lack the common sense to ask questions such as “Hang on, are you comparing Captain Tom to a slave trader?”

There was little surprise that The Sun responded to Harry & Megan announcing their pregnancy by trying to say that they’re hiPpPKritZ for wanting privacy yet telling the world that they’re expecting a child, almost as if they cannot understand that the couple being bullied out of the country by both press intrusion and a particularly nasty whispering campaign led by The Sun among others is what they meant when they said they wanted privacy - which seems to be the case given how many articles thundering the same line were vomited forth in the days immediately afterwards

Convicted criminal Darren Grimes didn’t seem to notice how sinister his statement (if a passive aggressive shittweet counts as a statement, which in Grimes’ world it certainly does) about BAME voters being able to vote in “our elections” actually sounded, did he?

Amidst the accolades Andrew Butler and James Wilson have been getting for their short film Keratin, there was one dissenting voice: artist Adam Ellis, who wrote the short comic Super Chill, which Butler and Wilson plagiarised and only informed Ellis when the film was already doing the festival circuit where they asked him to promote a work that ripped off his book in spite neither asking permission nor informing him beforehand, nor did they give Ellis a single credit

There was absolutely nothing normal about how Eddie Marsan lead a particularly vicious pile-on which Ian Austin and Steven Pollard were among those who joined in, all because somebody said that It’s A Sin was let down by Tracy Ann Oberman being in the cast, which naturally must mean this one person is an antisemite who must have dozens of people dogpile onto them in a short space of time while also revealing just how insane Gnasher’s pack have gotten if they now consider a person being a Liverpool fan as one of their red flags for rampant antisemitism

Apparently nobody had the conversation with TJ Ducklo that consists of saying that threatening to “destroy” journalists is not a good look, judging by TJ Ducklo threatening to destroy Politico reporter Tara Palmeri

Waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage demanded that the EU Human Rights Act be scrapped. Luckily for Nige, there is no longer an EU Human Rights Act so he can claim “victory” - although the fact there wasn’t an EU Human Rights Act during the video he posted demanding it be scrapped, or at any point in history before he posted the video demanding it be scrapped, he’s either lacking in any form of knowledge about the EU whatsoever or is banking on clueless boneheads who have no knowledge of the EU so believe that Acts which don’t exist should be scrapped because waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage said so

Has it occurred to Piers Corbyn that doing things such as comparing lockdown to Auschwitz, and distributing leaflets saying exactly that, is monumentally knobheaded? Hang on, let me check...no, he hasn’t realised that doing so is monumentally knobheaded, what with him doing precisely that

Something possessed Lauren Boebert to sit in on a Zoom meeting with three assault rifles and a GLOCK precariously balanced on the shelves behind her, somehow failing to notice that not only did it look completely deranged - especially if a spot of light dusting could lead to her unintentionally shooting the neighbours on both sides of her house - but the assault rifle on the bookshelf aesthetic has already been done by Osama bin-Laden

The oppressed underclass that are Manchester United fans once again responded to their team dropping points by racially abusing one of their own players on social media, with Axel Tuanzebe once again bearing the brunt of it after their 3-3 draw with Everton

Good to see that Gab are on the grift again with their free speech device, a device which guaranteed free speech by blocking cable channels that people who still use Gab (or rushed back there after Parler got iced) don’t agree with, because nothing says “free speech” like blocking differing viewpoints

There comes a point where you hope Julia Halfwit Hartley Brewer puts her foot down and tells her paymasters she’s had enough of making moronic statements posed as a question for people dumb enough to agree with the moronic statement, but clearly it wasn’t when she was told that her response to the Perseverance rover landing on Mars should be asking why we can send a probe to Mars yet not visit our neighbours, which is moronic even by the usual bilge she's told to throw out into the world by her paymasters

Hearing PS5 scalpers whine and complain that they are disrespected, and using some patently absurd arguments to defend themselves such as saying they’re simply supermarkets - as if they haven’t emptied said supermarkets of their stocks of PS5s before they even made it to shelves - really sums up how human garbage may have gained sentience, but it hasn’t gained self-awareness

Did it really not occur to DJ Tiiny that his telling record producers that their artists would get on his radio show as long as they bunged him £200 might come out at some point? Because guess what? It came out that DJ Tiiny was telling record producers that he could guarantee airtime for their artists if they bunged him £200

Occasional wrestler Austin Aries reminded us why the “occasional” part is relevant, as he decided to do a signing without masks where he signed tinfoil hats for the Covid Truthers who came to reward him for finding a career where he doesn’t have a track record of burning bridges with the entire industry

And finally, screaming and screaming until he is sick, is Donald Trump throwing a tantrum and quitting the Screen Actors Guild approximately ten minutes before he was expelled for that whole encouraging-white-terrorism-to-storm-the-Capitol thing back in January

#dickheads of the month

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middlehollow · 4 years

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ALANA WALKER

❝ LEAN INTO WHATEVER CONSUMES YOU. ❞

DATE OF BIRTH: August 25th, 1998

AGE: twenty one

PLACE OF BIRTH: aurora, ontario

OCCUPATION: medical student

SPECIES: fae (changeling)

PRONOUNS: sher/her

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

FAVOURITE SONG: so will i by ben platt

FACECLAIM: elle fanning

APPLYING FOR SOULMATE CONNECTION: I am open to it!

BIOGRAPHY/IN CHARACTER QUESTIONS

Alana Walker has honey blonde hair, bright blue eyes- and the etches of her father’s smile. Medical students never get quite enough sleep- and her body posture reflects that bone aching weariness, dark undereye circles thumbed in starkly against her pale complexion. Dove gray sweaters, dark slacks, and sensible hiking boots are her attire of choice. She’s quiet- but has a magnetism that draws the eye, a cold reserve about her that breaks away readily once engaged. It’s as if you’re being truly seen for the first time- or catching a glimpse of someone beneath a carefully curated facade of indifference.

Raised between two worlds: Alana spent the majority of her life split between meandering walks in the woods and curling up by the hearth with chunky textbooks. While she’s always been aware that she didn’t quite fit into the life that her father, James ‘Jay’ Walker, a retired professor and avid outdoorsman had envisioned for himself- Alana had thought it was because of a nasty divorce. She’d never imagined that her mother was inhuman- fae, even. The realization that she’d displaced someone else, taken the life and home that was rightfully theirs had been earth shattering. The grief and guilt from that has haunted her since.

question #1: “what was the biggest mistake you made while you were still alive?”

The sequence of events that led up to my death, right? Isn’t that going to be everyone’s answer? If it isn’t, there better be a good reason for it- a dramatic, cinematic, blockbuster sort of juicy reason. Life ruining, maybe. Otherwise, that’s just illogical- and I know how funny it sounds, to try to ascribe logic to emotion. Still.I guess I should stop dodging the question. If I had to single out one burning instance- it would be opening that front door, and walking out into the autumn night. I didn’t even get to celebrate my 21st birthday- my dad was going to break open a bottle of whiskey he’s kept on hand since I was a little girl, in anticipation of sharing it over cold glasses and a roaring fireplace. I thought it was going to be just another walk. I’d taken plenty of them before. I meant to come home. I really did- even if that’s not how they see it. How was I supposed to know it was going to be different? How could I have known?

question #2: “if you were forced to be stuck in one place around town, where would it be and why?”

Tout Museum- easily. I think everyone has a bucket list of artists’ works that they long to see in person- even if the security ropes keep you well cordoned off from ever stroking your fingers across the paint and canvas. I never quite got to check much of anything off of mine. I’d love to park a plein air easel in front of a Cassatt and try to emulate her brushwork, like how they learned in yesteryear. Marble sculptures posing in languor, relics and artifacts from long lost civilizations, Fauvist paintings exploding with colour like fireworks crackling across the night sky: there’s so much to sink your teeth into. There’s a million different stories just waiting to be ripped apart and devoured. What could be more intimate than that frisson of connection with someone thousands, millions of years in the past- of knowing that someone else saw the world through the same lens as you do?

question #3: “what is your greatest fear?

I don’t really think that I have one of those, not anymore. I suppose that’s how it goes, when you’ve already braved the absolute worst you could envision- and you’re still kicking. I’d always been afraid of not living up to my father’s expectations- that’s an easy enough conclusion to draw: single father, no maternal figure, he’s a professor- and I’m a high aspirations, Type A neurotic medical student. Is there any other kind? Thing is- you can’t be afraid of not living up to expectations, if it was never even possible for you to fulfill them to begin with. I already am a disappointment- was, had been. So what? Guess that makes me fearless? Doesn’t feel very much different, to be honest with you. Just a little empty. Numb, maybe. Could be shock- that sort of thing can take a while to settle in proper, come talk to me again in a month’s time: maybe my answer’ll change then. Until now: that’s the best I can do for you

question #4: “what type of person do you think you would end up with? why?”

Someone forgiving, hopefully. I’m an intense person- but the strength of those convictions can sometimes be difficult for others to stomach. I’d like to be able to come home at the end of the day- kick off my boots, shed academia like white lab coats in the laundry hamper, and slip in underneath the covers to someone who doesn’t want to pick my brain like sliding the flat of an oyster knife along the sulci and gyri. I get cross examined enough in lecture hall. I want someone who’s alright with silence, and settling into the long, dark night- without having to know the minute details to understand what I’m going through- someone I can say I need to be loved a little louder today to, and not have to plead with or justify why I’m deserving of that. Someone who’s loving, and accepting, even if they don’t know all of the details just yet- the kind of person who always has your back, is in your corner. Loyalty, and simplicity- not trying to solve all of my problems, trust me- I ruminate on them enough. Just someone who’s there, and solidly so. If I wanted an analytical, blow-for-blow rival, I could go out and grab any other medical student or resident by the collar. It’s a surprise to most- but I don’t want someone who lives in the academic grind day in and day out: it’s relentless and exhausting enough to have to go through it myself. I want someone who feels like home, you know? Someone you can trust with your heart, and all those silly little fears that seem so diminutive by daylight. Someone who loves art, and music, and poetry- and baking bread. The little things that medicine sets out to save, and that colour life in all of its little pleasures that make it worth it.

question #5: “you are given a magic lamp and three wishes that go with it. what would you wish for and why?”

That’s a ridiculous question. Really? I suppose there are stranger things than genies and wishes, but still. Frankly, the mind boggles at trying to encapsulate it all. I’m still coming to grips with my own heritage. Working off of the assumption that I can’t just take advantage and wish for infinite wishes, here… I suppose it’s not as if that really matters, though. The number of wishes. There’s only really one thing I’d like- even above being alive, which is kind of a cheap assumption that I’d guess more or less everyone around here would seize, given half a chance to. I’d want for- things to be set right. For me to have never taken her place to begin with- for him to have his daughter back. I love dad- but he’s not… He wasn’t meant to be my father. He’s hers. I don’t know who she is- but she deserves better than what happened- and he does, too. He deserves better. That’s all. An impractical answer for an impractical question- how’s about that?

question #6: “how did you die?”

It was stupid. It was shockingly stupid, actually- no one who knew me could’ve predicted it. It was an accident. It wasn’t something I could have foreseen coming- but I should’ve all the same: who runs outdoors into the woods in the dead of the night? I forgot to never take it for granted- that precarious truce, that humanity has with nature. It’s so easy to forget. All it takes is just a moment. I thought it’d just be a walk- I’d traced those same paths so many times before. It was like a second home, for me. How was I to have known? What was I supposed to do? I’m sure the papers chalked it up to some tragedy steeped in wasted potential, face down in the creek: too far gone by the time they found the body to accurately determine the cause of death. I fell, and broke my neck: the spinal column doesn’t tell lies. That much was clear. The motive was more muddled, though. Maybe they thought I was soused, or that I’d lost my footing accidentally. Did someone else have a hand in it? I don’t know if they ruled out foul play. I’m not quite sure that I could pinpoint down just the one cause for you myself- but I was clear headed when it comes to drink, and I don’t think that I would be so careless as to fall down on uneven ground of my own accord. I hope he didn’t find me- not like that. I know he would’ve gone looking for me. Dad wasn’t the type of guy to sit around on his hands, when there were things to be done. But it would be an ironic sort of inverse opening at the closing, wouldn’t it? To find a lost girl you thought was your own?

#alana #fae #MY GIRLLLL #bio #mhaccepted #town rp #supernatural rp

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Scared, angry, confused: Assam struggling to find a fine balance - india news

At 1.30pm on Thursday, Kabita Das’s phone rang. The mother of three was resting in the family’s unfinished courtyard that flanks their two-room thatched house in Chhaygaon, and fumbled for a minute with the correct button before her son’s voice wafted into her ears. “I am going for the meeting, Maa,” he said.Her son, 21-year-old Dipanjal Das, worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Guwahati, and was a loyal member of the powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU). On his way to a massive protest at the city’s Latasil field called by his idol, singer Zubeen Garg, against India’s new citizenship laws, he had dialled his mother.Das lived in a remote corner of central Assam’s Kamrup district, but news of the tumult outside reached her ears. “Don’t go, I have heard there can be gondogol (trouble),” she said.At 5pm, the phone rang again. This time, it was an unfamiliar voice on the other end. “Dipanjal has been shot,” a man said.Roughly 70km away in Guwahati’s Muslim-dominated Hatigaon neighbourhood, similar scenes were playing out. The youngest member of the Stafford family, Sam, 17, was part of a group of local men on their way back from the rally when they heard shots.“Before I could understand anything, we had started running. But Sam collapsed; blood was oozing out of the body. We called an ambulance but it was too late,” said Arif Ahmad, a neighbour. It was 7pm.The deaths of the two men, and injuries to 27 others in violent clashes that broke out across Guwahati on Thursday evening, have both shocked and galvanised Assam in its resolve to resist India’s new citizenship law that favours non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and more importantly for the North-east, Bangladesh.The deaths have forced the movement’s leaders to scale back the intensity of protests, announce no events after 5pm, and call to refrain from violence – while renewing the pledge to oppose a law that they feel will sound the death knell of local cultures and languages.But this has done little to temper local anger and the possibility of lurching back to the dark days of the Assam Agitation that not only took hundreds of lives but also cost the state decades in development.“The people feel that they are fighting for the survival of their essence, and their economic and cultural rights,” said Rakhee Kalita Moral, a professor at Guwahati’s Cotton University. “They feel that India is not ready to listen to their voices of protest.”PROTESTS, IN ANGER AND SUPPORT It’s Friday, a day has passed since Das and Stafford died, and thousands of people are trooping into the Chandmari field in Guwahati for a rally called by Assamese artists and intellectuals. A group of young men shout slogans in their remembrance.“We will never forget their sacrifice,” said Robin Sarma, a student.The stage is makeshift – a wooden table with a microphone on it, and some of the older speakers are being helped into plastic chairs before climbing atop the table. There is a citywide ban on the internet, and a curfew, but word has spread like wildfire, and people are walking in columns, many singing the jatia sangeet – O Mur Apunar Desh (our great nation) – penned by Assamese icon Laxminath Bezbaroa.“You cannot impose a law on Assam. Remember, if we elected you, we can also take the power away, “said educationist Deben Dutta. “Joi Aai Axom (Hail mother Assam),” the crowd thundered back.For roughly six hours, the crowd defies the curfew to listen to speakers – from student leaders, poets, writers, artists, actors and politicians – renew their pledge to fight the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. “If someone thought they could play with Assam’s self-respect, they don’t know they are playing with a volcano. It is time we show them,” said Lurinjyoti Gogoi, general secretary of AASU to loud cheers.Such protests are being organised across the Brahmaputra Valley – from the chars near Barpeta where Hindus and Muslims, Assamese and Bengal-origin people have joined hands in protest, to Upper Assam districts such as Tinsukhia and Sibsagar, often called the Axomiya heartland where local ethnic communities have threatened a re-run of the bloody 1979-1985 Assam Agitation if the amendments are not withdrawn or additional safeguards announced.Many of these demonstrations have devolved into street fights, with mobs pelting stones at police, uprooting road dividers, and torching vehicles.“The future of Assam as a place with an Assamese cultural face seems more in danger that ever. The numbers would justify these fears. Since this fear has such an old history – going back to the beginnings of a modern sense of Assamese identity – I am not surprised by this ,” said Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies at Bard College.Security forces have resorted to baton-charging and firing blanks, and have faced allegations of heavy handedness. The police complaint for Stafford’s death – seen by HT – alleged that forces fired without warning and at point-blank range. Police have denied the charge. “We tried hundreds of rounds of tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. When that failed, we had to resort to lethal force,” said GP Singh, additional director general of police.In contrast, in the Bengali-dominated Barak Valley, rallies were taken out to hail CAA. Many in the Barak, comprising the three districts of Hailakandi, Cachar and Silchar, feel that they were unfairly excluded from the recently concluded National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the CAA gives them a way out.The amendments are especially targeted towards people such as Ajit Das, a resident of Amraghat village in Cachar district.His family fled communal riots in then East Pakistan in 1956 and were issued refugee certificates – but these were not accepted by NRC authorities. Last year, a foreigners’ tribunal declared Ajit Das a foreigner and he spent three months in a detention camp. “We have heard that once the bill is passed, there will be no cases against Bengali Hindus,” said Sumanta Das, his brother-in-law.HISTORY OF TURMOILAssam’s tryst with ethnic and linguistic tensions dates back to the 19th century. In 1836, the then British government declared Bengali as the official language of the province, sparking huge protests that forced the administration to withdraw the decision in 1873. Over the next century and half, Assam saw many protests directed against “outsiders” – first shortly after Partition, then during the linguistic reorganising of states in the 1970s, and the last was the six-year agitation in the 1980s against “infiltrators” from Bangladesh that ended with the signing of the 1985 Assam Accord and the finalising of March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date to accord citizenship.“It is critical to note that when we say Assamese, we mean not only those who speak the language but also those indigenous and ethnic communities who have been living here for decades,” said Moral.There are three main concerns that have birthed the current crisis, say experts.The first is around the Assam Accord. In its initial days, the agreement that ended the violent movement created many differences, including those who wanted the cut-off date moved to 1951 and who opposed tribal reservations.“But over the years, a consensus emerged, and there is widespread agreement today over the accord. CAA seeks to dismantle the accord, and that’s why people are angry,” said Akhil Ranjan Dutta, professor of political science at Gauhati University.The second is anxiety about being overrun by “foreigners” and ending up as an ethnic minority. The tipping point for this was the 2011 Census, which showed that the number of people who declared Assamese as their first language dipped below 50%, and their share of overall population of India was an all-time low 1.26%.There is also fear of the “Tripura model” – where ethnic indigenous communities ended up as a minority to the dominant Bengal-origin population. “The tribals were poor and had little access to education. They lost out on jobs and privileges. Assam doesn’t want to go the Tripura way,” said Moral.The third is lack of faith in safeguards and regulation. Unlike previous outings, the government has exempted tribal-majority autonomous regions under the Sixth Schedule, and areas with inner-line permit (ILP) regime, where outsiders need prior permission before travelling. But this hasn’t stopped protests in states such as Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and even Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD).“It is clear that people don’t believe the exemptions will work. They also see it as a tactic to fragment the anti-CAA movement,” said Dutta.Pramod Bodo, who heads the All Bodo Students’ Union agreed, and said the exemptions were not practically enforceable on the ground. “There is already a population of migrants in Bodo area. Nowhere it’s written that they will be deported or their names will be deleted from electoral rolls. The exemption is only on paper,” he said. Bodos are the largest tribe in the state.This is the third phase of the anti-CAA protests – the first was before the 2016 assembly elections, when the government amended passport rules to allow people from minorities from Bangladesh and Pakistan to stay back; the second was before the 2019 general election when the CAB passed the Lok Sabha. At each stage, the protests grew.Some experts contend that unlike earlier protests, the demonstrations spontaneously erupted this time – hemmed by students from universities, and has centred religious neutrality, or secularism, as one of its central tenets.At every big protest, leaders of the movement have stressed that “infiltrators” have no religion, and that they were not against any faith. “Through these protests, we are making networks with diverse communities across tribes, ethnicities and religion, who are all feeling oppressed,” said Moral.LOST IN THE PAPER TRAILOn August 31, Sanjay Sammanit, a resident of Salmara-Dumuria village in Baksa district, found his name struck off the citizenship rolls over a typo.Sammanit’s father, Satyendra, migrated from East Pakistan in 1964 and possessed a document called “citizenship card” given to refugees. But Satyendra’s name is spelled without the “Y” in the certificate.The CAA would have solved his problems, but there is one issue: Baksa falls in BTAD, which is exempt from the ambit of the law. “We don’t know what to do. We were told that Bengalis would be taken care of but look at what will happen to us,” he said.Contrary to popular wisdom, Bengal-origin population dot the entire stretch of lower Assam where they live cheek-by-jowl with Axomiya and tribal communities. Many of these Bengali-origin settlements date back 40 years.While CAA has been broadly welcomed in these areas, many remain apprehensive of the paperwork and local Assamese officials, who they hold responsible for getting excluded from NRC.In these areas, there are two main concerns. The first is the promised implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, which calls for local reservation in jobs and land ownership, apart from political positions.“This could mean that the citizenship Bengalis would get would be second class because they would lose out on land and jobs,” said Shuvankar Ghosh, an activist from Chirang district. Earlier this year, the government set up a high-level committee to implement the terms of Clause 6.The second deals with the nitty-gritty of proving religious persecution and its impact on community and neighbourhood relations. “These locals hate foreigners. Can you imagine what will happen to us when we declare as foreigners after fighting for five years to prove our Indian-ness?” asked Rasik Das, a resident of Barpeta district.The mood among the Bengal-origin Muslim community is grim. The community, which has very low education and health indices and is among the most economically backward groups in the state, says it is opposing CAA because it is unconstitutional and also a tactic to isolate Muslims – because they’re the only community not covered.“Yes, we are scared. Bengal-origin Muslims can be targeted for both their identities. Many of us identify as both Miya and Assamese, but people are not ready to accept it,” said Ashraful Hussain, a poet and resident of Barpeta district.Another activist, Shah Jahan, says all communities in the district had come together to oppose CAA. “But there is already a narrative that Miyas are the only ones protesting and causing violence, so we are not taking the lead in the demonstrations,” he said.POLITICAL BLAME GAME Shortly after protests erupted in the state last week, curfew was clamped in five districts including Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Dhemaji and Jorhat, and in Guwahati. GP Singh, an Assam-cadre IPS officer serving in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) was posted as additional director general, law and order. “The government wanted to send a message that a tough cop is in charge,” said a senior state government official who asked not to be named.Singh says at least 1,500 people had been apprehended and 200 arrested all over the state in the past three days. “Things are normal now in the state,” he added.But there is a concern about rising tensions between Assamese and Bengali communities, admitted the senior official quoted above. “The government also suspects there is more to the protests than genuine anger,” he said.State BJP chief Ranjeet Dass said the BJP’s 4.2-million-strong cadre in the state were given specific instructions to not get provoked. “Our workers were on the defensive and it helped us. Had they also been on the offensive, Assam would have burnt,” Dass said.A Border Security Force personnel moved to Guwahati from Jammu & Kashmir said the scale of destruction in Guwahati surprised him. “Destruction to public property is more here. It wasn’t anywhere close to this in Kashmir when Article 370 was scrapped,” he added.The protests have signed the ruling BJP-Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) coalition with a number of leaders from the alliance quitting or signalling their opposition to the CAA. In upper Assam districts, angry protesters - which the BJP says are Congress members -- have barged into the houses of BJP workers and forced them to resign from the party. In almost every protest, hundreds chant slogans against chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal and finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.The BJP blames these attacks on the Congress and “miscreants”.“Congress people have made the situation worse in upper Assam, and are spreading the wrong message,” said Ranjeet Dass, state BJP chief.The Congress rubbished the allegations. “The state government failed to foresee and that is a failure of the state’s intelligence machinery,” said former chief minister Tarun Gogoi.A second senior government official said Sonowal – himself a former AASU chief -- had a fair idea that the protestors would hit the streets. “I wouldn’t say we were caught napping. But we didn’t anticipate the scale,” the official said, admitting there is genuine anger.There is widespread agreement that the AGP, which swept to power in 1985 on the back of the Assam Accord but which is facing brickbats for initially backing the CAA, is in poor shape. “The party is fragmented, there is not a lot of resources and its grassroots support is weakening,” said Dutta. In the face of the anger, the AGP has now said it may go to the Supreme Court against the new law.It is unclear whether a new grassroots formation will take its place because the AASU and Akhil Gogoi’s Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (who are heading the protests) have both historically stayed away from electoral politics. More importantly, experts say despite the protests, it would be wrong to say that the BJP will be badly defeated in the next election.There are three possible reasons for this. The first is that the BJP has consolidated its Bengali vote bank in Barak by including Hindus in CAA. The second is that the party has focused on welfare schemes and doles, especially targeting the tea tribes that form a sizeable chunk of the population in the Brahmaputra Valley. The third is the lack of an alternative because the Congress remains unpopular.“Elections are never fought on a single issue. Grassroots dissent may not yield electoral dividend,” said Dutta. He pointed out, referring to data by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, that 75% of those who voted for the BJP in 2019 – when it won eight of the 13 Lok Sabha seats – said they opposed CAB.Baruah said the connection between protest politics and institutional politics was complicated. “The BJP’s victories in Assam and the north-east are mostly the result of transactional relationships, not ideological conversion. I expect these relationships to change or become fluid. You may have voted for the BJP and still be in the streets now,” he added.COUNTING THE COSTAs the movement against CAA takes a new turn, and AASU activists fan out into villages to mobilise support, some experts have argued that the protests must be seen in conjunction with NRC to understand the human toll and the deep religious and ethnic fault lines that have been opened in the state.“CAA and NRC are both legitimate institutions of segregation, exclusion and discrimination. Their human costs will be borne by the minorities…Assam, the only state which currently bears the aftermath of both the processes, has seen deep social divides being foregrounded. The social boundaries that were asleep for a while are now awake and we see re-drawing of rigid boundaries supplemented by hate,” said Suraj Gogoi, a doctoral student at the National University of Singapore.In Chhaygaon, Dipanjal’s father Khagen -- now too old to ply a rickshaw -- has spent the past three days getting clicked for photos and bowing before leaders making a beeline to his home. Dipanjal has become a local hero and a small monument has been built in the village in his honour. “Everyone remembers dada,” said Bikash, his brother.Moushumi Begum has a new routine now. Every evening, the 24-year-old steps out of her home – located in a narrow lane in Guwahati’s Hatigaon – and walks 400m to the turn in the road where her brother, Sam Stafford, was shot. Locals have arranged bricks around a laminated photo of the boy, and people gather to light candles. In their home, Mamoni has insisted that the photo to be used in the funeral would be flanked by percussion instruments – the dhol, banjo and tabla – because Sam loved playing them. “They are still here, but he’s gone,” she said. Read the full article

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180abroad · 5 years

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Day 150: Communism, Art-Nouveau, and World War II

For our second day in Prague, we explored some of the highs and lows of Prague’s tumultuous 20th-century history: the Museum of Communism, the Alfons Mucha Museum, and the Memorial to the Heroes of the Heydrich Terror. The three sites span the arc of Prague's New Town, so we also got to see more of the city's 20th-century architecture as we walked between them.

We started the day with a sweaty 15-minute walk to the Museum of Communism, just a block away from where we saw Swan Lake the night before. It wasn’t even 10 am yet, but it was already pushing 90 degrees and humid.

The Museum of Communism is a great stop for anyone interested in learning about the Czech Republic’s troubled history under Soviet influence. It is heavy on reading and light on actual artifacts, but it is a fascinating look into the history of Soviet communism from the perspective of a country that suffered under it firsthand.

And best of all, we could take pictures–meaning that we could skim through the exhibit while recording their text for later digestion.

The exhibit starts in the 1930s. Much like Poland, post-WWI Czechoslovakia was finally free after centuries of domination by the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire. But the shadow of Fascism is looming on all sides. Intent on defending themselves from Hitler’s armies, the Czechs began a massive construction project to fortify their borders. Had it been completed, hundreds of fortified bunkers with overlapping fields of fire would have stretched across the German border.

These fortifications proved futile--not because of any design failure but because of a political one. Rather than send his takes to break through the Czech defense line, Hitler bullied the rest of Europe into forcing Czechoslovakia into giving up its borderlands to Hitler without a fight. Hitler claimed that the annexation was justified on the grounds that the inhabitants of these borderlands were ethnically German, despite the fact that the territory had always been politically Czech. (Not entirely unlike Russia's stance on annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.)

The decision to give Hitler what he wanted was called the Munich Agreement, and it was signed by the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy. Note that the leader of Czechoslovakia isn't on that list--he had to wait in a Munich hotel room while his so-called allies signed away his country's defenses in a vain attempt to appease the unappeasable Nazi war machine.

Although Britain and France revoked their support of this agreement after Hitler inevitably annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia by force, many Czechs continue to resent them for what they call the Munich Betrayal. I can’t say that I blame them.

Five years later, Czechoslovakia was liberated by the Soviet army. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The rest of the museum covers various aspects of life under communist rule. Food, medicine, and other essentials were scarce, working conditions became longer and harder, and freedom of expression was nonexistent.

Despite continual promises to the contrary, the Soviet-backed communist government nationalized one industry after another until there was virtually no legal private enterprise in the country whatsoever. Even simple transactions between individuals, like someone fixing a neighbor's door in exchange for food, were strictly prohibited.

Soon enough, the nationalized industries were struggling to pay their debts and keep up production. There were shortages throughout the country--people had money but nothing to spend it on. In response, the government enacted a series of currency "reforms." Savings and debts were devalued by 43%, and people had to exchange any cash they had for new currency, losing 80-98% of the value in the bargain depending on how much they had to exchange.

As a Soviet satellite state, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was made to join Comecon, a (retroactively hilariously named) protectionist trade organization run by the Soviet Union. Through Comecon, resources were taken from wealthier member countries and given to poorer member countries, and member countries could not trade with outside countries unless they did it through the Comecon organization. In Czech, the acronym for Comecon was RVHP, which inspired a joke that the acronym actually stood for a phrase that translates roughly as "rejoice, be merry, we have nothing, so let's share it."

Throughout the period of communist rule, propaganda was all-invasive. It was plastered on walls, shouted from public speakers, presented as journalism in newspapers, and even built into the skyline. Prague was chosen as the site for a massive stone monument to Stalin. It took ten years and billions of dollars to create--and it was blown up just seven years later during a rebranding movement under Khrushchev.

The bulk of the propaganda that wasn't focused on worshiping Soviet leaders was focused on idealizing poor, uneducated workers and vilifying the (rapidly shrinking) educated middle class.

In a stark, black-walled corridor, the museum tells the story of the Czechoslovakian military and police forces under communist rule. Despite being a supposedly independent country, Czechoslovakia's army was fully integrated into Soviet chain of command, with Russian generals in charge of every detail. Borders were tightly sealed, and 450 Czechoslovakian citizens were killed trying to cross the Iron Curtain. An additional 600 Czechoslovakian and Soviet soldiers were killed by people trying to escape.

And then there was the secret police, who used bribes, blackmail, and outright torture to create an army of informants. It was through these informants that such petty crimes as fixing a neighbor's door could be effectively policed and punished. If someone was suspected of hiding something, they were and their loved ones were beaten, drugged, and even executed. Forced labor camps once again sprang up throughout the country in a chilling echo of Nazi occupation. Fear and mistrust were the currency of Communism’s power.

In the 1960s, a new generation of Czech Communist party leaders began to adopt a more moderate, liberal stance. Censorship was eased, elections became more democratic, and limited trade with the West allowed department stores to fill with goods once again.

And the Soviets wanted none of it. Overnight, a Soviet army descended on Prague, and virtually all of the Czech Communist leaders were imprisoned or executed. A new Moscow-approved government was installed in its place, and for the next twenty-one years, things steadily got worse.

Finally, in 1989–days after the fall of the Berlin Wall–the dam broke. A student march that had originally been organized by the Communist youth to celebrate the defeat of Fascism turned into a protest against the ongoing repression of the Soviet-backed Communists. Tens of thousands of students were arrested or brutally beaten as they ran away. But unlike the Tiananmen Square massacre that had only recently occurred in China, the government’s actions only stoked the fires of resentment.

Working-class parents–the backbone of the regime’s support–were outraged by their children’s treatment and immediately joined the protests. Hundreds of thousands of people from across the country flooded Wenceslas Square each evening, and within days, the Velvet Revolution was complete. The Soviets packed up and left, and Czechoslovakians were able to vote in truly free elections for the first time in over 50 years.

(For better or worse, the again-newly independent country of Czechoslovakia was short-lived, breaking up several years later by mutual agreement into separate Czech and Slovak Republics. But that’s a story for some other museum.)

Having been run through the emotional gamut and in desperate need of additional caffeine, we decided to stop at a nearby café before going on to our next sight. But before the café, however, we followed a Rick Steves recommendation and peeked into the fabulous Municipal House that I mentioned in our last post.

The interior is stunning. Not gaudy, but colorful and vivacious. It was like stepping into a 1920s period movie.

We also noticed a sign indicating that the Slav Epic was currently on display at the Municipal House. We didn't appreciate what that meant at the time, but we soon would.

Our next visit was to the fabulously fun Mucha Museum. I didn’t know much about Mucha before visiting, but that says more about me than him. Mucha was one of the founders and basically the patron saint of the Art Nouveau movement. And tragically, we weren’t able to take pictures inside the museum.

Unlike the great painters of previous eras, Mucha was a commercial graphic artist. His best-known works were posters–advertisements for plays, beer, and cigarettes.

Some of his best known works are also the ones that launched his career: posters for the plays of actress Sarah Bernhardt, who fell in love with Mucha’s unique style after he made his first posters for her performance in Gismonda. He followed his smash hit debut with posters for Bernhardt's leading performances Medee, Lorenzaccio, and Hamlet--in which she cross-dressed as the titular protagonist.

(We couldn't take pictures inside the museum, but we could certainly take pictures of the postcards we bought.)

A recurring motif we noticed in Mucha’s works are nested circles, sickles, and other geometric patterns. Mucha was deeply interested in spiritualism and sacred symbology–he even became a leader of the Freemasons in Czechoslovakia later in life.

Since he spent time in Prague in his early life, Jessica and I can’t help but wonder if Mucha’s obsession with intertwining geometric shapes was in any way inspired by the city’s enchanting astronomical clock.

But there’s more to Mucha than poster art. After nearly a decade of skyrocketing fame, Mucha was dissatisfied at being essentially little more than a glorified ad man. He wanted to create something that expressed his spirituality. The culmination of this desire was Le Pater, a beautiful and hauntingly illustrated edition of the Lord’s Prayer. It was printed in miniscule numbers, and reproductions are still hard to come by.

We were able to see a copy opened to a dark and haunting illustration of a godlike figure looking down on a crowd of people prostrated and lapping eagerly from a flowing stream.

From then on, Mucha’s artistic vision branched in two directions. He explored traditional oil-on-canvas paintings, culminated in his masterpiece 20-canvas cycle The Slav Epic, which far too large and important to be kept in such a small museum as this one. He also continued his poster art, but instead of using his art to sell cigarettes and entertainment, he used it to sell a Czech national identity. Featuring traditional Slavic costumes and mythological figures, these works helped inspire Czech national pride and propel awareness of Czech culture into the heart of Western Europe.

Sadly, this effort was not appreciated by Hitler’s invasion force in 1939. Mucha was arrested by the military, and though he was eventually released, his health never recovered and he died shortly thereafter.

I have to say that I’ve become a Mucha fan. His art is easy to like and manages to inspires hope and optimism even when he’s dealing with the darker sides of human nature.

Our final major stop of the day was another site related to the Nazi occupation–the Orthodox church where Czechoslovakian paratroopers Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis made their last stand against an army of Waffen-SS troops.

It’s okay if you aren’t familiar with these two names. I wasn’t either. But you should be. With the help of British special forces and Czech resistance fighters, these two men carried out the highest-level assassination of a Nazi leader in all of WWII.

Reinhard Heydrich was Himmler’s right hand man, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, and a personal favorite of Hitler, who called him the man with the iron heart. Even among the Nazis, Heydrich was feared and respected as a cold-hearted monster. In 1941, he was rewarded for his loyalty and ambition by being made acting governor of the conquered Czechoslovak territories. A brutal man, he quickly earned the nickname Butcher of Prague.

Heydrich saw the Czechoslovakians as a mongrel race--a mixed bale of wheat and chaff to be ruthlessly sorted into separate piles. Those judged to be "good stock" were to be sent to Germany for reeducation. The rest were to be put to work or shot. The land of Czechoslovakia, successfully emptied, would then be repopulated with good German settlers.

I was particularly struck when I saw the museum's set of stained wood chips. SS officers would hold the wood chips up against a person's skin, hair, and eyes to judge what racial class they belonged in, from Aryan birch to Nubian ebony. Something about the twisted combination of brutal simplicity and horrific absurdity just perfectly encapsulates the essence of Nazism.

In response to this oppression, nine Czechoslovakian paratroopers stationed in Britain were selected for a high-risk mission to assassinate Heydrich. Gabcik and Kubis lead the mission.

Things went wrong from the start. They were airdropped into Prague, which was over 50 miles from their intended landing zone outside the town of Pilsen (home of Pilsner-style beer). Undaunted, the paratroopers joined up with a local resistance cell and secretly began to organize for the assassination.

When the resistance fighters eventually figured out what the paratroopers' mission actually was, they desperately plead with their contacts in the Allied command to have the mission called off. If a Nazi governor was assassinated, the reprisals against the Czechoslovakian people would be cataclysmic. At least some members of the Allied command seemed swayed by their arguments, but they never got around to actually calling the mission off.

On the day of the assassination, almost everything went wrong again. The plan was for Gabcik and Kubis to ambush Heydrich’s open-topped car as it went around a slow hairpin turn on the road to his office in Prague Castle. But their machine gun jammed, and the backup grenade exploded outside of Heydrich’s car instead of inside it. A brief gunfight ensued, but in the shock of the moment the paratroopers and the Nazi governor emptied their pistols at each other without landing a hit. Gabcik and Kubis managed to escape, certain that they had blown the only chance they would ever get.

But what they did turned out to be enough. Heydrich had been more severely wounded by the shrapnel of the grenade than they realized. After an excruciating week of sickness and surgeries, Heydrich died of sepsis from his wounds.

The reprisals came, and they were even more vicious than the Allies' worst fears. Anyone suspected of knowing anything about the assassination was tortured and executed, and two entire villages were wiped out on mere suspicion of hiding the assassins. In the end, around five thousand Czechoslovakians were killed in direct response to Heydrich’s death.

It was only in response to these atrocities that Britain and France decided to withdraw from the Munich Agreement, which we'd learned about that morning.

For days, it seemed like the Gabcik, Kubis, and the rest of the paratroopers might make it. They had been hidden in the crypt of an Orthodox church in central Prague, and despite the massacres taking place above ground, no one was talking.

But one man finally broke, deciding that the good of protecting the paratroopers wasn't worth the evil of allowing innocent Czechs to be murdered by the Nazis. This member of the resistance didn't know exactly where the paratroopers were hiding, but he went to the Gestapo and told them everything he did know. The other resistance members that he named were rounded up along with their families. One by one, they were tortured and executed until the Nazis were finally able to trace a bloody trail back to the church where the paratroopers were hidden.

After a two-hour standoff against an army of 750 SS troops, all the paratroopers lay dead, either by Nazi bullets or their own.

The informant, now a reviled traitor to his people, continued his work for the Germans until the end of the war, when he was executed as a traitor.

An ominous metal door leads from the museum into the crypt itself, where the last surviving paratroopers took their own lives. Today, it is filled with memorials to the paratroopers.

The alcoves filled with letters and handmade tokens of remembrance are a testament to the reverence that the Czech people hold for these heroes, regardless of the Nazi wrath their act of resistance incited.

Finally taking a break from the dreary topics of the day, we walked down to the riverfront and up the esplanade. We saw a ton of gorgeous old buildings, as well as the humorous and much newer “dancing house.”

Across the river, we could see the Prague Castle complex standing up on its hill.

We ended the day’s sightseeing with a walk across the pedestrian Charles Bridge. Built over 600 years ago, this bridge made Prague a nexus of East-West trade. Today, it is crowded with tourists, buskers, and trinket hawkers. But that doesn’t make it any less striking with its massive tower, lines of statues, and great views of the Castle Quarter across the river.

At this point we were just about dead on our feet. Especially Jessica, who had gotten basically no sleep up in the sweltering loft bed the night before. So we walked a few blocks over to find a less crowded spot, then called an Uber to take us home. We took a fair number of Ubers in Prague, and they were always a pleasant and affordable experience.

All in all, it was a bit of a depressing day, but in a good way. It’s important to know and appreciate the darker history of places. Not only does it make us more informed and vigilant citizens of the human race, it makes the beauty of places that much more meaningful in light of the ugliness that it has managed to outlive.

Next Post: The Slave Epic (and a Break for Beer)

Last Post: Prague–Old and Nouveau

#180abroad #prague #czech republic #mucha #history #museums #communism #wwii

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nomanwalksalone · 7 years

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GLENN O’BRIEN, 1947-2017

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

In recent days, the art, music and, not least, fashion worlds have all mourned the unexpected passing of Glenn O’Brien. The dust of his life path, even before one read his men’s style writing, kicked up many different clouds that each could qualify him as a style icon, worthy in fact of the most florid and flamboyant epithets of praise I know. His many public incarnations, beginning at the birth of Pop Culture as a product of Andy Warhol’s Factory, earn him the appellation protean: constantly adapting, indeed ahead of the curve. O’Brien’s acid wit rarely fueled a poison pen, but deserved the term epigrammatic. And his ability to marry and convey different conflicting views and inspirations made him a contrarian in the best possible way, a true original.

Many of the necrologies currently scattering like grave dirt mention O’Brien’s vast, varied, and immensely entertaining CV: his debut as a clean-cut kid who by his admission was one of the two people brought in to edit Warhol’s new magazine Interview because they weren’t effed up on drugs. (Warhol famously said everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame; coincidentally I always thought Interview took 15 minutes to read, but at least they were a fun 15 minutes, more than I can say about almost any other publication.) His days hosting the anarchic public access cable show TV Party (which he created with Blondie’s Chris Stein) welcoming in the bright lights of the postpunk generation; his stints as “Editor at Large” of High Times, a title he claimed to have invented in homage to the legally suspect area of the magazine’s avowed subject; Creative Director of advertising for Barneys New York; columnist for Artforum; and a long tenure as The Style Guy for the defunct Details and, until a few years ago, GQ, which has become even more irrelevant since his acrimonious departure. Thence to Maxim, as the Axe Body Spray of men’s magazines tried to rebrand. Latterly, he launched a new show on Apple TV called Tea at the Beatrice, where over sedate afternoon tea at Graydon Carter’s Beatrice Inn he hobnobbed with personalities from art and fashion as diverse as Gisele Bündchen (whom the NYT in its amnesiac idiocy is now calling an “influencer”) to the artist, provocateur and posturer Shepard Fairey, whose college-town Andre the Giant shenanigans influenced me indelibly.

In addition, over that time he co-wrote Madonna’s Sex, and, far more stomach-turningly, helped write the most recent Berluti book. In between, he came out with the best-seller How to Be a Man, an engaging compendium inspired by his work as GQ’s Style Guy. When he parted ways with GQ in 2015, it kept custody of the Style Guy moniker, though not his incomparable voice: he sniped to the to the snarkblog Four Pins that the change was part of GQ’s devolution into a magazine that could be slipped under a door.

What does his loss mean for fashion? The numerous plaudits and obituaries that have poured in enumerate all of his glittering trajectory, almost as if to minimize his fashion writing, or to imply that his Style Guy columns, which he mentioned took him “one day a month,” were not serious, because clothes, fashion, style are all implicitly unserious and frivolous. A review of almost all writing about clothing and style, including that by most claimants to intellectual viewpoints on them, could justify this assumption: writers repeat received nonsense, parrot rationalizations that $6,000 suits somehow pay for themselves, and generally proffer self-congratulation, either to those who follow expensive trends, or to the creepiest advocates of retrograde cliché. Sensibilities they lack – or fail to express – are history, perspective, individualism, and any semblance of creative thought. O’Brien’s numerous different incarnations weren’t just a résumé for us to take him more seriously than “just” another style writer. Rather, all of those different avatars conferred on his style writing the expanse of his experience, his knowledge, his culture and his individual taste. He broke out of cliché, the deep wellspring of #menswear writing, and burst the hide bounds of conservatism, the safe constraint of rules where the cautious or ill-informed men’s clothing writer seeks masochistic refuge. O’Brien loved clothes and brought his esthetic sensibility and the empiricism gained of personal experiment to how he dressed and how he, when asked, advised others to dress. He married custom suits from Steed, perhaps the best British exponent of the drape cut, with Belgian loafers without even a whiff of grapeshot.

And he introduced readers, even occasional ones like me, to a set of modern style icons, New Gods as baroquely different as Jack Kirby’s, from fellow Warhol scenester Fred Hughes (whose habit, O’Brien described, of wearing three different checked patterns I’ve never forgotten and often emulated) to the Iranian-American writer and political polemicist Hooman Majd.

Looking back, it fits: Warhol magnified and elevated our mass modern culture, a culture of frivolous commonplaces, taken for granted. What, to the popular mind, could be more so than fashion, that supposedly changes from season to season, and clothes, that conventional wisdom says are not serious? O’Brien brought a keen wit, a magpie eye, a vitriolic pen, and a broad culture that did not disdain the low or dismiss the high. Our Pop Culture style writer, it took a man of that breadth of interests, that depth of knowledge, to say something original and interesting about clothes.

As he explained to Four Pins in the aftermath of his GQ breakup, he strove to be both “philosophical and unpredictable” in his clothing writing. Amen.

Glenn O’Brien, 1947-2017.

#menswear #glenn o'brien #nomanwalksalone #rjman #reginaldjeromedemans #features

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blackkudos · 7 years

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Sam Cooke

Samuel Cook (January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964), known professionally as Sam Cooke, was an American singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur.

Influential as both a singer and composer, he is commonly known as the King of Soul for his distinctive vocals and importance within popular music. His pioneering contributions to soul music contributed to the rise of Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Billy Preston, and popularized the likes of Otis Redding and James Brown. AllMusic biographer Bruce Eder wrote that Cooke was "the inventor of soul music", and possessed "an incredible natural singing voice and a smooth, effortless delivery that has never been surpassed".

Cooke had 30 U.S. top 40 hits between 1957 and 1964, plus three more posthumously. Major hits like "You Send Me", "A Change Is Gonna Come", "Cupid", "Chain Gang", "Wonderful World", "Another Saturday Night", and "Twistin' the Night Away" are some of his most popular songs. Cooke was also among the first modern black performers and composers to attend to the business side of his musical career. He founded both a record label and a publishing company as an extension of his careers as a singer and composer. He also took an active part in the Civil Rights Movement.

On December 11, 1964, at the age of 33, Cooke was shot and killed by Bertha Franklin, the manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, California - Doug Bouchard a Boeing executive was in the room next door, and witnessed the event. After an inquest, the courts ruled Cooke's death to be a justifiable homicide. Since that time, the circumstances of his death have been called into question by Cooke's family.

Early life and career

Cooke was born Samuel Cook in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1931. In 1957 he added an "e" at the end of his name; the reason for the change is disputed. He was the fifth of eight children of the Rev. Charles Cook, a minister in the Church of Christ (Holiness), and his wife, Annie Mae. One of his younger brothers, L.C. (b. 1932), later became a member of the doo-wop band Johnny Keyes and the Magnificents.

The family moved to Chicago in 1933. Cooke attended Doolittle Elementary and Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Chicago, the same school that Nat "King" Cole had attended a few years earlier. Sam Cooke began his career with his siblings in a group called the Singing Children when he was six years old. He first became known as lead singer with the Highway QC's when he was a teenager, having joined the group at the age of 14. During this time, Cooke befriended fellow gospel singer and neighbor Lou Rawls, who sang in a rival gospel group.

In 1950, Cooke replaced gospel tenor R. H. Harris as lead singer of the gospel group the Soul Stirrers, founded by Harris, who had signed with Specialty Records on behalf of the group. Their first recording under Cooke's leadership was the song "Jesus Gave Me Water" in 1951. They also recorded the gospel songs "Peace in the Valley", "How Far Am I from Canaan?", "Jesus Paid the Debt" and "One More River", among many others, some of which he wrote. Cooke was often credited for bringing gospel music to the attention of a younger crowd of listeners, mainly girls who would rush to the stage when the Soul Stirrers hit the stage just to get a glimpse of Cooke.

Crossover pop success

His first pop/soul single was "Lovable" (1956), a remake of the gospel song "Wonderful". It was released under the alias "Dale Cook" in order not to alienate his gospel fan base; there was a considerable stigma against gospel singers performing secular music. However, it fooled no one—Cooke's unique and distinctive vocals were easily recognized. Art Rupe, head of Specialty Records, the label of the Soul Stirrers, gave his blessing for Cooke to record secular music under his real name, but he was unhappy about the type of music Cooke and producer Bumps Blackwell were making. Rupe expected Cooke's secular music to be similar to that of another Specialty Records artist, Little Richard. When Rupe walked in on a recording session and heard Cooke covering Gershwin, he was quite upset. After an argument between Rupe and Blackwell, Cooke and Blackwell left the label.

In 1957, Cooke appeared on ABC's The Guy Mitchell Show. That same year, he signed with Keen Records. His first release, "You Send Me", spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. The song also had mainstream success, spending three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart.

In 1961, Cooke started his own record label, SAR Records, with J.W. Alexander and his manager, Roy Crain. The label soon included the Simms Twins, the Valentinos (who were Bobby Womack and his brothers), Bobby Womack and Johnnie Taylor. Cooke then created a publishing imprint and management firm named Kags before leaving Keen to sign with RCA Victor. One of his first RCA singles was "Chain Gang", which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart. It was followed by more hits, including "Sad Mood", "Cupid", "Bring it on Home to Me" (with Lou Rawls on backing vocals), "Another Saturday Night", and "Twistin' the Night Away".

Like most R&B artists of his time, Cooke focused on singles; in all, he had 29 top 40 hits on the pop charts and more on the R&B charts. He was a prolific songwriter and wrote most of the songs he recorded. He also had a hand in overseeing some of the song arrangements. In spite of releasing mostly singles, he released a well-received blues-inflected LP in 1963, Night Beat, and his most critically acclaimed studio album, Ain't That Good News, which featured five singles, in 1964.

In 1963 Cooke signed a five-year contract for Allen Klein to manage Kags Music and SAR Records and made him his manager. Klein negotiated a five-year deal (three years plus two option years) with RCA in which a holding company, Tracey, Ltd., named after Cooke's daughter, owned by Klein and managed by J. W. Alexander, would produce and own Cooke's recordings. RCA would get exclusive distribution rights in exchange for 6 percent royalty payments and payments for the recording sessions. For tax reasons, Cooke would receive preferred stock in Tracey instead of an initial cash advance of $100,000. Cooke would receive cash advances of $100,000 for the next two years, followed by an additional $75,000 for each of the two option years if the deal went to term.

Death

Cooke died at the age of 33 on December 11, 1964, at the Hacienda Motel, at 9137 South Figueroa Street, in Los Angeles, California. Answering separate reports of a shooting and of a kidnapping at the motel, police found Cooke's body, clad only in a sports jacket and shoes but no shirt, pants or underwear. He had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest, which was later determined to have pierced his heart. The motel's manager, Bertha Franklin, said she had shot Cooke in self-defense after he broke into her office residence and attacked her. Her account was immediately questioned and disputed by acquaintances.

The official police record states that Franklin fatally shot Cooke, who had checked in earlier that evening. Franklin claimed that Cooke had broken into the manager's office-apartment in a rage, wearing nothing but a shoe and a sports coat, demanding to know the whereabouts of a woman who had accompanied him to the hotel. Franklin said the woman was not in the office and that she told Cooke this, but the enraged Cooke did not believe her and violently grabbed her, demanding again to know the woman's whereabouts. According to Franklin, she grappled with Cooke, the two of them fell to the floor, and she then got up and ran to retrieve a gun. She said she then fired at Cooke in self-defense because she feared for her life. Cooke was struck once in the torso. According to Franklin, he exclaimed, "Lady, you shot me", before mounting a last charge at her. She said she beat him over his head with a broomstick before he finally fell, mortally wounded by the gunshot.

The motel's owner, Evelyn Carr, claimed that she had been on the telephone with Franklin at the time of the incident. Carr claimed to have overheard Cooke's intrusion and the ensuing conflict and gunshot. She called the police to request that officers go to the motel, telling them she believed a shooting had occurred.

A coroner's inquest was convened to investigate the incident. The woman who had accompanied Cooke to the motel was identified as Elisa Boyer, who had also called the police that night shortly before Carr had. Boyer had called from a telephone booth near the motel, telling them she had just escaped being kidnapped.

Boyer told the police that she had first met Cooke earlier that night and had spent the evening in his company. She claimed that after they left a local nightclub together, she had repeatedly requested that he take her home, but he instead took her against her will to the Hacienda Motel. She claimed that once in one of the motel's rooms, Cooke physically forced her onto the bed, and that she was certain he was going to rape her. According to Boyer, when Cooke stepped into the bathroom for a moment, she quickly grabbed her clothes and ran from the room. She claimed that in her haste, she had also scooped up most of Cooke's clothing by mistake. She said she ran first to the manager's office and knocked on the door seeking help. However, she said that the manager took too long in responding, so, fearing Cooke would soon be coming after her, she fled from the motel before the manager ever opened the door. She said she then put her clothing back on, hid Cooke's clothing, went to a telephone booth, and called police.

Boyer's story is the only account of what happened between her and Cooke that night; however, her story has long been called into question. Inconsistencies between her version of events and details reported by other witnesses, as well as circumstantial evidence, suggest that Boyer may have gone willingly to the motel with Cooke, then slipped out of the room with his clothing in order to rob him, rather than to escape an attempted rape.

However, questions about Boyer's role were beyond the scope of the inquest, the purpose of which was only to establish the circumstances of Franklin's role in the shooting. Boyer's leaving the motel room with almost all of Cooke's clothing, and the fact that tests showed Cooke was inebriated at the time, provided a plausible explanation to the inquest jurors for Cooke's bizarre behavior and state of dress. In addition, because Carr's testimony corroborated Franklin's version of events, and because both Boyer and Franklin later passed lie detector tests, the coroner's jury ultimately accepted Franklin's explanation and returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. With that verdict, authorities officially closed the case on Cooke's death.

Some of Cooke's family and supporters, however, have rejected Boyer's version of events, as well as those given by Franklin and Carr. They believe that there was a conspiracy to murder Cooke and that the murder took place in some manner entirely different from the three official accounts. Singer Etta James viewed Cooke's body before his funeral and questioned the accuracy of the official version of events. She wrote that the injuries she observed were well beyond the official account of Cooke having fought Franklin alone. James wrote that Cooke was so badly beaten that his head was nearly separated from his shoulders, his hands were broken and crushed, and his nose mangled. Some people speculated that Cooke's manager, Allen Klein, might have had a role in his death. Klein owned Tracey, Ltd., which ultimately owned all rights to Cooke's recordings.

Aftermath

The first funeral service for Cooke was held on December 18, 1964, at A. R. Leak Funeral Home in Chicago; 200,000 fans lined up for more than four city blocks to view his body. Afterward, his body was flown back to Los Angeles for a second service, at the Mount Sinai Baptist Church on December 19, which included a much-heralded performance of "The Angels Keep Watching Over Me" by Ray Charles, who stood in for grief-stricken Bessie Griffin. Cooke was interred in the Garden of Honor, Lot 5728, Space 1, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Two singles and an album were released in the month after his death. One of the singles, "Shake", reached the top ten of both the pop and R&B charts. The B-side, "A Change Is Gonna Come", is considered a classic protest music from the era of the Civil Rights Movement . It was a top 40 pop hit and a top ten R&B hit. The album, also titled Shake, reached the number one spot for R&B albums. After Cooke's death, his widow, Barbara, married Bobby Womack. Cooke's daughter, Linda, later married Womack's brother, Cecil.

Bertha Franklin said she received numerous death threats after shooting Cooke. She left her position at the Hacienda Motel and did not publicly disclose where she had moved. After being cleared by the coroner's jury, she sued Cooke's estate, citing physical injuries and mental anguish suffered as a result of Cooke's attack. Her lawsuit sought US$200,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. Barbara Womack countersued Franklin on behalf of the estate, seeking $7,000 in damages to cover Cooke's funeral expenses. Elisa Boyer provided testimony in support of Franklin in the case. In 1967, a jury ruled in favor of Franklin on both counts, awarding her $30,000 in damages.

Marriages and Family

Cooke was married twice. His first marriage was to singer-dancer Dolores Elizabeth Milligan Cook, who was killed in an auto accident in Fresno, California, in 1959. Although he and Dolores were divorced, Cooke paid for his ex-wife's funeral expenses. Cooke and his second wife, Barbara Campbell Cooke, had three children, Linda (b.1953), Tracy (b.1960), and Vincent (1961 – 1963), who drowned in the family swimming pool. Cooke also fathered at least two other children out of wedlock.

Posthumous honors

In 1986, Cooke was inducted as a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 1987, Cooke was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

On February 1, 1994, Cooke received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the music industry, located on 7051 Hollywood Boulevard.

In 1999, Cooke was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him 16th on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".

In 2008, Cooke was named the fourth "Greatest Singer of All Time" by Rolling Stone.

In June 2011, the city of Chicago renamed a portion of East 36th Street near Cottage Grove Avenue as the honorary "Sam Cooke Way" to remember the singer near a corner where he hung out and sang as a teenager.

In 2013 Cooke was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio at Cleveland State University. The founder of the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame Museum LaMont Robinson said he was the greatest singer ever to sing. The Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame Museum will be built in Cooke's hometown of Clarksdale, MS.

Discography

Songs by Sam Cooke (1957)

Encore (1958)

Tribute to the Lady (1959)

The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke (1960)

Cooke's Tour (1960)

Hits of the 50's (1960)

Swing Low (1961)

My Kind of Blues (1961)

Twistin' the Night Away (1962)

Mr. Soul (1963)

Night Beat (1963)

Ain't That Good News (1964)

Sam Cooke at the Copa (1964)

Wikipedia

#Sam Cooke

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kallec3396-blog · 5 years

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Punk and the Vietnam War

Background: this essay will basically have two areas from which it stems: the war in Vietnam and the emerging Punk Genre. The Vietnam war had a huge impact on America society and created and influenced movements and protests for nearly two decades. A huge number of people died, countless people had their lives changed forever, and the United States itself would never be the same. To try to write an essay on this war thoroughly enough to explain the war itself and all its implications would be virtually impossible. Thus, in my essay, I will be focusing on music from the time, and more specifically, the punk genre. This genre will serve as a vehicle to contextualize the impact of the war on American society. I will be using three artists in my essay: The Clash, The Dead Kennedy’s, and The Ramones.

According to the United States National Archives, the number of casualties suffered in the Vietnam War amounts to about 58,000 American Troops.[1] The war left an indelible scar on the psyche of the American people that led to movements and uprisings across the entire country.[2] However, the war also led to a counter-cultural movement involving the inception of thousands of poems, books, films, and of countless songs. A very active movement at the time was the growing punk scene in which many artists were inspired by to express their emotions and sentiments through music. The Vietnam War facilitated the creation and advancement of punk by influencing the lyrics, musicality, and audience with whose messages resonated with.

When the United States entered Vietnam in the 1950s, the country was under huge turmoil and many Americans objected to an increase in American soldiers and the overall American presence in Vietnam.[3] As the war raged on, reports from the front lines of the war, especially the reports from television media, grew very negative and gloomy.[4] Protests began to stir and student activism began to grow and expand. This new group of socially conscious and discontent Americans were referred to as the “new left”[5] and, more colloquially, as hippies[6]. The counterculture movements and protests left an impression on American Society that eventually spilled onto all aspects of life and culture including, television, movies, books, and music. As many other musical genres at the time, the punk scene drew from the experiences and events that happened in the Vietnam War for inspiration and creativeness.

The punk genre is a musical movement whose origin is highly contested between England and the United States. The exact genesis remains unknown[7]. By the mid-1970 and the early 1980s, the punk scene had begun to gain momentum and had become a widely known genre because of bands and artists such as The Ramones, The Clash, Iggy Pop, and The Dead Kennedy’s.[8] The lyrical content of most punk songs were known to have scandalous and provocative lyrics. When the Vietnam War broke out, many punk artists took the opportunity to speak out against the war and its subsequent effects, dedicating entire songs to the war or even having subtle references to it.

The Ramones is a band who formed in New York in 1974 and were at the forefront of the punk movement.[9] The Ramones wrote many songs about the raging war and showed that, despite their simple lyrics, they could convey a powerful message about the Vietnam War. Their song, aptly named Commando[10], illustrated the situation of American troops being sent to Vietnam:

“They do their best, they do what they can, they get them ready for Vietnam.”[11]

This segment of the song alludes to the fact that during the Vietnam War, the recruiting methods that were employed by the state relied heavily on drafting. Draftees were often young and naïve men who did not know very much about the atrocities and pains they would witness and undergo in war. The government may try to prepare a person for war but, because warfare is as complex as it is, preparing is practically impossible. The next verse continues

“From old Hanoi to East Berlin, Commando involved again”.[12]

Again, this deceptively simple line illustrates what is known as the Military Industrial Complex. The Military Industrial Complex is a “symbiotic relationship between the military and the corporations that had become dependent upon the military contracts.”[13] The constant use of violent force through armed forces shows how adhered and present the Military Industrial Complex is to the United States foreign policy. Every situation “commando [is] involved again,”[14] almost as if diplomatic means were non-existent. The Military Industrial Complex is a struggle that continues today through the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.[15]

The Clash, a band native to England, also spoke out directly against the war in two of their tracks, Charlie Don’t Surf and Inoculated City. [16] The song Inoculated City starts:

The soldier boy for his soldier's pay, obeys

The sergeant at arms, whatever he says […]

The generals bow to the government

Obey the charge, you must not relent[17]

This verse illustrates how in war, the responsibility for actions such as killing and looting are not placed on those who directly carry out the actions but, rather on those in a higher charge. It also states how the actions of those who commit such killings are justified in their act of duty; it is not personal, but rather just a matter of following orders. Thus, when events such as the massacre of My Lai Massacre occurred, an event in which about 500 innocent unarmed civilians were killed,[18] those directly responsible for the massacre simply blamed those above them; it was not personal, it was simply an act of following orders.[19] Another song by The Clash, Charlie Don’t Surf, also makes reference to the Vietnam War. The title itself is taken from the famous movie Apocalypse Now (https://youtu.be/aLEjr4eg8rA), which takes place during the Vietnam War. The song goes:

Charlie's going to be a napalm star

Everybody wants to rule the world

Must be something we get from birth

One truth is we never learn[20]

The song uses the name “Charlie”[21] to represent an average American young man who has become a soldier in Vietnam. The song continues to narrate, ironically, about how “Charlie’s going to be a napalm star”[22] using “napalm”[23] as an ironic term for fame. Napalm was actually a very dangerous chemical used to burn down the dense jungle of Vietnam and kill anyone found in it, whether innocent or not.[24] The next lines transition to a different point and start to give insight into the policies employed by the United States: military interventionism.

Of all of the bands mentioned thus far, the most controversial and openly-political has been The Dead Kennedys. The Dead Kennedys is a band that originated in San Francisco, California and they have never been shy of discussing the taboo and controversial.[25] The song Chicken Farm narrates the story of Vietnamese immigrants who immigrate to America to escape the terror of their own home country only to find little relief in their new home.

Napalm rains no more

But the war goes on

Little brother died playing at the dump today

He found a new toy and held it up proud

Then it blew him to bits

How many more children

Will be killed or die at birth

Deformed by Agent Orange[26]

This verse narrates the grim reality that common Vietnamese people faced after the war, pointing out that even after the war had ended, those left would still feel the effects of it every day. The worst of these lasting impacts were the deformations suffered by newborns after the war had ended due to exposure to the chemical known as “agent orange.”[27]

One foot in a land we can barely understand

Can't speak the tongue of Yankee hospitality

Our kids at school get beat up

To the tune of "Boat people, go home"[28]

This verse narrates how after the family leaves Vietnam and escapes to the United States, they still can’t find peace as they encounter racism and isolation. Hypocritically, the United States which claimed to have gone into Vietnam to fight for the rights and justice of the Vietnamese people, still had racism, sexism, and discrimination within its own borders, as illustrated in the final verse.

Music helps us describe and share our emotions; every song, every drum beat, guitar chord, and word helps us share what we feel. Punk is wild, rebellious and sounds fast and abrasive. Punk described what could not be expressed with words. Punk reflects what the artist feels. It serves as an outlet to release those bottled-in emotions and confusions. It was loud and wild and during the time of the Vietnam War, that was not the norm. In truth, had the Vietnam War not occurred, it is very probable that it would have lacked an audience with which it could resonate. The counterculture movement that arose from this harsh era provided the perfect audience and allowed the punk genre to grow.

The Vietnam War was an era that changed the United States forever. Music was not an exception and punk was not either. Punk became a reflection of the discontent and angst that the war stirred. The counterculture movements that arose gave way to an audience which wanted to keep listening to punk. Now in the year 2015, Punk has changed and evolved. Bands like Green Day are household names and punk is not only for the rebellious. However, the United States has not changed mush itself. The wars we currently find ourselves in are very similar to the one fought in Vietnam decades ago. Our society was changed forever but the war mindset that we had did not. In the same fashion that music and people evolve, so must the United States. It must learn from the mistakes from its past and must stop entering wars it cannot win. It must learn to evolve, and it must learn to change for the better.

[1] "Statistical Information about Casualties of the Vietnam War." National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[2] Schultz, Kevin M. HIST. 3rd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth ;, 2013.

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Philo, Simon. 2005. "Punk Music". In Britain and The Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, edited by Will Kaufman et al.. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

[8] Ibid

[9] "The Ramones Biography." Rolling Stone. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[10] "The Ramones." - Commando Lyrics. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[11] Ibid

[12] "The Ramones." - Commando Lyrics. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[13] Goldschmidt Jr, Arthur, and Lawrence Davidson. "MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX." Industrialization in the Modern World: From the Industrial Revolution to the Internet [2 volumes]: From the Industrial Revolution to the Internet (2013): 316.

[14] "The Ramones." - Commando Lyrics. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[15] Goldschmidt Jr, Arthur, and Lawrence Davidson. "MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX." Industrialization in the Modern World: From the Industrial Revolution to the Internet [2 volumes]: From the Industrial Revolution to the Internet (2013): 316.

[16] "The Clash Biography." Rolling Stone. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[17] "The Clash – Inoculated City." Genius. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[18] Whitney, Craig R. 2008. "1968 THE MY LAI MASSACRE." New York Times Upfront, Feb 25, 16-19,TE3,TE6-TE7. http://search.proquest.com/docview/207595696?accountid=13758.

[19] Ibid

[20] "The Clash – Charlie Don't Surf." Genius. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[21] Ibid

[22] Ibid

[23] Ibid

[24] Hall, Mitchell K. 2011. "Napalm". In Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by Spencer C. Tucker , Spencer C. Tucker , and Spencer C. Tucker . Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. http://libproxy.sdsu.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com.libproxy.sdsu.edu/content/entry/abcvw/napalm/0

[25] "Dead Kennedys Biography." Rolling Stone. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[26] "Dead Kennedys - Chicken Farm Lyrics | SongMeanings." SongMeanings. Accessed April 13, 2015.

[27]Hoyle, Brian. "Agent Orange." The Gale Encyclopedia of Science. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 70-72. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

[28] "Dead Kennedys - Chicken Farm Lyrics | SongMeanings." SongMeanings. Accessed April 13, 2015.

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samanthasroberts · 7 years

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27 Of My Most Cringeworthy Moments From My Early Twenties I Will Recount Here For Your Entertainment

If you are my mother or my father or are in any way affiliated with them, please stop reading right here. Unless you’re Aunt Julie. Because you can hang, Jules.

1. I once locked myself into a bathroom with several cases of beer, because the cops showed up to a college party. I declared it my throne and proceeded to continue to drink cans of Coors Light for over an hour BY MYSELF until I decided it was safe to emerge.

2. After my 21st birthday party, I fell asleep on my staircase with my tights midway down my legs cradling my then baby dog and assuring her over and over, “You’re so beautiful.” I woke up to her chewing on my hair.

3. I played Peter Pan in college and had some sort of weird virus that resulted in 85% of my body being covered in hives. I was released from the ER after my school’s health center sent me there post thinking I was going into anaphylactic shock, but I had to do press and several photo shoots for the show. So now, there are photos of me (that yes, you can find) dressed as Peter Pan, flying around, while on several milligrams of Valium. Gives a whole new meaning to “flying high.” (sorry I had to.)

4. Once I got drunk in a field solely so I could hang out with a goat named Penelope. Here’s a picture:

5. My boyfriend for the latter half of my early twenties was around a year younger than me. So he couldn’t drink with me (in public anyway) at my 22nd and instead had to take care of me, bless his heart. On my 21st birthday a friend had challenged me to take a shot of SUPER cheap whiskey and I’d managed to do it. On my 22nd I tried to complete that same challenge and ended up puking into a cloth napkin, and sneakily throwing it away in the trash. My boyfriend promptly took me home after.

6. Another throw up story (let’s just stick with the theme) involved a pint glass. A party was being thrown at my ex’s house and naturally, I didn’t want to attend. One of my best guyfriend’s offered to accompany me to a bar near said ex’s place called “The Town And Country Lounge” which is a bar in a refurbished double wide. We sat there for approximately two to three hours, drinking cheap beer and shooting whiskey. The last shot of Jameson I did didn’t sit well, and I ended up methodically vomitting into the pint glass next to me, filling it straight to the brim. Surprisingly though, I didn’t spill.

7. At 25 I got so heated with a cab driver after a long night that he ended up calling the police on me. From my own phone. Saving that whole story for my eventual Lifetime movie. But it happened.

8. I went to a One Direction concert and a stranger who was drunk and talking animatedly with his hands clocked me straight in the face. I told him it was okay, I missed Zayn too. Again here’s a photo from said evening:

9. At 25 I sent presents to some dude who wrote for the same website as me, because I thought it meant we’d be friends. Now I’m pretty sure he just wanted to have phone sex (never did) because he was lonely as he stopped talking to me the SECOND there was a possibility of us hanging out IRL. Learn from my mistakes kids: don’t send flat-brims to people just because they’re sad. Save that money.

10. I left my number on more coasters and napkins for cute bartenders than I can even remember. It’s not really a cute move though, and I fully shake my head at myself now.

11. I sort of notoriously trolled a guy on Tinder and wrote about it. It made a lot of people really mad. I still stand by my original intent of writing the piece, which was/is that it’s kind of fucked up that we laugh when people threaten us or harass us or even just get rude, but I didn’t execute this well at all. Like honestly, I am linking to it and saying, “I think this ispoorlywritten and I am the one who wrote it.” BUT – I don’t believe in deleting work even when I don’t really relate to it anymore or even when it doesn’t garner the reaction I was hoping for. Instead I just shake my head when I get random messages about this piece (yes, even over a year later) and use it as a reminder to always do better.

12.After my first big breakup I decided to get out of a dodge for a bit and flew home to be with my parents and my childhood best friends. Only problem, I was flying out of my college town on my ex’s birthday. And apparently, his parents were also flying out on the same flight to go on vacation. I was in first class (not bougie – just the only ticket that was available) and they had to awkwardly stand beside me waiting to get to their seats. One of my absolute least favorite memories.

13. I impulsively got a tattoo with a sort of boyfriend one day on my ribs. I didn’t really WANT a rib tattoo but this dude told me it was “so sexy” so I caved. I also made the mistake of not going to a reputable artist, and frankly the tattoo looks like shit now. Eventually I’ll get it covered up but for now, the scratchy quote stays. Here’s another a picture so you can see visual representation of my mistakes!! Yay!

"curiosity often leads to trouble."

A photo posted by Kendra Syrdal (@kendrasyrdal) on Apr 6, 2013 at 4:58pm PDT

14. Once I went out on a date with a guy who actually, seriously quoted that fucking AWFUL book about picking up women called and I didn’t leave. Not only did I not leave, but I let him stay the night at my apartment (didn’t hook up with him because I maintained SOME level of self-respect) AND let him shower in the morning. He used my brand new, pretty spendy Sephora bubble bath as body wash, and opened brand new shampoo. He wanted to have a “discussion” after I told him I wasn’t interested in seeing him again. Yeah…I pick winners.

15.For my 20th birthday party I threw a joint birthday party with my friend Nicki that was “P” themed. This meant everyone who came to the party had to come dressed as something that started with the letter P. (Best costume was this dude Kyle who came as the preamble. It was gold.) The only other rule was that no one could come as a princess because that’s what Nicki and I were being. I dressed like this:

16.I was so in love with a boy that I bought him Decemberists tickets for literally no reason. Actually, come to think of it, a lot of the moments where I look at my younger self and go, “What the actual fuck were you thinking?!” have to do with spending money on boys who didn’t appreciate me. My therapist told me that I show affection through material goods because I have difficulty expressing emotions. Whatever, I’m working on it.

17.I have written so many prose pieces about guys who I knew were pulling away from me in a sad, pathetic attempt to try and make them see that I was worth their time and attention. Spoiler alert: If a guy doesn’t even read your stuff to begin with, this will literally never work.

18. At 23 I went to Las Vegas for my best friend’s 21st birthday and the two of us go so lit up before going to the wax museum that we found a karaoke machine (it’s next to the was figure of Simon Cowell) and started serenading the entire museum with renditions of Celine Dion hits like “Taking Chances” and “The Power of Love.” We attempted to shake his hand after. We cleared the room of 70+ people. What I’m saying is, it was embarrassing.

19. I was really bad about remembering to renew my tags for my car in college and was pulled over for said offense one summer, and still didn’t renew my tags. 7 months (yes I know, I was/am the worst) later I was pulled over AGAIN for the same thing. Apparently there was a warrant out for my arrest and the officer decided midnight was the appropriate time to lecture me about this. Catch? I had just finished a performance ofwhich, if you’re not familiar, is set in Japan. So I was in FULL kabuki makeup while this policeman decided to lecture me about my fuck up. I was sobbing, Ben Nye makeup was smearing everywhere, he felt pretty bad. It was overall just a mess. But I didn’t go to jail. Thanks, Missoula Cop who didn’t take me in while I was still rocking the geisha makeup. I really appreciate it.

20.Iwas feeling vulnerable and sad one Halloween and decided the cure to this was hooking up with my friend’s much younger, VERY hot, trying to be a stripper friend. It was fine, it was whatever. But we hooked up on the floor of an apartment which was basically concrete. I ended up slipping a disc, bruising my tailbone, and having to spend the next 3 months getting chiropractic work to make my back okay again.He was hot, but not hot enough to justify that amount of back pain. #srynotsry

21.I got violently ill once from antibiotics and promptly shit in my leggings after trusting the fart. There is more to the story but again, saving it for my future bestseller.

22. I thought this was a good look. And also did this in public.

23.In college I played Columbia in the live musical version of where, for the midnight shows only, we were topless. I debated about it, but it was a paid gig and I felt fine about it so I decided sure, why not. My boyfriend at the time was NOT okay with it. I later found out he adamantly REFUSED to let his friends come to the show, even going so far as to pay them back for the tickets they had already purchased. I didn’t find this out for years and it still makes me super embarrassed for his behavior.

24.A guy broke up with me when I was 25 because I didn’t make enough eye contact. That was his honest to god reason. (Still bitter.)

25.I went on a mini vacation with some friends to Austin, Texas for my 26th birthday and decided to really just GO for it when I was there. This meant doing one of the ultimate “why not” moments: the Tinder one night stand. Only problem? We didn’t know our way around Texas and I didn’t bring any condoms. So my solution was to have Postmates deliver them. I didn’t even try to play it off and ordered like, chips and gum to make it better. I straight up just ordered a box of 16 Trojan’s to the AirBnb. The delivery man was loling, my “date” was loling, my friends were loling. It was lols all around. 10/10 recommend.

26. A friend of mine came to Seattle for an audition and I took her out one night to blow off some steam/show her the city. We ended up drinking all night with a professional indoor soccer team from Vegas, and I definitely got naked in a photobooth with a bunch of them. Somehow though, I still didn’t get laid. Only I could be one of two girls surrounded by a bunch of guys who were hot, professional athletes, show them all of my tattoos that required me taking my clothes off, and end up going home to eat queso in bed.

27.I lived. I made memories. Or I had those memories told back to me because I didn’t really…well… them. And even though sometimes that makes me all “god dammit smdh” I honestly think it’s pretty dope that I have all of these stories – cringeworthy or what have you.

Plus I once peed on my neighbor’s lawn furniture because she was threatening to call the cops on my Harry Potter themed party. And you can’t pay money for those kinds of stories.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/30/27-of-my-most-cringeworthy-moments-from-my-early-twenties-i-will-recount-here-for-your-entertainment/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/27-of-my-most-cringeworthy-moments-from-my-early-twenties-i-will-recount-here-for-your-entertainment/

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adambstingus · 7 years

Text

27 Of My Most Cringeworthy Moments From My Early Twenties I Will Recount Here For Your Entertainment

If you are my mother or my father or are in any way affiliated with them, please stop reading right here. Unless you’re Aunt Julie. Because you can hang, Jules.

4. Once I got drunk in a field solely so I could hang out with a goat named Penelope. Here’s a picture:

7. At 25 I got so heated with a cab driver after a long night that he ended up calling the police on me. From my own phone. Saving that whole story for my eventual Lifetime movie. But it happened.

10. I left my number on more coasters and napkins for cute bartenders than I can even remember. It’s not really a cute move though, and I fully shake my head at myself now.

“curiosity often leads to trouble.”

A photo posted by Kendra Syrdal (@kendrasyrdal) on Apr 6, 2013 at 4:58pm PDT

21.I got violently ill once from antibiotics and promptly shit in my leggings after trusting the fart. There is more to the story but again, saving it for my future bestseller.

22. I thought this was a good look. And also did this in public.

24.A guy broke up with me when I was 25 because I didn’t make enough eye contact. That was his honest to god reason. (Still bitter.)

Plus I once peed on my neighbor’s lawn furniture because she was threatening to call the cops on my Harry Potter themed party. And you can’t pay money for those kinds of stories.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/30/27-of-my-most-cringeworthy-moments-from-my-early-twenties-i-will-recount-here-for-your-entertainment/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/164769835047

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juliatakesnotes · 7 years

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THE BLOG 07/28/2010 12:12 pm ET | Updated Nov 13, 2015Should Artists Publish Their Own Catalogues?

By Daniel Grant

Artists are told regularly that they must take an active role in the development of their careers, that they must invest their time and energy in this endeavor, rather than waiting for someone else (dealer? patron? MacArthur Foundation?) to do it for them. Many of these opportunities involve artists spending their own money, which brings up the question of whether or not self-pay garners the same art world esteem as when someone else is the underwriter. (I can say, for example, that what you are reading is a great article, but it is probably more meaningful for readers that this magazine chose to publish it.) For some time, the ground has been shifting, moving the line between what is and is not considered acceptable for artists to pay for. Renting out a gallery in order to show one’s artwork still may be viewed as a vanity exhibition, for instance, but increasingly it is common for artists to split the costs of shows with gallery owners — even galleries that exclusively represent these artists — such as advertising and promotion, an opening reception and even repainting gallery walls. That split may be heavily weighted against the artist, but critics don’t ask or seem to care about where the money came from before they review an exhibit, nor potential collectors when they visit the gallery; a review and sales far outweigh older concerns about breaking traditional rules about the roles of artists and dealers. Being the subject of a coffee table art book is another great benchmark in an artist’s career, but the publishers of these books regularly are subsidized by the galleries of the artists and/or by the artists themselves (“One of the factors in the decision to produce a book is whether the artist is willing to contribute to the costs of publishing,” said Carol Morgan, publicity director for Harry N. Abrams, the art book publisher). The means of financing these books are not revealed publicly, and readers don’t inquire: They simply assume that the artist must be a big deal in order to merit the book, which is what the artist and dealer wanted in the first place. Throwing a veil over how the operations of the art world are actually paid for may help maintain older (needed?) illusions for collectors, critics and artists, but even what used to be called blatant self-promotion does not seem as out-of-bounds as it once had.

A growing number of artists have taken to self-publishing catalogues of their work, complete with high quality reproductions of their work and essays by noted critics, that look for all intents and purposes just like those created by galleries and museums.

“Artists are looking for grants, new galleries, museum shows,” said West Palm Beach, Florida artist Bruce Helander, “and they need professional evidence to show that they’ve not just another artist in a sea of wannabes.” He has produced catalogues three times to accompany shows (twice at galleries, once at a museum), claiming that the costs of creating them — averaging $12,000 — were more than made up for by increased sales that the catalogues generated. “A catalogue gets more reviews from critics and more attention from collectors,” he said. “The basis of a catalogue is to transmit visual information to a consumer with a high level of design and quality. Readers then put two and two together and are more likely to form a more favorable opinion about the artist.”

The first catalogue Helander published was in 1995 for his first one-person exhibition at New York City’s Marisa del Rey gallery, which had no promotional plans beyond printing and mailing a postcard. He hired a designer to create an attractive presentation and commissioned Henry Geldzahler, former curator of 20th century at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to write a 1,000-word essay about his work. (Part of that expense included round-trip air fare to his studio for Geldzahler.) For its part, the Marisa del Rey gallery kicked in $2,500, which went toward mailing the catalogue to collectors, critics and other people on the gallery’s mailing list. Sales were strong, and “by the end of the opening, the catalogue had paid for itself,” Helander said.

The link between increased sales and a catalogue is not always direct or clear — might (some of) these sales be attributable to the prestige of the gallery itself or other behind-the-scenes work done by the dealer? — and artists may have to take on faith that the catalogues they produce is money well spent.

In 2001, Manhattan artist Barbara Rachko self-published 5,000 copies of a 16-page catalogue of her pastel paintings, which she used as promotional material, sending out the catalogues around the country to museums, curators, galleries exhibiting contemporary art, “any single person who had ever expressed interest in my work” and art consultants and critics (names and addressed purchased from mailing lists). The costs broke down to $14,000 to produce the catalogue ($1,000 apiece to two designers, $1,000 apiece to two critics who wrote essays and $10,000 for printing), $4,500 for an assistant who typed mailing addressed and stuffed catalogues into manila envelopes along with cover letters, $150 for mailing lists and several thousand dollars for postage.

Her catalogue did produce results: Several galleries took on Rachko’s work, and 10 others have scheduled exhibits. The new galleries have generated a few sales which, considering prices for her artwork — $7,500 for smaller pieces and $24,000 for larger ones — indicated to the artist that “I’ve already couped the costs. The value of my paintings justified the cost.” However, Rachko has not had a larger quantity of sales overall since publishing the catalogue than in preceding years, which she attributed to “the economy, which has been horrible.” The catalogue may have helped offset a downturn in sales, or she might have generated those same additional sales through a less costly form of promotion: Who knows? “It’s very difficult to quantify the dollar value of your efforts,” she said. “Welcome to the art world.”

Any artist who self-publishes a catalogue trusts that there will be benefits seen at some point in the future. “You do a project like this, and you don’t get results in the first six months or a year, that doesn’t mean it’s a flop,” she said, noting that “a curator or gallery owner may contact you a year or so later. You never know.” Helander claimed that he does know, however: In August, 2003, he met a senior curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, who bought one of the artist’s collages for the institution’s permanent collection, “and on that curator’s desk was a stack of material about me, and on top of that stack was my catalogue of the Marisa del Rey show.”

Self-published catalogues serve various purposes for artists. Topping that list are expanding an audience and generating sales; as much as increasing their visibility in the art world, potentially leading to exhibition opportunities, artists need to recover their costs through sales. As a result, artists need to move slowly into this realm, developing an idea of how much a catalogue will cost, how much they have to spend and how they will distribute the catalogues (and pay for that distribution). The total costs were more than twice what Rachko had budgeted, largely because she began to produce her catalogue and “learned what it was really going to cost me along the way.”

Susan Hall, a landscape painter in Point Reyes Station, California, self-published 2,000 copies of a hardbound book of her artwork in the beginning of 2003, which cost $30,000 (“I didn’t start out with a budget,” she said, “and found out what it would cost along the way”). Her plan has been to sell copies of the book — at $45 apiece — through local bookstores (she and her husband both went to store owners to convince them to carry the book) and mail order (based on brochures about the book sent out to a mailing list). Her paintings sell for between $1,000 and $6,000, and Hall hoped that the book was “a way for people who can’t afford my work to have something of mine.” For long-time collectors, the book presents a career overview, while for those new to her art it offers “a way for people to be introduced to my work.”

Almost one-quarter of the books have been sold and, perhaps, more importantly, the number of her paintings sold since publication of the book has increased by 30 percent, Hall noted. As with Rachko and Helander, the exact link between book and painting sales is difficult to identify, but Hall claimed that the book “starts a process,” with the end result being the sale of original art. At the current rate of sales, the book’s publication costs will be recouped “within two years; it could even be sooner.”

Among the decisions that need to be made are whether or not to tie a catalogue to a particular exhibition and who should write an essay (or if one should be written at all). It is obvious to anyone reading a catalogue that the essays in it will be positive, even laudatory. Some artists just include their own comments — an Artist Statement, for instance — and otherwise let the artwork speak for itself. The usefulness of an essay written by the artist or by someone else is to provide whomever is looking at the catalogue with some essential facts or interpretation that may be quickly gleaned. “The main people who read catalogue essays are critics on deadline,” quipped Phyllis Tuchman, an art critic for Town & Country magazine and the author of numerous artist catalogue essays. While an artist’s own say-so may be valuable in understanding the creative process, an outside observer as essayist is more likely to lend greater authority and credibility to the work — it’s not just the artist who appreciates it. Carey Lovelace, a critic and co-president of the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, however, stated that a catalogue essay is “not just validating the work for the viewer. It’s not just like Consumer Reports. Art is about ideas, and the critic looks to find the idea that is important. That creates a bridge to the work for the reader.”

Hiring a noted critic or curator also may be seen as elevating the stature of the artwork being discussed — “it adds what I call the Pope’s nod,” said Bruce Helander. A known critic’s essay may be more likely read than that of an unknown writer, according to a number of critics who write and read these commentaries. “I guess I’d perk up if an essay is by someone I know,” said Eleanor Heartney, a critic for Art in America and the other co-president of the International Association of Art Critics. She added that artists may also “go for the big name, because they’ll assume they’ll get a quality essay.”

Critics, museum curators and art historians regularly are approached by artists to write catalogue essays; for some of them, it is a lucrative sideline, since the going rate is one or two dollars per word and essayists often require a minimum of 1,000 words (critic Peter Frank claimed that also may be “an extra charge if the writing needs to be turned around quickly”). The New York City-based artist career development company, Katharine T. Carter & Associates, has formalized his process, placing on retainer a number of New York area art critics who for two dollars per word, 600 words minimum, will write catalogue essays. “It has been helpful in my career have written these essays,” said Karen Chambers, one of Katharine T. Carter’s critics-for-hire who separately wrote an essay for one of Bruce Helander’s catalogues. “It gets my name out. People see that I’ve written about artists, and they want me to write about them.” In fact, it was after Helander had read Chambers’ essay in a self-published book by Seattle, Washington glass artist Dale Chihuly that he contacted her to write about his collages.

Artists need to keep their hopes and expectations in check, when hiring a noted critic. Just because Richard Vine, the managing editor of Art in America and another of Katharine T. Carter’s critics, wrote about a given artist does not mean that artist has any “in” with the magazine — in fact, none of the artists he has written up as part of his association with Katharine T. Carter has ever been reviewed or profiled in Art in America. “You have to realize that you haven’t bought this person body and soul for the price of an essay,” Eleanor Heartney said, adding that “all of us who write these catalogue essays are trading on our reputations.” Both Barbara Rachko and Susan Hall produced their catalogue and book independent of any specific exhibition, which makes them less time-bound but also removes a potential marketing event in which excitement and sales may build. Both women have needed to create all the momentum on their own, lengthening the process of generating sales. Helander, on the other hand, produced his three catalogues at the time of particular exhibitions, even placing a gallery’s logo, address and telephone number of the catalogues as though to suggest the dealers published them. Had he produced his catalogues with no exhibition taking place and no gallery to list on the back, the publication would lack “cache. It would be too much of a commercial venture,” he said, “just a naked piece of promotion,” produced by “a poor artist that no gallery or museum wants.” He added that “it’s no one’s business how an artist is trying to market his work.” Perhaps, the real issue is whether an artist may look in control of his or her marketing and sales or if some veil over the actual operations of the art world is still needed in order to appeal to older sensibilities.

Daniel Grant

Arts Writer

#artists #business of art #exhibitions #catalogues #critical essays

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