#eric. has. a literal. catalogue

[c00pswhore]

kyle has no fashion taste and would not wear plaid, especially when eric "i wear a button up underneath my sweater" cartman is right there

[frootyrooties]

Right so, about the 10cc concert.

First and foremost. The venue, ICC Sydney, was quite impressive and perfect for a rather intimate crowd like the 10cc fanbase. I was especially impressed to see that it was a full house! So many Aussie 10cc fans, right on!

The group started off streaming 5 minutes of Godley & Creme gibberish. I’m very glad they did that bc according to legend, when 10cc were just beginning to tour in the mid-70s, their shows would always start with Kevin doing a 3-5 minute spiel on how he’s introducing the world’s greatest band/God’s gift to man on stage. Anyways, after that little G & C bit, the group went right into, dare i say, a rather controversial yet sensational piece “The Second Sitting for the Last Supper.” I expected this of course bc they’ve always started every show with that song. Such a banger. They then proceeded to do at least one song from each of the first four albums. Again, very glad they did this because those albums were crucial to the development of 10cc as a group. What I was most impressed with was Rick Fenn’s (lead guitarist post Godley & Creme) performance in “Clockwork Creep.” The man literally nailed Lol Creme’s wackiness in and even captured the playful spirit of that song. Brilliant performance, Mr. Fenn. A little side note, Rick Fenn began playing for 10cc in the late 70s after Kev and Lol left the group. Paul Burgess, who is also in the current lineup, is the unsung hero of the group. He has played drums and percussion since the early days of 10cc but it’s a shame he hasn’t received enough recognition. He’s got quite the talent, that one.

Alright so, can I just say, I was quite enthused with the fact that they played all 11 glorious minutes of “Feel The Benefit” my personal favourite. This included a mighty bass solo by the great Graham Gouldman. I shared a clip of it the other day. Will reblog for those that missed it. What a brilliant bassist, that Mr. Gouldman. I’m so proud of him. Very very talented boy and quite adorable if I do say so myself.

I was also happy to hear that they acknowledged Eric’s contributions to 10cc’s catalogue throughout the show. Quite right, the man literally put his entire heart and soul into that band he better be getting some kind of credit. And I’m not joking when I say I yelped a little everytime I heard them say Eric’s name 🤭

The group’s performance of “I’m Not In Love” “Art for Art’s Sake” and “I’m Mandy Fly Me” was absolutely groundbreaking. The way they maneuvered all the different instruments on stage, the lighting, special effects. Everything was just stunning. Pure 10cc. The group definitely did those songs justice.

Lastly, the group exited the stage just after “I’m Not In Love” but myself and the rest of the crowd cheered “more!” We were not gonna let them go without them playing “Rubber Bullets.” And they did just that! and the group even requested that the crowd go up front to dance if we were up for it. I wanted so badly to go up there and dance with the rest of them but I was bit embarrassed, being the youngest member in the audience. However, I will have another opportunity to do that when I see them again later this summer so I hope to take full advantage of that now that I know they are letting fans dance up front. Who knows, maybe I’ll get up close and shake Graham’s hand next time! 😀

[blossom-hwa]

I don't generally request stuff and the reason why I am doing this is because I absolutely love your work, especially the Kingdom Series and the Mermaid!Younghoon and I am a little embarassed to put out my little imagination request out

But I would like to request

Sunwoo + colour lavender but could you make it best friends to lovers au too? (It is okay if you can only work on one part too!!! Whatever you are comfortable with)

Thank you so much! Congrats on your 4 years, and thanking for alllllll the amazing work you have put out!!!!! Really big appreciation for you and your writing!!! Ly❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

hi love! there's no need to be embarrassed at all about this - it's a lovely idea, and thank you so much for your kind words and the request! I hope you enjoy this token of my thanks for your support <3

4 year anniversary drabble game: send me a Stray Kids/The Boyz/Golden Child/Ateez member + a prompt (check out the post for ideas) and I’ll write a drabble for you!

~

Title: Palette

Pairing: Sunwoo x gender neutral!reader

Word count: 1.8k

Triggers: none

~

"What color am I?"

The question comes on a hot day spent on the couch with the air conditioner broken, when everything feels like it's melting under the heat of the sun baking your apartment to a crisp. Somewhere in the building, a repairman is trying to figure out what's wrong.

You and Sunwoo, however, are melting into puddles on the sticky hardwood floor.

"What?" You shake yourself out of the blank state you’ve slipped into, staring at the empty ceiling. You've never spent much time looking at the ceiling. It's off white, maybe eggshell, a little cracked and blemished but not enough for you to say to no to the cheaper rent. Looking at it now, though, it's kind of ugly.

"You said Juyeon is yellow, like sunflowers.” He pauses. “Eric’s... green, I think. Sangyeon was red, Changmin was also green, but brighter than Eric. Right?”

Something tugs at the back of your mind, a memory of using your paints to describe some of your friends. Your eyes drift to the abandoned easel in the corner of the muggy room. You can almost feel the canvas melting off of it into a paint-splattered puddle on the floor. “Right,” you reply, wiping a bead of sweat off of your head. 

“You didn’t give me a color,” Sunwoo says. You can’t spare the energy to look in his direction even though he’s literally right next to you, but you imagine he looks about as wiped out as you feel. “So I wondered.”

Colors. Yes, colors like the off-white eggshell of your ceiling, the blue of the sky outside... 

What color is Sunwoo?

Orange is the first one that comes to mind, orange like a sunset, burning as it slowly dips under the horizon. Its rays wisp into the sky, fading in some places, intensifying in others, turning it into a mural of oranges and pinks and yellows, burning like the passion that fuels Sunwoo’s soul...

Oh, but yellow. Yellow exists - maybe not as golden as Juyeon’s yellow, maybe not as bright as the burning sun, but darker, deeper, like marigolds - orange mixed in, perhaps, but still yellow in abundance, like flower petals bursting into bloom. 

You frown. Sweat drips down the side of your face, but this time, you don’t even notice. Orange and yellow - they’re right, but not quite right. Not exactly. Not yet...

Sunwoo’s voice interrupts your thoughts. “Still thinking?” 

“Shut up.” You flail around a limp arm, smiling with satisfaction when it hits his stomach with an audible thump. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“You’re thinking about a color.”

“How long do you think it takes me to mix the exact right shade for each part of a painting?” You turn just enough to let him see your raised eyebrow. “Thinking about colors takes a lot of work.”

He grumbles but shuts up, eyes closing as he settles back onto the floor. You keep watching him though, follow the curve of his jaw down to his chin, tanned skin shiny with the sheen of moisture that seems to have covered everything in this tiny apartment...

Bronze comes to mind, warm, metallic, rich like the color of his skin. They made weapons out of bronze in the past - strong, steady, unyielding, like Sunwoo’s will to push past obstacles no matter how hard they seem at a glance. He could be a bronze statue, for all you know - he’s handsome enough for that, certainly some sculptor from the past would have been taken with Sunwoo’s looks if he’d been around and created a statue that would have lasted for centuries afterward. 

But it’s warm. Too warm. And maybe it’s just because of the hot sun pouring into the room even with the shades drawn, but thinking about metal, about bronze, makes you feel like you’re touching a burning hot stove on a day like this. There have to be other colors, right? Other colors that aren’t bronze, green, pink, maybe blue - 

Blue. You latch onto the thought. Not the color of the relentless sky, but maybe like the ocean - cool, deep, ceaseless in its flow but not overbearing until a storm comes, whipping the waves into a chaos of whirling water that slashes and swipes across the beach. Sunwoo’s a little bit of both, you think, the part of the ocean that goes with the flow, but also the part that gets a little angry, a little passionate, a little too worked up about some things sometimes. 

But his anger isn’t quite blue. Not really. Sunwoo is quick to anger but also quick to calm when dealt with correctly. The storm builds up its rage and lashes out as long as it wants, but Sunwoo... no. He’s not that way. Not quite. 

You stifle a groan. Is there any color that fits Sunwoo perfectly, then? Any single color on the stained palette next to your easel, any single color in the world? He’s too complex, too much of everything all at once - he could be blue, could be bronze, could be orange or yellow or pink, of all things - you could find a way to justify every single one but none of them would be enough - 

Your gaze rises from his chin to his lips, and your mouth goes dry. 

Maybe he’s red, like the first time you ever noticed the fullness of his lips. 

No, don’t think about that. You squeeze your eyes shut tight before opening them as though that’ll erase the image of his lips from your mind. It was in high school - you’d handed him his water bottle after ten minutes of running laps and you’d watched him tip it against his lips so full and soft, and for a moment, you had let yourself imagine what it’d be like to have those lips against yours. 

You force yourself to look somewhere else, anywhere, just away from the lips and the shade of red beginning to shimmer before your eyes. Red, right - your mind scrambles to turn its thoughts away - red - colors - that’s what you were supposed to be thinking of - not lips, colors - 

Your gaze rises above the lips to Sunwoo’s closed eyes. 

Only they aren’t closed anymore. 

You can’t breathe. You literally can’t breathe - how long have his eyes been open? How long did he see you watching him like some stupid creepy stalker?

Did he realize you were looking at his lips?

“Done yet?” he asks, breaking the silence. Is it just your imagination, or do his eyes flicker down to your lips too?

Just your imagination. “Shut up.” Even the jab comes out weaker than you’d like to. You want to look away, but you can’t seem to do it - something’s rooting you where you are, eyes fixed upon his. “Give me a minute.”

“How many minutes has it been?” It’s just your imagination, just your imagination... “Is it really that hard? You thought of Eric’s in, like, a second.”

You’re too much, you think. Too many colors all at once. But instead of saying that aloud, you just swallow, like the idiot you are. “Let me think,” you say. Your voice almost cracks. 

Red. Shades of red, beautiful red, the color of his lips, the core of the sun burning at sunset, smoldering embers on a dying fire splashed across the canvas of your vision. And yes, it’s almost perfect, almost there - you have his flaring temper caught in a color, now, but it needs something to cool it off - 

Blue. Blue, like you thought before, the ocean and its ceaseless flow. Blue and red, blue and red, blue and red...

“Purple,” you whisper, too close to his lips. Rich, royal, the coolness of blue and the fire of red... “Some shade of purple.”

“Purple.” Sunwoo repeats the word with curiosity on his lips, almost like he’s tasting the color on his tongue. “Why purple?”

“I -” You swallow when the soft puff of his breath hits your face. When exactly did you two get this close? It wouldn’t take more than a few inches to close the gap between your lips. “I couldn’t choose between blue and red,” you say honestly. “You’re both. In fact, it feels like you’re a bit of every color. But purple... that’s the closest I can get without giving you a specific shade.”

“Which shade?”

Something clicks into place in your mind, and it is definitely not your imagination this time when Sunwoo’s eyes fall down to your lips. 

The dryness in your mouth makes it difficult to swallow. You try anyway. “Give me a moment,” you murmur, heart beating unnecessarily quickly. 

Think. Shades of purple. Do you go darker or lighter? Warmer or cooler? Is he magenta? Mauve? Violet? Your mind flicks as quickly as it can through the catalogue of colors in your mind. Cooler, probably - he’s more the ocean than the fire, more embers than a full flame - lighter, too, like a breath of fresh air - 

A blast of cool wind gusts down from the vent. It’s gone almost as quickly as it comes, but it stays with you in the name of the color forming on your lips. 

Your voice comes out like a whisper. It feels wrong to speak any louder. “I’ve got it.”

Sunwoo blinks. His lashes look so lovely, framing his eyes. “Really?” he asks, and you have wonder if he closed the distance slightly since the last time you spoke - the few inches that separated you before seem to have decreased to a mere centimeter or two. “So what color am I?”

There’s another blast of cool air. Neither of you reacts to it. Instead, as blissfully cold air begins to filter through the vents, impulse drives you to lean forward, to close the entire distance at last -

Sunwoo’s lips are softer than you ever thought they’d be. They feel cool and warm all at once, purple as a base but lighter, cooler, a breath of fresh air on your face after a horribly hot day spent in the sun.

“Lavender,” you whisper against his lips. “You’re lavender.”

You don’t offer an explanation, but he doesn’t ask you to elaborate, like he did with purple. It’s okay. You think he knows it. Feels it, at least, when you kiss him once more, fresh air washing over your bodies, painting the canvas of your skin in cool, blissfully cool strokes. 

Lavender. 

[gagosiangallery]

Georg Baselitz at Gagosian 555 West 24th Street, New York

April 6, 2021

GEORG BASELITZ Springtime

May 4–June 12, 2021 555 West 24th Street, New York __________ Gagosian is pleased to present Springtime, an exhibition of new paintings by Georg Baselitz. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Baselitz has combined a direct and provocative approach to making art with an openness to art historical lineages, counting among others Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston as his key influences. In 1969, he began composing the inverted images for which he has become best known to slow the processes of making, looking, and apprehending. During the past fifty years, he has augmented his visual language with a range of formal and historical allusions while consistently returning to the human figure. Often he reinterprets—cannibalizes—his own work. Just as the exuberant provocations of Dada—as seen in the work of Hannah Höch, George Grosz, and others—emerged out of the catastrophes of the First World War, so does Baselitz’s title herald a spirited reawakening from the ravages and restrictions of the current pandemic. In this new series, he has, for the first time, introduced the idea of collage by gluing pairs of nylon stockings onto canvases and painting over and around their diaphanous forms in white, black, or gold. In some paintings, these stocking-figures remain distinct from their backgrounds, while in others, printed impressions replace the hosiery itself, their stretched forms snaking from multihued “skirts” of expressive splatters, like plants from undergrowth. Here, the stockings retain their associations with the human body while also evoking both botanical and abstract forms.

Art historian Eric Darragon, in his essay on the exhibition, cites numerous indicators of stockings’ extensive history in cinema as well as in art, tracing their appearances in such classic films as Francois Truffaut’s La Peau douce (The Soft Skin) (1964) and Mike Nichols’s coming-of-age narrative, The Graduate (1967); or Degas’s images of dancers and Egon Schiele’s confrontational nudes. As a kind of collegial memory, Baselitz has titled several of the paintings in reference to women artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Sarah Lucas, and Kiki Smith. Springtime attests to Baselitz’s seemingly infinite capacity for artistic renewal, innovation, and tongue-in-cheek irreverence while continuing to harness the resilience of his distinctive methods and motifs. The appearance of the stockings, literally preserved in paintings such as Start ins Unbekannte (Off into the Unknown) (2020) and Freier Flug (Free Flight) (2020) serves to underscore the fleeting and enduring qualities that coexist there, drawing together an unexpected network of connections among images from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An illustrated catalogue with a text by Eric Darragon will accompany the exhibition. Springtime overlaps with the exhibition Archinto at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice, and anticipates Baselitz’s retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, which will open on October 20. Georg Baselitz was born in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Germany, and lives and works at the Ammersee, Germany; in Imperia, Italy; and near Salzburg, Austria. Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland; Kunsthaus Zürich; Recent exhibitions include the 56th Biennale di Venezia (2015); The Heroes, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2016, traveled to Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; and Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, through 2017); Preview with Review, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest (2017); Works on Paper, Kunstmuseum Basel (2018); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (2018, traveled to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC); Corpus Baselitz, Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France (2018); and Baselitz – Academy, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice (2019). In 2019, Baselitz was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France. _____ Image: Georg Baselitz, Displaced persons, 2020, oil, dispersion adhesive, and nylon stockings on canvas, 116 1/8 × 122 1/8 inches (195 × 310 cm) © Georg Baselitz. Photo: Jochen Littkemann

[thereisaceinspace]

This weeks TMA episode has brought out like all my red string tendencies - and I’ve seen loads of comparisons of Gertrude and Emma to Jon and Martin. And it made me wonder, what about all the rest of the two archive crews?

So, behold, a quick comparison / similarity pairing of the old and new archive assistants et al. It got long, so I put in a cut

Gerry & Tim: Gone too soon, our poor angry sons, sarcastic whatsits, oldest vs newest companions to the archivist, overcoming their family traumas to fix the world, both into books(?), the directed anger and hopelessness driving Gerry to the Archives vs Tim’s anger and hopelessness being partially driven by being trapped there, Jons attempt to keep Tim safe despite all his self destructive tendencies and how much Tim is pushing Jon away at the end vs Gertrude literally binding Gerry to a book and then leaving him behind.

Michael & Sasha: both died, like, immediately, both come back but not as themselves, catalysts for the archivists journey to trust/distrust, the archivist holds themself entirely responsible for their fate, symbols of Gertrude’s fully knowing sacrifice(?) Vs Jons complete lack of knowledge

Eric & Melanie: Both highly competent in the field, both driven by frustration that they are never told whats going on or respected, both driven to leave the archives for the sake of their external relationships (Gerry vs Georgie), contrast of Eric not even telling Gertrude where he was going, to Jon telling Melanie how to leave, contrast of coping mechanisms in that Melanie gets angry first and then turns to counselling whereas we must assume Eric is frustrated but ultimately it turns him to Mary Keay further. Also someone pointed out recently that Eric may well have tried to kill Gertrude to get out of the archives and like, Melanie is a hard same on that approach (even if it was directed at Elias)

Basira & Sarah: The detectives, puzzling and cataloguing and often unaware of the strings being pulled behind them, or uncaring (i.e., s4 Elias vs Emma), problem oriented. We know very little about Sarah, but I feel as though probably there is something in Basira ultimately recognising everything surrounding her in 119 vs Sarah wondering up to a man about to asplode but idk

Fiona & Daisy : Both go into the buried, literal opposites in doing all the things vs fainting all the time, survival skills, willingly chose to be employed in the archives knowing what was going on, Gertrude’s resistance to look for her missing assistant who she likes, vs Jons diving head first after someone who was actively hating him I guess, Fiona’s tales of the war vs Daisy’s tales being a hunt aligned police person I guess

Georgie & Adelard: 100% the paladins of the group, always external to what is going on, close relationships with the archivist, Adelard’s determination to stay involved in all the horror and terrors going on vs Georgie’s determination to stay clear, the differences between prioritising yourself and your own mental wellbeing and running head first into things, A comparison of Adelard without powers sometimes envying Gertrude’s and Georgie disdaining Jon’s

I may have forgotten some things or got them mixed up, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them all

[womenintranslation]

Monday, Oct. 28, 6:00pm-8:00pm

Deutsches Haus at NYU

42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

From their site:

Deutsches Haus at NYU and the New York Review of Books present “Käsebier Takes Berlin: The Weimar Republic and Satire in Times of Crises,” which will focus on Sophie Duvernoy’s new translation of Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin and the vital function of satire in times of crises, both in democratic societies of the past and today. Sophie Duvernoy will be in conversation with the Germanist and mastermind behind @neinquarterly, Eric Jarosinski, and Eric Banks, Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU.

About the book:

In Berlin, 1930, the name Käsebier is on everyone’s lips. A literal combination of the German words for “cheese” and “beer,” it’s an unglamorous name for an unglamorous man—a small-time crooner who performs nightly on a shabby stage for laborers, secretaries, and shopkeepers. Until the press shows up. In the blink of an eye, this everyman is made a star: a star who can sing songs for a troubled time. Margot Weissmann, the arts patron, hosts champagne breakfasts for Käsebier; Muschler, the banker, builds a theater in his honor; Willi Frächter, a parvenu writer, makes a mint off Käsebier-themed business ventures and books. All the while, the journalists who catapulted Käsebier to fame watch the monstrous media machine churn in amazement—and are aghast at the demons they have unleashed. In Käsebier Takes Berlin, the journalist Gabriele Tergit wrote a searing satire of the excesses and follies of the Weimar Republic. Chronicling a country on the brink of fascism and a press on the edge of collapse, Tergit’s novel caused a sensation when it was published in 1931. As witty as Kurt Tucholsky and as trenchant as Karl Kraus, Tergit portrays a world too entranced by fireworks to notice its smoldering edges.About the panelists:Sophie Duvernoy is a PhD candidate in German Literature at Yale University, where she focuses on the literature and aesthetic theory of the Weimar Republic. Her translation of Gabriele Tergit’s Käsebier Takes Berlin was published by NYRB Classics in 2019, and she is the recipient of the 2015 Gutekunst Prize for young translators. She is now working on a translation of Emmy Hennings’ Das Brandmal (The Burn). Her writing and translations have appeared in the Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Man’s Land, and The Offing. Once a professor of German language and literature, Eric Jarosinski has gone on to find his true calling as a former professor of German language and literature. He is currently the editor and sole author of @NeinQuarterly, the world's leading fictitious journal of utopian negation (found on Twitter). In addition, Jarosinski regularly takes his stand-up philosophy/sit-down comedy on the road as part of his ongoing Failed Intellectual Goodwill Tour. His writing and stage performances have been featured in numerous international publications, including the New Yorker, The Economist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and El País. Jarosinski's first book, Nein. A Manifesto., was recently published in six languages. Eric Banks (moderator), Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, is a writer and editor based in New York. A former senior editor of Artforum, Banks relaunched Bookforum in 2003 and served as the publication’s editor in chief until 2008. From 2011 to 2013, Banks served as president of the National Book Critics Circle and is a two-term member of the NBCC board of directors as well as chair or past chair of its award committees on Biography and Criticism. Banks’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Bookforum, the New York Times Book Review, the Financial Times, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, Aperture, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He has contributed essays to monographs on a number of artists, including Franz West (To Build a House You Start With the Roof, MIT Press, 2008) and Christopher Wool (Christopher Wool, Taschen, 2008). Additionally, he has edited numerous catalogues and collections of artists’ writings, including Artists for Artists: Fifty Years of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (D.A.P., 2013); Paul Chan: Selected Writings (D.A.P., 2014); and Jeff Koons: A Retrospective (Yale University Press/Whitney Museum of American Art, 2014).

Käsebier Takes Berlin will be for sale by New York Review of Books during the event.Attendance information:Events at Deutsches Haus are free of charge. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. Space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event. Thank you!“Käsebier Takes Berlin: The Weimar Republic and Satire in Times of Crises” is a DAAD-sponsored event.

[benthemusicalbeard]

27 Feb 2019

Good day to you! Trust this posting finds you well? I have three more songs this week for you and, should you like what you hear, the option is also there to explore the back catalogue of the artists so endless scope for enjoyment (nb: not ‘literally’ endless as there is an exhaustive quantity of music from each artist, it was merely a figure of speech.....). Let’s CRACK ON.

First up this week and an artist from North Carolina but now based in LA called Jonathan Wilson. Firmly set in the folk/country genre he has been active for over 20 years, first as part of duo Muscadine and secondly as a song writer & producer for other artists. It is with his solo project’s for which I came to find his music. In 2011 he released his debut album entitled ‘Gentle Spirit’, having written the album over the previous two years whilst combining his solo efforts with his song writing and production for the likes of Elvis Costello & Erykah Badu. One song from this album called ‘Desert Raven’ was on a Spotify trawl of mine many months ago and I loved the flowing guitar intro, very similar in feel to the echoing riff on Fleetwood Mac’s song Albatross. Upon hearing the song again recently I searched Mr Wilson to find a further two albums, his 2013 album release ‘Fanfare’ and a 2018 release ‘Rare Birds’. I gave the latest album a good listen whilst at work and the opening track I think is exceptional and have chosen to share. If slightly psychedelic folk is your bag baby then I can recommend Jonathan Wilson wholeheartedly. 

Jonathan Wilson - Trafalgar Square - https://youtu.be/R2pg8BPQWlc

Second up today and a band I’ve always heard about but never explored until now, The Black Crowes. They were formed in 1989 and after a hiatus between 2002 & 2005 they finally announced a final split in 2015. When I was getting into music I used to get endless compilation albums of rock/indie music in those ‘Now That’s What I Call An Indie Rock Anthem 1996′ style which had some absolute dross on, but occasionally some good stuff too! I clearly remember one such album having the song ‘Hard To Handle’ on it, a cover of the classic Otis Redding song. Upon inspection this song was released in 1990 so maybe I had a ‘Rock Songs Of The 90′s’ album as I don’t recall being quite so up to date with my music at the age of 6 in 1990! The Black Crowes were a hugely successful group in their early days and their first three albums; the 1990 debut ‘Shake Your Money Maker’, the 1992 follow up ‘The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion’ and the 1994 release ‘Amorica’ all being massive commercial hits which contained all their most successful and recognisable singles, namely ‘Hard To Handle’, ‘She Talks To Angels’ and ‘Remedy’. Whilst a fan of the first three albums and obviously a fan of that style of music I found a track of theirs recently and I have not been able to stop humming the opening bass line. Very different from their earlier hits, from their last album as a band, post hiatus, their 2009 album ‘Before The Frost...Until The Freeze’ which has a much more mature sound, they are certainly a band which all rock fans should give time to if you have not familiarised yourself with them previously. The song I’m sharing is not the truest reflection of their early success but still a decent track nevertheless.

The Black Crowes - I Ain’t Hiding - https://youtu.be/F1d0uImJKtU

Finally this week and John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. From 1963 until 2008 the group had close to 100 members, with only one constant, John Mayall himself. Originally from Macclesfield he has been performing for over 50 years and is a brilliant blues rock singer and songwriter. During the lifespan of his Bluesbreakers group there had been some legendary names associate themselves and record under the banner of ‘The Bluesbreakers’. John McVie, Peter Green & Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac, Jack Bruce & Clapton from Cream, Andy Fraser from Free & Mick Taylor, lead guitarist with the Rolling Stones before Ronnie Wood joined. There have been many more who have graced recordings from the band, covering all ranges of instruments from double bass to saxophone. One of my favourite albums of the groups happens to coincide with when Mr Clapton was present in the group, the 1965 debut album ‘Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton’. Being a huge Clapton fan I was bound to enjoy the album and the opening track, ‘All Your Love’ which is a cover of blues-guitarist Otis Rush 1958 version sets the scene for many tracks which are simply in place to exhibit the talents of Clapton before he found mainstream fame. The Bluesbreakers would go on to release four albums, the last of which coming in 1968, before John Mayall would release tracks as a solo artist with the help of many session musicians. However in 1985 the name Bluesbreakers was back and from then until 2007 when the Bluesbreakers disbanded and Mayall went it alone once more, the band released a further 11 albums. Their 1965 debut has rightly been classed by many as the best and is the one I would recommend over any other. If you like your blues rock then there really is no better group to explore.

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers - All Your Love - https://youtu.be/rUUEtCBhn_Q

There we have it. Slightly back to my indie/rock/blues safe place with these three choices but it’s just been one of those weeks! Until next time, take it steady!

[r4ct]

Habermas’ Minimal Facts Of The Resurrection

Habermas’ Minimal Facts Of The Resurrection by Eric R, simpleprofundity.com March 31st 2013 (On this Easter morning, I thought I’d give you a repost from last May. Enjoy.) On Sunday, I preached from Acts 2 on the events surrounding Pentecost. During the sermon, I discussed Dr. Gary Habermas’ 12 Minimal Facts approach to proving the historical reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Habermas has studied the resurrection for nearly 30 years, and most scholars consider him to be the world’s leading expert on the topic. He is well-known in philosophical circles, and is a recognized scholar. In 2000, Habermas, a professor of philosophy at Liberty University, decided he needed to update his bibliography. As he was working through his material, he began to notice a pattern. There were certain perspectives that everyone he was reading shared, and this started him on a project of cataloguing all the material discussing the resurrection of Jesus written since 1975. The research included everything written in French, German, and English. It included sources written by scholars from all across the theological and philosophical spectrum: Evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Catholics, and atheists. Five years, and 2400 sources later, Habermas has compiled a list of 12 minimal facts related to the resurrection on which 95% of all scholars agree. 1. Jesus died by crucifixion. Some have tried to argue that Jesus did not really die by crucifixion. They argue that somehow Jesus survived being crucified and appeared to the disciples a few days later. The problem with this argument is that there is absolutely no record of anyone ever surviving being crucified. There is a single recorded incident of two men surviving a crucifixion. They suffered greatly, and the emperor felt pity and had them brought down from the cross. He provided them with the best medical treatment available, but they died a few days later from their injuries. No one has ever survived being crucified. Further, if Jesus had survived, he would’ve been so badly beaten, there is no possible way the apostles would’ve mistaken him for a resurrected Messiah. 95% of all mainstream scholars agree that Jesus died, really died, on a Roman cross. 2. He was buried. Some have argued that Jesus was never actually buried, but that some of is were led to believe he was. 3. His death caused the disciples to despair and lose hope. Essentially everyone agrees that the disciples really believed Jesus was dead. They were hiding from the authorities believing their own lives might be in danger. 4. The tomb was empty. This is the most contested of the 12 facts at about 75% agreement. Still, that’s 75% of over 2,000 sources. So again, most scholars agree that the tomb was empty when the women came to care for Jesus’ body. 5. The disciples had experiences which they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. This is possibly the most important proof, and 95% of all biblical scholars, historians, and philosophers agree that the disciples believed the Jesus they saw was a real, physical Jesus. The disciples did not believe they had a hallucination. In fact, the objection that the disciples were having a grief induced group hallucination has been thoroughly debunked. First, there is absolutely no record of group hallucinations where every person involved saw the same thing. The few hundred witnesses saw Jesus at different times and places. They did not all see him at the same time. Imagine the likelihood that we would all come together, pop a little LSD, and all have exactly the same vision. That just doesn’t happen. Some want to argue that this was grief induced. However, research shows that grief induced hallucinations happen almost exclusively to the elderly who have lost a spouse, and only about 7% of those hallucinations are both audible and visual. Grief hallucinations on the scale required to fool so many witnesses do not happen. There is no classification for grief hallucinations in the DSM-IV. There is no evidence for mass grief hallucinations because they do not happen. Lastly, the apostle Paul claimed to have seen the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul was a persecutor of the church, he was no friend of Jesus, and his seeing and hearing Jesus can not be explained as a grief hallucination. 6. The disciples were transformed from doubters to bold proclaimers. Everyone agrees that whatever happened, it radically changed the disciples. Peter’s sermon on Pentecost is a prime example of this phenomenon. Peter stands in front of some of the very people responsible for Jesus’ death, accuses them of killing the chosen Messiah/King sent by God, and challenges them to repent. A man in Peter’s position does not do this unless he is convinced he has seen the risen Jesus. Everyone agrees the disciples were convinced proclaimers. 7. The resurrection was the central message. Studying the sermons in Acts, teachings of Paul in the epistles, and early church fathers, everyone agrees that the belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was the core teaching of those early Christians. This fact indicates that they believed in the physical and historical event, prompting them to faith in Christ. 8. They preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem. Everyone agrees that Peter and the apostles preached the resurrected Jesus in Jerusalem at Pentecost and subsequent to it. They may not affirm the miraculous aspects of the Pentecost event, but everyone agrees that Christianity was born in Jerusalem among Jewish converts. That devout Jews, who traveled from all over the Roman world, would come to Jerusalem and be converted to follow a dead Jewish rabbi is extremely unlikely unless they were certain that rabbi was no longer dead. 9. The Church was born and grew. Historical fact. It happened. 10. Orthodox Jews who believed in Christ made Sunday their primary day of worship. Devout Jews would not do this, as it was forbidden in the Law of Moses, unless they were certain that Jesus had fulfilled the law, and a new covenant was instituted by the resurrected Messiah. 11. James was converted to the faith when he saw the resurrected Jesus. It is an accepted fact that James was skeptical of Jesus. However, it is also accepted fact that he later was leader of the church in Jerusalem. The most plausible explanation is that he didn’t accept his half-brother’s claims about himself until after he witnessed the resurrected Jesus. 12. Paul was converted to the faith. Here again we have Paul, the persecutor of the early Christians. He was an important figure, a Jew among Jews, and a young man on the rise among the important people in Israel. Then – quite suddenly – he chucks it all, endures beatings, jail, threats, illness, and shipwreck for the sake of preaching the message of the resurrected Jesus. This is accepted by everyone as historical fact. So, after looking at these 12 facts that 95% of all scholars agree upon, Habermas argues that though none of these individually is proof of the resurrection, when taken as a whole, they point strongly to the high probability that Jesus did in fact come alive again by some supernatural means. It is simply more probable, in light of the accepted facts, that Jesus did rise from the dead. Note: Philosopher William Lane Craig affirms Habermas’ research, and agrees that in his experience as the preeminent Christian apologist/debater, the vast majority of his opponents agree with these 12 facts. Craig has argued that the historical fact of the resurrection is also strong evidence for the existence of God. It follows that since Jesus did rise from the dead, someone must have acted upon him to make that happen. I have read reports stating that after a debate with Habermas, longtime atheist stalwart Antony Flew renounced his atheism. Original Page: http://simpleprofundity.com/2013/03/31/habermas-minimal-facts/

[garp20-liambull]

Circus as Multimodal Discourse Performance, Meaning, and Ritual

Chapters 1 and 11

Paul Bouissac London : Bloomsbury Publishing 2012PublisherLondon : Bloomsbury PublishingCreation Date2012Format1 online resource (225 p.).LanguageEnglish SourceLJMU Library Catalogue

Chapter 1

Circus Perfomances as Ritual: Participative Ethnography The opening chapter opens with the role of the traditional circus and how this has developed into online advertising. I talks about the alluring qualities in which the circus showcases such as music, banners, painted panels and loudspeakers to entice an audience.

A key point to note is it says that each circus is an organisation with its own social identity and symbolic character. Something it says a lot of journalistic reports miss.

There is nothing fancy in the phonetics and semantics with respect to the languages of the countries they work it. The value of these acts are established in the memory of the spectators who went ad seen their acts over several generations.

Example - Circus BureauIt has a rather bland name but was held in high regard for the older generations that romanticise the stories of the circus. It creates an established image that people hold in high regard. It was endowed in glamour. It had blue and yellow tents and trucks which became iconic to its brand This is similar to what most circuses do as they need to establish their identity as a brand. The driect impact of a circus depends on its ability to stand out from a dull background. It was important for the to distinguish themselves from their competitors. To this day, traditions companies display bold, vibrant colours and patterns on their tents and trucks. The chromatic combinations invokes ancient coat of arms communicate the brand.

The WebsiteThis way of advertisement has been transferred onto an online presence for the circuses.The website is a semiotic gesture towards the audience. By combing images,textx and music, it provides a virtual sample of the goods it is offering.The websites convey the rich iconography of the circus by displaying crucial information two an audience. It first allows to show their identity and style through the colours of costumes, props and animal decorations. Secondly, the website displays content of the acts which the circus have chosen themselves to represent what they have to offer. The want to provide a glimpse into their artistic identity without disclosing the full content of what they have to offer.

The circus as a ritualCircuses qualify as a form of secular ritual. The term ritual has often been used in a metaphorical sense in modern sociological literature to designate forms of interaction which follow a set of patterns and convey meaning. Example include ‘how are you?’ And ‘have a nice day.’ Accompanied by a stereotypical hand gesture. It does not imply that the person cares about someone else day. It is rather a quasiautomic maintenance of the functionality of a network. It is engrained into our culture to do so. A handshake in some cultures can make a contract effective. It can also be a form of greeting and a visual display to show that two people are friends or acquaintances. That they are linked together as a network. It is a physical acknowledgement that you have become part of a group and people who stay in touch, literally. In animals, rituals mean a display of courtship, threat or submission.

In religion terms, a ritual is described as a performance involving an action, gesture, objects or words with the purpose to interact with supernatural entities. Extreme cases of this are a human sacrifice. Sacrificing a human life in order to establish a deal or agreement with a supernatural force. Typically for protection. This is  seen in Voodoo and Tantric Hinduis.

To be a ritual the action needs to set apart, remain unquestioned and require a radical suspension of disbelief. The actions follow a compulsory pattern. There is no practical rationale for them except that they must be obeyed for the ritual to be effective. They carry the symbolic seal of a transcendent order.

Bringing it back to circuses. In India, crises there use animals to perform rituals and religious acts such as elephants. Now as elephants, monkeys and cows are scared in hinduism, it is clear to see how the circus makes itself compatible with the accomplishment of a religious ritual and of the culture.  We can clearly see that circuses too, include the formal properties of rituals. The displays o circuses themselves are repetitive. Horses are included in acts that vary little, cage acts include lions, tigers, leopards or bears where the core action of the act is down to the same training techniques and displays. The acts of clowns are based on only a small number of gags. All these actions are executed with a formality and highly predictive manner. A circus can show heroes, like willing victims of a sacrifice for no other reason than the act itself. The themes of purification, survival, redemption, life and death is consistent in both religious rituals and the circus. Subtle actions of acrobats kissing their medals or wearing a talisman before performing an act or tilting their head towards the sky with a hand gesture gratitude retroactively endows their actions with a religious significance.

Chapter 11

Ideology and Politics in the Circus RingIt is explained that circus acrobatics often immtate there p[oses based on greek, renaissance and modern marble icons. The music score involved is typically synched to match the acrobatic style of the performance.

There is an element of voyeristic language to their performances. Erotisim is in the eye of the beholder. There is nothing pornographic as to the perfromnacer of the acrobatic performance. However with the elements of intimate body movement, costume and eye contact with the audience, it can be why some audience may feel this way.

The intimate dancing of the acrobats does have its constraints in some cultures. One of these being India. In the last century male and female performers were segregated in the ring. This contrasts to major circuses in America and European circuses which establish a variety of performers male and female which are in close contact with one another. Now this kind of intimacy would have been unacceptable in India in context to their culture which enforces norms of incompatibility.

Another example is in western civilisation and the taboo of homosexuality. Until the gay liberation movement, two acrobats on a single trapeze would of had to have been a man and woman. Despite this, having two woman on a trapeze was acceptable but only if it where stated that they where sisters and the emphasis was on the gracefulness of their acrobatics rather than the undertones of erotism.

Later when circuses such as the Zirkus Roncalli introduced program acts of two men displaying daring acrobatic seats it was perceived as a strong statement of sexual politics. 1983 “The Lindors” Martin Ener and Walter Joss performed and by how they displayed an unapologetically romantic between two men was loved by audiences in Germany and Holland. However no circus in Southern Europe would try this as Homophobia was still the social norm in there cultures. “Eric er Amelie” was an example of the progression of the male and female roles in the acrobats. Their performance was based “passion of perfect yet unspoken communication”. The performance displayed signs of mutual respect as the woman was also the bearer, balancing the man on her hands. A small detail which was insatiably noticed by the audience. This was due to the rise in sexual politics, men and women where becoming more equal.

The article explains how circuses included “Gay Circus Night” where the erotism is unleashed to the audience, examples being drag queens, erotic dancing and bear skin showing. However despite this being perceived by a naive audience as maybe being a pornographic show. It is intact sexual politics expressed through the language of the circus.

The language of the circus can be used metaphorically to convey political propaganda and ideologies. This can result from spontaneous representations of ethos of a culture. Examples include the idea of the American Dream, how we as individuals strive for excellence and to risk it all which is reflected in the lone acrobat who surpasses everybody else by showing self reliance and courage. This ranged differnent from Soviet Union circuses of the 50s and 60s which had the ideology of a communist culture which empathised the human concern as apposed to the recklessness of the American circus. Acrobats performing daring feats in a much more controlled manner with a safety net beneath them as to let a person injure or kill themselves in the pursuit of entertainment for a crowd was cruel and a symptom of the cruel capitalist culture.

Circus acts are loaded with political significance. From portraying the stereotypes of social classes such as fat priests, intellectuals of high class represented in attire and props such as books, men and women and their relation to one another. The language of the circus articulates its own multimodal texts which produce a deep meaning for its audience. “Circus is a well ordered microcosm that reflect harmonious society I which everybody works at the place which God has assigned to them.”

[vitaevandal]

Illuminated

Genre: Fan Fiction (Divergent) Pairing: Eric x OFC Warnings: Adult themes Rating: Mature Disclaimer: This a strict work of fiction, I own nothing except the original characters and the plot line.

A/N: This is based on a request I received from @murmelinchen on my old blog @feminamortem that I can’t repost since I deleted it like a douche. The prompt was a one-shot of Eric and reader/OFC going on a moonlit walk. Here you go.

(I also apologize for not remembering who asked to be tagged in this besides @thihaf. Don’t let me do anything stupid like delete a blog again.)

Eric blindly paced back and forth through his living room, his fingers alternating between pinching the bridge of his nose and raking his usually impeccably styled hair into manic spikes. The relentless buzzing of the usual gathering of Dauntless in the Pit was pummeling his ears like a bass drum, making it impossible to think, so he’d fled to his apartment to clear his head, where the oppressive silence seemed to convolute his thoughts even further.

Typically on Thursdays she’d meet him at his apartment after her shift at one of Dauntless’s many tattoo parlors for their semi-weekly fuck; they were in mutual agreement that neither was looking for anything resembling a relationship, and the arrangement was uncomplicated and comfortable. They rarely wavered from this routine, and if one or the other couldn’t make it, they’d gotten to the point in their ‘liaison’ where they would at least do the other the courtesy of letting them know. So when she hadn’t shown up at the usual designated time without so much as a text, he knew something was amiss and headed straight for the parlor. Lucas, the one who handled piercings, was there alone, breaking down her station. His visage turned into one of dread as Eric, visibly upset, demanded, “Where is she?”

Lucas shrugged his shoulders, continuing when Eric’s glare intensified, “I really don’t know. She seemed kind of off all night, like real agitated, and when I asked her what was wrong she said she wasn’t feeling well. So I said I’d clean up here when we were done and as soon as she finished up her last client about an hour ago she practically bolted out of here. Maybe try the infirmary?”

Eric was surprised to find his annoyance had become tinged with worry. As he made the trek towards the infirmary, he became even more unsettled by the foreignness of such a feeling as concern for another person’s well-being. As he neared the hallway leading to the clinic he caught the sound of two voices speaking in hushed but frantic tones, one of which he recognized as hers, holding a conversation that was most likely not intended to be overheard. He halted abruptly before he rounded the corner and held back out of sight, holding his breath and listening intently.

“How could I have been so stupid?” She spoke lowly, but the alarm and anger in her voice was still evident. “Thinking it’s nothing but a touch of the flu. This honestly never even crossed my mind, not once. I thought we were being careful, I really did. But obviously not enough!” Eric chanced a peek around the corner and saw her slumped against the wall, one hand clutching a small paper bag, the other pressed against her forehead, before retreating back into the shadows. “I can’t even process this, Gina. What in the fuck am I going to do? Do I even tell him? How do you tell Eric of all people something like this?”

He heard the other girl exhale loudly and pause before replying, “Don’t panic. It won’t do you any good, what’s done is done. And maybe you don’t have to tell him, at least not yet.”

“Are you kidding me? This isn’t exactly something I’ll be able to hide! He’s going to find out eventually. And no matter how this plays out, he should know, he needs to take responsibility! I...Gina,” she whispered, as her voice began to break, “my entire life has literally just been ruined. This changes everything.”

Eric felt paralyzed as he attempted to digest this exchange. He was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of suffocation, of being trapped inside a bubble where the oxygen was growing short in supply and his surroundings were muted and distorted. His brain moved in hitches and spurts as he pieced their mutterings together.

“...a touch of the flu…thought we were being careful…what’s done is done…has to take responsibility…”

She was pregnant. And it was his.

A cold sweat sprang up through his pores as this fact clicked into place, and Eric went into panic mode. He had to get out of there. He needed time to think before she confronted him, and he was in no way fit to feign ignorance for her.

So here he was, making a blind trek through the landscape of his apartment, replaying the illicit dialogue over and over in his mind, attempting to catalogue his many reactions. Eric did hail from Erudite, and his position as a leader was not entirely ill-gotten; so despite a rather conflagrant temper, the union of his natural intelligence and militaristic conditioning had produced an ability to maintain logic, composure, and clarity in the most disastrous situations. Without actual conscious, choreographed thought, his brain began to disentangle the threads of the situation with the detached yet swiftly calculating adroitness of a born strategist. He’d knocked her up. While he could cling desperately to the hope that it wasn’t his, he had little reason to doubt that it was, so he wasted no time in entertaining that romantic notion and instead simply accepted it as an unassailable fact. One that needed immediate damage control, the top priority of which was unquestionably self-preservation.

While they had never discussed such a hypothetical, he believed he knew her well enough by now to confidently predict that she would not have an abortion, and besides, he operated by the creed of, “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.” His first concern: how would the berth of fatherhood affect his leadership position? There were no rules in place regarding marital or dependent status, so there was no immediate threat to his career per se, but the burden that having a family would place on his time would undoubtedly skyrocket his already considerable stress level. Eric prided himself on prevailing over adversity, so while this was not exactly a challenge he would have sought out, he had no fear of this thwarting his ambitions. But on the personal level? A family would end life as he knew it. He’d never had to be accountable to anyone, never been in a committed relationship so never had any qualms about sleeping around. Never anyone besides Number One to look out for, never anyone for Eric to take care of besides Eric. A family would mean a practical and emotional onus unprecedented for him, and the question wasn’t whether he could be ready for such a thing, because there was no question about it - this was happening, he had to be. The question was just how miserable the rest of his entire fucking life was going to be. And that’s when it hit him.

Or rather, didn’t hit him, because the waves of anger and petulance and despair he expected to flood him never came. There was no outrage over the end of his old life. There was apprehension, there was fear, but could that really just be how his ingrained personality was translating...excitement? Optimism? At what he realized he was beginning to see as the onset of his new life?

True to his nature, resoluteness took hold quickly as he vowed to, at the very least, give this whole thing a shot. He was, after all, brave; he was Dauntless.

***

“Take a walk with me.”

“A walk? Where?” A bemused expression crossed her features before turning to one of trepidation.

“Navy Pier. For once it’s not hot as fuck in August, I think we should get out.” Eric looked at her almost beseechingly, which only made her warier. While his proposition was, as always, a command rather than a request, the uncertain and hopeful expression that accompanied it was altogether alien for him.

She paused briefly as she considered the opportunity this might afford her. He seemed to be in a pleasant mood, which could lend her an advantage in this situation. This nighttime excursion out of the compound also lent them the privacy she hoped for when she broke the news. She quickly changed her countenance to one of eagerness.

“Alright. Ready whenever you are.”

It was a rare evening on which Eric was not burdened with any extraneous leadership duties, so they set off immediately without him having to clear his schedule with any of his fellow leaders or his own assistant. They exited the compound unbothered through the seldom-used maintenance doors at the east end, leading to a path too narrow to accommodate vehicles, therefore of little use to anyone coming or going from the premises, Dauntless or otherwise.

Eric was right; the typical late summer humidity was absent from the night air, and a gentle breeze whispered against their skin like silk. Eric felt his conviction oddly fortified by the balmy weather as they started side by side down the pathway, a restive electricity seeming to pass between them. The moon was full that evening, a coin of iridescent silver that illuminated the unobstructed trail before them but whose light stopped short at the trees on either side of them, creating an atmosphere that was intimate rather than grim. The walk to the pier was short, but he didn’t want to wait until they reached their destination to broach the subject of their relationship; he would be fooling himself if he said he was entirely undaunted by the prospect of voicing and therefore solidifying his new receptiveness to the idea of commitment, but knew that every second he waited was cowardice on his part. He cast a sidelong glance at her and took a deep breath.

“Look, I know we’ve called what’s between us casual these past few months, but I think we’ve lied to ourselves long enough, don’t you?”

She turned to him with a look of genuine shock over what he assumed was his defiance of her assumption that she was a temporary toy to him.

“What are you saying, Eric?”

He tentatively took her hand in his, his gaze on her this time remaining steady. “I’m saying, we both know there’s something more there. Something worth pursuing. I’m saying I want us to be exclusive. I want there to be a future for us.”

Now she seemed positively aghast. A silence hung between them as they reached the ferris wheel, and he pulled her toward the steel supports that formed a rudimentary ladder along its sides. The moonlight glinted softly off of the metal, but their surroundings were mostly dark, throwing the nearby lights of Erudite into a relief that looked almost like stars, blazing brightly before they extinguished for all time. “Come to the top with me. The view will be worth it.”

He didn’t see the whirlwind of emotions that flitted across her face as he guided her to begin the climb before him, too intent on ensuring he was prepared to catch her if she slipped. They reached the top car without incident and she was again caught off-guard by his tenderness as he delicately gripped her waist when she swung first one leg and then the other into the gently swaying car. As she sat down and waited for him to join her she shook her head almost imperceptibly, attempting to clear away the momentary fog that this new Eric was perpetuating. She silently pledged to remain unflinching in her confrontation.

Instead of sitting beside her he slid sideways to the edge of the car and remained standing, looking out contemplatively at the ruins of Chicago. Bathed in the incandescent lunar glow, its eeriness, in that moment, transformed into a melancholy beauty.

“I heard you talking to Gina after you left the infirmary. I know you’re pregnant,” he whispered. “I have a responsibility now, to you and our baby. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect, but I can promise that I’ll try. I think you want this as - “

She cut him short as she shrieked, “You what?”, causing him to start and turn to face her. Her features were twisted with what could only be described as unadulterated rage. “You brought me here to tell me that you accept that you fucked up by knocking me up, that you’ve resigned yourself to being a ‘family man,’ like you’re doing me some kind of fucking favor by staying with me? You ruined my life, Eric! No man will ever touch me again thanks to you. You don’t have a fucking clue what you did to me, do you? DO YOU?”

It happened so quickly, he didn’t even have time to scream. Her arms pistoned out and connected with his chest, and as he toppled over the edge of the swinging car, he could just make out the last words anyone would ever speak to him before he struck the pavement some 200 feet below.

“You gave me herpes, you asshole!”

***

She was numb as she clambered down the rungs of the ferris wheel, only sentient enough to wonder if her volatile emotional state that persisted throughout the day had just caused her to hallucinate what she’d just done. She then caught sight of Eric’s inert form, his limbs bent at impossible angles, a growing pool of blood matting his flawless hair. She drifted over to it, noting his grotesquely misshapen skull, but nonetheless crouched next to him and searched for a pulse. Feeling only stillness beneath her own clammy fingertips, she breathed a sigh of relief and her lips curved into a grim smile. It stayed upon her face until she reached the maintenance door they had exited from earlier unnoticed.

Those damn factionless, she would utter later that night to Gina as the whole of Dauntless raised their glasses in tribute to their fallen leader. Eric should’ve known it wasn’t safe to go wandering out into the city alone at night. Arrogant bastard.

[automaticvr]

A new film by Eric Minh Swenson. Few artists are as synonymous with the history of 20th and 21st-century American art as Frank Stella. His work across media, from painting to sculpture to printmaking, has continuously broken ground at each stage of his decades-long career, remaining influential and relevant to subsequent generations of contemporary artists. Sprüth Magers is honored to present the first solo exhibition of Frank Stella’s painting and sculpture in Los Angeles since 1995. The selection of works highlights the artist’s ongoing experimentation with spatial representation and includes the début of a new painting series.  In its broad array of forms, colors, and scale, Stella’s recent work offers viewers an equally remarkable and confounding visual experience. Planes intersect, cutting through each other as if in virtual space, while metal frameworks balance brightly painted, sinuous shapes whose appearance shifts radically when viewed from different perspectives. Since the 1990s, the artist has worked with computer renderings of complex forms, piecing together compositions from recurring motifs inspired by smoke rings, a spiral-coiled hat, stars, and other visual phenomena. Though Stella conceives of all his works in relation to painting, they often extend into three dimensions and are inspired by various disciplines, including literature, philosophy, and music.  At the center of the gallery, The Broken Jug. A Comedy [D#3] (left handed version) (2007) takes its title from the celebrated German Romanticist writer and theorist, Heinrich von Kleist, whose texts Stella has engaged with for twenty years. Ribbons of wood weave in and out of each other in graceful arcs, flowing dynamically over viewers as they walk around the piece. Three additional sculptures illustrate the artist’s diverse approaches to the star form, which has figured prominently in his work since 2014. Stella’s stars at times appear weightless, dissolving into bands of stainless steel; elsewhere, their mass is tangible and echoes the weighty reality of celestial bodies. Summer Star (Net) (2015), moreover, exhibits the process of rapid prototyping (RPT) that the artist has used for many years to develop intricate arrangements of vibrantly colored plastics and metals.  Several examples from Stella’s Scarlatti K series, which he first began in 2006, expand upon his varied use of RPT. The series is named for the 18th-century composer Domenico Scarlatti, the creator of 555 inventive piano sonatas, and the scholar Ralph Kirkpatrick, who later catalogued them chronologically giving each one a “K” number. Rather than attempting a literal translation of Scarlatti’s compositions, Stella's series instead evokes the “sense of rhythm and movement that you get in music,” as the artist has explained. In K.404 (2013), for example, a spray of yellow needle-like protrusions suggests staccato notes and an upbeat tempo, and metal parabolas trace meandering melodic lines.  On view for the first time, Stella’s recent paintings mark the artist’s return to the canvas, albeit with compositions that relate directly to his three-dimensional investigations. Each one features a painstakingly rendered, undulating form that hovers in space, casting painted shadows onto the picture plane below. With the look of architectural plans, computerized models, and diagrams, the figures seem to defy gravity, as if designed for some otherworldly location or enigmatic purpose. Sensuous and inviting, these new works offer insight into Stella’s long-standing conception of painting as a multidimensional, multidisciplinary enterprise.  EMS Legacy Films is a continuing series of short films produced by EMS on artists and exhibitions. His art films can be seen at https://ift.tt/2xH1ckP Instagram : @ericminhswenson Website : emsartscene.com Eric Minh Swenson also covers the international art scene and his writings and photo essays can be seen at Huffington Post Arts : https://ift.tt/1QmYGkR

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Tutorial Says UFOs Exist, However That Does not Imply 'Aliens' Do

http://tinyurl.com/y5zzek5p The time period “UFO” robotically triggers derision in most quarters of well mannered society. One in all Christopher Buckley’s higher satires, “Little Green Men“, is premised on a George F. Will-type pundit pondering that he has been kidnapped by aliens, with amusing outcomes. UFOs have traditionally been related to crackpot concepts like Huge Foot or conspiracy theories involving crop circles.   The apparent purpose for that is that the time period “UFO” is often assumed to be a synonym for “extraterrestrial life.” If you consider it, that is odd. UFO actually stands for “ufo.” A UFO shouldn’t be essentially an alien from one other planet. It’s merely a flying object that can not be defined away via standard means. As a result of UFOs are often introduced up solely to crack jokes, nevertheless, they’ve been dismissed for many years. One of many gutsiest working paper shows I’ve witnessed was Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall presenting a draft model of “Sovereignty and the UFO.” In that paper, ultimately revealed within the journal Political Idea, Wendt and Duvall argued that state sovereignty as we perceive it’s anthropocentric, or “constituted and arranged by reference to human beings alone.” They argued that the actual purpose UFOs have been dismissed is due to the existential problem that they pose for a worldview during which human beings are probably the most technologically superior life-forms: UFOs have by no means been systematically investigated by science or the state, as a result of it’s assumed to be recognized that none are extraterrestrial. But in actual fact this isn’t recognized, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET risk…. The puzzle is defined by the useful imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which can not resolve a UFO exception to anthropocentrism whereas preserving the power to make such a call. The UFO may be “recognized” solely by not asking what it’s.   When Wendt and Duvall made this argument, there have been plenty of titters within the viewers. I chuckled, too. Nonetheless, their paper makes a persuasive case that UFOs definitely exist, even when they aren’t essentially ETs. For them, the bottom line is that no official authority takes severely the concept UFOs may be extraterrestrials. As they word, “appreciable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects solely of ridicule and scorn.” In recent times, nevertheless, there was a refined shift that poses some fascinating questions for his or her argument. For one factor, dialogue of precise UFOs has been the subject of some severe mainstream media protection. There was the December 2017 New York Times story by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean concerning the Protection Division’s Superior Aerospace Menace Identification Program, which was tasked with cataloguing UFOs recorded by navy pilots. DoD officers confirmed its existence. Although this story generated some justified skepticism, it represented the primary time the US authorities acknowledged the existence of such a program. Then, there have been the reviews final November about Oumuamua, “a mysterious, cigar-shaped interstellar object [that] fell via our photo voltaic system at a rare pace,” in keeping with New York‘s Eric Levits.   Oumuamua’s form and trajectory have been uncommon sufficient for some genuine astrophysicists to publish a paper suggesting the chance that it was a man-made development counting on a photo voltaic sail. Once more, this prompted skeptical reactions, however even these skeptics couldn’t fully rule out the chance that extraterrestrial exercise was concerned. Then, on Monday, the New York Times came out with another story by the identical reporters who broke the 2017 story: The unusual objects, certainly one of them like a spinning high transferring towards the wind, appeared nearly every day from the summer time of 2014 to March 2015, excessive within the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no seen engine or infrared exhaust plumes, however that they may attain 30,000 ft and hypersonic speeds. “This stuff could be on the market all day,” stated Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Tremendous Hornet pilot who has been with the Navy for 10 years, and who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress. “Preserving an plane within the air requires a big quantity of power. With the speeds we noticed, 12 hours within the air is 11 hours longer than we would anticipate.”…. Nobody within the Protection Division is saying that the objects have been extraterrestrial, and consultants emphasize that earthly explanations can usually be discovered for such incidents. Lieutenant Graves and 4 different Navy pilots, who stated in interviews with The New York Occasions that they noticed the objects in 2014 and 2015 in coaching maneuvers from Virginia to Florida off the plane service Theodore Roosevelt, make no assertions of their provenance.   The Occasions reporters broke new floor by getting pilots on document. What’s fascinating about this newest information cycle, nevertheless, is that DoD officers should not behaving as Wendt and Duvall would predict. Certainly, Politico’s Bryan Bender reported final month that, “The US Navy is drafting new pointers for pilots and different personnel to report encounters with ‘unidentified plane,’ a big new step in creating a proper course of to gather and analyze the unexplained sightings – and destigmatize them.” My Publish colleague Deanna Paul followed up by reporting that “Luis Elizondo, a former senior intelligence officer, informed The Publish that the brand new Navy pointers formalized the reporting course of, facilitating data-driven evaluation whereas eradicating the stigma from speaking about UFOs, calling it ‘the one biggest determination the Navy has made in a long time.'” What seems to be taking place is that official organs of the state are actually acknowledging that UFOs exist, even when they are not literally using the term. They’re doing so as a result of sufficient pilots are reporting UFOs and near-air collisions in order to warrant higher record-keeping. They don’t seem to be saying that these UFOs are extraterrestrials, however they’re attempting to destigmatize the reporting of a UFO. Nonetheless, the actual fact that this step has been taken considerably weakens the Wendt and Duvall thesis. This was all the time a two-step course of: (a) Acknowledge that UFOs exist; and (b) Think about that the UFOs is perhaps ETs. In recent times, the US nationwide safety forms has met the primary criterion. What occurs to our understanding of the universe if nice powers meet that second one? Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of worldwide politics on the Fletcher College of Legislation and Diplomacy at Tufts College. Opinions expressed on this article do not essentially mirror the views of ScienceAlert editorial employees. 2019 © The Washington Publish This text was initially revealed by The Washington Post.   Source link

[casualarsonist]

Disenchantment: Season 1

Matt Groening is an Ideas Man. Life in Hell, The Simpsons, Futurama, it’s not often that a single creative becomes the voice of more than one generation. And yet, his TV shows, at the height of their respective successes, were not identifiable by Groening’s direct influence so much as they were their fantastic team of writers. At their apex, Groening’s greatest successes were far bigger than Groening himself, and while he was adept at dreaming up the conceit and the characters of the worlds he created, it was on the back of the efforts of a fantastic writing team that his shows flourished. So while Groening’s typically warped and cynical worldview held his comic strip in good stead, his short-form, frame-by-frame method of joke-telling lacks the subtlety and nuance that a good story-writer can use to build to a punchline, or to thread its characters into the weave of its plot rather than just having them stick their heads through a door and utter a joke because it’s been five minutes and the egg-timer sitting by his computer has gone off. In saying that, his contribution here is in co-operation with one of The Simpson’s most acclaimed writers - Josh Weinstein - so I don’t really know where to start in trying to figure out exactly what happened in the production of Disenchantment to start it off on such a bad footing.

Disenchantment is a ‘Netflix Original’ - a brand I can’t help but instinctively flinch at the mere mention of. To be fair to Netflix, not all its releases under that title are trash - some are even straight-up excellent - but there are literally hundreds of Netflix Originals released all over the world, and when you have the money and ambition that Netflix has (or had) there’s going to be an inevitable temptation to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. After all, Netflix is the bastion of those willing to settle for cheap thrills, rom coms, and anything that will drown out the deafening sound of existential dread reverberating around the inside of their skulls. Not the most discerning audience, is what I’m saying. And to be fair to Disenchantment, Groening’s writing only appears credited in the first episode (even though the symptoms of that writing appear throughout to various degrees throughout the series). But when you’ve only got ten episodes to make your mark, and your appeal is in part trading on the pedigree of a back-catalogue of seminal shows such as The Simpsons and Futurama, the bar you’ve got to leap is going to be higher than usual. Which is why it’s so baffling that the opening episodes of Disenchantment are just. so. bad.

Full disclosure - I barely got half way through the first episode before I gave up with a groan and a roll of the eyes and turned it off. I even called it ‘Disenchanted’ seven times in this review before I realised I was getting the title wrong. Perhaps I was projecting. The only reason I watched the rest of the series was so I could write this review in good faith. Characters bounce from scenario to scenario in a chaotic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fantasy world. The narrative almost invariably plays out in a ‘this happened, and then this happened, and then THIS happened’ format. Mediocre visual gags and one-liners are shoehorned into scenes with no care at to how relevant they are, or how they affect the pacing. Everything is overstated, lacking the finesse that the best episodes of The Simpsons or Futurama used to let their humour and emotion sneak up on the viewer and take them by surprise. It lacks the endearing characters, the contained and engaging storylines, and the genuine social commentary that both of its predecessors had.  And on top of all this the animation is really, really cheap, meaning that my first impression was that it was as amateurish in its visuals as it was in its script.

Growing pains can be a passing thing. The first season of the American Office was mostly trash, as was that of Parks and Rec, as were the first few seasons of The Simpsons, and while the entry point into Disenchantment reeks like a teenager’s bedroom, with time and distance from the first episode it does open up in two something more engaging. But that doesn’t absolve it of its sins, as the budgetary and temporal constraints of the ‘Netflix Original’ title have clearly failed to let this series grow large enough to support the wide creative team it needs to even entertain thoughts of approaching its predecessor’s quality. Everything about Disenchantment feels impermanent compared to its predecessors - from the meandering and indefinable conceit, to the clutch of thinly-written characters, to the cheap, badly-written, throwaway jokes…it all feels like it wasn’t made to last beyond the initial ten episodes. It feels like a draft copy.

Which is a real shame, because Disenchantment is a vehicle for an excellent cadre of modern comedians and performers who simply haven’t got much to work with. Abbi Jacobson and Eric Andre both came from better, more ground-breaking shows to play far-less interesting characters. ‘He’s a demon, BUT HE’S KINDA CUTE!’; ‘she’s a princess, BUT SHE’S ALSO A ROUGH-AND-TUMBLE REBEL!’ The best a character can hope to be in this series is a thing that is also another thing, otherwise, they’re Kissy, the promiscuous elf. Or Weirdo, the sex pest elf. Or Shocko, the elf that expresses shock, and is legitimately the only joke I laughed at in the first episode by virtue of the fact that it was just so dumb. Below even that rung lay the characters that exist only as vessels for shitty end-of-scene one-liners, like the guy who walks through the door after the King has threatened to decapitate anyone who looks at his daughter, saying ‘oh boy, did I look at HER!’ Ugh.

And when the jokes aren’t content to simply be bad, they straight-up don’t make sense - a perfect example of this being when the princess’ betrothed accidentally impales his head on a sword.

Let’s break it down:

- A prince drops the ring during his wedding ceremony, and when bending to pick it up accidentally impales his head on a sword. The joke being that a character is suddenly killed in an unexpected way. This is mildly amusing.

- A member of the court declares him dead. To which the prince replies with the garbled mess of a line: 'Ah, I think I’m alive. No, wait, never mind.’ He then slumps down dead. Aside from not being as funny as the first joke, in showing the price to be alive it undoes the punchline of the first joke. ‘Prince has an accident and lives’ is not funny. ‘Prince has an accident, seems to live, but doesn’t’ is also not funny.

- Finally, after two increasingly poor gags that both rely on the prince’s death to even be considered jokes at all, the scene moves on for around a minute before the prince opines the fact that no-one is helping him. Not only does this YET AGAIN render the two previous jokes moot (’Visibly alive man turns out to be alive’), it just plain doesn’t make any sense. The joke was that he died. Twice. Why would anyone be expected to help him? Did they forget to take this out of the script? Or did they just forsake consistency and the internal logic of their show so they could cram as many shit gags in as possible?

In two minutes we have three crappy bits that are all essentially the same joke, each one simultaneously worse than the last AND retroactively rendering the jokes before it less funny. To be honest, I’m kind of impressed. It’s almost the perfect, literal, anti-comedy. And it’s the norm, rather than the exception, for the first few episodes at least. Any time the show starts to get any steam up and you allow yourself to be invested, some kind of desperate, tone-deaf non sequitur swings in and ruins your mood. The best jokes in the series are either less-painful versions of this, or the occasional rare gem that is both unexpected AND YET makes sense for the scene. When the king laments that he can’t possibly lose anything else, and then his crown slips off his head and plunges over the railing of his tower, THAT’S funny. In the moment, I laughed out loud. And it’s not even that spectacular a joke. But it’s sadly among the best that Disenchantment can offer.  

I’ve got a real bone to pick with Netflix’s ‘Originals’. If you ever held hope that one day down the track the channel’s trashheap would be thinned out, or somehow transformed by the platform’s success, then one five-minute wade through the collection will convince you that this is a pipe-dream. It’s an endless sea of low-budget, thrown-together mediocrity that seriously suggests the person greenlighting these things needs to have their rubber stamp confiscated. Disenchantment grows on you, and by episode ten you might even find yourself a little bit invested. But big picture, the series is just another idea flung at a wall and failing to stick. The potential is there, I suppose, and I can only hope that the upwards momentum carries over to the newly-commissioned second season, but the low quality animation and poor execution just pulls the rug out from under it. Groening’s style is best suited to self-contained episodes that allow the writers to condense the humour; a ten-episode arc with a flimsy plot is not fertile ground for a style of show that needs time to find its feet and settle into the premise and the characters. And while it might amuse you if you hang around long enough, I don’t really feel like awarding points to a show for being kind of worth it eventually. Disenchantment simply doesn’t hold a candle to the best of Groening’s works.

5/10

[jodyedgarus]

Why Kevin Durant’s Shoes Keep Falling Off

IT’S DEC. 6 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a sold-out crowd files into the Spectrum Center. The world champion Golden State Warriors are in town for their lone trip to the Tar Heel State this season. And though Queen City native Stephen Curry isn’t in uniform, due to a right ankle injury he sustained just two days prior, Kevin Durant is doing his best to make up for whatever gap in enthusiasm might exist. Durant is drilling one rainbow jumper after the next while piecing together what will ultimately become a 35-point, 11-rebound, 10-assist triple-double on the way to a wire-to-wire 101-87 road win.

But for how easy Durant makes it all look, on this night, he manages to dominate while overcoming the greatest on-court obstacle he’s ever known.

Kevin Durant loses his shoes more than any player in NBA history.

Indeed, if one could identify an Achilles’ heel in Durant’s game, it might be the feckless nature of the shoes that swaddle his Achilles’ heel. Just after halftime, with Golden State up 55-43, Durant backpedals in transition following a Warriors’ turnover, then successfully contests a Michael Kidd-Gilchrist layup. And then, as he grabs the rebound and begins a fast break going the other way, Kidd-Gilchrist steps on the back of his foot, causing Durant’s black-and-white, yellow-swooshed KD10 to briefly soar into the air.

And nine minutes later, it happens again — this time as Durant launches a baseline fadeaway over Nicolas Batum, who also comes down on the back of Durant’s right shoe. After the whistle, Durant bends his 7-foot-tall, Gumby-like frame, reaches down, and slides the shoe back on his foot without as much as re-tying it.

It’s almost as if it’s something that happens so much, it hardly merits notice. Which is exactly the case.

THE 2017-18 CAMPAIGN had just begun, but Kevin Durant was already in midseason, shoe-shedding form.

Immediately after halftime on Oct. 20 in New Orleans, with Golden State down by 13 points, Durant finished a tough layup off the wrong foot after Tony Allen stepped on the back of his left heel, losing the sneaker in the process. Durant hustled to grab the shoe as the Pelicans pushed the ball back down the floor, but then — after realizing he wouldn’t have enough time during the play to put it back on his foot — opted to fling it toward the sideline. The choice to free up his right hand ended up being a wise one: After a New Orleans misfire and offensive rebound, Durant swatted not one, but two of Allen’s shots at the rim with just a single sneaker.

Three nights later in Dallas, as Durant was going up for a defensive rebound in the second period, he lost his left shoe and could only watch as future Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki put back a Mavericks’ miss. Fast forward six days, back home at Oracle Arena against the Pistons, and Durant lost the left shoe again during an awkward first-quarter fall while trying to swat an Andre Drummond layup. He managed to shed a sneaker on consecutive nights in March, too, jumping out of his right shoe while jostling with San Antonio’s LaMarcus Aldridge for a rebound, then losing a shoe on that same foot the next game after getting stepped on by teammate JaVale McGee while guarding Moe Harkless in Portland.

It’s happened in blowouts, like the 21- and 24-point laughers against the Mavs and Nuggets on back-to-back nights last season. And just as often, it’s happened in some of the biggest, most scrutinized games of Durant’s pro career.

His shoes ran away from his feet twice during that epic 2016 Thunder-Warriors Western Conference finals, in which Oklahoma City lost a 3-1 lead and set the stage for Durant to join Golden State in free agency two months later. He blew a tire two times during the Olympic Games in Rio that summer, including once in the middle of the gold-medal game against Serbia. Durant’s right shoe came off during his wildly hyped, highly contentious first game back in OKC. The right kick also went flying last June during Game 5 of the NBA Finals — the same night he would go on to win his first NBA championship and be crowned Finals MVP.

And then, in Game 5 of the just-completed Western Conference Finals, it happened not once … but twice: The first time, Durant’s right shoe came loose with a minute left in the first quarter as he finished a layup. The second came just 30 minutes of game-time later, when the same right shoe came all the way unglued after biting on an Eric Gordon head-fake at the 3-point line — a foul that gave Houston three free throws — and an 84-80 lead — with just under seven minutes left in the game.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/kdshoe_2017-18_final.mp4

All told, an extensive video analysis of Durant’s games from the past three regular seasons and postseasons reveals that the four-time scoring champ has come out of his shoe at least 31 times since the beginning of the 2015-16 campaign. That number, compiled against 20 different NBA teams, equates to losing a sneaker roughly every eight games or so — a mind-bogglingly high figure considering that Durant has had his own signature Nike shoe, designed to fit the unique contours of his feet, dating back to 2008.

“His shoe comes off more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” says teammate Draymond Green.

The question, of course, is why.

THE THEORIES FLY as fast and as far as the footwear that flings from the forward’s feet.

Perhaps it’s the shoes? With all due respect to Spike Lee, it’s gotta be the shoes, right?

It is, for sure, worth considering the changes that have been made to Durant’s signature sneaker in recent years. Leo Chang, the designer behind Durant’s shoes for more than a decade, told ESPN sneaker expert Nick DePaula that he loosened the bootie — the part of the shoe you slide your foot in through — to make them easier to put on and take off. The push to make the shoe more accessible with a tongueless design happened with the release of the KD9, which came out in 2016 — timing that meshes with when Durant began conspicuously losing his shoe at a noticeable clip. (A Nike spokesman declined comment for this piece.)

Or maybe it’s the feet?

Indeed, Kevin Durant somewhat famously possesses some of the longest, narrowest feet that anyone who’s witnessed them has ever seen — ones that, when paired with his chicken legs, look a lot like the blades at the ends of hockey sticks.

“My feet are so weird, man. I’ve got flat feet. I’ve got all sorts of calluses and corns on my feet,” says Durant, who wears orthotics and two pairs of socks during games in hopes of reducing friction.

But longtime Warriors equipment manager Eric Housen, who, despite being in his mid-40s, has worked 29 years with the team, has an altogether different theory.

Having seen everything that Durant is asked to do for Golden State — be a primary scorer who can attack at all three levels, a switchy perimeter defender capable of handling the opposing club’s No. 1 option and occasionally even a rim protector who cleans up back-end mistakes — Housen feels the superstar’s versatility is a factor in the shoes coming off so frequently. No player, aside from perhaps Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, is called upon to do as much.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/kdshoe_2016-17_final.mp4

“He constantly has to change direction because of the different roles he plays,” says Housen, who’s taken a rather keen interest in this subject, which sometimes makes extra work for him. Housen recalls racing through the arena in New Orleans during the play where Durant tossed his sneaker toward the Pelicans’ sideline because Housen wanted to ensure no one disadvantaged the Warriors forward by playing Keep Away with his shoe as action on the court continued.

Like countless other young basketballers, Durant developed a fascination with sneakers at a young age. But getting new pairs of shoes on a regular basis wasn’t realistic at times for the superstar forward, who’s spoken openly about his humble beginnings in Seat Pleasant, Maryland.

“We couldn’t afford the Pennys, the Pippens, the Jordans,” Durant told The Oklahoman in 2011. “I had one pair of Team Jordans and I wore them everywhere. I hooped in them, played football in them. I had some Shaqs from K-Mart and a pair of Tim Duncans. But I couldn’t get a bunch of different ones like I wanted.” He was an Eastbay magazine die-hard, but the only size-11s his mother could get him from the catalogue were Lisa Leslie’s and Sheryl Swoopes’s Nike models.

It’s perhaps not unrelated, Housen notes, that for a star player — one who’s literally provided an endless supply of sneakers by Nike, and could wear new kicks every game if he truly wanted to — Durant very rarely moves on to a different pair compared to other NBA players.

Thunder star Paul George said he prefers the feeling of a new shoe when he steps out on the court. “Fresh out of the box,” he says. Ex-Warriors guard Larry Hughes was the same way during his time in Golden State. Dwyane Wade used to go through as many as three pairs in the same game, citing how sweaty his feet would get in certain sneakers. Durant is the opposite.

“Kevin really hates wearing a pair that’s brand new. He likes them boys worn, and then he’ll stick with them consistently, for a long time,” Housen says, adding that he even prefers to use the same pair for both practice and games. “He doesn’t care if they match the uniform that night. He’s just, ‘Those are my shoes — the shoes I practice in, the shoes I play in.’ So I just bring them back and forth for him, and he lets me know when he’s ready to start over with a new pair.” (One indication of all this: Durant’s brand-new sneaker, the KD 11, is available for him to wear now. And Nike’s initial plan was for him to market the shoe to the basketball world by playing in them during the high-profile Western Conference Finals against Houston. But true to form, Durant has yet to wear the shoe, which is slated to be released to the public in June.)

For as long as he uses the same pair of shoes now, Durant actually used to wear them for even longer stretches during his first few years in the league. Chang, the Nike designer, has said that Durant used to only switch out his shoes three or four times per season, the equivalent of once every 23 games. So perhaps, instead, Durant is not giving himself enough time to break in the sneakers — a premise that seems more plausible given that almost 40 percent of his shoe-shed incidents have taken place during the first month of a season, when he’s still getting used to wearing them.

Durant’s explanation for this is simple. “If I feel something is right, I just like to stay in it,” he said. Asked how long he’ll stay in the same pair, Durant thought for a second. “Usually about three weeks — maybe every eight games?”

Here’s a fun fact: That’s the exact frequency with which he sheds a shoe out on the court.

There is one other possible explanation, though.

NEARLY EVERY VETERAN teammate of Durant’s who’s played with him at least a few months — after initially wondering why the hell he loses a shoe so often — has busted his chops over the habit. (Well, nearly every teammate, save for Steph Curry. “I give him shit all the time about stuff, but no, I don’t go there — it’s … a sensitive subject,” Curry says, an apparent reference to the rival sneaker brands that the players promote.)

And while there’s evidence that he lost a shoe during a game as early as 2010, most all observers of this streak of sole-baring agree that it wasn’t always this bad. Those who played with Durant prior to him becoming NBA royalty express genuine bewilderment over how he suddenly began losing his sneakers so often these past few years.

“It never happened at all when we were in school,” says Orlando Magic guard D.J. Augustin, who starred at the University of Texas with Durant before becoming a lottery pick in 2008. “The funny thing is, I never realized exactly how much it happened until I played with him in Oklahoma City his last year there. And there it felt like it just kept happening every few games.”

Nick Collison, Durant’s teammate for nine seasons in Seattle and Oklahoma City, says he and others stayed on him about it constantly. “The funny thing is, I know it’s not the shoes, because I wore the KDs for years, laced them up tight, and literally never had a problem with them,” says Collison, who recently announced his retirement. “But we were constantly telling him to tie his shoes. All the time.”

And still: Durant continues to opt against re-tying his shoe whenever one falls off. Instead, he simply stuffs his foot back in and continues playing as if nothing happened.

Every now and then, if a student of the subject studies hard enough, they might see a look of frustration cross Shoeless Kevin’s face. Review the video from that last season he spent with the Thunder, and they’ll find an instance of him losing both shoes — on his left foot, and then his right — within the same minute or so of action during a November game in Houston. Upon collecting the second shoe, he stands straight up and briefly stares into space before grabbing the right sneaker as if it’s somehow betrayed him.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/kdshoe_2015-16_final.mp4

On a chilly April morning in Indianapolis, after months of studying the phenomenon, I finally got around to asking Durant about all this. Upon hearing the question — basically, how can anyone’s shoes fall off as often as yours do? — he laughed before unfolding an enormous ear-to-ear grin. Then came the moment of sole-searching truth; the reason he finds himself picking up left-behind sneakers more frequently than a Payless Shoes store associate.

“Anything too tight on my body as I play, I feel like it restricts me a little bit. I don’t wear the arm sleeves, the undershirts, the finger tape, the wristbands, or none of that stuff,” he said. “I’m already skinny as it is, and I don’t need anything else weighing me down. I want to be aerodynamic out there, and I guess that’s how I think of my shoes as well.”

And so it is, that to achieve that featherweight feeling, Durant wears a size-18 while on the court — one full size bigger than what he wears when in casual settings.

“These are like slippers, man, and I just try to be as efficient as I can when I create what I want out there. I don’t want something that’s too bulky. So, sometimes they may come off, but the good thing is, I can slip them back on and keep playing.”

All of which seems like a slightly crazy notion — and one that would benefit the opposition — until you realize the extent to which it’s the opposite.

On a per-100 possession basis, Kevin Durant has averaged 114 points when occupying the court without a shoe1 — more than triple the 36 points per 100 possessions he posted this past season. Looping in his other stats, he logged five dimes and five turnovers per 100 possessions sans a shoe, while shooting 9-for-12, or 75 percent.

So perhaps there’s really little mystery at all to why Durant sees little need for both his sneakers. If you could morph into the next coming of Wilt Chamberlain, you might not find it vital to tighten your shoes up, either.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-kevin-durants-shoes-keep-falling-off/

[projectalbum]

Deep blue sea. 103. “Veckatimest,” 104. “Shields” by Grizzly Bear, 105. “Living in the Material World,” 106. “Brainwashed” by George Harrison

Grizzly Bear’s brand of lush, dreamy folk rock wormed its way into my subconscious through a track on the Dark Was The Night compilation and, somewhat embarrassingly, one on a Twilight soundtrack (I mean, those movies are as dumb as their reputation, but the producers’ needle drop choices are stacked with indie heavy-hitters). Both songs are stylistically somewhat atypical compared to the band’s LPs, with “Deep Blue Sea,” a traditional folk standard, and “Slow Life,” a mournful dirge with Victoria Legrand, both in a comparatively stripped-down mode. The tracks on Veckatimest and Shields may begin as acoustic rumbles or jazz grooves, then build into expansive, 4 to 6 minute pop symphonies. Psychedelic ballads can have their reverie cut through by a peal of distorted guitar drone. The distinctive, soulful voices of Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen trade off lead from song to song, or blend into a glorious harmony that would inspire respectful nods from Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

I bought Shields (#104) first, and tracks like the woozy “Speak In Rounds” and the optimistic “A Simple Answer” solidified my devotion. While I find the power of, say, the angular guitar and raging storm swells of “Sleeping Ute” self-evident, I haven’t had much luck getting people on the same wavelength just by playing it. The riffs aren’t heavy and the aesthetic can seem sleepy. When I went back and picked up Veckatimest (#103), the skittering, roiling opener “Southern Point” and sunny, movie credits-ready “Two Weeks” got the heart pumping on a road trip, but the rest of the album was of a much lower-key, dreamy vibe. The lyrics are impressionistic and I’d be lying if I said I could make them out even after a few years of repeat listening.

* * * * *

Growing up in a Beatles-loving household, there was a lot of solo Lennon, solo McCartney, and Lennon/McCartney floating around. But when I finally delved into the band’s catalogue in earnest as a high schooler, soaking it up instead of quietly putting up with it, I found myself especially drawn to George Harrison’s contributions. We didn’t even have the whole discography at first, but I drew some of the greatest depth of feeling from “Something” on Abbey Road, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the White Album, even tossed-off ditties like “Savoy Truffle.” Something about the timbre of his voice, the self-assurance of his lyrics, hard-won by that point in the band’s evolution, it felt like I was hearing a specific frequency pulsing in-between the more widely-celebrated iconography of the “main” songwriting partnership. I encouraged my mother to fill in the missing pieces in the collection we had come to share, which meant moving backwards and hearing Harrison’s evolution as a songwriter. “I Want To Tell You,” from Revolver, comes from a more adolescent romantic perspective than the Patty Boyd-serenading “Something,” but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t identify with the tongue-tied yearning more than the gobsmacked devotion.

From there, I started to explore his post-Beatles solo work. Compared to the high profile, classic rock radio staples of John and Paul, it was like a secret treasure box, a finite resource with lifetime rewards. The 2-disc All Things Must Pass is fantastic… and I only have a CD-R copy someone burned for me. So I’ll write about the 3 years later follow-up, Living in the Material World, and his farewell release, Brainwashed, a final message as his spirit left the material world.

Housed in a frustratingly thick cardboard case that keeps it from sitting comfortably amongst the other CDs on my shelf, the music of Living in the Material World (#105) has spent most of its time floating in digital form on various devices I’ve owned through the years. This has lead to me developing a preference for endlessly re-playable, shuffle-ready songs like the acoustic and slide guitar prayer “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth),” “Sue Me, Sue You Blues,” a swinging country rocker about post-breakup Beatles litigation, and the title track, a semi-biographical journey through this physical plane in which we all strive. Earnest spiritual ballads like “The Light That Has Lighted The World” and “That Is All” were less likely to make it on a playlist. As an album, in its original sequence, the songs balance each other. “Be Here Now,” the most atmospheric, down-tempo hymn of the bunch, is followed by the lavish, Phil Spector-produced waltz “Try Some, Buy Some,” later covered by David Bowie. And then we also have bonus tracks. My greatest foe! “Deep Blue” is a fine back porch rocker, but “Miss O’Dell,” which is about 80% George vocal bloopers, is a new exemplar for the Bonus Track’s inessential nature.

Released posthumously after Harrison’s death at 58 from cancer, Brainwashed (#106) could have been a morbid affair, but a light touch pervades throughout. The arrangements are dreamy and fun, the melodies instantly memorable, and George is in fine voice. Though his devout Eastern brand of spirituality continues to be a thread through his lyrics, “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night),” is a sardonic thumbing-of-the-nose at organized religion that this recovering Catholic finds especially amusing. And though my birthdate is all wrong for it (I’m a Gemini, if you think that actually means anything), “Pisces Fish” is a favorite that continues to wind like a river through my mind.

Harrison’s grave illness can’t help but lead interpretation of tracks like “Stuck Inside a Cloud” (with lyrics like “Never slept so little, never smoked so much / Lost my concentration, I could even lose my touch / Talking to myself, crying out loud / Only I can hear me, I'm stuck inside a cloud”), but the songwriting had been in development for years before he was diagnosed. “Run So Far,” about loneliness and inevitability, literally invoking something that can’t be escaped, would be unbearably sad if it weren’t for: one, the pleasant, almost jaunty nature of the tune, and two, the fact that Eric Clapton had recorded it nearly a decade previously. The back third of the album gives itself over to joy and sweet devotion: “Never Get Over You” might be the most heartfelt ode of Harrison’s solo career that’s not explicitly about God, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” lifted from the Great American Songbook, is practically a love song for his ukulele collection. The title track closes out this set of recordings, completed by producer Jeff Lynne and George’s son Dhani, with searing social commentary, sardonic humor, and a Hindu prayer. A better swan song could hardly be imagined.

[soulcooljay]

#TBT Monday, February 27th was the 10 year anniversary of the release of Eric Roberson's album Left... the only album in which has its own fan base other than just being Erro fans... It's the 1st album in which his collabs w/ @phontigallo start & first duet w/ @algebrablessett pops up. In all honestly, it's literally when Erro started to go "left" with his musical journey. There is a distinction before Left and after Left. It contains the only record Eric released that was produced by J Dilla and @jamespoyser | It's also the last album that was touched by longtime band mate and friend @curtchambers or any of the Tribbett brothers (@thadworld ). It's a pretty significant body of work in his catalogue and definitely a pivot in his musical career... Happy 10th Birthday to the Left album... a lot of people got put onto Erro with this record. #ericroberson #blueerrosoul #honestmusic #realrandb #realsoulmusic