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yayneloveart · 4 years

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Good Omens/Lucifer 11

(Guys, I barely remember what was going on at this point in Lucifer. I guess maybe Season 5 coming up will jog some memories but expect some memory problems in me. I never forget anything with good omens because ive read the book 5 times and watched the show 3)

Ella felt like she hit the jackpot. Not only had she met Lucifer’s brother, but now she was being introduced to his brother-in-law. And he was nothing short of an angel.

‘Aziraphale? Am I saying that right?’ she asked him as they shook hands.

‘On the nose,’ he smiled at her.

‘And you’re an antiques book dealer?’

‘You could say that... I do more collecting than dealing. Once I have my hands on a dusty old tome I dread letting it go.’

‘We figure his expertise could help us with this auction coming up,’ Chloe explained.

‘If anyone could sniff out a fake antique, its ‘Zira,’ Crowley chimed in from the corner.

‘I just emailed you the lot book the Dowling’s sent me,’ Lucifer told Ella. ‘The fake might already be in there if they want it to look clean.’

Ella pulled it up at her computer and Aziraphale began to look through the list. He couldn’t help himself but make comments on the lots as he browsed, mumbling how many of them weren’t even first edition, let alone signed by the author.

‘Les Miserables has no business being published as one tome,’ he huffed. ‘Why couldn’t they just keep them as a book set? That was how they were supposed to be read.’

‘“Zira, we’re looking into a murder, not a lecture on 19th century literature,’ Crowley reminded him.

‘I know, I just get cross when people treat a single book edition as something special... wait a moment...’

‘What?’ Chloe walked over to look over his shoulder. ‘Did you find something.’

‘I found something indeed,’ Aziraphale smiled and turned the laptop towards her. ‘I found an impossible lot.’

‘’Lot 667, ‘The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Anges Nutter, Witch’ donated by A Z Fell and Co’. How can you tell it’s fake?’ Chloe asked.

‘Because ‘A Z Fell and Co’ is my store,’ Aziraphale explained. ‘And there is only one copy of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies and it belongs to a friend of mine who keeps it under lock and key.’

‘Wait,’ Lucifer tore himself away from his phone game to join in on the investigation. ‘So the fake book thats going to be used to smuggle drugs is listed under your store’s name and is supposed to be an extremely rare single copy that your friend happens to own?’

The room was punched in the face with a weird silence as the information began to sink in.

‘Do you have any enemies, Aziraphale?’ Chloe asked.

‘No- yes, well, some. A few. One or two.’

‘Look who his brother-in-law is,’ Crowley gestured to Lucifer. ‘Of course we have enemies! I have tons of people who would love to meet me in a dark alley with a sackful of bricks. And just because ‘Zira looks all clean and proper doesn’t mean he can’t be a right bastard when he needs to be.’

‘But none of them would get involved in... this sort of activity. It’s beneath them.’

‘Oh please, it was your lot who put created poppy flowers and cocoa plants on earth. Did you really think humans weren’t gonna try and eat them?’

‘We didn’t know humans would eat literally anything!’

‘Save the pillowtalk for later, we have planning to do,’ Chloe moved the laptop and pulled out a stack of papers. ‘While Lucifer covers the bidding on the fake lot, Crowley and I are going to talk to the Dowlings and their staff. We can narrow down the buyer and seller in one night. And maybe find out why someone would use Aziraphale’s business as a front for drug smuggling.’

‘I do feel rather chuffed that someone would use my store’s good name to commit such a crime, but I still don’t believe one of my people could be behind... this.’

‘With how things have worked out for us in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be a team effort between Gabriel and Beelzebub,’ Crowley muttered. ‘Or Raphael and Paimon.’

#good omens #lucifer #anthony j crowley #aziraphale #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker

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emritcheson · 6 years

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The Rise and Fall of PlayFirst Inc.

In the early 2000s, quality options for casual games were limited. You basically had Cubis, Bejeweled, Jewel Quest, and a few thousand Mahjong games.

But in 2004...or 2005, depending on which Wikipedia article you’re looking at, a little company known as PlayFirst Inc. published Diner Dash, effectively changing the world of casual gaming as we know it.

The original Diner Dash was actually developed by Gamelab, who before then had only done a lot of online LEGO games from the look of it, but PlayFirst quickly acquired the rights to the game after they realized they had the golden goose sitting right in their lap.

The story of Diner Dash begins with Flo, a young woman who is fed up with corporate bureaucracy and strikes out on her own to run a restaurant. Which ends up as a whole chain of restaurants, each with a different theme. Now, I use the term “story” loosely because all that really pertains to a story here are a couple of comic book-style screens at the beginning and end. It’s all very standard “follow your dreams” stuff, but trust me, it wasn’t as cliché back then as it is today.

What’s really to talk about here, though, is the gameplay. It’s deceptively simple, gets more challenging with each level, and - as any review of the game will tell you - it’s highly addictive. You seat customers, take customers’ orders, bring customers food, customer leaves a nice fat tip, you clean the table. Lather rinse repeat. But! Dining parties get larger and arrive faster as the game progresses, and they also come in more colors, which are matched to seats for bonus points. But you also get perks that help you, such as complimentary drinks and a podium to entertain customers waiting to be seated. All in all, it’s a perfect time waster game. And even if you make it to the end, you still feel compelled to get the expert score on every level. At least...that’s the way I feel.

After Diner Dash cemented itself as a classic, PlayFirst dedicated most of their lifetime to milking this cash cow for all it was worth. The game itself received four official sequels: Restaurant Rescue, in which Flo helps her restaurateur friends revamp their kitchens and pay rent; Flo on the Go, with the added gimmick of getting to change Flo’s clothes after she loses her suitcase on vacation; Hometown Hero, in which Flo visits her Grandma Florence and - what else - helps to revamp the local restaurants to their former glory; and BOOM!, in which Flo’s Diner is flooded with so many customers that it literally explodes and the money you earn goes toward rebuilding it. They also put out some more novelty titles like Seasonal Snack Pack and Flo Through Time, but these seem to be regarded as lesser installments.

(And did I mention the Spongebob version?)

But of course, one can’t mention Diner Dash without mentioning...the spin-offs.

In addition to the proper Diner Dash series, PlayFirst released several other “Dash” games following the same general formula, but set in different businesses with different protagonists.

The most successful of these was Wedding Dash, starring Flo’s friend Quinn who tries to make it as a wedding planner. It was so successful that they actually made three sequels.

Then came Doggie Dash, Dairy Dash, Parking Dash...(that seems like an oxymoron). All of which were fun in their own right, don’t get me wrong, but by no means lived up to the original. And you can tell that not all spin-offs really had the same budget, especially when it came to art and animation.

There was also Cooking Dash (which if you ask me was just Diner Dash trying to be Delicious, but that’s an article for another day), DinerTown Detective Agency which served as the obligatory hidden object game, and DinerTown Tycoon.

Amazingly enough, though, the Dash empire was not PlayFirst’s only claim to fame. They also worked on Chocolatier, a tycoon series in which you travel back in time to run a chocolate company, and the Dream Chronicles series, equal parts hidden object and puzzle that actually had a really good story set in a world of fairies.

PlayFirst also had some great little standalone games. In 2006, they released Plantasia, a crazy time management-slash-puzzle game where you use magic to bring gardens back to life.

They actually made this in collaboration once again with Gamelab who, despite having effectively sold the rights to their own personal gold mine, actually weren’t doing too bad for themselves. They ended up developing the first two Jojo’s Fashion Show games and the highly underrated Miss Management.

Then in 2009, PlayFirst collaborated with Wadjet Eye Games (one of my very favorite game developers) to make Emerald City Confidential, a point & click adventure set forty years after the events of The Wizard of Oz. And while Wadjet Eye’s CEO Dave Gilbert expressed significant creative differences between the two companies (watch his game commentary on YouTube), I still think the final product is amazing.

And in the same year, if you can believe it, PlayFirst took all that Wadjet Eye had taught them and released Avenue Flo, a fully-voiced point & click adventure based on Flo and the other characters of DinerTown, complete with a singalong theme song! And wouldn’t you know it, it even got a sequel.

Unfortunately, the Avenues Flo were pretty much the last good hurrah for PlayFirst. They just kept stretching and stretching and stretching the spin-off thing as far as it could go and the magic just wasn’t there anymore. They weren’t really adding anything of substance to their new games - only making them gimmickier. The reason I loved Avenue Flo so much was because it gave me a slice-of-life view of the characters of DinerTown; actually let me talk to and learn about them, rather than just shuffling them through a diner or a fitness center or a freaking soap opera shoot.

(Don’t get me wrong, Soap Opera Dash is still rad.)

The other thing that really sent PlayFirst on the path downhill was that they became very diligent about porting their games to mobile. At first, these ports were pretty successful. I mean, duh. Why wouldn’t they be. You port Diner Dash to anything, it’s going to be successful.

(Except for...most things Diner Dash was ported to.)

They were so successful, in fact, that in 2012, PlayFirst officially announced that they would cease production of all computer games to focus their efforts on the mobile market. Which means any games in progress were cancelled, which means we never got Dream Chronicles 6, and I’m still bitter about it.

Then...tragedy.

In 2014, PlayFirst Inc. was purchased by Glu Mobile. (You know, the company that makes the Kim Kardashian game? Yeah, those guys.) Most of their titles understandably went on backlog and are now only available through third-party sellers. Which, thank God, there are a lot of.

But Diner Dash, cash cow that it is, kept being developed for the modern audience. Which means the game got way more complicated than it needed to be, with weird power ups, too many new restaurants, and Flo and her friends getting really, really ugly makeovers.

Like, is that supposed to be Grandma Florence?

And that’s about when Gordon Ramsay got involved and the dream well and truly died.

But no matter what the bloodsucking Glu cronies are trying to do to our beloved Flo, PlayFirst will always live on in memory as one of the giants of the casual gaming world.

#casual games #diner dash #mobile games #playfirst #retrospective #original article

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kurogabae · 6 years

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Tsubasa: Trainwreck Chronicles

And Why Bee Train Has Failed Me Not Only as a Company, but as a Concept in General; an Essay by Popular Demand

part 1 -- part 2

In part 1 (linked above) I spoke about the anime adaptations of the opening/introductions of our main cast through Jade and our first filler. These were episodes 1-16. Out of 26 for the season and 52 for the series. I don’t feel like my time has been wasted with pointless, endless, literally 30+ second long shots of characters staring at each other or into the distance for no reason. No. Not at all. Those moments added a lot of needed and organic tension and suspense.

Really.

But Sakura gazing longingly at a giant fish aside, we’re going to get into what is probably my most hated canon arc of the anime - Outo. Now, I loved Outo in the manga, it was an amazing world and it really kick started a lot of character and plot developments in TRC, not to mention that it was just generally a lot of fun. It was the longest world thus far and it had had the most characters in it as well. Outo was great. It’s one of my favorite worlds, right along side Piffle and fanon!Yama.

Bee Train did me dirty guys. Real dirty.

Outo:

So the animation swings wildly in this arc from “yeah that’s not so bad” to “Fai is that your hair or a giant yellow spider eating your head?” - pretty par for the course as far as the anime goes. Mostly. But then we have the changes to plot, both for the sake of the Children(tm) and... Just Because? It’s also in Outo that we start really noticing that whoever was in charge of directing the music usage was really just throwing music at the animation and hoping something stuck.

I’ll try to keep this linear but I make no promises.

We start off pretty normal - arrive, greeted by The Ladies, whisked off to City Hall. Fai gives them all their delightful Outo names while Syaoran looks on in a mild panic. They buy the cafe and get attacked - and here I have my First Issue.

For some reason, probably to make me hate them more than I already do, they change the events of the Oni attack just enough that Kurogane doesn’t grab Sakura out of the way of the ambush, iirc Fai grabs her. This might seem like nothing, but the anime has kept Kurogane and Sakura’s interactions to basically zero and if someone were to only watch the anime they would miss out on a lot of very small but meaningful moments between those two. Also, it’s important to me okay!

Morning comes and plot is still basically on track - Syaoran and Kurogane become oni hunters and Fai and Sakura open the cafe.

Now, when the family gets their costume changes, things get a little odd and the music is to blame. Sakura wakes up and goes to greet the family, who are all wearing what they’ll be sporting for the rest of Outo. As her view pans (ba-dum tss) over each of them a weird smooth jazz sort of music starts to play. I don’t know what to call it, but the tone makes it feel vaguely sexual/romantic, or at least like that’s what the intent is. Now if this had happened over Syaoran alone it probably wouldn’t have been weird, but funny. It doesn’t just happen to Syaoran though, Kurogane gets the music too (Fai is the first she sees and the music only starts playing as Sakura begins to look away). It’s a really strange music choice for this moment.

When Sakura changes into her cafe maid outfit and the boys see her it isn’t just a Sakura and Syaoran moment, which would be fine. If they weren’t playing that music again. And also Kurogane hyuus. At Sakura. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It was all very weird. I didn’t like it. Could have been just me.

Night one of oni hunting is here and so is another change that I don’t understand? Before when they added characters to the scene it was Sakura and I assumed it was them trying to give her more screen time, but Sakura is very much left out of this whole bit while Fai, who should be back at the cafe with her preparing to open up a business, is with Kurogane and Syaoran. Why? “I like to watch you at work, Kuro-sama.” (Which would have been simply amazing foreshadowing if we were ever going to so much as glance at Fai’s backstory in the anime, which we aren’t. Hell, at this point we don’t even know what it is because Celes hasn’t been published yet, so Bee Train is pulling this out of their ass. What a waste.)

Syaoran and Kurogane kill some oni, there’s very vague talk about Syaoran’s blind eye (they never outright say he’s blind in it, just that he “has trouble with it”), and we get to meet Yuzuriha and Kusanagi. Syaoran does not fawn over Inuki and I am once again personally insulted. It’s here that Kurogane learns about the names.

Fai manages to make it all the way back to the Cafe alive before Kurogane corners him. Also, even though Fai was gone all night with the puppies he still has a chocolate cake made and ready to serve to Yuzuriha and Kusanagi after they follow his and Kurogane’s immature murder trail home. Which is frankly bullshit. I know Sakura didn’t make that cake.

Syaoran and Kurogane don’t have to fight to prove their worth to the information seller, which is whatever I guess. Probably just trying to save time and budget, but that didn’t really help you now did it Bee Train?

Now, surprisingly, I actually liked the change they made to the bar scene/the fight before the bar. Fai and Kurogane don’t have their Moment in the bar, since this time they’ve missed Oruha and will have to come back. And instead of fighting on the way to the bar, the oni attack them on their way home. The song “Kaze no Machi he” plays over not only the KuroFai vs oni fight, but also sweet moments between Syaoran and Sakura in the cafe, effectively setting a very nice parallel between the two couples while still contrasting them. It’s a wonderful scene and it’s part of what makes me so extra mad at Bee Train for how they treated the whole series, because they clearly know how to do their jobs, they were just too lazy to give TRC the effort and care it deserved.

It was a really great scene and I would suggest watching just that couple of minutes, even if you don’t watch anything else from the Bee Train anime, simply because of how well it’s put together. Was it all just a happy editing accident? Maybe, but it’s one that I love.

Of course, like all things I love, Seishirou soon shows up to ruin them. This time with bad special effects.

This is of course after a pretty much canon-compliant intro to Ryuu-ou and Souma, complete with Kurogane dropping his freshly injured boyfriend on the ground in shock. Followed by pouting that I will take as a personal apology.

It’s not enough to make up for the lack of drunken shenanigans. Not even close.

Syaoran’s learned that not all of life’s problems can be solved by kicking. Sometimes you need to stab them. He asks Kurogane to teach him, but unlike in the manga where this is a sweet, if somber, moment between just the pair of them, Fai is, again, on the scene where he shouldn’t be. He’s also acting rather bitchy and tells Syaoran that if Kurogane teaches him to use a sword he needs to be ready to kill with it. Now this new dialogue is fucked up on a couple of levels.

Firstly, this is the same night Kurogane just lectured Fai about valuing his own life and admitted to killing more people than he could count in order to protect what he considered important to him. I’m sure we’re meant to read this as a type of semi-protective warning on Fai’s part towards Syaoran, but it comes off as petty at best and out right cruel at worst, to both Syaoran and Kurogane. Syaoran because he’s thirteen and he just wants to help save the love of his life who he is convinced he’ll never get back. Kurogane because he’s having this thing that’s pretty central to him at this point in his life thrown in his face with venom and treated like a danger towards his own adopted son.

Second, and big spoilers, if you’re watching this after Tokyo and Celes have been published (which at the time of the airing they were not) Fai telling Syaoran to “be prepared to kill” is fucked up. It’s clear in Tokyo that Fai has known for a while (we don’t find out how long exactly until Celes) that Syaoran is a clone. He also has known that Syaoran is a very real threat, basically a ticking time bomb. Fai would not be egging him on like this.

So, the whole exchange is very drastically changed in tone by giving Fai a small handful of lines, and in my humble onion it isn’t for the better.

Do you wanna know what is better though? The quality of these weapons compared to the everything else that’s been seen in Outo so far, and we don’t get better. The animation takes a noticeable dip from here on out. It’s especially noticeable because Bee Train has gotten into the habit of padding episodes with flashbacks and recaps of things we saw only a few episodes ago like they’re fucking Naruto and when you cut from one of the decently animated flashbacks to the current shitshow it’s really jarring.

Quality aside (for the moment) the puppies finally get their swords but before they had left, Sakura asks Syaoran about what he and Kurogane are planning to do during the day. It’s a fair question since they’re heading out early, but no oni can be hunted until night. For some reason he doesn’t tell her they’re going to get weapons? Or that he’s going to train with Kurogane? He just says “It’s nothing to worry about” and like... why?

On several levels why. First we have the whole why have Sakura ask if Syaoran’s not even going to tell her anything - maybe to add tension, as if they didn’t have enough, maybe to add angst, as if they didn’t have enough. He’s got no reason to hide this. She knows he hunts oni, telling her he’s going to better arm himself would only be a good thing, hell if he really wanted to avoid saying that he was going to get a sword he could have said that he was going with Kurogane to get one since Kurogane’s broke the night before. Second, Syaoran not answering only makes Sakura feel bad and worry more and I’ve never been so frustrated in my life. Yes, Syaoran tries to keep things from hurting Sakura but in the manga he doesn’t treat her like spun glass.

And then Mokona just tells her anyway so honestly the entire exchange was 95% meaningless and I demand to know who made these choices so I can meet them in the pit!!

Really the purpose is probably to waste time and pad the episode, but there’s enough in Outo that they really shouldn’t need to do this? But hey, what do I know? I’ve only read this series 10 times and done I can’t tell you how many analysis essays on the characters and plot. Surely some hacks who probably only glanced over the material know better.

So now Kurogane is throwing rocks at Syaoran. Not a whole lot is different for a while - we throw rocks at Syaoran, we blindfold Syaoran, we leave Syaoran all on his own to wander the city, Ryuu-ou stops Syaoran from getting his ass kicked by oni that he’s too focused on puzzling out to dodge, they flirt, they flirt so much.

Ryuu-ou takes Syaoran to see the Biggest and Prettiest cherry blossom tree in Outo, because Ryuu-ou goes big or not at all and he’s got a boy to woo.

Meanwhile, Fai has gotten a piano for the cafe that he can’t play and Sakura can speak to musical instruments, kinda. After another TouYuki cameo where they don’t recognize Sakura, Fai leaves Sakura to look after the cafe for reasons I can’t recall but that are probably dumb. Oruha shows up and she and Sakura have a Magical Musical Moment where Oruha plays the deus ex baby grand and learns all about how Sakura can’t remember Syaoran and somehow sees all the memories that Sakura can’t see/doesn’t have and folks I could not tell you what this adds to the story other than more confusion to people new to the series and frustration to people who have read the manga.

Let me break it down - Sakura doesn’t have these memories. Yuuko literally took them away as payment, they no longer exist. If they try to exist Sakura goes through a soft reset as seen earlier in this arc. Oruha should not be able to access them, super special VR powers be damned. The memories aren’t there to access. 404: Childhood Friendship not found.

This is all without touching on the creep factor of someone casually rooting around in Sakura’s head without her knowledge or permission. Hasn’t she’s lost enough autonomy?

Magic Music Memory time over, Oruha leaves and we’re spoiled and shown that Outo is VR and not actually the world we think it is, ruining both a really neat reveal and the weight of Syaoran and Fai’s “deaths” later in the arc. Do you want suspense and angst or not Bee Train?!?!

After reading some notes I had on the anime I think Fai left Sakura alone to go drinking with Kurogane because it’s now that they have their Moment in the Clover bar and finally meet Oruha (who stopped at the Cat’s Eye, sang with Sakura and read her mind, and then popped back to Clover because fuck you).

So. The dads are drinking and gathering info, the boys are flirting, and Sakura is doing what she did in Hanshin - where she enters zombie mode and autopilots towards her feather. Yuzuriha appears in the nick of time to stop Sakura from meeting Seishirou and for this I think she should receive a medal of some sort in all honesty.

As the girlfriends make their way back to Cat’s Eye Seishirou summons a Giant Deku Baba (seriously, Nintendo should look into copyright) and attacks the boyfriends. Ryuu-ou has to, once again, pull Syaoran out of harm’s way as he stands there aghast at the sudden turn of events. Things get a little too close to becoming a very uncomfortable tentacle based hentai and everyone escapes with their lives and virtue intact.

Syaoran tries to defend Seishirou’s honor because he thinks Seishirou has honor to defend, but no one is buying it. We also get a brief look at our resident Lava Lamp Dweller (who I might remind you all we never get answers about in ANY form in the anime) before we are swiftly moving along to another moment between Syaoran and Sakura where he’s pretty much lying to her face about things he doesn’t need to lie about and Sakura ought to chew him out.

Why? Why Bee Train? This is so OOC. Rewrite this fanfic.

It’s Tower of Terror time and Kurogane is Delighted about the 3% chance of survival he’s been handed. So far we’re back on track. Except we’re not.

Manga readers will remember looking back on this as one of our first Big Hints about Kurogane’s past - his hang ups about the demons leaving behind no bones or bodies of their past victims, implying that they’ve been eaten whole, and how that seemed to bother him. There’s the vaguest of hints that Kurogane still has a personal grudge with demons here in the anime, but it’s a lot less impactful and I don’t know how much meaning it would have to someone who didn’t have prior manga knowledge to fall back on. I feel like it falls a bit flat (especially once we see how Kurogane’s past has been sterilized for a younger audience).

Aside from that, the tower is more or less the same, bad hentai jokes and all.

Things also go very similarly at the cafe - Sakura works herself up into a tizzy and passes out, Fai feels the first emotion outside of Guilt and Horny he’s felt in upwards of a century, and Mokona tells him that he’s fine and that no, that’s not heartburn it’s affection.

Enter King Trashface. He’s holding the feather in some sort of weird space disco ball? Not the worst thing, just an odd choice? He and Fai exchange words (starting with Fai telling Seishirou to fuck off in the most polite way ever) - during which Fai’s animation makes it seem that the closer Fai gets to “death” the more his face distorts, which is terrible and hilarious.

Before Fai gets turned into demon chow though, Seishirou calls him out on being Mr. Deathwish, especially since Fai is fighting without using magic that could very possibly save him. At this point Fai flashes back to his and Kurogane’s “how about we don’t die” talk earlier and Fai says that he might want to live after all. Which is like. Bullshit at this point in the journey. He doesn’t want to live, he really really doesn’t and the very fact that he’s not using his magic is proof positive of that (see: Le Court). Though also, even with a bum ankle he thinks he can take Seishirou until he pulls out the feather. At which point Fai basically tells Mokona to pay attention to how he dies so she can tell the others about it. Which is so... against what he just said?

This is well before we ever see even a manga version of Fai with anything resembling self preservation or a proper will to live, but we have enough of his character for the anime writers to know that this is a very big leap for him to be taking so soon. I feel like if they wanted to give him a hopeful outlook (which is what I think they were trying to do after coming off the scene with Sakura and Mokona) they could have had him seem more wishy-washy about it, or phrased it as a curiosity. “Something I didn’t expect has happened and I wanna see where it goes” is a much better way for him to have made the same statement. At least in my opinion.

Anyway, he dies and I find his death scene really funny because you just see his legs dangling slowly and it’s so... idk it might just be me but I couldn’t stop laughing.

Now I am pretty sure Seishirou causes this but Outo starts glitching. Everything starts going full Matrix rainbows on us and all the NPCs vanish. Souma is worried about the game falling apart and Ryuu-ou and Yuzuriha are both worried about their potential love lives new friends.

Here we come to a few things I very much HATE that were changed. Once Fai is dead Sakura goes zombie again and starts to follow after her feather/Seishirou before the puppies get home, so only Mokona is there waiting. This means I have lost yet ANOTHER FATHER-DAUGHTER MOMENT!! It also means that when Syaoran runs after Seishirou and gets murderized she not only sees it happen but... dies? with? him? Because she hugs him while the game is transporting him out? I dunno. It’s bad and dumb and I hate it.

So Kurogane thinks they’re ALL DEAD, which is great. It’s not like he isn’t already having a bad enough day. Not that you could tell by looking because the animation doesn’t have him emote at all. He looks basically bored as Mokona tells them that Fai is dead while Syaoran is a step away from a full on meltdown. @beetrain you do know that Kurogane has emotions other than anger and Fight Me(tm) right?

And now Seishirou is idk posturing? Bragging? He talks about how there’s no one left to oppose him now that the 13 year olds are dead, completely ignoring the pissed off ninja murder machine that has nothing left to lose that’s coming for his sorry ass. I don’t remember him being that cocky in the manga? Am I misremembering or did the anime somehow make Seishirou even more unlikable? Either way, Kurogane finds the slimeball and, to my extreme annoyance, only asks if he killed Fai and Syaoran - not Sakura - even though he believes all of them to be dead. The anime keeps doing this and I have ranted about it so much I’ll spare you the retyping. For now.

A quick list of minor things that happen that I dislike:

Fai’s coat and Sakura’s cloak both pull random appearing and disappearing acts between episodes

No one is even a little surprised when Syaoran’s sword sets itself on fire

The pacing could kill a man. Unfortunately Seishirou lives.

My soap opera isn’t real and this is

Seishirou knows Syaoran is a clone and drops hints about something we are never getting resolution to

Oruha, after allowing Seishirou to fuck off, just, you know, tells Sakura that she has missing memories of Syaoran

Memories that she somehow was able to access even though they no longer exist within Sakura

If Yuuko says no memories she means NO MEMORIES!!!

FWR watches the demon rampage across Edonis. He’s probably reminiscing. Like an asshole.

Outo wraps up and is it the worst of the arcs? No. But am I bitter about the things that were done to it because it changed a lot of fundamental things about the characters and the plot? Yes.

See you next time, where I’ll probably talk about more than one arc. Until then, have this.

[part 1] [part 2]

#Tsubasa Trainwreck Chronicles #my meta #TRC #spoilersTRC

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inkofamethyst · 4 years

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September 26, 2020

I AM TORN

On one hand I’d love to do the whole cottagecore/naturecore life and just live amongst the trees and have my own little garden from which I get vegetables and fruits in their appropriate season and I just crochet and embroider all day long beside my cat. Unfortunately, spiders tend to frequent areas such as these, and I am not a friend of the creepy-crawlies.

On the other hand, I feel like I’d be such a city gal, roaming the streets with confidence and feeling the energy of everyone around me while I live in a cute little Boston apartment with a cat and I’m always going to the theatre and trying out new places to eat.

I think the best compromise here would be to live in a city but adopt a very cottagecore look. Plants all over my apartment, maybe a little garden on the roof (if I’m allowed to), sewing supplies neatly scattered all over. Books and bookshelves and such. Still going to shows, still embroidering, I still have me a cat. I think I like the dark cottagecore aesthetic specifically which is sort of a dark/light academia mix with more plants. Focused on woods rather than meadows (though don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly go running in either if given the chance and the proper footwear). Yeah, I can see this happening.

I’d like to mention that I’m a bit annoyed with Tumblr today, as I spent half an hour last night typing out a music time capsule for myself and then the page randomly reloaded :))))

I started receiving my packages today though! I got the wool I bought a few weeks ago from FashionFabricsClub as well as the brown houndstooth-lookin pants from Depop. So,,, neither were quite what I expected.

First of all, the wool is SCRATCHY. Like, I knew that wool tended to have that quality but I was not expecting something so thin and itchy? It’s almost like a sandpaper fabric. It’s also not really the color I had been anticipating; the brown is super super dark, and there is a weird green tint to it? It’s also got a rectangle cut out of it an there’s writing in gold marker on the fabric that didn’t come out after washing. So, yeah. I had planned on making a nice, long winter skirt out of it, but now I’m not so sure. I have 2 5/8 yd x 60 in, so I could probably get a fall/winter overdress out of it to wear to SCA, as long as I’ve got a linen underdress against my skin. If I still wanted to make a skirt, I probably could, as long as it was lined or I had a slip underneath. After washing it with fabric softener and letting it air dry for half a day or so, the wool is actually a ton softer than it was when I’d first felt it (still a bit scratchy, but much better than it was before)! The thinness actually makes the drape really really nice, and the deep brown color is far more pronounced. After washing, I’m satisfied with my purchase :). I don’t know for sure whether I’ll make a dress for SCA or a skirt or two or maybe a vest or something, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

The pants, on the other hand, were suuuper soft. It turns out they’re made from recycled polyester, not cotton as the seller had claimed, but I don’t fault her for it as she wasn’t near the pants when she sold them to me. Also I luckily don’t have a weird allergy or anything to certain fibers as far as I’m aware. Besides, recycled polyester is far better than plain old polyester, I suppose. Anyway, they were a size 2, but the waist was 15.5 inches across. My optimal waist size is 13.5 inches across. Everything else fit fine, but I knew I’d need to alter them. And... I did! It took about an hour of working it out on my own (the youtube tutorials took in the pants from the back, but my waistband didn’t have a back seam so I had to take them in from the sides to make it look neater, as I also didn’t want to increase the butt darts. I took them in by an inch on both sides (actually, the waist is now 13 inches across, so I think I overshot by just a bit) for a total of four inches being removed from the waist, and they’re done! They literally fit so snugly around my waist with just enough room for my to tuck in a shirt if I so choose! I’m so proud!! This is the first ever alteration I’ve done and it turned out great! I’m definitely less afraid to buy pants secondhand that are a bit too big, and I can totally take them in now!

Now for more serious stuff. I have literally three midterms this upcoming week. Three of my four classes are having midterms this week (I just have to read Little Women for my YA lit class and come to Tuesday’s class with a creative writing scene lol), and that’s on top of regularly-scheduled homework. I’m definitely not prepared for any of them fully, my Tuesday Orgo one least of all :(, but on the bright side I don’t have my 8 am Wednesday lab this week!

Today I’m thankful for my sewing machine. Now that I’m really starting to pick up on my sewing journey, I’m just so thankful that I’m able to make clothes that are exactly for me. I’m in the process of making a button-up pinafore that can transform into a button-up circle skirt!! It’ll be self-drafted, and the mockup I’m making out of some old polyester may actually turn out well enough to sell? I’m not sure how high I should be pricing it though. $40? $60? The materials (for this mockup lol) have been pretty cheap, but I should probably factor in my time and the fact that it’s an original design inspired by other things I’ve seen (I’ve seen a pinafore-skirt convertible before, but not a button-up one!). It might be a bit ambitious though, so we’ll see what happens.

Alright. I’m off to watch some lecture videos and do some homework, I suppose.

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery

Rhinegeist Brewery, founded in 2013, is among Cincinnati’s more unusual, ambitious breweries. Its brewing style does it all — from honoring the city’s historic brewing roots, to challenging the hop capacity of an IPA (and adding apples, for good measure). Rhinegeist is part of a brewing renaissance in the city, itself: See, back in the 19th century, before character-defining La Croix seltzer preferences, and almonds had yet to be milked, the Queen City thoroughly loved its beer. In 1893, the annual beer intake of Cincinnati residents was about 40 gallons per person.

Prohibition came along and laid the city’s brewing scene low, almost to the point of disappearance. But in recent years, scrappy talents have begun redeveloping on the bones of the city’s former brewing scene — in Rhinegeist’s case, almost literally; the brewery was built into the former packaging hall of the historic 1853 Christian Moerlein Brewing Company. (In case you couldn’t tell from the brewery name, Rhinegeist isn’t afraid to play with ghosts.) Below, read on for 10 more things to know about Rhinegeist.

Rhinegeist is proudly ‘Cincy Made,’ partly because of an algorithm.

Rhinegeist is the brainchild of two former San Francisco-based business consultants, Bob Bonder and Bryant Goulding. First looking to start a coffee business, Bonder used an algorithm to pinpoint Cincinnati as his next entrepreneurial terrain. When he started the now permanently closed Tazza Mia Coffee, he noticed the surprising dearth of young, plucky craft breweries in a city formerly defined by its beer. He contacted Goulding, a former coworker, to come join him, and the two began making plans to start their own brewery.

Bonder and Goulding wanted to start a brewery in Cincinnati, specifically, because of the city’s combination of its economically up-and-coming vibe, and its rooted historic feel — its brewing history dates back over 200 years. Since neither had brewing experience, they later approached former Eli Lilly chemist and avid homebrewer Jim Matt to join the team as head brewer.

It’s both the 26th and 36th top-ranked brewery in the nation.

Rhinegeist has garnered enough attention in the seven years since its inception to hit two major brewery ranking lists: In 2019, Rhinegeist ranked 26th on the Brewers Association’s Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies and 36th on the Top 50 Overall Brewing Companies in the U.S.

Rhinegeist might be a little haunted.

“Rhinegeist” is a portmanteau, or a blend of words. It’s a combination of Rhine (as in the Over-the-Rhine Cincinnati neighborhood, where the brewery is located) and “geist,” which is German for ghost (as in, “Ach! Geist!”). The brewery isn’t so named because its neighborhood is haunted (although, considering the neighborhood was once home to the most breweries per capita in Cincinnati, it probably is). Rather, the brand’s title is a way to combine the neighborhood’s name with a play on “zeitgeist,” or “spirit of the times.”

As the founders explain in this video, the Rhinegeist logo — which looks like a cute little skull tear drop (or beer drop) — is meant to unite the city’s brewing history with its future. Hence, Rhinegeist proudly self-identifies as “Cincy Made.”

It loves apples almost as much as hops.

Rhinegeist isn’t just a brewery — it’s also a cidery, a.k.a. Cidergeist. The cider brand makes a semi-dry hard cider that’s all about apple expressiveness, as well as a dry-hopped cider with an herbal edge. Rhinegeist has also been making a limited run of draft-only ciders since 2015, using juices sourced from the Pacific Northwest.

Rhinegeist is a brewery, a cidery, and more.

Rhinegeist loves uniting fruit and alcohol. Among the several offerings in its fruited beer category is the Moonburst, a sour fruited ale that combines the aforementioned house-cultured Brett yeast with stone fruit, secondary fermentation, and 14 months of barrel aging. The brand also makes a Bubbles Rosé Ale, made with cranberry and peach, and another beer-wine crossover called Slangria — which sounds like something you say after drinking too much sangria, but is actually a pomegranate, blueberry, and lime-packed ale, brewed with Cascade hops.

Rhinegeist messes with Brett.

Rhinegeist takes the pursuit of flavor very, very seriously. Part of this is by messing with Brettanomyces, that special yeast as renowned in brewing as it is shunned in traditional winemaking for its ability to impart fruity, funky flavor to anything it touches. The brewery’s Quarky Mosaic Brett Pale Ale, “a complex Brett Pale Ale intensified by fruity esters from wild yeast and massive notes of orange, mango and berry,” is a tasty example that’s been sold since 2018.

Like a Tarot card, the ghost signals rebirth.

Cincinnati at large — and the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood specifically — enjoyed a serious brewing culture from 1812, when its first brewery was founded, all the way up until Prohibition, when the city’s brewing scene got smacked into near oblivion. During its pre-Prohibition heyday in 1998, Cincinnati was brewing over 35 million gallons of beer among 23 breweries. Only now, in the 21st century, have Cincinnati breweries surpassed the pre-Prohibition number, thanks in part to Rhinegeist and fellow Cincy craft breweries like Fifty West, Fibonacci, Darkness Brewing, West Side, MadTree, and more.

Rhinegeist celebrates its European brewing roots.

It’s apt that Rhinegeist itself has a mixture of West Coast and European influences in its roster: Cincinnati’s brewing scene was eventually dominated by a massive mid-century influx of German immigrants (and Rhinegeist makes both a year-round lager and witbier, not to mention a seasonal bock and hefeweizen). But Cincinnati brewing really began with an Englishman, Davis Embree, who opened the city’s first brewery in 1811 (he also made mustard, because why not?). Among Rhinegeist’s original brews is Uncle, a low-ABV malty British Mild that drinks like a gentle hug from an Englishman in a thick sweater.

It’s got a West Coast hop habit.

Bob Bonder and Bryant Goulding came to Cincinnati from San Francisco, so perhaps it’s no shock that they brought a California love for artfully aggressive hopping techniques with them. Among Rhinegeist’s flagship offerings is Truth IPA, which was originally a homebrew project of head brewer Jim Matt. The original recipe used seven pounds of hops and was called “Inspiration Island,” likely because it makes you feel like you’re drinking a lush, floral island of hops (Amarillo, Citra, Simcoe, and Centennial). Naturally, it remains its top seller to this day.

Rhinegeist has serious fun with barrel aging.

Barrel-aged beers aren’t exactly hard to find these days, but there’s ubiquitous bourbon barrel-aged stout, and then there’s Rhinegeist’s limited-supply Añejo Borealis, aged in tequila barrels. Whereas most barrel-aged beers land on the darker end of the spectrum, this draft-only brew is all pucker: It’s a sour ale with lemon, lime, and sea salt. Rhinegeist also makes a 12.7 percent alcohol wheatwine, an ale aged in both bourbon and Scotch barrels. The brand is among our favorite weird-yet-helpfully-descriptive beer names: “Double Oaked Bogbeast.”

The article 10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/rhinegeist-brewery-guide/

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isaiahrippinus · 4 years

Text

10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery

Rhinegeist is proudly ‘Cincy Made,’ partly because of an algorithm.

It’s both the 26th and 36th top-ranked brewery in the nation.

Rhinegeist might be a little haunted.

It loves apples almost as much as hops.

Rhinegeist is a brewery, a cidery, and more.

Rhinegeist messes with Brett.

Like a Tarot card, the ghost signals rebirth.

Rhinegeist celebrates its European brewing roots.

It’s got a West Coast hop habit.

Rhinegeist has serious fun with barrel aging.

The article 10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/rhinegeist-brewery-guide/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/625798594846490624

0 notes

johnboothus · 4 years

Text

10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery

Rhinegeist is proudly ‘Cincy Made,’ partly because of an algorithm.

It’s both the 26th and 36th top-ranked brewery in the nation.

Rhinegeist might be a little haunted.

It loves apples almost as much as hops.

Rhinegeist is a brewery, a cidery, and more.

Rhinegeist messes with Brett.

Like a Tarot card, the ghost signals rebirth.

Rhinegeist celebrates its European brewing roots.

It’s got a West Coast hop habit.

Rhinegeist has serious fun with barrel aging.

The article 10 Things You Should Know About Rhinegeist Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/rhinegeist-brewery-guide/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/10-things-you-should-know-about-rhinegeist-brewery

0 notes

lilnasxvevo · 7 years

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I wrote an essay once when it was really late and I was really frustrated

I am not going to send it to my literary journal and I did not even hand it in for the class I wrote it for (the next essay I wrote was passable enough to submit) but I think it is kind of funny so I am going to share it with you

Zoom Zoom

Draft number four of this FUCKING essay because I can’t FUCKING write. I just through out the last three because they sucked and excuse my language but I’m so frustrated at myself and I typed the wrong homophone in the last sentence and I went back and changed it but then I changed it back so you understand where I’m at right now because I NEVER!! MAKE!! SPELLING MISTAKES!! I was on the editorial staff of my high school newspaper for two years and that shit was flawless! I was editor in chief and that shit was free of god damn error! I do not make! Spelling mistakes!

I’m so frustrated because part of me just wants to write about a motherfucking TV show and the rest of me is like, “No, Thomas, that’s so fucking stupid, write about something that’s serious, something people can take seriously, something people can respect, but NOT something boring” and I’m like OK!! WELL!! THAT’S A TALL ORDER YOU’VE GIVEN YOURSELF TOMMY BOY!!

I’ve been trying to copy the style of the essays we’ve been reading in the last three drafts I just started and abandoned. I wrote…lets see…(I will be keeping all future grammar and spelling errors that I make) over 1300 words that way so far today. Fuck it!! I am going to be writing like ME and what I write like is a protagonist from a really sub-par young adult novel. I read a lot of those! But I was already like that before I read all those books. Actually most of the ones I read are pretty great. Holly Black, David Levithan, uh those Girl, 15, Charming but Insane books I forget who writes them but if I look it up I have to stop my timer and that is just not happening—check em out, they’re great. Oh, Eoin Colfer, too. I have his autograph! I actually also have David’s.

I made a list of all the things I could write this essay about. I didn’t want to write about being queer again because I don’t want you people to pigeonhole me. There’s like 50 items on that list. I’ll spare you. The list sucks. I texted my best friend “What should I write this essay about” and she said “Roman Catholicism” and I was like “Maybe” and she was like “Vampires” and I was like “LMFAO you will never believe what I wrote last time spoiler it was vampires.”

I have ADHD. Sometimes this surprises people! Sometimes it does not! Usually it doesn’t surprise other people who have ADHD because we go based on our lived experiences instead of stereotypes unlike SOME people. I was diagnosed when I was 17 which is super super late but they literally, and you can look this up, base most criteria off of the symptoms of little white cisgender boys, who are usually hyperactive, and I was inattentive type. My third grade teacher used to slap my desk with a ruler when I spaced out. She never brought up my attention issues to anyone else. I hated her. I still hate her. Curse you, Cathy Sellers!!

I have chilled out on the caps lock because maybe that was kind of a gimmick. Ok. Well. The ADHD. I actually don’t remember why I brought up ADHD, which is classic ADHD. Oh. I think it was to say that maybe you will be surprised that the inside of my head is this giant mess. Not to be all “welcome to my twisted mind” or that edgy shit. Maybe I’m trying to make an embarrassing essay on purpose. The point is some people think I’m very composed and stuff and the inside of my head has never once been composed. Well, maybe a few times. I miss standardized testing because they don’t really matter and they were fun to focus on and it was fun to fill the bubbles in and they made me feel smart. I am smart. I promise I’m smart. Sometimes people think I’m dumb because I’m a trans man which I don’t understand but I promise I’m smart.

I just slapped my face to try to get myself to wake up a little bit. I am wiped. That cold that’s been going around is kicking my ass, though not as bad as it’s kicking the ass of other students in this class who I have maybe potentially had to drive to the pharmacy this week.

I am so obsessed with this show on BBC America right now called Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. In ADHD circles this is sometimes called a hyperfixation—it’s kind of like the special interests autistic people have, surprise surprise ADHD and autism are both developmental disorders and they have a lot in common. Dirk Gently is all I can think about. It’s a really great show and I loved it last season because it has the actor Samuel Barnett as the lead actor and I swore my fealty to him in like 2014 and then he got a lead on a TV show which is crazy because he never gets big roles like that so I was like NICE!!! Yeah, so last season was sci-fi, and the show is really great and it has this big diverse cast and all the characters are really interesting and the show never leans on stereotype instead of fleshing out a character as a unique person and there were electric crossbows last season that were designed by that Adam Savage dude from Mythbusters. So but this season, THIS SEASON, is SO good because apparently the show is planning on “switching genres” every season but with the same main cast so now they’ve been running around trying to find each other after everyone got separated at the end of last season (spoiler) and now they’re all in Montana and instead of sci-fi it’s FANTASY which is my FAVORITE. There’s another dimension that’s this great high-fantasy nation called Wendimoor and there’s a door between the valley of Inglenook and this one town in Montana for reasons that I refuse to explain, just watch the show. Ok and in Inglenook, there’s—it’s kind of sketchy how it works but there’s this guy named Panto Trost who has pink hair (his whole family has pink hair and it’s unclear if it’s genetic or if they dye it as a tribal marker or something, and when I first saw it I was like, HOLY SHIT, WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THAT), and he’s the prince of Inglenook, and there’s this guy named Silas Dengdamor, who’s some kind of minor prince in Inglenook somehow, and THEY. ARE. A GAY INTERRACIAL HIGH FANTASY COUPLE. THEY ARE IN LOVE.

And the guy who plays Silas, Lee Majdoub, he’s really active on Twitter and Tumblr, which is crazy because almost no one is active on Tumblr under their real name and it’s mostly just depressed young adults like me, but Lee fields questions about the show all the time and talks about how it was an honor to play a gay prince and he has so much love for Silas and he put so much work into this character which you can tell because he has an answer ready for everything. Has he ridden that train we saw? Is he gay or bi or what? What are his hobbies? If he lived in our world what would his favorite movie be? His five favorite songs? Does he agree with his family’s stance on the feud? (Oh my god I forgot to MENTION that the Trosts and the Dengdamors are TWO FAMILIES AT WAR, which makes Silas and Panto basically gay Romeo and Juliet, but hopefully they won’t die but Dirk Gently is a “don’t get attached” kind of show.)

And did I mention he’s respectful??? My favorite answer he’s ever given is when someone asked him what it was like to kiss Chris Russell (the other actor), which is a question every fucking presumed-straight actor gets when they play a gay role, and since there is a 4 inch height difference between them, Lee answered something like, “It was a little weird because Chris is very tall, so I felt a little like Natalie Portman in Thor. Natalie Portman and I both have dark hair so we’re practically twins.” Also he is very handsome. It is important that Lee Majdoub is very handsome. Okay, it’s important to me.

Wow, glad I got that off my chest. It’s kind of all I ever want to talk about. Two weeks ago, before I could do my actual writing assignment for the day, I had to freewrite about Kevin Spacey for like AN HOUR. What I wrote ended up being kind of unusable for this class thus far, I just haven’t been pleased enough with the way it handled a very sensitive topic to hand it in, but it was about Kevin Spacey and Jeffrey Dahmer and OUT magazine and news media and Anthony Rapp and me.

I wanted to write about a historical figure for this paper but all the ones I could think of that I have a strong connection to were gay. While I was typing that sentence, I thought of Dorothy Parker. Well, shit. Another day, then.

This paper is what we call a RISK!!! pleasedontfailme

Here are some excerpts from the other three papers I tried to write today:

· Sometimes I sing and dance in front of them. Sometimes I scream. One time, I stood on a desk.

· The last time I told her I was proud of her I could only do it because she had consumed an obscene amount of wine and called me to talk about one of Shakespeare’s history plays

· I am afraid that I am a husk a husk a HUSK a husK a husk a husk a husk of Corn-ell because

I promise these essays were not good. These were the only good parts. I wanted to include them because I wanted you to understand that I covered a lot of fucking ground before settling on whatever the fuck this is. I am sorry if you feel you would rather be reading one of those other essays, but I did not want to write them.

I just scrolled back up to the top because I remembered abruptly that this essay doesn’t have a name. It’s called Zoom Zoom now. When my sister is bored while she drives, she says, “Zoom zoom! We’re zooming!” She is 24 and has a master’s degree. This particular catchphrase of hers always comes to mind when I try to describe how my brain works—childish, too fast, bored. Her boyfriend says “Brroom brroom” when he drives. I think he picked it up from her. He calls me Thomathy. Because Thomas can be Tom for short and Tom is like Tim and Tim is short for Timothy. Get it? He says “Thomathy” sounds like a disease. I think he likes me anyway. Even though one time during a heated game of Monopoly I told him I would eat chips at his funeral.

I have three cats. One is ten years old, the other two are one. I have a rabbit. He’s a jerk. That’s all you need to know about me. Oh, I’m from Wisconsin. My favorite color is orange.

Yeah so thanks for coming to my TED talk. Please buy a t-shirt on my way out, they’re $20. I know TED talks don’t usually have t-shirts but I want your money. Yes. Now scram.

Are they gone?

Jesus, I’m so fucking tired.

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littlenerdyempress · 7 years

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nothing hurts like being disregarded for being a teenage fangirl

I’m sorry that this is so long, but I’ve spent the last few days on a constant emotional rollercoaster, courtesy of VIJI CORP. If you want, just skip to the last paragraph

I live in Bangkok, Thailand. Musical artists barely perform here, and even when they do, the tickets sell out in 10 minutes flat, if we’re lucky. I’m 16, and I’ve only been to one concert in my entire life (god bless Pentatonix)

Imagine my delight when I found out that Oh Wonder, my absolute favourite band in the whole world was including Bangkok in their Ultralife tour.

I count down the days until the tickets go on sale. It’s in the middle of my exam season, but the prospect of the concert in August gives me something to look forward to. I’m a bit weirded out that it’s being held in an EDM nightclub (they’re an indie pop duo), but the ticket website reassures me that the minimum age is 15- I assume that they’ve probably cleared it with the authorities beforehand. I beg a friend who has never even heard of them to go with me, for safety.

When D-Day arrives in May, I wake up 2 hours early, constantly refreshing the ticket seller’s page, credit card and ID card at the ready. When the hour strikes, I’m 77th in the queue. I wait anxiously for my turn to come, praying that they haven’t all sold out by the time they get to me.

The page reloads, and I am IN. Unable to believe my luck, I quickly select the drop down box for two tickets. I type in my information with shaky fingers, typing as fast as I humanly can- despite the website saying that the tickets are on hold for me, I’m not taking any chances.

After I receive the ticket confirmation, all I feel is blood running through my veins, like I’ve never been here before. Complete elation. I know what Ultralife truly feels like. I find out later that the tickets sold out in 7 minutes- when I go on the Facebook page for VIJI CORP (the promoter), it is full of disappointed fans who didn’t get there in time. I think that perhaps they should move to another venue- there’s a perfectly nice, easily accessible concert space in the middle of town that can hold more than double the number of fans. Instead, they organise another concert on the night before- it’s still not enough for all the Oh Wonder fans in Bangkok, but it’s a reasonable solution.

The months pass by. I commit every single lyric to heart, staying up late to buy their new album when it’s released in July. I am convinced that this concert is going to be the highlight of my summer holiday. Even my friend gets into them, and we anxiously wait for 1 August, the date of the concert to arrive.

Then I wake up on 27 July, to a text saying that tickets have been cancelled for everyone under the age of 20 (the legal drinking age in Thailand)- they’ve just discovered that Thai law makes it illegal for us to enter. After the initial shock, my first thought is well duh, it’s a nightclub- they literally just figured this out? Like everyone, I had been aware of this law, but like I said; I thought they had already sorted this out- no promoter could possibly be idiotic enough to sell tickets to people who can’t enter the concert; it would simply be bad business. Turns out, I overestimated the promoter. That’s exactly what happened. The email is short and blunt, like the stabs at my heart.

“We would like to inform you of the cancelation of the Oh Wonder concert for those guests under 20 years of age according to the Thai Law. Please contact ThaiTicketMajor for refund. We apologize and thank you for your understanding.”

Heck yes they should apologize. IT TOOK VIJI CORP THIS LONG TO REALISE THIS? My money can be refunded, but the time, energy and heart I invested into preparing for this event is something I can never get back. In fact, they’re not even refunding all my money- I still have to pay the credit card transaction fee. On top of that, it will take 2 months for the refund to be wired to me. I’m completely heartbroken. It could just be me being stupid, but I never dreamed that this scenario could happen. But no, this nightmare isn’t even over yet.

Two days later, the returned tickets go on sale. Resentfully, I perennially check the website throughout the day, revelling in every hour that passes by without the tickets being sold out. It’s 8pm when I notice that the location stated for the concert has changed to a studio- where I bet THEY DON’T SERVE ALCOHOL. With reluctance, I check VIJI CORP’s Facebook page and I feel a tiny bit of flickering heart hope when I see their latest update- they’re considering a change of location for both the Oh Wonder concerts and another concert (LANY). They ask the public’s opinion- like if you would agree with this, sad react if you don’t, comment your opinion. I’ve never liked a post so quickly in my life. When I check the comments, they’re mostly approving of a hypothetical change of location, but there are a few old fogies whining about how inconvenient it would be for them to travel to the new location (meaning that they would have to take a taxi instead of just walking from the skytrain station. boo hoo.) I go to sleep feeling hopeful, against all my better judgement.

The next day, my gut instinct is proven right- VIJI CORP does change the location for LANY, but not for Oh Wonder, spouting some bs about how they had already signed a contract with the nightclub months ago (I’m pretty sure that there would have been a clause on minors being able to enter if they were planning on it and that changing the circumstances would have violated said clause, but okay), and they didn’t want to make it difficult for the old fogies mentioned earlier to travel (there are shuttle buses provided, but whatever floats your rapidly sinking boat). However, what really got to me was that they said that LANY was willing to change location so that minors could attend, but Oh Wonder refused to do so, due to liking the atmosphere of the nightclub or whatever.

I really want to believe that it was just Oh Wonder’s management refusing the request, but honestly? This whole experience has just disillusioned me to the point where I am willing to believe that all adults, including ridiculously talented musical artists are willing to disregard all teenage fans because who cares, they’re just kids. But the thing about teenage fans is when we love an artist, we really love them- we absorb their music, the lyrics building up our identities, the beat providing a metronome for the tempo of our lives. Oh Wonder was the soundtrack to my life, and this concert would have been one of the main scenes. I know that my disappointment is insignificant compared to others- there are fans that were flying in just for the concert, and now have plane tickets that have passed the deadline for full refunds. Heck, there are people starving all over the world- my entitled self not being able to enter a concert is microscopic in the grand scheme of things.

It’s just that knowing this won’t make the 1st of August hurt any less.

#oh wonder #teenage fans #teenage fandom

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omgleerps · 7 years

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where do [we] I go from here?

i’m laying awake at 3:46am still feeling so hurt and betrayed and it’s breaking my heart. I feel lost. I don’t know how to proceed or how to make this stop. ...

it shouldn’t mean this much but I busted my ass off over the last year and made, what i though, were solid friendships. i feel angry for one of my best friends but beyond that i’m angry as a rper. but i can’t walk away. i can’t because i’m afraid to lose the muse that’s been present with me over the last year and is stronger than i think any other muse has been. i can’t leave him. i can’t abandon him and that, i actively know this sounds weird but I can’t stop writing him and his journey because it’s not complete. I think that would break my heart.

however, i’m so lost on how to proceed. i don’t know how to, figuratively, look them all in the eye upon my return from hiatus. I don’t know how to sit on my couch feet away from my best friend and know she isn’t allowed to return to this world that we’ve talked endlessly about. it was taken away not just from her, but from me and the others she rp’d with. We’ve rp’d together for six years the same amount of time we’ve known each other. We met in college and bonded over a mutual love of Harry Potter and subsequently, Glee.

It was quiet literally the AVPM of Ron: “Where have you been all my life?” Harry: “Oh in a cupboard under some stairs.” We were actually in a shadowcast together of AVPM her as Ginny and me as Hermione, but that’s another story.

I knew she was the coolest person in the world and when we started to talk and learned we both loved Glee it was just kismet.

This is the first time I’ve been so deeply attached to an RP, it’s players, and my muse. Which is why I’m so hurt myself, feeling borderline betrayed by people I believe my friends. Who she believed to be here friends.

I have been rping since I was in about eighth grade. That was probably....(here comes my age) around 14-15 years ago. I started in AOL chatrooms (yeah the aol where you had to use dial-up and log into the internet, not just AIM but AOL circa 2002, look it up it was rough. i’m old af) I rped LOTR or Harry Potter and soon moved onto creating my own guestbook style Sailor Moon RP.

I ran that RP successfully for all of highschool. There were rough times and hard decisions were made and I had made some good friends doing that. It was where my love for RPing really took hold. Into college I continued to RP, this time moving onto forum RPs such as Proboards. I joined a few, but ultimately couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. I ended up creating a pretty well liked Narnia proboard RP with two of my good friends and college roommate at the time and from there I had an idea for a Percy Jackson proboard RP (as Percy Jackson became a huge new obsession just before the release of the first movie).

Needless to say if i wasn’t doing my homework in college I was running an RP (or two because I had a few going at once at one point), or I belonged to other Proboards rps. I discovered Tumblr rping during my last year and a half at college which is the same time I met my best friend. At this point, due to personal issues, I had dropped the majority of my proboards rps and my own were dying or dead. It was sad and rough.

When i discovered tumblr rping in 2012 I severed my relationship with proboards RPs in favor of this new medium. I joined my first Glee RP where I played Kurt. The RP was not staying afloat and the admin at that time asked if anyone would like to take over, and I stepped up. I wasn’t ready to let go of this new thing I found especially only after one short month. I had no idea how to run a tumblr RP or how one RP’d on Tumblr. It was completely different than a Proboards forum where everything is just Paras or F2f’s.

It was at this point I was talking with my best friend and mentioned roleplaying and feeling almost stupid for bringing it up because I just didn’t tell my friends about this stuff and our friendship was still so new. When she told me she used to RP Harry Potter but by passing a notebook back and forth with another friend I was like...fuck I hit the friend lottery. Season 3 of Glee was still airing and we both fell in love with a new character, Sebastian Smythe. I convinced her to join the Tumblr rp I was in and together we learned how to rp on tumblr and what worked and didn’t.

Looking back on that first rp it was rough af. But from that point we’ve RP’d together, either one on one or in groups. We had created a few of our own but we would find that Glee RPs are sometimes fleeting. Never the less we shared this mutual love of these characters and RPing. I love writing with her because she is a phenomenal writer and I can’t wait to have a signed copy of her best seller someday. (Cue her making a disgruntled noise and rolling her eyes at me when she reads this part...now cue her smacking me on the arm while she read that ;) ).

During a rough time in her life one year ago, I provided her comfort and a distraction by telling her of an RP i had just joined. I recounted the events of my character and his interactions with others and the crazy plots and how unique this RP was compared to other Glee RPs. I told her of plots I had started to build and I really think it made her feel better during that time. Toward the end of the summer of 2016 I managed to convince her to join. She was nervous, afraid that they wouldn’t like her application but I told her I would help. Once she was accepted it was great to be able to share an RP with her again. Our characters didn’t interact much as they were not fans of each other, which was perfectly fine. We just liked talking about this place and helping each other develop plots and I saw a change in her and it made me happy to see her happy again.

I won’t go into many more details from here on out but, when she was asked to leave just recently I watched as it broke her heart and also mine. I still can’t make sense of the decision and I’ve never seen anything like this (this type of expelling of a player) in all of my years of RPing.

What hurts the most is I believed we were family and now here I am at 4:30 in the morning as I finish this, not knowing what to do. I’ve rambled about things that may not matter hoping that I would be feeling better or come to a conclusion. I can’t type anymore angry words (i did a fair share of those) I can only type whatever ramblings come to my head trying to make sense of a unfortunate and unfair situation.

it’s one thing to want to remove a player from an RP, that’s your decision as an admin. However, do not say it is for the mental health of that player. You’re not a psychiatrist and trust me when I say if it was bad for her she would have left on her own. Just say the real reason and don’t act like you did it with her best interest at heart. I don’t believe or trust that for a second. You took away a person’s muse and expect them to be alright after they poured their heart and soul into something for nearly 10 months? Reverse the roles and how would that make you feel? Would that help your mental health?

If anything your actions made it worse. Just be frank and don’t save face as it feels like you’re doing.

I guess I did have some angry words left after all. That’s what makes me angry the most. They believe they did this from a place of caring. And I don’t understand that, not even objectively.

I get a lot of quotes from a book series I like ‘Sword of Truth’ by Terry Goodkind, but I find that a lot of the quotes are very relevant to real life. And one quote stands out in my mind and has over the last few days is this...

“The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.” -‘Stone of Tears’

i’m going to continue to feel lost while i make sense of this. And I know I can’t abandon my muse because, again, I can’t leave him unfinished in the middle of his journey. I think that as a writer it would be too painful. I just need a few days to myself to hope my head and heart clears, even a little.

I needed this post to get some thoughts out even if they aren’t the most coherent at times.

-Rachael

#get personal for a sec #rp stuff #rachael may ramble a little

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passportsymphony · 7 years

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Things I wish I knew before travelling to Vietnam

Traveling to another country with a completely different culture is a difficult but very rewarding experience. This kind of adventure allows you to learn some valuable life lessons and broaden your horizon. However, this can also be a traumatic experience, especially if you run into scammers or another kind of trouble. Vietnam isn’t like the other countries in Southeast Asia. It’s not so touristy, there aren’t many fancy beaches and most people don’t speak English. Hence, you should mentally prepare yourself before visiting in order to fully embrace Vietnamese culture and make most out of your trip. Here are some things I wish I knew before travelling to Vietnam.

Everyone’s a millionaire: Things I wish I knew before travelling to Vietnam

I’m sure there are many lost souls visiting Vietnam trying to figure out the ridiculously high conversion rates here. At the moment, 1 EUR = 26,716 dong and 1 USD = 22,714 dong. This means 100 USD is worth more than 2.2 million Dong and it’s safe to assume that all people in Vietnam have more than 1 million Dong.

The good part: coins have been abolished back in 2011. The bad part: you can easily mix up the 500,000 Dong bill and the 50,000 Dong bill. It’s the same with the 100,000 Dong bill and the 10,000 Dong bill. The rule of thumb is to try and memorize bills according to color, but again the 500,000 bill and the 20,000 bill have a similar shade of blue. Well, good luck with that.

The price for everything is… whatever you agree to pay for it

In Vietnam, it’s normal to increase prices when they think they can get more money out of you. If you’re coming from the Western hemisphere, the truth is, a lot of people will try to take as much money out of you. You might even start feeling like a walking ATM! I know it’s hard to grasp this, but they’re not necessarily trying to rip you off. Vietnamese are taught that the Western countries are the ones to blame for all of their problems and that we “owe” them. So they will try to pretend you agreed to a higher price, give you back less change etc. And they expect from us to spend money when visiting, and when you try to bargain, they get upset and treat you poorly.

Don’t Book anything Online

Don’t book any tourist arrangements and be careful about visa agents. There are a lot of frauds out there. And there are a lot of agencies using the names of big brands because there doesn’t seem to be any rules on trademark rights in Vietnam. To get back to the topic, if you book a tour online, you might end up paying a much higher price than the price you would pay if you arranged everything on the spot.

Be prepared for the weather

The South and North of Vietnam have a different climate, which can make travelling to Vietnam complicated. In Northern Vietnam, the dry season is on from April to October, while in South and Central Vietnam, the dry season occurs between December and April. So you should be prepared for both seasons when visiting. Additionally, Hanoi has four seasons, including cold and humid starting in November and ending at January and hot and sticky summers. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, has only two seasons: a hot and dry season and a monsoon season with high humidity throughout the year.

Shop outside tourist districts

Avoid restaurants, bars and souvenir shops around the French Quarter in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Get out of the area surrounding the main tourist attractions and you’ll find the best restaurants with authentic food and most importantly, local prices. You can also get all the colorful traditional clothes and the most memorable souvenirs, again at lower prices. The locals in these areas aren’t so used to tourists and you might get a few weird looks, but you can save a lot of money and have a far more authentic experience.

Crossing the street is an art

Motorbikes are pretty common in Asia but Vietnam still takes motorbike traffic to a whole other level. In Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City the traffic is so chaotic that crossing the street can literally be the hardest part of your day. A general rule of thumb is to wait at a place that looks like there is supposed to be a crosswalk. The next step is to pray to God, gather your courage and go for it. If you still can’t do it, just wait for some of the locals to cross the street and follow them. They’ll know what they’re doing.

Travel outside of the big cities

I love Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) and I met many fellow travellers there. And the sad truth is, most travellers focus on these two cities and missing out on many amazing authentic Vietnamese cities. Like Hoi An, Sapa, Danat etc. My best memories (and some of my best Instagram posts) from my Vietnam trips were from these small towns. If you have the choice, spend more time in Northern Vietnam, as this part is less developed and hence has a much more authentic charm. There are a lot of mountains, canyons, caves and isolated villages. Every corner here reveals another breathtaking view and another amazing story to tell.

Motorbikes are the way to go

In the big cities, where there are more sellers you will be able to buy a motorbike for as low as $200 USD. I’m sorry to break it up to you, but if you’re paying more than that, you’re most likely being ripped off. Let’s say you buy your bike in Hanoi and want to take it for a ride across the country. Unless you completely trash the bike, you will be able to sell it for more or less the same price in Ho Chi Minh. This actually means that you’ve rented a bike for free. It will be a bit difficult to drive it in the beginning because of the congested traffic and just the Vietnamese driving culture in general. Also, get used to honking. A lot of it! In Vietnamese that normally means ‘I’m about to pass by you’, or ‘Hurry up, you old lady’.

Tips for bus/train rides

After a few days in Vietnam, you will realize that Vietnamese are quite laid-back and appear to never be in a rush. This concept is also integrated into the public transport system. Bus rides can be really long. The dense traffic and poor roads turn 6-hour trips into 10-12-hour trips. Anyway, there are some things you need to consider when travelling by bus. Here are a few useful tips.

You can easily get bus tickets for your journey on the same day.

Consider booking your ticket through your hostel/hotel. Sure, the ticket is a bit more expensive, but they will arrange a pick up from the hotel and you won’t have to go through the hustle of reaching the station, which in the end might even save you money if you’re in a big city.

It’s not uncommon at all for a bus to be a few hours late.

You probably won’t get dropped at a bus station. Most of the bus rides in Vietnam I took just dropped me in the middle of the road. So be prepared for that.

In the sleeper bus, you should take off your shoes before entering and keep them in a plastic bag that the driver provides for the passengers.

Most buses don’t have washrooms and a 10-hour bus ride usually includes not more than two stops. The chances of finding a pre-packaged food in the places where the bus will stop are really slim and the stops are filled with questionable restaurants. Make sure you pack enough food before going on a long journey.

Food and Drink tips

The food portions are really small. I always used to order two dishes every time I had a meal because I knew one won’t be enough.

Fruit is on the dessert menu. I’m a big fan of fruits and they come really cheap in Vietnam. However, I was struggling in the beginning because I couldn’t find them on the menu. Apparently, in Vietnam, fruits are considered to be a desert.

I’ve never found a cheaper beer. You can get a beer in Vietnam for 13 cents! Which means you can get wasted for $2-3.

Soup-like dishes are typical in Vietnam. Most of them are really tasty but are also a number 1 reason for a stomach virus among tourists. Make sure the soup you ordered isn’t undercooked and is piping hot.

Avoid the ‘Cheap restaurant scam. It includes a friendly local eager to hang out. He leads you to a restaurant outside of the tourist area to try authentic Vietnamese food. You either end up being drugged with all of your belongings missing or getting ripped off when the bill comes.

Beaches aren’t that good

If you previously visited Thailand, Indonesia or The Philippines, Vietnam’s beaches might disappoint you. Vietnam’s coastline is rocky and pretty rough during the winter. There are some beaches with expansive white sand, but they still can’t compare to the best of Thailand and Indonesia. Vietnam has a lot of other things to offer, like canyons, mountains, caves and amazing nature, but beaches aren’t among the highlights, even though there are some really beautiful cities like Nha Trang.

The post Things I wish I knew before travelling to Vietnam appeared first on Passport Symphony.

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flauntpage · 7 years

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Morning Wood: Sleeve of Wizard

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The truth is, I was going to use that headline win or lose. A win would’ve been better, but at least we can now link our lede to headline by saying that the Wizards kept the Sixers at arm’s length.

Welcome to the Wood. The last time I did this on any consistent basis was 2012, before the Phillies totally shit in their beds and began a five-year hibernation in it. The purpose of Wood, besides making it generally difficult to pee, is to regale in tales of the previous night and celebrate our superior team. We don’t do it for all the teams because it’s a lot of work (a grind, if you will) and something is lost when you’re trying to make tongue-in-cheek, not-so-thinly-veiled sexual references of sports conquest for dreadful teams. It just wouldn’t work with a team who counted among its standout stars Jerami Grant, or had Alexey Shved on the roster. But this team, your team, your town… well, they’re worthy of such loosely scheduled morning posting.

For those of you who are new here, strap in, because the last time this series had its lifeblood pumping, we wound up making a t-shirt of a pissing horse. And for you OG CB readers, WELCOME BACK. I’ve missed you. Let me grind up on your hip as we awake from our slumber.

Let’s Wood!

Start it off right

First, the necessaries: The Sixers lost a tight game, 120-115. Joel Embiid had 18 and 13 in 27 minutes (!!!), while Ben Simmons was borderline LeBron-like with 18, 10, 5 and 2 in 34. Markelle Fultz was, somehow, better than expected. And Robert Convington I think just hit another three-pointer from that deep, well-formed shooting pocket of his.

A loss is a loss is a stupid fucking phrase. But consider the Sixers were rolling out units that had literally never played together in a game, and two players who hadn’t yet played an NBA game, and Joel Embiid’s minutes algorithm, and Jahlil Okafor and new free agent signings, and players returning off injury against a well-formed, veteran, experienced team, on the road, and, well, yeah that was impressive. Unless of course you’re from the old school Philly sports mindset, in which case you have to FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING:

Sixers showed great promise in opener last night, but it's not enough. After 4 putrid seasons, they need to win games. And they didn't.

— Angelo Cataldi (@AngeloCataldi) October 19, 2017

This team should be beyond talking about positives in a loss. https://t.co/sfkMZCVxo2

— Reuben Frank (@RoobNBCS) October 19, 2017

It was their first game together. Their three best players had a combined 31 games playing experience. Their point guard was coming off a near season-long injury. Their shooting guard just arrived here. And they were leading at the half against John Wall and the Wizards.

Sure, I get that this might get old if they start 2-10, but let’s give them some time – I don’t know, like A GAME – to gel and get to know each other. JJ, I’m Joel, this is my friend Jahlil. I’m just kidding, nobody likes Jahlil. Want to grab a burger?

The A team

Mike Breen – “A FOUL!” – and Jeff Van Gundy calling a Sixers game. God that feels good. No Mark Jackson last night, as Doris Burke joined in the three-man (er, person) booth. She’s great, actually. I like Jackson, too. A good “Mama, there goes that man” gets me horned up for hoops action like no other. Burke gets a full-time color commentator role. But Jackson will remain a part of the A-team once the playoffs come around.

Still, seeing the Sixers get the A-team treatment from ESPN feels good. I can’t imagine this crew has called a Sixers game over the last four years. I’m too lazy to look it up, and don’t know where I would, but suffice it to say, this was rare and, I guess, unexpected. We’ve arrived. And hearing Van Gundy gush over Simmons’ height was something to behold. Otto Porter is 6’8, and Simmons is much taller than him. He might be 7’0! Or hearing Breen remark that Simmons was playing “point center” as the biggest guy on the floor. Yeah, I’m all fucking in on that.

The halftime show, on the other hand…

Paul Pierce on Joel Embiid:

“I’m tired of getting a little taste of him . I want the whole load” http://pic.twitter.com/2VUpSZKKju

— BLACK ADAM SCHEFTER (@B1ackSchefter) October 18, 2017

Delicious.

That group, besides mispronouncing Embiid’s name and not knowing how long he’s been in the league (four years), was hit or miss, though I did appreciate their loss of words at the don’t call it a minutes restriction.

Rebranding the minutes restriction

I LOVE how the Sixers have rebranded a “minutes restriction” to call it a “plan.” Nothing escapes the arm of their very large (according to this Philly.com story about their sales and marketing efforts) marketing department.

The last two days have been dominated by coverage of the incorrectly referred to minutes restriction, which, to be fair, was a phrase born more out of media branding than the Sixers themselves (Brown was clear this week that Embiid would have a range and not a hard cap). So what do the Sixers do? Let’s, ah, tweak the phrasing on that.

Brett Brown after the game:

“The rigid… whatever… pick a number. It’s more of a plan that we have this year rather than a restriction.”

And Joel Embiid:

“We gotta stop calling it a minutes restriction. I think the plan is to get out there, play, see how I feel. There’s gonna be some games where I’m gonna be tired… but yeah, we gotta stop calling it a minutes restriction. It’s a plan.”

Got it? Plan. Not a restriction. Or you can call it “fucking bullshit.”

Markelle Fultz’s free throw form

Markelle Fultz’s free-throw form still looks a bit weird.

http://pic.twitter.com/wtMSQWM9a7

— NBA SKITS (@NBA_Skits) October 19, 2017

Yuck.

But, I thought Fultz actually played well. I think that observation is based partly on the fact that we’ve all reset our expectations with him. He’s not Simmons or Embiid. Few are. Those guys are both freaks in their own regard, and it’s unreasonable to expect any rookie, even the number one pick, to come out and look like a vet like those two guys have. Fultz is not only younger, but certainly more raw. Throw in the fact that he has some sort of shoulder injury and hasn’t been around an NBA coaching staff for 12+ months, and there’s going to be more of a learning curve with him. And despite his -18 number last night, I thought he played quite well. Attacked the rim, defended adequately, and wasn’t a liability out there.

But he’s not going to be the player we expect until he gets comfortable with his shot again. I mean, SHOOOOOOOOOOOT:

He didn’t.

Robert Covington

I want to live in his shooting pocket. Just pitch a tent there and have wild sex parties. Everyone’s welcome. He shot lights-out. That pace isn’t sustainable, but him and Redick are a dynamic 1-2 three-point threat. Add in Embiid eventually getting more of his to fall and Fultz, you know, like taking one every once in a while, and that Sixers gravity is going to be full John Mayer.

But new rule: Robert Convington should never put the ball on the floor. Just shoot it or look around and pass. Never dribble.

Almost throw it down

Oh if this had gone in… http://pic.twitter.com/dXSGbkUrk4

— Dan Levy (@DanLevyThinks) October 18, 2017

so close, joel http://pic.twitter.com/xo0bV0Xuen

— ALSO, KEITHFUJIMOTO (@vineydelnegro) October 18, 2017

This would have broken souls.

Travel

Joel Embiid getting Sixers Fans FIRED UP in DC!!!#joelembiid #TrustTheProcess #HereTheyCome #nba http://pic.twitter.com/d9dlwW8klo

— Jeff Skversky 6abc (@JeffSkversky) October 18, 2017

Philly fans are the best. How many times did Breen and the rest of the crew comment on the Trust The Process chants? And it didn’t hurt that this guy was wearing a beautiful hoodie:

You can get that right here.

So close

I think he meant Markelle Fultz.

Embiid is the best

Joel Embiid does not care about your convention.

Simmons

Ben Simmons was LeBron-like. The way he moves up the court, passes the ball, drives. It all looks so familiar.

LeBron’s per-36 stats in his NBA debut (he played 42 minutes) were 21, 8, 5 and 3. Last night, Simmons had 18, 10, 5 and 2 in 34 minutes. Not bad.

Merch

You know what to do. Right here.

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wineanddinosaur · 5 years

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How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager

Jimmy Buffett’s entry to the beer world happened quite accidentally, as you’d expect most things do in Buffett’s life. It was 1984 and the laid-back rocker was sitting in the office of his manager, Howard Kaufman. As Kaufman spoke on the phone with Corona’s marketing team, trying to get them to be the beer sponsor for another client, The Eagles, on their upcoming tour, Buffett interjected:

“Hey, I’d like Corona to be my sponsor, too,” he said.

It was a curious choice because, at the time, most American consumers saw Corona as more of a Mexican workingman’s beer; not some cut-loose, sand-in-your-toes, party pounder. But, upon inking a deal with Buffett, Corona quickly started incorporating the Margaritaville beach lifestyle aesthetic into its ads and promotional materials. According to Forbes, “Corona hired him to flog its Mexican brew to young, cash-fat consumers,” spending more than $2 million on a radio campaign starting in 1984.

In turn, Buffett’s fans, known as Parrotheads, committed themselves almost exclusively to the light cerveza at shows, where, during the song “Cheeseburger in Paradise” a sign would illuminate on stage showing Corona bottles with limes wedged in their necks.

“Go to a Jimmy concert today, look around, and you’ll say, ‘Wow, this is all Corona imagery,” says John Cohlan, the longtime CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, LLC, in Palm Beach, Fla. “But, you have to remember, it wasn’t always like that.”

Realizing that it had inadvertently stumbled upon lightning in a bottle, Corona went so far as to co-opt the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” for a subsequent campaign. “Change your whole latitude” was the motto in commercials and on billboards all across the country by 1992. Corona trademarked that line without even informing Buffett.

“That ended up being the most successful Corona ad ever,” explains Cohlan, who still isn’t sure whether Buffett is aware of what the beer brand had done.

Corona’s “Change your whole latitude” campaign co-opted the title of Buffett’s seminal 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”

Corona’s sales had been declining as recently as 1991, but once it adopted the “latitude” tagline, in 1992, business was booming. “The sponsorship of Jimmy Buffett … helped create a fun-in-the-sun image for the brand,” AdAge wrote in 1998 as Corona had just ousted Heineken to become America’s top imported beer.

By 1999, when Corona finally scrapped the Buffett-based tagline, it was the nation’s 10th best-selling beer, seen as the quintessential “vacation in a bottle.” Today, it’s one of the only macro beers still trending upward in sales.

“And it was all based on this IP that came directly from Jimmy’s tour,” Cohlan says. “That made us start thinking … maybe we should quit Corona and do our own thing.”

Room for more than one ‘Vacation in a bottle’

“Woodstock for people who like to drink heavily.”

That’s what Cohlan jokingly calls the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. It was there, in 1998, where he first met Buffett. At the time Cohlan worked with Triarc, a holding company that held shares in brands like Arby’s and RC Cola. Triarc had moved its operations to Florida in the early 1990s, and Northeast-raised Cohlan still wasn’t thrilled about it. But, as he watched Buffett perform for the first time, he had a revelation.

“I looked out and I saw all these people dressed up,” Cohlan says of Parrotheads’ signature, tropical-splattered beachwear, “and I said to myself, ‘This is more of a brand than the brands that we actually own.’ Buffett was their entire way of life.”

At the time, Buffett operated just three small Margaritaville restaurants in Key West, Fla., and Jamaica and didn’t seem that interested in expanding, especially after one foray into New Orleans had flopped. But, upon creating his role as CEO of Margaritaville Holdings, Cohlan brokered a deal with Seagram Spirits & Wine Group (which also owned Buffett’s label at the time, MCA) to license the name Margaritaville to a 20,000-square-foot space at the entrance to Universal Studios’ new Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando.

When it opened, in May 1999, it was a massive success. The empire began rapidly expanding, with Margaritaville restaurants popping up all across the country.

Capitalizing on that success and, after angering Cohlan by releasing a sounds-a-little-too-similar Parrot Bay Rum, Seagram quickly issued a line of Margaritaville Tequila in 2000.

Buffett’s tour, meanwhile, was still sponsored by Corona. In 2006, as the 8th annual Orlando Beer Fest (held at Universal CityWalk) approached, Cohlan realized it was finally time to make a move. It was time for Buffett and Margaritaville to have their own proprietary beer for the restaurant chain and, perhaps, the world. (“Let’s take our beach back,” he recalls Buffett saying.)

Cohlan initially approached Corona about contract-brewing their beer, but, as he recalls, they told him, “No thanks. We already have a ‘Corona.’” They moved onto sponsoring Kenny Chesney.

So Cohlan called up his buddy Dave Peacock, then-president of Anheuser-Busch. Conveniently, they had been looking for a “Corona killer” for years, having already failed with two previous challengers, Azteca in the late-1990s and Tequiza, a tequila-flavored beverage that was about to be discontinued.

“Thankfully, [Peacock] said, ‘There’s room in America for more than one “vacation in a bottle,”’” Cohlan says.

No one wants to drink a ‘Lone’

Parrotheads were both angered he’d dumped Corona, then a little confused by who was making his new beer, but, ultimately, they fell hard for LandShark Lager, which burst onto the scene at Buffett’s Feb. 10, 2007 Tallahassee concert.

Initially, the brand had called it Lone Palm Lager — based on the name of a song from Buffett’s “Fruitcakes” album and the outdoor seaplane bar near Margaritaville — but the name just wasn’t resonating. As Cohlan explains:

“When we did consumer research, people would say “I don’t want to drink a ‘Lone.’”

Calling it Margaritaville Lager would have been a little confusing, too. So they started thinking about some of his other songs. Then, just like now, one of Buffett’s most popular concert performances was for “Fins.” It’s about a woman at a beach bar who feels like prey to all the men trying to aggressively pick her up. Before each live performance, audience members place their hands in the shape of a fin on top of their heads and start swaying back and forth while Buffett would call out: “The LandSharks are coming!”

They were already selling concert merch with LandShark logos on it — a fin with squiggly waves underneath it, palm trees in the background— and it wouldn’t be too hard to adapt that for a beer. It would come in a clear bottle, just like a Corona, and be an inoffensive and easy-drinking “island lager.” Its slogan, written on the spur of the moment by Buffett, was “Let the fin begin!”

Even in this highly skeptical era, when most people still don’t realize what “crafty” beers are owned by multinational conglomerates, folks were onto LandShark Lager right from the get-go.

The first-ever review of Landshark Lager on BeerAdvocate, in January of 2007, reads, “Looks very much like [Anheuser-Busch]’s version of Corona, right down to the bottle and marketing.” Another early review notes: “[Anheuser-Busch]’s latest attempt to bite into the Corona market in the sunshine state. It’s got the pee yellow color, snappy name, and clear bottle.” By March, The Palm Beach Post was reporting that “Buffett’s new beer masquerades as microbrew,” explaining:

“At first glance, LandShark looks like a microbrew that’s produced by Buffett himself. After all, the name alludes to the Buffett song Fins, the product is displayed prominently on Buffett’s Web site and the bottle says the lager is made by Margaritaville Brewing Co. of Jacksonville. But LandShark is brewed by Anheuser-Busch Cos. of St. Louis, although the nation’s largest brewer seeks a stealth role.”

(Cohlan claims Margaritaville simply licenses its name out to the brewery.)

Reviews of the beer’s quality were even more dismissive.

“Like a bad Corona,” wrote one online review. “Could maybe see drinking this on a dive boat in Mexico … And it would have to be 95 degrees, with the beer temp just above freezing.” Doug Blackburn, Tallahassee Democrat’s online beer columnist, wrote. “LandShark Lager lacks taste and flavor. At best, it qualifies as a lawn mower beer, a post-workout thirst quencher.”

Almost since the beginning, it has scored a pathetic 1 (out of 100) on RateBeer.com.

Yet, none of this seemed to matter to Parrotheads who quickly began switching their allegiances. “You dont even need a lime to make it better to drink. (sic)” wrote one fan on an early beer forum.

Thanks to Buffett’s devoted fan base, despite its dismal reviews Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. Credit: Landsharklager.com

Initially it was only available at Margaritaville restaurants, Buffett concerts, and in Florida, but it quickly expanded nationwide, sitting on store shelves and in gas station coolers right next to Corona. By the 2009 NFL season, the Miami Dolphins were even playing in LandShark Stadium, a move the football team thought would make game day a more “multi-entertainment experience” for fans. It looked like LandShark Lager had a real shot to become the “Corona killer.”

But then … it never really did.

In fact, I literally thought the beer was no longer on the market when I began reporting this story, but that’s not true whatsoever. It may have never taken down Corona, but it still became a pretty big player in macro beer, all in a bit of a weird, “Florida man” kind of way. That’s why, if you’re a guy like me, who mainly goes to craft beer bars in urban environments, you aren’t really going to ever see it.

Yet Landshark Lager sells close to 4 million cases a year in America, which makes it a better seller at retail than Guinness. (Though, not as good as Corona, which reportedly sold 65 million cases in 2017 and is today the fifth best-selling beer in America.) It also sells well in Canada and numerous spots in the Caribbean. It’s not just boomer Parrotheads buying it, either — there’s a college ambassador program that has led the brand to pick up steam among our nation’s newest beer guzzlers.

(And all this without a single TV commercial. In fact, Cohlan claims they spend less than $1 million a year on marketing, compared to the over $100 million per year Corona spends on advertising.)

There are also currently 12 LandShark Bar & Grills (in such far-flung places as Branson, Mo., and Tulsa, Okla.), not to mention LandShark bars on six different Norwegian Cruise Line ships. LandShark Stadium relinquished the naming rights after just one year — it’s called Hard Rock Stadium today — though a rewritten version of “Fins” still does play occasionally after touchdowns, while the concession stands serve plenty of the lager. The beer is not going away any time soon and Cohlan thinks it still has room to grow to 10 million cases per year.

You could argue this was the first real celebrity beer, way ahead of its time compared to today’s era when Metallica is now partnering with Stone, or the Grateful Dead with Dogfish Head. LandShark Lager does a helluva lot better than all those beers, too, and will almost certainly still be around when they are not. That’s the power of Buffett, as a musician, businessman, and beerman.

“It ultimately works because Jimmy created one of few true lifestyle brands in this country,” Cohlan says. “It’s not a celebrity beer. It’s not called Jimmy Buffett Beer, and that’s intentional. That’s to his credit. His art form created an entire lifestyle around his lyrics. About working hard, but being able to still escape and enjoy yourself. A person’s name is not a lifestyle, but a person’s art can be. That’s why LandShark Lager works. You look at other celebrity beers, and he dwarfed the curve.”

Meanwhile, even if LandShark Lager didn’t win the initial race, Buffett, the indefatigable businessman, is still looking for ways to beat Corona. In September of last year he announced plans for his own marijuana line. It will be called Coral Reefer.

The article How Jimmy Buffet Accidentally Charted a Course From Margaritaville to Corona to LandShark Lager appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/jimmy-buffet-corona-landshark-lager/

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claudecat17 · 7 years

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Orioles Game 89: Jughead Fails Again

So the second "half" of the season is off to a rollicking start, no? In case anyone had forgotten who the O's are, how they've sunk to the level they're at now, this game immediately brought it all back home. Historically terrible starting pitching? Check. The inability to drive in runners in scoring position with fewer than two outs? Check. Iffy defense? Check. One of the good bullpen guys giving up the winning run within seconds of the O's hitters somehow getting the game tied? Check and mate.

And at this point I'm not even that bothered by it. I'm becoming more and more convinced that winning too many games now will ultimately only delay the inevitable rebuild. So I'm almost rooting against 'em. When Brad Brach gave up that dong? I was not unhappy. If nothing else, it meant no extra innings on a night that had already gone on far too long (mostly due to the completely unnecessary 45 minute rain delay). It's always more fun to win, and I wouldn't have been any less happy had the O's done so, but I think just about everyone knows by now that this isn't their year.

It's simply too much to overcome. Nobody could have expected the absolutely dreadful seasons that Kevin Gausman, Chris Tillman, Wade Miley and Ubaldo Jimenez have put up so far, and it's starting to look like even Dylan Bundy's little run of awesomeness is at an end. You just can't win a lot of games when you're behind by crooked numbers regularly, often before even coming to bat. It's a testament to how good some of the hitters can be that the team is as close to .500 as it is. Seems like they deserve to be in even deeper shit.

This game was sort of a microcosm of the season: incredibly poor start by Gausman putting the team in an 8-run hole by the 4th inning, but the fellas started chipping away. Slowly but surely. With taters, and more! They manage to tie it up, only to have the scent of victory brutally expelled from the atmosphere by Brach's meatball to Addison Russell. A loss, sure, but more than that. Another forceful jolt to the metaphorical nuggets of O's fans everywhere. An all too familiar feeling...

That's enough on the game. As for crowd experience? Well, there were a ton of Cubs fans. As heavy a concentration of opposing fans as we're used to seeing for the Red Sox and Yankees, though far less annoying. By the end there were more of them than there were O's fans.

Of course it was student night as well, but y'know what? It's getting so that that's rarely an issue anymore, and I'm starting to realize why. There's a new person in charge of gates F and G this year and he's really good at making sure the people coming in are able to at least stand up/walk without wobbling. It makes a huge difference if the problems are nipped in the bud proactively rather than us having to escort 'em out later. We really haven't had a bad student night since the first one, and that's definitely something to be happy about.

Pretty much a normal-feeling night in most ways. The only thing notable was that the Baseline Burgers places now serve those Chesapeake fries with the crab goop on 'em. I won't be partaking, but that's a great idea. Keeps folks from having to travel far and wide to find crab stuff.

I'm pretty bushed after this one. It's always rough, the first game of a home stand, but especially Fridays because of the large-ish crowds. This year? All but two first games of home stands happen on a Friday. Yay! The rain delay didn't help. At no point did it rain heavy enough that they couldn't have played. Barely a sprinkle.

So I'll close this out by wondering what the next few weeks will hold for our Birds. Will they actually pull the trigger on being sellers? Will Dan Duquette survive this here thing? Will Buck Showalter continue to put up with having almost literally nothing to work with in the rotation? Will there be new records established for starting pitching crepulence? These questions and more may be answered very soon. Stay tuned! It could get extremely weird.

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