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technouk · 5 years

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Everyman Superstar DJ Carl Cox On Techno, Ibiza, Burning Man And Life In The Fast Lane Carl Cox Photo credit Dan Reid Carl Cox has provided the soundtrack for some of the best nights out for millions of clubbers and music lovers all over the world. "Coxy," as he is affectionately known, is one of the most famous DJs on the planet. It is not every day one speaks to such an iconic figure, so in advance of our interview, I talked to a couple of experts to hear their thoughts. Author, DJ and techno editor at Mixmag, Marcus Golden Barnes, is glowing in his appraisal. "I love Carl! He has worked tirelessly to transmit his unwavering love for music to millions of people all over the world. He is always buoyant and positive, and clearly revels in his job every single time he plays. Carl is a remarkable character who lives for music, there's no superficial facade, just pure, sincere love and soul." Ministry Of Sound DJ, journalist and Ibiza stalwart Timmy Sheridan is renowned for deflating the pretensions of many a superstar DJ with his withering editorial putdowns, and is not a man to suffer pretenders gladly. His evaluation of Carl Cox is telling. "Everybody loves Carl. He is unique because you get a sense that absolutely everything you see is what you get. He's literally the only survivor of the process of becoming famous I can think of in our scene. He is utterly without guile, couldn't be less of a diva if he tried and most miraculous of all, still has a fully functioning sense of humor. On top of all this, he is an unwavering standard of excellence. He's never sold out, faked it or failed to deliver over something like 35 years. Few can say that, almost none in the UK." Sheridan continues, not without a sense of humor himself, "As a footnote, I should add, I also get the impression that if something broke, Carl would be the first one to know and to try to fix it. Most DJs can't even mix, never mind solder, splice or make a cabinet." Sheridan is probably not wrong, Cox worked in all aspects of the building trade before getting into DJing, he tells me by phone from his home in Australia. "My last job before I was a DJ was a scaffolder, and before that, I was a painter and decorator, and before that I was I was a builder's mate, a plasterer's mate and a chippy." Perhaps as a result of his unpretentious roots, Cox has always been alive to his opportunities with a clarity which might elude those with less varied life experience. "I know what it's like to be on the other side of the coin. I know what it's like to wait in a queue, to save up my money to go to an event, when I couldn't wait to hear the DJ play. I was right in the middle of the dance floor listening to the sound system with a big smile on my face, and dancing my ass off! Most DJs don't have that experience, most go straight into the DJ booth. But I was a clubber for a least 10 to 15 years before I was DJing. The only reason that I DJed was that - all the time I was dancing - the DJ wasn't really giving me what I wanted. So I thought, the only way I can do that is to do it myself. So that's what I did, I became a DJ." Carl Cox Photo (c) www.visionseven.co.uk After years of perfecting his craft alongside luminaries such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling, his big break came when he was invited to perform on three decks at a 1988 Sunrise event in Oxford at 10am. "Since that day I haven't looked back," he reflects. His motivation has remained constant, "I just always love the gift of sharing the love of music. If it moves me then hopefully it moves others." Cox describes the early rave scene as a "Woodstock" for his generation, and is delighted to see new generations embracing aspects of dance music culture, decades later. His distinctive smile behind the decks is a sight welcomed by clubbers of all ages, and one gets a sense that he is still genuinely grateful for every moment. This is no mean feat considering his career is one marked by tireless productivity. "It's taken me a long time to get to where I am," he admits. Cox has performed at over 5,000 events the last 30 years, that's over 166 times a year on average, a punishing schedule when one takes into account the travel needed between events. Cox was one of the first DJ/producers to have a chart hit with "I Want You (Forever)" in 1991, and has sold well over 100,000 records as a solo artist. His 1995 mix CD, 'F.A.C.T.,' set a new benchmark for techno, selling over 250,000 copies, while his label Intec has sold over 600,000 copies of their vinyl and digital releases combined. At the time of his last "Global" radio show, his listenership was a phenomenal 17 million people worldwide. With these staggering levels of reach and influence, Cox is, of course, aware of his role as an ambassador for the music he loves. But he speaks with a palpable enthusiasm when talking about supporting the next generation of techno stars. In particular, he name-checks two young artists signed to his label. "We have a lady called Anfisa Letyago and another guy called Vikthor, both making some really amazing music. Most people don't know these artists, but they are the 'now generation' putting out their own new music." Anfisa Letyago's recent Intec release "Catch The Spirit" is indeed a thunderously euphoric techno banger. One can see why Cox is so excited to be supporting this new wave of the music he loves. Cox is also increasingly involved with events as not just a headliner, but also as a curator. His involvement with the massive US dance music festival Ultra started by curating a relatively small "Carl Cox & Friends" tent which would hold around 2,500 people. The festival quickly had to upscale their allocation for his lineup, and today a purpose-built "Carl Cox Megastructure" holds up to 20,000 clubbers for his specially curated experiences. He admits that the music industry is more demanding now than ever, and DJ/producers also need to be able to perform their music live in order to survive. "People really need to see something tangible," he reflects, name-checking Paul Kalkbrenner, Stephan Bodzin and KiNK as exemplars of the art. The name Carl Cox is also synonymous with the clubbing scene of Ibiza. He has been there since its inception and reminisces fondly about the early days. "You always have certain years in life where it was the best. In the '80s none of the clubs had roofs, you danced under the stars, it was phenomenal. When those roofs went on the clubs, everything changed." Cox's 15-year residency at Ibiza venue Space helped to establish it as one of the most important club nights in the world. "Space was always a club which was a catalyst of how people felt about the island, because it was very much for the people who lived on the island, for the workers and also people who came to club. It had that Spanish feel about it. It was always a non-VIP orientated club, it was a dancefloor club for people who really wanted to have a great time." Cox is well placed to comment on the changes in the island's culture and ethos. "Today there is a VIP 'three-tier system' in most places, and DJs are playing more commercially to get more people in the clubs. It's all progression, it's nothing more than that." While he is pragmatic about the changing emphasis of Ibiza clubland, he is singularly unimpressed with new opportunities to buy overpriced sushi from star chefs. He remembers well being able to get beautiful locally-caught and cooked fish for 15 euros, and reflects on the loss of these simpler times on the island with a hint of sadness. "Well, it's disappeared, that whole idea now is gone. When people are flying in on a private jet or arriving in a superyacht, it's kind of taking away the true essence of what made Ibiza great in the first place." As this gradual transformation of Ibiza was underway, Cox made his first visit to the Burning Man festival in 2008. "As soon as I got onto the playa, I was a Burner, I was just into it." Cox found an opportunity for creative expression unlike anything he had experienced before. "I thought, this is something else, a gathering of like-minded people who go there to be creative, to gift in a way of being able to express themselves, from the biggest sculpture to the smallest detail of something meaningful." Now a regular Burning Man DJ, Cox still relishes the creative canvas, which he has chosen to paint purple in homage to one of his musical heroes. "I decided after three years that I wanted to build a camp at Burning Man, and to have The Purple Party in tribute to Prince. Everyone dressed in purple, and I just played Prince records and '80s music." These days, Cox is spending more time with another lifelong passion, motor racing. He started in 2013 by sponsoring the New Zealand-based sidecar team of his friend, Gavin Sokolich. When they zoomed to victory at the first championship that year, Cox recalls thinking "Wow, this is cool. I wonder what else we can do." True to his nature, Cox embraced the opportunity with gusto. He bought a racing bike, another sidecar, and revamped his team over the course to two infamously demanding Isle Of Man TT races. His team, CC Motorsport, finished in the top three of the TT races last year. Cox also sponsors 15-time Isle of Man TT winner Michael Dunlop, seven-time World Champion Tim Reeves and his passenger Mark Wilkes. He is also a partner in the boutique motorcycle restoration company TT Motorcycles, and obviously loves the work they do, bringing classic '80s Honda and Yamaha motorbikes back to pristine condition. After speaking at length about his teammates and colleagues, he mentions almost as an aside, "I also drag race myself. I have a Mark One Ford Capri, which is very very fast, over two thousand horsepower. It runs this quarter mile from seven seconds dead, at over 200 mph a quarter mile." As our conversation returns to his first love, Cox still speaks with the untainted enthusiasm of his teenage self, unselfconsciously "dancing his ass off" in the middle of the dance floor. He mentions forthcoming gigs at Tomorrowland and Space Ibiza On Tour, recent remixes for Matthew Bushwacker and Yothu Yindi, his Dr. Funk "El Rancho" remix, and his remake of "Dark Alleys". Throughout our entire conversation, his gratitude for his place in the world is obvious. "I'm so happy, I feel blessed and honored to be doing what I'm doing. At the end of the day I feel privileged to be able to be in this position, and to give you what you believe you should be getting from me as a DJ, but also as a person, because at the end of the day I'll have a beer with anyone, "I'll have a shot with everyone. I don't see myself any higher than anyone else." " There is some poetic justice in this self-effacing superstar DJ rising to the highest point in the dance music industry, using his position to inspire and support others, while indulging his passion for life in the fast lane and loving every sweet minute of it. By all accounts, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Carl Cox Photo by Dan Reid Carl Cox ‘Dark Alleys’ (Remixes) is out now via Circus Recordings. Carl Cox tour dates: Fri, JUN 14 - Kings Hall at Avant Gardner, Brooklyn, NY Sat, JUN 15 - Brooklyn Mirage, Brooklyn, NY Sun, JUN 16 - Olympic Stadium, Montréal, Canada Wed, JUN 19 - Ushuaa Beach Hotel, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUN 21 - Ciudad del Rock, Monteagudo Del Castillo, Spain Sat, JUN 22 - Marenostrum Fuengirola, Spain Wed, JUN 26 - Glastonbury Festival, Pilton Green, U.K. Thu, JUL 4 - Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia Sat, JUL 6 - Parco Dora, Piemont, Italy Sat, JUL 6 - Kappa Futur Festival, Turin, Italy Thu, JUL 11 - Stadion Poljud, Split, Croatia Fri, JUL 12 - DC10, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUL 19 - De Schorre Recreation Ground, Boom, Belgium Sun, JUL 21 - Poble Espanyol, Barcelona, Spain Fri, JUL 26 - Tomorrowland, Boom, Belgium Tue, JUL 30 - Privilege, Ibiza, Spain AUG 7-12 - Boomtown, Hampshire, U.K. For more live dates visit carlcox.com/tours " readability="191.56632781652"> Carl Cox has provided the soundtrack for some of the best nights out for millions of clubbers and music lovers all over the world. "Coxy," as he is affectionately known, is one of the most famous DJs on the planet. It is not every day one speaks to such an iconic figure, so in advance of our interview, I talked to a couple of experts to hear their thoughts. Author, DJ and techno editor at Mixmag, Marcus Golden Barnes, is glowing in his appraisal. "I love Carl! He has worked tirelessly to transmit his unwavering love for music to millions of people all over the world. He is always buoyant and positive, and clearly revels in his job every single time he plays. Carl is a remarkable character who lives for music, there's no superficial facade, just pure, sincere love and soul." Ministry Of Sound DJ, journalist and Ibiza stalwart Timmy Sheridan is renowned for deflating the pretensions of many a superstar DJ with his withering editorial putdowns, and is not a man to suffer pretenders gladly. His evaluation of Carl Cox is telling. "Everybody loves Carl. He is unique because you get a sense that absolutely everything you see is what you get. He's literally the only survivor of the process of becoming famous I can think of in our scene. He is utterly without guile, couldn't be less of a diva if he tried and most miraculous of all, still has a fully functioning sense of humor. On top of all this, he is an unwavering standard of excellence. He's never sold out, faked it or failed to deliver over something like 35 years. Few can say that, almost none in the UK." Sheridan continues, not without a sense of humor himself, "As a footnote, I should add, I also get the impression that if something broke, Carl would be the first one to know and to try to fix it. Most DJs can't even mix, never mind solder, splice or make a cabinet." Sheridan is probably not wrong, Cox worked in all aspects of the building trade before getting into DJing, he tells me by phone from his home in Australia. "My last job before I was a DJ was a scaffolder, and before that, I was a painter and decorator, and before that I was I was a builder's mate, a plasterer's mate and a chippy." Perhaps as a result of his unpretentious roots, Cox has always been alive to his opportunities with a clarity which might elude those with less varied life experience. "I know what it's like to be on the other side of the coin. I know what it's like to wait in a queue, to save up my money to go to an event, when I couldn't wait to hear the DJ play. I was right in the middle of the dance floor listening to the sound system with a big smile on my face, and dancing my ass off! Most DJs don't have that experience, most go straight into the DJ booth. But I was a clubber for a least 10 to 15 years before I was DJing. The only reason that I DJed was that - all the time I was dancing - the DJ wasn't really giving me what I wanted. So I thought, the only way I can do that is to do it myself. So that's what I did, I became a DJ." After years of perfecting his craft alongside luminaries such as Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling, his big break came when he was invited to perform on three decks at a 1988 Sunrise event in Oxford at 10am. "Since that day I haven't looked back," he reflects. His motivation has remained constant, "I just always love the gift of sharing the love of music. If it moves me then hopefully it moves others." Cox describes the early rave scene as a "Woodstock" for his generation, and is delighted to see new generations embracing aspects of dance music culture, decades later. His distinctive smile behind the decks is a sight welcomed by clubbers of all ages, and one gets a sense that he is still genuinely grateful for every moment. This is no mean feat considering his career is one marked by tireless productivity. "It's taken me a long time to get to where I am," he admits. Cox has performed at over 5,000 events the last 30 years, that's over 166 times a year on average, a punishing schedule when one takes into account the travel needed between events. Cox was one of the first DJ/producers to have a chart hit with "I Want You (Forever)" in 1991, and has sold well over 100,000 records as a solo artist. His 1995 mix CD, 'F.A.C.T.,' set a new benchmark for techno, selling over 250,000 copies, while his label Intec has sold over 600,000 copies of their vinyl and digital releases combined. At the time of his last "Global" radio show, his listenership was a phenomenal 17 million people worldwide. With these staggering levels of reach and influence, Cox is, of course, aware of his role as an ambassador for the music he loves. But he speaks with a palpable enthusiasm when talking about supporting the next generation of techno stars. In particular, he name-checks two young artists signed to his label. "We have a lady called Anfisa Letyago and another guy called Vikthor, both making some really amazing music. Most people don't know these artists, but they are the 'now generation' putting out their own new music." Anfisa Letyago's recent Intec release "Catch The Spirit" is indeed a thunderously euphoric techno banger. One can see why Cox is so excited to be supporting this new wave of the music he loves. Cox is also increasingly involved with events as not just a headliner, but also as a curator. His involvement with the massive US dance music festival Ultra started by curating a relatively small "Carl Cox & Friends" tent which would hold around 2,500 people. The festival quickly had to upscale their allocation for his lineup, and today a purpose-built "Carl Cox Megastructure" holds up to 20,000 clubbers for his specially curated experiences. He admits that the music industry is more demanding now than ever, and DJ/producers also need to be able to perform their music live in order to survive. "People really need to see something tangible," he reflects, name-checking Paul Kalkbrenner, Stephan Bodzin and KiNK as exemplars of the art. The name Carl Cox is also synonymous with the clubbing scene of Ibiza. He has been there since its inception and reminisces fondly about the early days. "You always have certain years in life where it was the best. In the '80s none of the clubs had roofs, you danced under the stars, it was phenomenal. When those roofs went on the clubs, everything changed." Cox's 15-year residency at Ibiza venue Space helped to establish it as one of the most important club nights in the world. "Space was always a club which was a catalyst of how people felt about the island, because it was very much for the people who lived on the island, for the workers and also people who came to club. It had that Spanish feel about it. It was always a non-VIP orientated club, it was a dancefloor club for people who really wanted to have a great time." Cox is well placed to comment on the changes in the island's culture and ethos. "Today there is a VIP 'three-tier system' in most places, and DJs are playing more commercially to get more people in the clubs. It's all progression, it's nothing more than that." While he is pragmatic about the changing emphasis of Ibiza clubland, he is singularly unimpressed with new opportunities to buy overpriced sushi from star chefs. He remembers well being able to get beautiful locally-caught and cooked fish for 15 euros, and reflects on the loss of these simpler times on the island with a hint of sadness. "Well, it's disappeared, that whole idea now is gone. When people are flying in on a private jet or arriving in a superyacht, it's kind of taking away the true essence of what made Ibiza great in the first place." As this gradual transformation of Ibiza was underway, Cox made his first visit to the Burning Man festival in 2008. "As soon as I got onto the playa, I was a Burner, I was just into it." Cox found an opportunity for creative expression unlike anything he had experienced before. "I thought, this is something else, a gathering of like-minded people who go there to be creative, to gift in a way of being able to express themselves, from the biggest sculpture to the smallest detail of something meaningful." Now a regular Burning Man DJ, Cox still relishes the creative canvas, which he has chosen to paint purple in homage to one of his musical heroes. "I decided after three years that I wanted to build a camp at Burning Man, and to have The Purple Party in tribute to Prince. Everyone dressed in purple, and I just played Prince records and '80s music." These days, Cox is spending more time with another lifelong passion, motor racing. He started in 2013 by sponsoring the New Zealand-based sidecar team of his friend, Gavin Sokolich. When they zoomed to victory at the first championship that year, Cox recalls thinking "Wow, this is cool. I wonder what else we can do." True to his nature, Cox embraced the opportunity with gusto. He bought a racing bike, another sidecar, and revamped his team over the course to two infamously demanding Isle Of Man TT races. His team, CC Motorsport, finished in the top three of the TT races last year. Cox also sponsors 15-time Isle of Man TT winner Michael Dunlop, seven-time World Champion Tim Reeves and his passenger Mark Wilkes. He is also a partner in the boutique motorcycle restoration company TT Motorcycles, and obviously loves the work they do, bringing classic '80s Honda and Yamaha motorbikes back to pristine condition. After speaking at length about his teammates and colleagues, he mentions almost as an aside, "I also drag race myself. I have a Mark One Ford Capri, which is very very fast, over two thousand horsepower. It runs this quarter mile from seven seconds dead, at over 200 mph a quarter mile." As our conversation returns to his first love, Cox still speaks with the untainted enthusiasm of his teenage self, unselfconsciously "dancing his ass off" in the middle of the dance floor. He mentions forthcoming gigs at Tomorrowland and Space Ibiza On Tour, recent remixes for Matthew Bushwacker and Yothu Yindi, his Dr. Funk "El Rancho" remix, and his remake of "Dark Alleys". Throughout our entire conversation, his gratitude for his place in the world is obvious. "I'm so happy, I feel blessed and honored to be doing what I'm doing. At the end of the day I feel privileged to be able to be in this position, and to give you what you believe you should be getting from me as a DJ, but also as a person, because at the end of the day I'll have a beer with anyone, "I'll have a shot with everyone. I don't see myself any higher than anyone else." " There is some poetic justice in this self-effacing superstar DJ rising to the highest point in the dance music industry, using his position to inspire and support others, while indulging his passion for life in the fast lane and loving every sweet minute of it. By all accounts, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Carl Cox ‘Dark Alleys’ (Remixes) is out now via Circus Recordings. Carl Cox tour dates: Fri, JUN 14 - Kings Hall at Avant Gardner, Brooklyn, NY Sat, JUN 15 - Brooklyn Mirage, Brooklyn, NY Sun, JUN 16 - Olympic Stadium, Montréal, Canada Wed, JUN 19 - Ushuaa Beach Hotel, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUN 21 - Ciudad del Rock, Monteagudo Del Castillo, Spain Sat, JUN 22 - Marenostrum Fuengirola, Spain Wed, JUN 26 - Glastonbury Festival, Pilton Green, U.K. Thu, JUL 4 - Petrovaradin Fortress, Novi Sad, Serbia Sat, JUL 6 - Parco Dora, Piemont, Italy Sat, JUL 6 - Kappa Futur Festival, Turin, Italy Thu, JUL 11 - Stadion Poljud, Split, Croatia Fri, JUL 12 - DC10, Ibiza, Spain Fri, JUL 19 - De Schorre Recreation Ground, Boom, Belgium Sun, JUL 21 - Poble Espanyol, Barcelona, Spain Fri, JUL 26 - Tomorrowland, Boom, Belgium Tue, JUL 30 - Privilege, Ibiza, Spain AUG 7-12 - Boomtown, Hampshire, U.K. For more live dates visit carlcox.com/tours Read More

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signourneybooks · 5 years

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April was another weird month to be honest. The car was acting up. My body was being weird (but what is new on that account). The weather was going up and down. But reading wise it all went super!

The Numbers

# Read 60 Books Read this month: 15 Total: 51/60

Night Shift by Debi Gliori / 5 stars

Little Witches: Magic in Concord / 3 stars // ARC

The Copper Promise (The Copper Cat 1) by Jen williams / 5 stars // Reread

Career OWLS. Other OWLS.

Slayer (Slayer 1) by Kierstin White / 3 stars // OWLS / Ancient Runes // ARC

Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan / 4 stars // OWLS / Transfiguration // ARC

Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1) by Mark Lawrence / 4,5 stars // OWLS / Defence Against the Dark Arts

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann / 4 stars // OWLS / Charms // ARC

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman / 4 stars // OWLS / History of Magic

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. Edited by Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman / 4 stars // OWLS / Arithmancy

Nyphon Rising (The Riyria Revelations 3) by Michael J. Sullivan / 3,5 stars // OWLS / Herbology

Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries 2) by Martha Wells / 4 stars // OWLS / Potions

A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews / 4 stars // OWLS / Muggle Studies

All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (All Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder vol. 1) / 2,5 stars // OWLS / Astronomy // Graphic Novel

The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us 1) by Emily Skrutskie / 3 stars // OWLS / Care of Magical Creatures

Holiday in Death (In Death 7) by J.D. Robb / 4 stars // OWLS / Divination

I managed to finish all OWLS needed for my career AND I read the 4 extra owls. I am best pleased!

AVERAGE: 3,53

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Fire Breathing Dragon: 12/20 Prompts Completed This Month: Warrior / Uncommon Fantasy Creatures / Pirates

Complete Alien: 6/20 Prompts Completed This Month: Space Creatures / Space Ship

Generic Robot: 7/12 Prompts Completed This Month: Under 500 Pages / Satire

Total: 24/52

Read more about my own reading challenge here.

Level: Elemental Witch (11-15 retellings) Read This Month: 2 Total: 13/15

I’ll show and update with the bingo card every 3 months here.

⌘ So instead of health problems at the start of the month I now had car problems. My car had its yearly check up at the end of February. In March I had to return to fix a shake while driving. And in April I seemed to have problems with my cooling system. It was not fun. I gave me a lot of stress and sadness. I tried very hard not to let it rule me. It got fixed and as we were driving back from my parents at Easter, another light went on. Grr.

⌘ The change of the clock at the end of March messed a bit with Merijn’s sense of bed time and he keeps coming out of bed for 30 minutes. I hope he’ll get used to it again because it being light when he goes to bed is just going to get worse.

⌘ We got some fun bits for our garden to cheer it up.

⌘ We took Merijn to a fairytale theme park more geared towards his age with a very large playground as well. He loved it. He was so tired but he loved it.

⌘ Then a few days later Merijn got the sixth disease/roseola. He broke out in bumps and red splots over night, ended up with a high fever for 24 hours and then his temperature went back to normal. The break out took a few days longer to go away, een more so with some of the warmer days we had. He was better in time for Easter

⌘ For Easter we went to my parents. Which was fine. We had some great weather. Merijn stayed the week with my parents and we went back on King’s Day.

⌘ For some reason I got a bad case of hayfever? And then I woke up the last weekend of April and I had a swollen, stiff and sometimes painful knee. Who even knows what I did…

Reviews

⌘ The Unicorn Anthology. Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weissman // ARC ⌘ The Beauty and the Beast by Gabriella-Suzanna Barbot de Villeneuve ⌘ Slayer (Slayer 1) by Kierstin White // ARC ⌘ Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1) by Mark Lawrence ⌘ Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Top Ten Tuesday Things That Make Me Pick Up a Book / Older Books I Don’t Want You to Forget About! / Ten Rainy Day Reads / Eight Blog Posts I Think Give You the Best Glimpse of Me

Other Posts Dancing out of March 2019 / Best of the Bunch // March 2019 / Dancing Versus – The Passage / Snapping Those Bookish Pictures / Why Do I Seem to Have So Many Reading Goals but Rarely Any Personal Goals? / Buying Full Series Before Reading the First Book: How Has That Been Working Out for Me? / Is Limited Third Person Point of View Still My Favorite? / Book Haul #42 / In Which Spring Arrived with Sequels / With Which Characters Would I Describe Myself?

⌘ The Lost City of Z / Movie / DNF I watched a good portion of this but it was a bit boring and I couldn’t really care about any of the characters.

⌘ The Warrior’s Gate / Movie / DNF I couldn’t do it. This screamed white savior all over it. Also why in hells name would a chinese man give a white teenage boy that works for him a family heirloom?

⌘ Spirited Away / Movie / Rewatch

⌘ Goosebumps / Movie I was excited to see they were showing this here and I liked the humor at the start. Then it kind of dwindled and I think Jack Black was trying a bit too hard to be honest.

⌘ Inspector Lewis / Season 1 / Ep 1-4 / Rewatch / COMPLETED

⌘ Game of Thrones / Season 6 / Ep 1-8 Well I finally started this season now everyone is watching the final season, lol.

In April I participated in Anderwereld’s #aprilmeetthebookworm photo challenge so here you can see the picture I took for that.

You and your shelf / What are you currently reading / Golden Oldie Favorite Reread / How long have you been reading? / First Fantasy Book Favorite Writer / TBR / Reading Spot

Reading Buddy / Favorite Fantasy World / Biggest Book on Your Shelf Special Book to You / Favorite Bookish Item / Most Fun Reading Memory Your Reading Goal / Favorite Bookish Quote / A Genre You Still Want to Try

Favorite Drink / Pleasant Surprise Bookmarks / Your Biggest Treasure Best Meeting in the Bookish World / Your Favorite Book Store

Your Favorite Series / Your Favorite Blog/Site Favorite Reading Snack / Favorite Character April Book Haul / April Wrap Up

Blogs

⌘ Cait from Paper Fury talks about what it is like to write an own voices book. She also shares a collab post with other autistic bloggers/authors about what they would like to see more in books regarding autism. And here was a book shelf tour! ⌘ Fadwa from Word Wonders recommends books based on the twelve zodiac signs. ⌘ Vicky from Vicky Who Reads created a tutorial about DIY sprayed edges. ⌘ Krysta from Pages Unbound asks where the ya books for younger teens are. ⌘ Lindsey from Lindsey Reads shared ten inspirational quotes for introverts.

Dutch Blogs

⌘ I wrote a guest blog in Dutch for Anderwereld about why second-hand books are fun too. ⌘ Emmy from Zon en Maan did another compliments for book bloggers survey and has posted the results with the compliments.

⌘ It is WYRD AND WONDER TIME! I’ve already started on May 1st with some posts for this fantasy themed month and of course so shall be my reading.

⌘ Other than that I don’t really know. I guess I’ll be working on the blog some. And I kind of really need to get on those pictures. But that might be more of a Summer evening task. You know, those nights that you can’t sleep on time anyway because its so hot?

This monthly wrap up will be linked up with the monthly one by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction. This so we can blog hop to each others wrap ups easier.

Dancing out of April 2019 April was another weird month to be honest. The car was acting up. My body was being weird (but what is new on that account).

#Monthly Wrap Up #Personal #reading challenges #Wrap up april 2019

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bluesakurablossom · 7 years

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Life's Gift Of Love: Mikey's Love Story

Name: Skylar Richards Age: 18 Height: 5'7 Hair Color: None Eye Color: Green Skin Color: Pale white Ethnicity: American Personality: Loving, courageous, stubborn, sarcastic, artistic, and gentle hearted As teenage leukemia victim Skylar Richards stared death in the face she could not have imagined that the illness would lead her to love and happiness. For many years her life has been dominated by her desperate struggle against the disease, but in an echo of meeting and saving an orange banded turtle, she had found reason to live again. Can love really overcome a deadly obstacle? Chapter 1 Skylar's Pov... Late in the winter of my eighteenth year, I decided I was severely depressed. Probably because I have one of the most deadliest diseases coursing the blood and bones. Leukemia. I have had this disease for over ten years now and there has been no signs of improvement. I rarely left my small apartment I rented in the middle of Manhattan except to leave to go to work. I often would just sit with the many pets that I own that I saved from critical situations and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to be thinking about death. Whenever you hear or read anything about leukemia, one of the most serve side effects is depression. But the fact is that depression wasn't a side effect, it was clear sign that I was dying. Well pretty much everything else is really. I have been living on my own for three years now since I left my mom. We really drifted apart after my dad had left me when he found out that I had been diagnosed with this disease. I think really she blames me for all of us not being together anymore. Even after I left thinking I would be finally able to get happy again having my own independence, it seemed to not change. Something just felt missing from my life. I went to my local hospital to see my regular doctor and she agreed that I was swimming in a pool of clinical depression and that I need to do something before it gets any worse. The chemotherapy I had been getting was depressing as hell. I had to met there every Thursday in the same room, laying on the same uncomfortable bed, and getting poked and prodded by needles. I was honestly at the point of why do I even bother still come in every week to get this treatment when it doesn't seem to be doing anything to help cure this. I would always get the treatments in the same arm and I feel like I have lost the feeling it in every time a needle get pushed in. I noticed that the nurses that would give me these treatments would tell me every time that I look like I have been improving, but really they are just masking the truth, trying to lift my spirits. When really they should just flat out tell me and not butter me up. Luckily my life did have some good in it. I had a really good paying job at the tattoo parlor near my place. I earned my license to start my own practice by the time I had turned seventeen. To celebrate, I even got my very first tattoo at the place I work at and they hired me just a week later. I was working my way up to take over the shop when my boss Bryan would retire and I was getting rather close. I never knew why I liked tattoos so much. I guess they just show what you really are inside, a true imprint of what makes you, you. I started getting into designing my own art work when I turned thirteen and continued on doing this until I applied for school to get my tattoo license. Even though that my job did give me some happiness and temporary relief from the depressing hell that I so call my life, it really just hurts me that I really have no one to be with or talk to. Sure I have my boss and co workers but they all have their own lives to attend to and family was out of the question. I was at home watching TruTv Top Funniest, trying to get a good laugh going after coming back from chemotherapy at the hospital, but the sound of my vibrating phone interrupted my attention. It was my mom. Me: I refuse to take anymore of this chemotherapy Mom: Do you want to get better or not? We have talked about this many times Skylar, you won't get better if you allow your stubbornness to get in the way Me: What's even the point?! I am not getting better, I am stuck where I have been for nearly over a decade! Mom: Skylar, you are a teenager nearly grown, you are not a little kid anymore. You need to try to find something to get your energy back up and go out and make friends, get out of the house, and live your life Me: Speak for yourself, I barely had a life after dad left me and you and I separating, and you are not the one with a deadly disease coursing through your body! I threw my phone on the couch refusing to answer anymore messages. I really hate that mom and I fight all the time. We were so close, she was my best friend in the whole world. But after dad left us, it seemed like that strong bonding chain just broke, like a pair of chain cutters came along and separated us both. I wanted my family back, this wasn't meant to happen. I was suppose to be getting all the love and support I need in order to cope and navigate through the difficulties of battling a life threatening disease. I wanted to be happy again. There is only one thing in this world that is shittier than someone like me getting cancer so young, is that I am allowing it to consume every bit of chance of happiness. About now I had enough and I had to get out of the house for a little while before I would scream. I got up from the couch passing my sleeping cat on her little bed curled up. She immediately woke up and followed me into my bedroom, jumping on my circular bed. "Hey Kisa you pretty kitty", I said, smiling a little petting her head My fluffy calico cat with yellow eyes purred rubbing her head against my hand. She always could help me bring a little smile to my face. I changed out of my sweats and slipped on a long sleeve pink shirt, putting a short camouflage shirt over it, and slipping into dark blue skinnies. I slipped on my pair of pink vans and I grabbed my short red bandanna tying it around my bald head. The day that when my hair started to fall out it was the saddest day of my life. I would just be taking fists full of my pale blonde hair and let it fall into the trash can. I opted to shave the rest of it off because so much was falling out at one time and it was covering everything. But for some reason I didn't cry when I saw my newly shaved head. To most people baldness is the sign of sickness, and even though I was told I had a beautiful head, I never saw myself that way. It looked like a permeant defeat. I had grabbed my green tote bag that was carrying my oxygen tank inside and I slipped on the breathing tubes up my nose and hang over my ears. I hated wearing these things. It made so vulnerable to the world, but I had to wear it to help with my breathing when it came to the smog that floated up in the air in this place I called home. I adjusted the pressure making high concentrated levels of oxygen fill up my nose. "Love you Kisa, see you later", I said, giving her ear a few scratches gently I grabbed my phone before putting it my pocket and locking my door on the way out. I walked down three flights of stairs before making my way out of the door and out on to the sidewalk. It was turning out to be a casual night, everything seemed to be pretty normal. Or so I thought. When I was walking along a quiet street I was feeling finally relaxed after dealing with the stresses of home, work and therapy. I considered my walks through the neighborhood to be a great therapy for me in order to relieve stress and break free, if only they could help me with leukemia. I heard my phone vibrate again and I checked to see it was mom again. I sighed annoyed as I continued walking reading her long text of why we are not so close anymore and why did I choose to do the things I wanted to do in life. I really didn't want to deal with it as I have already enough of her bickering from earlier. I clicked on the text and I clicked delete as the message went into the trash can. "Why do you think mom? Jesus christ", I said, to myself Right when I was about to walk again, my heart nearly stopped beating when a metal object was thrown in front of my face stabbing into the concrete, just barely an inch from hitting me. I could of literally seen my life flash before my eyes as I almost slipped backwards towards a staircase. "Holy chalupa", I said, panting hard I walked up to the object and I yanked it out of the wall and it was a flying ninja star. I recognized it from doing designs for some of my clients. It was really beautiful, even more than just seeing picture and designs. It was a gleaming silver with six sharp points and in the center was a design I have never seen before. There was a turtle in the middle of outlined in black. "Wow", I said, looking at the object with amazement I then heard screams as I barely had time to turn and duck down as another star came flying towards me barely snagging on my bandanna. "What in the world?!", I said I saw from across the street that there was an intense fight was being taken place. Not like a local street bar fight that would be easily defused by the police, I am talking about like mixed martial arts fighting. There were many men fighting some huge shadow and I tell you what he was kicking ass. One the men went charging towards him and he back flipped kicking him in the jaw, causing him to fall on his knees. Another man went up on his right, wielding a sword in his hand and he tried to strike at the huge shadow. But he was quick to jump back at each strike and he grabbed one of his arms and head butt him right in the face. "Ow, gonna feel that in the morning", I said, to myself I decided to get a closer look on the action and I snuck close enough at the edge of the alley and knelt down to keep a low profile, not wanting to become apart of it. Another man then used a long stick and grabbed a hold of him by choking him from behind. I gasped and I immediately grabbed the first thing I saw in front of me, an empty beer bottle and threw it across the air. "Duck!", I called out Luckily he heard me and duck his head down just in time as the bottle smashed into bits into the man's face. He then swooped his legs out from under him and he fell on his back. Another man then charged at him from the side and pinned him against the brick wall and he kneed him int he gut and ridge hand him on the side of the head, then side kicked him into a dumpster. I then saw one other man get up and pull out a long stick and I could see electricity between the two metal prods. He then struck him in the back, making the huge shadow scream in pain. "Oh god!", I said, to myself Two more came charging in with the same prods shocking him repeatedly. He struggled to reach out and crawl away from the torture devices, but one stomped on his back a few times with such brute force and even then stomping down on his head into the concrete, where I could slightly hear bones cracking. He groaned in pain before it started to silent, going unconscious from the electricity shocking him. Several men grabbed his huge muscular arms and began to drag him away as he limply laid against the ground. I knew this was beyond dangerous, but I wanted to help in some way without getting myself killed or the victim in the process. I then looked down at my tote bag and I unzipped it open seeing my oxygen tank inside and across from me was a metal pipe laying on the ground behind a pile of junk. I quickly reacted and pulled my tank out of my bag unhooking myself from it as I laid it on the ground and I grabbed the pipe and getting in front of the tank. "Hey dingbats!", I called out The figures stopped what they were doing and looked towards me, I then spun the pipe in my hand. "Surfs up!", I said I then whacked the metal pole down on the regulator on my tank smashing it open and the air entering the tank caused so much pressure that it started smoking up and it went flying like a rocket towards them. The tank crashed into one figure and it ricocheted off the brick walls knocking each figure to the ground, like a balloon letting all its air out releasing a cloud of smoke. The air tank smashed one more in the head before it landed on top of his chest, knocking the wind out of him. "Woo!", I said, doing a victory jump I picked up my bag and slinging it over my shoulder as I started making my way over towards the person those figures beating up. He was struggling to his feet and I started to jog over, but I stopped suddenly when I saw the huge size of this person crawl on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet. I was not quite sure I would recognize someone that muscular. His muscles were huge in size, bigger than what I would see on a body builder. His long and slender shadow had covered me completely from the light of the lamp post above. Something was dangling around his neck in two strands, like long hair or dreadlocks or something. He didn't appear to have any hair on top of his head, kind of like me. He looked about my age, maybe a little older. His posture was poor as he stood up from the ground picking up a nunchuck. "Are you okay?", I asked, walking up He suddenly whipped looking me at in my direction, the prettiest blue eyes were looking at me. Even though I couldn't see his face so well I was already intrigued by the beauty of them. When I came closer making sure I didn't injure when I let my tank go flying, he took off running. A mixture of confusion and concern struck me as I started to run after him down the alley. "Wait! Wait! Come back! I won't hurt you!", I called out I then saw him jump against one of the buildings and jump across towards the other beside it, doing a zig zag. I skid to a halt as I reached the end of the alley and I looked up to the rooftop, to see he looked back down at me before taking off disappearing into the night. I then heard a flapping noise coming from behind me and I saw this artwork that looked to be in Japanese in orange and purple spray paint and there was a yellow sticky note right in front of the now dried graffiti. I gently took it off the brick wall and saw there was a message on it. "Thanks, I owe you one-Mikey" "Mikey?", I said, to myself I flipped over the note to see nothing more than just the message and I looked back up to the night sky where I guess now known as Mikey had disappeared to. How could a normal human have such ability to jump that high and disappear that quickly, let alone fight like a professional? I then looked back down at the note and held it with both of my hand and I saw at the bottom of the note there was smiley face winking. "Well then, I guess you owe me one...Mikey", I said

#turtlebaes #tmnt 2016 #tmnt mikey

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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All this time, being laid off, and I don't even know what to do with myself! I haven't had this much time off for nearly two and a half years, not since I took that trip down south. My father, who is sort of my boss down at the factory, stomps around angry that I got laid off, as though it were some kind of tragedy. But being laid off isn't a bad thing for me. I get three hundred dollars a week. I put in for jobs that I know I can't really get each week, and I am living pretty comfortably. It's a relief to not have work, but certain things start creeping up on me. I shall attempt to explain.

For one thing, if I am going to be completely honest, I haven't really dealt with a lot of what's happened to me in the last five years. It nearly broke me trying, and I reached this point where I gave up. Secretly here and there I attempt to deal with my inner turmoil, but for the last year and a half I have been coping in the easiest way I know how. I simply shut off dealing with things that frighten me. I don't let myself have big ideas that I am going to do anything great. When I get bored, I eat, or I sleep. More often than not I work. It isn't to say that my life hasn't had ups and downs. Inevitably, stressful things have come my way, but more often than not they eventually go away when I turn my back on them.

So now I am more overweight than I care to be. I don't feel as good about myself when I look in the mirror. I feel boring in conversation among people my age. I am honestly afraid to listen to music I love generally, because music has this tendency to reach into me and tear things out. Music causes me to do rash things like quit my job, or talk to strangers. I can't afford to be doing that with myself anymore. I avoid any form of catharsis. I bottle everything up inside myself so long that it becomes a festering mold, which in itself dissipates and leaves nothing but a hollow hole eaten out from the previous wound in my chest that I can feel always, but at the same time find myself all too aware that there is nothing on this earth that could ever fill a hole like that. There is no fixing my kind of broken. I don't make art anymore. I avoid reading fiction. I avoid idealizing the notion that I might ever fall in love again. That might be what hurts the most. I embrace emptiness. I almost don't care if a meteor hit me. I think love is selfish and everyone should focus on making the planet we live on a better place. But at the same time, I feel like I have become too old to make a difference even if I did try jumping out of my skin.

I know that if I ever went back to college (not that I could make up for the damage I did myself at this point, what's done is done), I would be too mentally ill to succeed. Honestly, I don't even care what happens to me most of the time. I feel like my good years are behind me and there is no great mystery of my spirit that hasn't withered away and died. It's a dull ache, but I don't generally focus on it. Tonight, as I am writing this is a rare exception. And though these words sound harsh to anyone who might read them, I say them with humble indifference. I am not so dull that I don't know how horrible I sound.

But if you really knew what it was like for me to care so much back when I did. If anyone knew how much of a burden I was when I let myself have ups and downs and to constantly feel compelled to do something great with myself but constantly fail, to feel like laughing and crying at the same time, taking risks, getting my hopes up, and to constantly feel like a failure and be in a constant state of destroying myself and recreating myself. I didn't really stop though. Honestly wondering if I was going to die. Never letting myself slow down. Feeling crazy and anxious. It was exhausting. And how much I had to physically starve just to stay in shape for a world that looks at women like meat, and still not meet the standard. And to feel so alone because there was nobody there when I needed them, and at the same time, to be judged as weak for having such an abundance of emotion, to fight off the people who saw me as someone to be treated like a punching bag, to always be paying attention to how I felt as a person, always looking for love everywhere, leaving myself open despite the risk involved with embracing such a cruel world. To never let myself not be vulnerable. If you could possibly imagine what things were like before, and if you could see how left and right I became disenfranchised, how I ended up getting abused, and how I became my own worst enemy, and how I eventually alienated myself from people who were honestly afraid they were going to have to be the one that had to 'deal with me', then perhaps I am to be forgiven for becoming such hardened robotic thing that I am today.

I just basically described most of my twenties. Before that, between the ages of sixteen when I had to quit school due to mental illness, till the age of twenty one when I finally escaped my troubled family life, I used to eat when I felt depressed, but eventually that didn't work anymore, I began having panic attacks, and at this time in my life, I had also lost hope. I never figured I would have a job or live on my own. I figured I would die in my father's house, tucked away far from the outside world and nobody would ever know I had existed. But for whatever reason I decided that taking a chance out in the real world was worth the struggle, so I lost most of the weight over the course of two years, and I acquired the social skills to at least creep by in the outside world, get a job and such. I kept it up well all things considered till about two years ago. I let myself get carried away with feelings. Feeling ambitious, and afraid, and angry and euphoric, and inspired and to embrace as much of life as I could. It all dragged me down in the end. The world doesn't take kindly to that kind of thing.

And it's funny, I feel like even though I have changed a lot throughout the years, I am still very much able to look in the mirror and see the saddened plain face of the girl who was locked in her father's house at the age of nineteen, having only the smallest glimmer of hope that anything might be different for me, that I would not die alone in the cold house alone. I am glad I got out, but I am looking back at my twenties with serious regret. I don't feel like with all the effort I put into getting out in the world, that anything much came from it. I was a light that burned out and nobody noticed. I never created unspeakably beautiful art. I was never able to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I never found a niche in the world that accepted me for who I was, I never really experienced what it was like to really be in love and to be loved back in equal measure. And I could not fix people or change anyone. I could not reach into people and make them realize their own beauty. And that broke me. I left myself open for abuse. And when the stress of that accumulated, I had that fateful panic attack that ruined college for me forever and I still to this day have not found a way to correct the damage, it was my only chance. And then everyone I knew moved on with their lives no matter how hard I tried to hold them all together. And I was able to let myself be disappointed by the world. I fought it for years and it just hit me. I am still in my twenties, I am twenty-seven. But I will never have my early twenties back again. I know the journey isn't over or anything. But I feel like a part of me is.

That's why I just kind of shut down. I feel like I am a better person when I don't focus on how I feel. I also am able to stay stable this way, not because I have resolved anything in myself, or that I have learned how to live harmoniously letting myself feel everything. I can't afford a therapist, or vacations or yoga classes. But embracing a flat perspective is a poor man's mental wellness and I am damn lucky I am who I am. I know deep down that I still have a lot of the same issues I had before. I just simply choose not to look at those problems. They won't get any better if I do look anyway. I will just get lost again. And when I feel bad I eat something. It levels me out. I don't eat like I did when I was a teenager by any definition. I don't eat dairy obviously. But it happens. And sleep is my best friend these days. I know the battle is not over. But I don't know that I want to dive back into life and fight again.

But I sometimes wonder if this is the end for me, or if something is going to intervene with my simple little life. It would have to be something life changing. It would have to slap me in the face. It could be as simply as hearing a song that affected me deeply. Or it could mean me meeting someone who actually sees into my eyes and gets a glimpse of who I really am and not what I pretend to be. As it is, this is the first time I haven't had a schedule for a very long time, and typing about this stuff at all is a troubling sign that something in me is beginning to stir. I could always put work first since I got on at the factory, even though I hated the work, it was a legitimate structured approach to avoiding any and all difficult emotions. It's nice to have a break, being laid off as I am, but with all this time, lingering doubts about my own stability seem to be creeping back in. The old feelings are edging in slowly. Should I fight this or should I let it. At this point I don't know if it would even matter.

#text

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fourteenacross · 7 years

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2016 in Review

I’ve done these stupid surveys every year for the past ten years and I don’t care if LJ is dead, I’m gonna keep doing them.

The writing one is still in progress because it involves a lot of linking and thoughtful responses. Below are Fandom in 2016 and Life in 2016, mostly for my own records.

Fandom 2016

1. Your main fandom of the year?

Oh god, this has a different answer for the first time in five years, but definitely Hamilton? Up until SM, the only fannish words I wrote this year were Hamilton, most of the shit I reblogged on Tumblr was Hamilton...jesus, it’s like 2004 up in this joint.

2. Your favorite film watched this year? This is really difficult. Um, probably Ghostbusters because it blew me away and was totally unexpected as a favorite. I knew I’d probably like it, but not necessarily six-times-in-theatres level of liking.

Runners up are The Conjuring 2, which would have won without Ghostbusters, and Moana, which I found surprisingly moving and would probably see six more times without getting bored.

3. Your favorite book read this year? I’m gonna say Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older, which is an amazing modern urban fantasy set in Brooklyn about an afro-latina teenager who discovers she’s part of an old spiritual order that can channel spirits into art. IT’S SO GOOD? But I will say that The Diviners by Libba Bray and the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo were neck and neck with it right up until I made my final list for our WBS year-end episode. The best middle grade book I read was George by Alex Gino.

4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year? I honestly am not sure that I listened to any “new” albums outside of The Hamilton Mixtape this year? I spent the start of the year listening to Hamilton and Great Comet non-stop, then listened to every Dar song in order and all of the 69 Love Songs in order for a couple months...but yeah, the only ~*~new~*~ thing I can think of is The Hamilton Mixtape.

5. Your favorite TV show of the year? Prooooobably Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Or maybe the end of Gravity Falls.

6. Your favorite online fandom community of the year? idk. To be honest, I still don’t quite ~*~get~*~ tumblr (tho I had some nice conversations via the chat function, despite my general awkwardness as a human), LJ is dead, and while I connect with fandom friends and talk about fandom on Twitter, I don’t do that as much as I whine about my life. I guess AO3 has been great via comments received, but that also feels one-sided, as chatty cathy as I sometimes get when responding to people’s comments. Most of my fandom conversations this year have PROBABLY been over text?

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year? I’m trying to think if there was anything new I was super into? Maybe Six of Crows, which I talked about a lot and read a couple fics for?

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? X-Men: Apocalypse, for sure. Man, after DoFP, I had SUCH HIGH HOPES for XMA, which was totally my own fault. Every time someone made a comment about how weird something looked or how dumb something sounded I rolled my eyes, because they had done the exact same thing for DoFP, which was AMAZING. But, uh...this time they were all right. The more I thought about the movie, the more it fell apart for me.

9. Your TV boyfriend of the year? Strictly teevee, probably...idk, Luke Cage?

10. Your TV girlfriend of the year? I don’t watch SNL regularly, but can I cheat and say Kate McKinnon?

11. Your biggest squee moment of the year? Seeing Hamilton. Seeing Great Comet. Ghostbusters.

12. The most missed of your old fandoms? I really missed the joy I got from DoFP when I was watching XMA :(

13. The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to? I’m p mono-fannish, so I’m good for now.

14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year? Going to Chicago in May! Heroes! DragonCon! WBS liveshow! Maybe other things! I don’t know, I haven’t planned that much of the year yet!

***

General 2016

What did you do in 2016 that you'd never done before? Voted for a woman for President. Went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Um...probably other stuff too? Gosh, I don’t know, I’m so boring.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

+ Make a writing schedule and stick to it Did not do this. Like, at all. I got maybe a week on schedule over the course of the whole year /o\

+ Go on more dates Yes! I did do this! None of them really went anywhere, but I went on a whole bunch!

+ Get into the cooking habit and stay there Ish? I got better about making lunches for the week, but I wasn’t super consistent with it. Another thing to try in 2017.

+ Read more I did do this! Sort of! I didn’t keep super good track of it and I was mostly trying to read more adult books and I failed MISERABLY at that.

For 2017: + Read more adult books + Keep track of good things that happen + Make a writing schedule and try to stick to it for at least a month + Be better with money--pay off half the credit card + Go on more dates

Did anyone close to you give birth? Joni had a baby! It was so weird! One of us grew a tiny human! He’s ADORABLE.

Did anyone close to you die? My (step)grandfather.

What countries did you visit? Just this one! But within this one I went to...Charlotte, ATL, Orlando, Arkansas...and, you know, the Northeast in general.

What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016? I'd like to feel more on top of things. I'd like more organization in my life. I'd like more sleep. I'd like a girlfriend.

What dates from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? November 8, not for good reasons, unfortunately. May 21 (Hamilton, Hadestown), November 12 (Great Comet), stuff like Heroes and DCon.

What was your biggest achievement of the year? Finishing the goddamn ghosthunters fic, HOW DID THAT EVEN HAPPEN?

What was your biggest failure? idk what my biggest PERSONAL failure was, but I certainly know what my biggest failure as an American was :\

Did you suffer illness or injury? Brain stuff, some colds, and I broke my foot.

What was the best thing you bought? Great Comet tickets, plane tickets to visit various people. My dumb Silhouette machine that I love. Tiny John Laurens and The Washingtonians, both of which are within my sightline. This fuzzy blanket.

Whose behavior merited celebration? My friends. A lot of excellent activists.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? The American people as a whole and everything associated with our clusterfuck election outcome.

Where did most of your money go? Grown-up type stuff (rent, utilities, groceries), cons, and travel.

What did you get really, really, really excited about? HeroesCon, DragonCon, Hamilton, Hadestown, Great Comet, The Conjuring 2, finishing the ghosthunters.

What song will always remind you of 2016? I mean, mostly just The Hamilton Mixtape, probably.

Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? Uh. Up until November I would have said “happier,” but currently I’m definitely sadder and more anxious. b) thinner or fatter? Same. c) richer or poorer? Same.

What do you wish you'd done more of? Writing. Sleeping. Hanging out with people.

What do you wish you'd done less of? Being depressed. Obsessing over stupid shit people said on the internet.

Did you fall in love in 2016? With this fuzzy blanket.

What was your favorite TV program? Brooklyn Nine-Nine!

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Many, many people. THANKS, POLITICS.

What was the best book you read? Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older. See above for more details.

What was your greatest musical discovery? Nothing really new, tbh.

What did you want and get? Cons, brunch, travel, Great Comet tickets.

What did you want and not get? A female President. A girlfriend. More sleep.

What was your favorite film of this year? Spy or Star Wars or Jurassic World, I guess?

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 31! The weekend before, me and @pearlo and @cygnaut and @littledust saw XMA a couple times! And Laura and Erica and I went to the Gardner and then I had a party and people mostly hung out and played Drawful and drank a lot of champagne. On my actual birthday, @ginthusiastic and I just went out for dinner after work and I had a drink that was the same color as my dress.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? A different election outcome. Literally anything. A box turtle could be our president and I’d be happy.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016? Retro-y dresses.

What kept you sane? @ginthusiastic @pearlo @caphairdadbeard @isjustprogress @intrikate88 @anachronistique @lisapizza @charmingpplincardigans @brilligspoons and the rest of the Boston crew whose tumblrs I don’t know/remember, and the DCon crew and The Hamilton Mixtape and theatre and the cast of Hamilton and crime show marathons.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I have a Daveed Diggs problem. And an unfortunate swing crush on Morgan Marcell. And Kate McKinnon was A THING that happened. And Jasmine exists and also Stephanie Beatiz and XMA was a bust, but Sophie Turner was A+.

What political issue stirred you the most? Gee, I wonder.

Who did you miss? Pretty much everyone when they are not right next to me. Sarah Bay, a lot, but I feel weird singling one person out. [This is exactly what I wrote for the last two years, but I'm keeping it because it's still true.]

Who was the best new person you met? I’m trying to think of actualfax new people I met? Boston Maja is the only IRL person who comes to mind immediately? Oh, and I met Ellen at DCon? Online-wise, I met a slew of great folks through Hamilton-related crap and you’re all lovely 💜

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016: I’m still not sure what the lesson from the ‘16 election is. Don’t trust polls? People are more misogynistic than you think? People are more racist than you think? I don’t know. I guess I’m still learning it.

Quote a song that sums up your year: I am the one thing in life I can control

Maybe THAT’S the lesson of 2016. idk, man.

#stuff about me #year in review #2016

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williamsjoan · 5 years

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Virtual reality gaming and the pursuit of “flow state”

Maggie Lane Contributor

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Maggie Lane is a writer and producer of virtual reality experiences and covers the industry for various publications.

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Inside Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VR Interview Experience

Does Ready Player One reveal the future of VR?

You need to stop procrastinating. Maybe it’s time for some…

Whatever your choice, workers today (especially in the tech industry) will do just about anything to be more productive.

But what if getting into flow state could be as easy as playing a video game?

Gameplay in RaveRunner

In essence — flow.

As for me, along with the peppermint tea, grapefruit candle, and music that make my focus possible, I’ll now be adding some Orpheus games into my flow repertoire.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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tube-thoughts-blog · 6 years

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Vol. 13

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

--- "Studs":

*Personality matters little to these early 1990s bimbos on this dating game show

*They want a guy with a "wild side" (code for douchebag)

*One of their potential hunks is wearing dress shirt, tie, and shorts. 90s ensemble

*The women can't decide if the second hunk is a beefcake or a 6 foot tall bowling pin

*The guy in shorts is called a mix between John Wayne and a mime. John Wayne is nothing like a mime. Stoic, maybe. John Wayne would punch out a mime, if ever bothered by one.

*Shorts hunk dissed his date because he saw his hero Bobby Brown in an elevator

*Not much else to say about these bland dates between California girls and Midwest boys

close to 2 stars

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

--- Tori Amos on MTV's Loveline:

*After the bummer of hearing about Tori's abuse hotline, we have a Gen X'er call in tot alk about how his girlfriend accidentally ripped out his penis piercing and he's afraid to go to the doctor

*A guy, with his back to the camera while wearing an airbrush painted t-shirt that reads: "Boo Hoo!", has a problem with his girlfriend not wanting to look at him during oral sex. I can't see his face, but I don't even want to look at him, period.

*A guy, w/ a butt-cut hairstyle and a flannel shirt, is down cause his first love "dogged" him and broke his heart after taking his cherry. Now, he can't score with new chicks.

*Tori calls him a pussy. Not really, but, basically.

*We get a pierced nipples question via 90s internet video live feed

*A guy calls in with a weird obsession about bear feet. Oh, bare feet. Well, that's not too weird. Many weirdos have that.

*Tori thinks he should work at a shoe shop. It didn't work for Al Bundy. He hates women and their feet.

*Talk about how having kids is a cockblock to getting dates

*The set for LoveLine is very 90s with a coffee shop lounge feel and couches along with a big screen that's multiple screens attached together.

*Tori doesn't want her lover thinking about the girls on "Friends" while she's making love to them.

*Tori reminds me of a psycho chick who'd try to sacrifice a dove, for some weird symbolic reason, while she was in the throes of passion.

*A girl had two affairs. One of them with an "indivijiBILL" (what it sounded like she said). Now she don't know who da baby daddy. Call Maury, in a few years, he do dem dna baby daddy tests.

*LoveLine has a cappuccino bar on the set. It's for people who are ashamed of looking at another person when talking about sex. A sort of hipster confession booth.

*One guy is nervous about his girlfriend dressing up like Wonder Woman during sex

2 stars

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

--- TV CARNAGE:

*Great Acting Is Great Acting, Especially With Titties: Do you wanna see my horribly disfigured chest or not?* 2 stars

*How To Commit Social Suicide: "Be expressive and let it rip." Air piano. Not flatulence.* between 2 & 2 1/2 stars

*Microwave Brain: Hasselhoff stresses over poodle poo.* 1 star

*Mighty Fine Man: It's a lust thang.* close to 2 stars

*Shoplifting Is Fun!: Johnny 5's cousin robot is a hood.* close to 2 1/2 stars

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

"Dance Party USA, 1980s NEW WAVE DANCING AND HAIR!" *In the 80s, cool kids did weird things like wear their shoes on their hands.* 2 1/2 stars

Rescue 911 w/ William Shatner: Boy vs. Gasoline Volcano *The re-enactments on Rescue 911 & Unsolved Mysteries are perfect time capsules for thelate 1980s & early 1990s.* 2 1/2 stars

A Haunting: Phantom Room *"Instead of holy water, highly flammable liquid is used, and if it ignites, it's a sign that a spirit is present." Gee, I wonder if it will ignite... A junkie overdose is angry and needs to be evicted from a suburban garage. Destination America is supposed to be a postcard network for American life, I'm thinking. America, where ordinary life happenings can psych a family out so much their lives begin falling apart and they blame the results on the supernatural.* 2 stars

USA Saturday Nightmares: The Dummy (1982) *Ventriloquist dolls are creepy, but it's hard to consider them actually scary. That is unless they're sliding butcher knives underneath the bedroom door. This comes from an era of really good & inventive horror shorts.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Ripley's Believe It Or Not!: episode 2 (1985) *Surgeons remove two toes, from the feet of a Chinese man, fitting them as a makeshift pincer in place of a missing hand. Believe that.* 2 1/2 stars

"Wild Man of Navidad" (2007) *No country for old bigfoot. Some might see the wild man itself as undercooked, but the greasy hicksploitation sticks to the ribs better'n chicken fried steak & gravy.* close to 3 stars

X Files: Roland *From beyond a cryo-frozen genius controls his autistic twin to complete his groundbreaking scientific work.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars

--- Phone Losers:

*Politically Correct Portraits: or "wrong side first" photos.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Bank Customers - Take A Running Jump: "If they told you to jump off a bridge" they being Bank of America and you being British or George Reeves Superman* 1 1/2 stars

*Pauly Shore Screws Up Another Vacation: MTV's The Weasel turns a pleasure cruise into a slave-ship passage for Laura Winslow & the mom from Family Matters.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Radio Shack Prayer Is Evil: For a decade or more it's been against their religion to have any customers and they also have a do not resuscitate order upon going out of business.* 2 1/2 stars

*Yard Sale Competitor: it's a cut throat business using a $5 "as is" weed-whacker.* 3 stars

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

--- USA Cartoon Express, Revisited:

*The Real Ghostbusters - Citizen Ghost: I forgot that the voice of Peter Venkman, on Ghostbusters, is likely the voice of Garfield on his cartoon. Which is funny because the live action characters are voiced by the same guy, too, as we all know.

*Commercial for Crocodile Mile slip n' slide.

*Old foggies stink in an Andy Warhold art style BubbleTape commercial. Those were great.

*In a cyberpunk future tween boys battle it out with a b.b. ammo board game shooter called "Crossfire." I remember plenty of show & tell days where Crossfire was the shit.

*I like the little march the Ghostbusters do during their ticker tape parade

*Kids can't cut loose in the supermarket or the museum, but they can in this Discovery Zone kids play park commercial. Soulless corporate slime-pit, McDonald's has replaced most of these. Now, miserable single moms take their poor brats there and change their dirty diapers on the same tables kids eat their McNuggets on. Fuck society and industry.

*Get a Bart Simpson squeek toy at Burger King

*Rappin' Lego-Maniac ad

*Mouse Trap, from Milton Bradley, where a cartoon alley cat shows up to present kids with one of the most contraption filled board games ever

*An awesome ad where Jesse the body Ventura sells WWF action figures. I wish grown men were still allowed to play with action figures

*Cadillacs & Dinosaurs - Rogue: I forgot about this well animated show with some adult sensibilities that also combines two really cool things. those being the title of the show.

*Cartoon Express where Mr. T. hangs out with the Grape Ape and Pac Man

*"Your gym teacher irons his underwear" adults are weird, chew BubbleTape

*Garfield fruit snacks. You could sell anything with a cartoon spokesman and kids who pitch a fit to their parents in the grocery store if they can't have it, once they see it.

*Shout & Shoot 2 water gun helmet. Voice activated water fights. I'm sure it didn't tear up after the first day. Water and electronics go together so well... I remember when having water fights, in the backyard, seemed so important that toy companies had to keep up with the arms race we kids were racing towards.

*Barney has built a fake time machine from the year 2000 and almost tricks Fred out of his Coco Pebbles. I preferred Fruity.

*One thing missing from watching these cartoons is a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, Lucky Charms, or Cap'n Crunch beside me on the living room floor.

*Marvel's X-Men, for the Sega Genesis, "Welcome to the Next Level."

*If kids ruled the world they'd play b'ball like Michael Jordan, their big brothers would suck up to them, they'd get a billion dollars & have a sports agent, and they'd always eat at McDonalds. "Duh!"

*"In A Minute" USA Network 1989 presents kids trying out tongue twisters like "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear..." I'm unlocking weird memories of things that I had forgotten like this cute little animated station break from USA that's somewhere in the long lost toy chest recess of my sad adult brain.

*Teenage Mutant Turtles - Enter the Rat King: If April O'Neil were real she would try to further her news career by exposing the Turtles to the world.

*Take a chill pill or stick anchioves in your ears, kids, instead of doing drugs. Partnership for a Drug Free America and stick figure drawn kids.

*2XL battery operated, cassette controlled "intelligent" 80s style robot from Tiger toy electronics. He makes Teddy Rupskin look like Neil Degrasse Tyson (whatever his name is)

*A kid with a bald spot and a beard is tired of stuffy adult dining places and demands to be taken to Chuck E. Cheese

*Dance Party USA, the weekday dance party on "America's favorite network, USA."

*The Dark Knight collection. A kid has every Batman gadget a kid could ask for and his own personal Batcave. I would have killed to have my own personal Batcave when I was 8

*"Tetris & batteries included" Gameboy. Cool teens hanging out in shop class, on the basketball court, everwhere playing their handheld Nintendo "Power to go."

*Captain N, The Game Master - Metroid Sweet Metroid: N, The Game Master is a character from Nintendo's past that they'd like to forget and not celebrate. Same with Lou Albano's version of Mario and the more goofy, talking version of Link from cartoons & CDi games.

*King Hippo's nipples, Eggplant's head, and Mother Brain's lips are all very obscene looking.

*Beetlejuice action figures. Those were some of the better, more weird toys.

*Call a 1 800 number to get a 60 minute vhs tape of Bigfoot monster truck action.

*Crest "Sparklemania" obviously is putting drugs in the toothpaste, because kids are freaking out and taking magical trips through the night sky with animated globs of Crest gel.

*'Milk does a body good' ad. You know the one where the kid grows up to be buff because he or she drank milk. I wonder if they show similar ones to young cows. "Yo, I'm a calf and I'm taking govt. provided hormones so that I can grow up to be a great-big dairy cow!" That was sort of a lame joke. Almost Carlos Mencia bad.

*The Cartoon Express travels away off into the distance to Bruce Springsteen's house. No, kidding. They kept mentioning that that's where it was heading.

3 stars for the Saturday Morning cartoons, 3 stars for the retro ads, and 3 stars for USA network's Cartoon Express bumpers

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

The Greatest American Hero: Fire Man *Everyone's favorite marinara, on the show, Michael Pare, gets put put on a hot stove for a bum wrap. The main thing that doesn't hold up, about this episode, is the very dated fire special fx.* close to 3 stars

Gerhard Reinke's America: Arizona *Painted desert highways with a pistol & a singing Billy bass GPS by Gerhard's side.* 2 stars

--- Commander USA's Groovie Movies: Man with the Synthetic Brain

*From beneath a shopping mall in New Jersey, Commander USA. HA! Great location for a hero lair in the 1980s.

*The commander comes out in a trench coat, with his costume underneath. I like it. It's a sleazy way for a hero to dress. He's always smoking a cigar, too. Nice man's man touch.

*He's talking about those hopeful, yet melancholy days after the New Year is rung in. He explains how Auld Lang Syne means 'old long since' in Irish or old English.

*After the commander uses his kazoo to open up the psychotronic movie screen, we get to our flick

*This one stars an old school horror icon, John Carradine, & a Mickey Mouse Club teen from Swiss Family Robinson

*And the groovie movie is photographed in "Chill-O-Rama"

*I know the movie will ultimately be supbar, but I still get good feelings & goose pimple giddy, with nostalgia, watching these old basic cable & UHF B movie features

*A zombie(?) chokes out a hooker(?) & her pusher(?) in an alley. Her death face was so overacted & funny to look at.

*Mickey Mouse Club guy is the detective on the case of the zombie murders. He has gotten worse, actually, as an actor since his days riding ostriches & fighting pirates on tropical islands in Swiss Family Robinson.

*He's also a part of the Danny Bonaduche class of child actors who didn't age well. He looks like he's been through hell. This is the early to mid 70s & his Disney days were just in the 60s, maybe late 50s, I'm thinking. Wow.

*There's a cryptic letter & a head in a box (a killed detective's). I'm guessing this killer is a pre-cursor to the Zodiac & Kevin Spacey in SEVEN.

*"Get your hot roasted peanuts" as a candy striped apron wearing salesman proclaims on an early 20th century hazy memory of beach life on an eastern seaboard boardwalk in a Planters honey roasted peanuts ad.

*The coo coo bird builds a time machine to steal the kids CoCo Puffs. This is the second time machine related cereal theft by cartoon spokesman commercial that I've seen in 24 hrs

*Lee Press On Nails. In 18 colors. Don't nails just make life more difficult? Even if I were a crossdresser, I wouldn't wear nails.

*An 80s mallrat girl thinks her mom was wrong about her big earrings, but mom was right about something (nervous energy) StayFree Maxi Pads for those heavy flow days. Thanks, mom. Now, stop coming in to my room to stare at my Kip Winger poster. He's my man, bitch!

*"Exorcism at Midnight" on USA Saturday Nightmares (looks awesome) & ugly as a man Sandra Bernhardt on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (would still watch it).

*There's nothing to look forward to watching on Saturday night, anymore. Svengoolie, maybe, but he plays the same tame Universal horror & Hammer horror movies that we've all seen way too many times. His act is stale too, but he's likeable, I guess, if you're a babyboom viewer.

*Sophia Loren, her story, on the Nabisco family theater Sunday afternoon on USA. No thanks. I'd leave that to the early birds. I'd still be sleeping off my USA Saturday Nightmares.

*John Carradine is a doctor under suspicion because one patient that he was the coroner over, years earlier & called one of the first casualties of Vietnam, is up & walking around again, out there, killing. It's obvious that Carradine is a mad doctor, because he has a bubbling test tube, for odd unexplained reasons, but the detective hasn't seen enough low grade sci fi & horror to know this is an ominous sign.

*Why did action or fight scenes in the 60s/70s think that karate chops to the neck were believable knock out blows? It'd be more annoying than anything. Painful, sure, but not enough to put a man down. They just look so funny.

*Gloriously unselfaware Twix commercial with a street of kids breaking into a marching band parade over Twix. Much better than the Right Twix vs. Left Twix candy factory ads of today Too self aware like most modern ad companies. It makes the product even more unlikeable

*Square 80s ladies have a roundtable discussion about "So Fine" conditioning mist

*The effects designs, on the movie, are so low budget. The Frankenstein electric chair is made of chords attached to a silver construction worker's helmet.

*Commander USA pokes fun at the mad science hat contraption during his segment.

*Computer graphics medieval dystopia commercial ends with the freedom of the mind that is an exploding volcano & the Scientology best seller ‘Dianetics.’

*Shades wearing Bears QB, McMahon, thinks he's cool, but he's a crybaby when his hoagie doesn't have Miracle Whip mayo. A janitor hears his cries and throws a hail mary of mayo.

*Fergie, Letterman, Tom Cruise, Vanna White, Dr. Seuss, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson wearing a Groucho Marx disguise. They're all the most interesting people of 1986 according to People Magazine. Such a more innocent time. Don't forget Crocodile Dundee, he was fascinating to 80s yuppies as well. Not a joke. He's also on the cover.

*The 80s had this hazy, maudlin, feel good vibe to even Dimetapp & Metamucil ads.

*Just a sleazy undead crook strangling slutty women in seedy hotels kinda Saturday afternoon movie for the kids, you know.

*Cheerios helps a white knight save a princess from a black knight in a musical ad. Uplifting. Cheerios ads are so depressing now & always about a middle age guy's health & cholesterol.

*Nothing says Mexican like white people singing about & eating Mexican Velveeta cheese.

*’Airwolf’ is high tech & kicks butt. this was already a popular rerun show here in the mid 80s.

*An overtanned blonde bimbo shows up from France saying she heard her father speak to her telepathically while she was in a voodoo sleep trance. Her father was John Carradine & he was just murdered by a zombie. She tells this to Mickey Mouse detective while he over-acts.

*Ah, there's another mad scientist who looks like a dimestore Vincent Price. I guess they couldn't get Vincent for the flick. He's the real villain.

*Commander USA noticed the bimbo & the zombie too.

*"It's hard to hide the kid inside." Talkin' 'bout Santa & his love for oreo cookies

*The honey nut Cheerios bee almost gets murdered by cowboy Black Bart. Just wait, Bee, soon with pesticides we'll make ye extinct.

*A kid pulls home a box of Tide detergent, for mom, through a picturesque 80s suburb. More of that 80s is just like the 50s, according to tv & advertising, theme of the 80s.

*70s thought that frantically playing a pipe organ & bongos meant great suspense music. It didn't & doesn't.

*Wacky 80s robots run on ENERGIZER "It Doo Run Run Run"

*This film can't make up its mind if it wants to be a detective tale, a zombie creeper, a serial killer slasher, a mad science flick, a voodoo or telepathy thriller, a heist / crime picture, or a hostages on the road movie.*

*Commander predicts, via crystal ball, that the Red Sox will almost win the 87 world series and that Vanna White will be nominated to the Supreme Court.

*Commander had his hand pal, Lefty, rammed down his tights during the most tense scene of the movie. A snowy chase through the mountains with killer in hot pursuit.

*Carefree panty liners for a fresher zebra striped bikini

*An aged Lorne Greene talks about Ron Reagan's cutbacks to medicare & how they're costing the sick & poor elderly thousands of dollars.

*Timelapse female zombie transformation with horrid makeup, but forgivable during the finale in the mad science lab.

*Her zombie voice is laughable & terrible. Why is she even talking? zombies don't talk, well, trioxin or Return of the Living Dead ones do, but whatever, Braiiiins... She doesn't say that, but I guess she had to act. Vanity, maybe. Idiotic script, more likely.

*We end with zombie lady crying & taking an antidote while zombie henchman dies licking goo off the floor. Mickey Mouse detective was too late to make any kind of difference.

*Commander USA closes things out by teasing Mickey Mouse cop about his poor acting.

close to 2 stars for the movie, close to 2 1/2 stars for the ads, & more than 2 1/2 stars for the commander

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

Look Around You: Sport *Thank you for showing us your balls. Now try to get it in the hole.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Viper: Wheels of Fire *Crooked, corporate Bryan Cranston character. A revolutionary Tesla type battery with a deadly bidding war going on for it. A reclusive Howard Hughes industrialist/inventor. Long lost prototype Batmobile style car colored fire engine red. A creepy Albino hitman.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars

Manimal: Breath of the Dragon *Martial arts began by studying animals. Ancient man popped a National Geographic tape into his VCR to do so.* more than 2 1/2 stars

Robocop the series: Ghosts of War *A ragtag group of Universal Soldiers seek vengeance against an evil general who now works for O.C.P. They include a hobo wolfman, a black G.I. Joe (friend from Murphy's childhood), an Asian Joan of Arc, a Indian computer-wiz who dresses like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs. The show tries to force Punky Brewster into scenes, again. She's annoying & unnecessary.* 2 stars

--- Everything Is Terrible:

*Enhance Your Memory With Murderous Bloodlust: American Psycho Patrick Bateman has a poor poker face.* 3 stars

*Going For It!: Commies skateboard. So, like you want them to be more free than you, brah!? Didn't think so, dude.* close to 2 stars

*So You Moved To Paducah...: Only thing to do here is to visit the Quilters Society of America museum again & again & again.* 3 stars

*Rush Limbaugh Sure Is Funny: Comedy night at Jabba the Hutt's palace.* 1 star

*The Lil' Singing Demon Baby!: The spawn of Lucifer is a little boy version of Shirley Temple. Of course he would arrive on earth in Branson, Missouri.* 3 stars

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

Cannon group presents America 3000 (1986) *The one thing Road Warrior needed was Wonder Years style narration. I think the members of No Ma'am (Al Bundy's woman hating group) saw this movie instead of Mad Max: Fury Road. That's why they were so upset. Much more reverse sexism here.* 3 thousand stars

Rescue 911 w/ William Shatner: Softball Hit *A little girl gets a head injury, has a seizure, then precious seconds tick away in the era before cell phones because I guess there were no payphones on this little league sports field. Youth sports injuries weren't taken as serious in this era either. It was the whole "Walk it off" time period. So maybe that's why 911 wasn't called sooner.* 2 stars

--- Memory Hole:

*Death Of Strength: Guillotine of greatness, in a garage, captured on camcorder.* 1 star

*See The Macaroni: String theory or unsatisfactory service.* 2 stars

*The Ballad Of Tony Jones: "Mommy, what does doomed mean?" It means what happens when you destroy your white trash girlfriend's ceiling after sitting your fat ass in her sex swing.* 3 stars

*Piglet: You reap what you sow (noun).* close to 3 stars

*Just Do It Adult Diaper: Is that a swoosh on your bottom or do you need changing?* close to 2 stars

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

--- MTV's Oddville (1997?)

*MTV had to Gen-x up Beyond Vaudeville, from its public access days, & put a pretty co-host with Frank to take the attention away from his weird, silent (often violent) sidekick.

*Nancy Giles is a nice lady, but not the most interesting guest. She's like PBS news hosts. Respectable, but not entertaining. She thinks talking about how weird the sidekick is & being a fan of Howard Stern will get her over. She does an imitation of a cat choking on a hairball. That's odd enough, I guess.

*Mr. Stanless Steel is a meathead who lifts 600lbs slightly off the ground using only one finger. Impressive, yet also idiotic.

*"Mind over matter," he says as he squeezes an unopen can to smithereens. Mind, remember, not steroids. He rocks about the floor trying to look intimidating & deep.

*Very confusing Levis jeans commercial. It starts off with a cowboy hat wearing Gen X hip dude driving the desert listening to yodeling from Mars Attacks & Slim Whitman. He stops at a local western watering hole where a hipster black dude is a turntables mixing dj. He passes him a stuffed dinosaur before the black dude gets on a greyhound leaving town. Bus stops in the big city, but a new girl gets off holding the dino. A European model looks at her as she walks on. The model is ordering a hotdog from a vendor. What any of that had to do with jeans, other than the close ups of asses, is beyond me.

*Self aware commercial whore Dennis Miller is on a fake talk show ad interviewing the cgi M&Ms. Miller lost all his Hollywood street cred when he started hangin’ out on Fox News. He doesn’t give a shit about being a shitlib so he lost his Hollywood friends.

*Epic cgi ad for the Playstation classic Final Fantasy 7.

*Phil Hartman isn't murdered yet in this college class lecture ad about collect calls.

*The clerk at Footlocker is having a hard time believing that Joe Namath is making an NFL comeback in a nike ad

*It's Virtual Insanity, the music video, when Chris Rock hosts the Video Music Awards

*I think it was the one where Puff Daddy teamed with Sting to make an annoying, overplayed song even worse.

*"The world's fastest painter" comes out & does a Bob Ross quickie while rambling in a Polish accent.

*A black guy in black & yellow stripes, including his Dr. Seuss Hat, comes out to pop & lock dance to Salt & Pepa's "Push It"

*Igia hair removal system ad where the device damages your skin cells, but it's cool 'cause no more chin whiskers for mom

*Technology... multimedia... CD-Rom software games... "You need Art Institute."

*Not Carl Winslow, but close, says "Open a box. Any box." Make it a Blockbuster Night

*"Talk to the hand." quote & hand motion from slumming it actor Timothy Dalton in a movie with Fran Drescher. The days where the general public had to endure her are long gone. Not counting easily avoided reruns of The Nanny

*On an snowy special ops mission (I'm sure those happen often) "Be all that you can be" (including maimed or killed) in the Army (after that, who knows? possibly a homeless vet)

*"What is Mtn. Dew?" from this ad, I take it has something to do with a green drink that makes you scream hysterically while performing idiotic x-treme sports

*A small woman, with a shaved head, comes out doing yoga to industrial techno. Followed by very late & nervous applause.

*A little girl comes out blowing up a balloon using only her nose.

*A generic alternative rock band, like the countless others on MTV at the time, comes out to perform. They don't hold a candle to any of the weird musical acts from the Beyond Vaudeville days.

*Guests are having a dance party. This show is as edgy, or as interesting for that matter, as Snick's "All That" of the same time period. Lame, as Gen-X would say.

*Well, MTV took a quirky public access show & stripped all the life out of it to make it another corporate product.

1 star for the Odd, 1 1/2 stars for most of the ads (thanks to M&M's & Miller), between 1 1/2 & 2 stars for the guests

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

"The Summer of Rave 1989" BBC *In Margaret Thatcher's England, a new era of hippies & yuppies collide.*

3 stars

"Lost Purity" (video mixtape) *Adjust the tracking on your squeam.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars

--- Found Footage Fest:

*Life Is For Living: Safety first or kiss leisure goodbye.* 3 stars

*Michael Finney's Spencer Gifts Speech: Hack comedy & gag novelty.* close to 3 stars

*Silent Partners - Shoplifting: If you see somebody walk into your store, become overly suspicious.* 2 1/2 stars

*VCR Games: Make haste & pray constantly that you don't have a Klingon overlord or be forced to endure Rich Little's awful family fun night comedy.* 3 stars

*Uh-Huh!: Either the Kenny Loggins or the Ray Stevens of polite Christian pop comedy & a fan of wearing tan leotards while juggling foam balls.* 3 stars

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

Rescue 911 w/ Shatner: Accidental Hanging *Darwin Awards & wasting time dialing for help. Or hero boy with a hatchet.*

2 stars

A Haunting: Echoes of the Past *A New England family move into a historic Civil War era home. Soon they are bothered by faeries claiming to live in under a tree in the backyard who also claim to have died in a fire. The family are aided by a team of pretentious Wiccans in sending all the home's spirits to a magical place in the west called the "Summer Lands."* between 2 & 2 1/2 stars

Gerhard Reinke's America: Quebec, Canada *"Beaver fever, catch it." "Be patient." "My God, it's magnificent." (A platypus.)* 3 stars

Kingdom Hospital: Ep. 11 *Doctors without borders & tuned into a different frequency.* 2 1/2 stars

Farscape: Hidden Memory *Espionage & clouded minds in a Nazi style experimentation lab. Followed by a Caesarean--section for a baby battleship. Farewell to a sweet-lipped deus ex machina (sorta deus...)* close to 3 stars

Forever Knight: False Witness *Sleazier than a white lie.* 2 1/2 stars

Penn & Teller - Bullshit!: Ghostbusters *Begin by having come to a conclusion that ghosts exists no matter what you find to prove different, soak the scene with sepia or nightvision, get out the pseudo scientific gear & have it activated with its nonsensical readings of supposed supernatural phenomena, & the bullshit has long since already began.* 3 stars

Jake Byrd on Black Friday *Great deals is gravy.* close to 3 stars

Classic Comedy Central: The Buttafuoco Song *I really really wish I never heard of...* either 1 star for Joey or 3 for Comedy Central

WCW Superstars on Politically Incorrect w/ Bill Maher (1999?) *A lot of aggression taken out in a discussion forum.* either 1 star or close to 2 stars

VH1 Classic Pop Up Video: Alanis Morissette - "You Learn" *The video took 23 hours to film in 10 degree weather. The video is 4 minutes long. Her hair (dreadlocks) took 5 hours to style. A number of jacket changes were used by Alanis in the video. The theme: who knows if any of us get any wiser during the average lifetime.* 2 1/2 stars w/ pop ups 2 stars w/out (I forgot how much I like her voice, pretty face & lyrics & easy to digest, for the most part, music. Mood & opinion on her music are subject to change. I have, in the past, wanted to poke my eyeballs & eardrums out when her "Ironic" video came on MTV for the 1000th time.)

Public Access TV: "Robin's Safe Sex Lesson - Dental Dam Use" *The setting is the height of the AIDS epidemic. Sexually active folk are still confused to the spread of disease & the practice of safe sex. A sex worker, possibly, has her ownlocal city tv show to inform them how to snip an ordinary condom into use for performing oral sex on a female so as to not spread infectious diseases. She almost is a trainwreck but not enough for any legit comedy, only curiosity.* 2 stars (3 for the info for the time)

"Sam Kinison - Family Entertainment Hour" *This might be comedy blasphemy, but Larry the Cable Guy is as popular as Sam Kinison was. Both have a similar rowdiness & offensiveness in the connect with their audience. Larry, however, has neither a spine nor a soul.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars

Literal Videos: Air Supply - Making Love Out of Nothing at All *"I don't want to seem them naked." I don't want to hear their soft rock.* 2 1/2 stars literal or 1 star actual

---- SCTV - Midnight Special:

*An all white (never seen before) scat singing choir conducted by Eugene Levy To see them live in concert, "Phone your nearest Republican." HA!

*Rick Moranis impersonates a cranky David Brinkley editorial.

*David Thomas & Catherine O'Hara are phone commercial lawyers (& possibly married lawyers) not helping an arguing married couple out very much in their disputes.

*Rick Moranis impersonates a radio dj becoming a video vj in this transitional time period between radio music & video music outlets.

*Followed by a Talking Heads video "Once in a Lifetime"

*A very politically incorrect (when you still could be before the p.c. police) & somewhat funny live feed from a Japanese parody vj

*Followed by a cool music video by hip & quirky Japanese band The Plastics. So, that does in a way cancel out the casual racism.

*SCTV starts the tech war between Japan & the U.S. in a funny skit.

*The real enemy, however, is Russian t.v. and Good Day Moscow

*Exploitation a plenty in a fake ad for a late night pajama party t.v. show on SCTV

*John Candy is the Hugh Hefner smoking jacket wearing host of the all girl pajama party Complete with creepy guy climbing in the window using a ladder. ha

*Candy tries to explain the show is empowering to women, but a prudish sexologist hijacks the feed to talk about how it's sexist.

*John Candy is back again, this time as a sportsman in an ammo ad. He sports a beard & hunts ducks. Hmmm... He remains likeable while other bearded duckhunters that I won't mention still remain hateable. Much focus is put on the cleavage of his buxom buddy that he's hunting with. She's female.

*A punk dyke delivery chick brings pizza & starts a catfight which the sexologist reveals is more of Candy's libido problems.

*Thankfully, the "menopausal" femi-nazi is interrupted by a male chauvinist fan of the pajama party.

*It's bedtime & Candy has to toss the old geezer, kicking & screaming, out the window.

*Al's Garage "Anytime At All." He has a naughty pinup calendar & he smokes cigars.

*Feminists have protest signs outside SCTV's studio & chase Candy to his limo

*Poindexter, investigative reporter (played by Eugene Levy) gets up close & a little too personal exploring singles bars.

*Monster Chiller Horror Theater with a howling Count Floyd

*The featured flick is Bloodsucking Monkeys from West Mifland, Pennsylvania

*Wink, wink. There's no movie. But Count promises that it was scary & describes it. It's just as good as Alien, he claims.

*Great White North wants to talk about Nasa's tools & beer, ay.

*SCTV has Hitchcock presents in late night. So, they're like MeTV or AntennaTV on current cable.

*A parody of Kirk Douglas in "Lust for Life" in the SCTV vault classic "Lust for Paint"

*Catherine O'Hara shows off some sexy cleavage & gets offered to be painted nude as she plays a bar beauty of the 19th century. The mom from Home Alone was sexy back in the day.

*Fish Police. An early reality show that's just as absurd as the 90s hit COPS.

*France was filled with great artists in the 19th century & possibly they were all gay according to SCTV

*Harold Raimis cameo as a waiter.

*Rick Moranis sells ridiculous logos.

*John Candy is an angry Babe Ruth in the wrong time period. Candy lost out on the role to Goodman years later. Not really, but really.

*Candy does a decent Hitchcock impersonation as well. Also Curly Howard.

3 stars

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

"Let's Paint TV's Last Cable Access Show" 2008 *A weirdo in a dirty & disheveled business suit runs a treadmill while horribly painting, taking live prank calls, & talking to a Swedish barmaid mixing things up in a blender.* between 1 1/2 & 2 stars

--- TV Carnage:

*I Hate My Kids: Brats are birth control. The only time Fox News will ever be pro choice.* 2 stars

*Lurking Danger: The fish land right in the boat & land you right in the hospital. Tonight, in our Lurking Danger special report. This is CNN.* 2 stars

*Making The Grade: Solve my equation, again, & I'll slit your throat.* 2 1/2 stars

*Phonebooth Funnys!: Coed improv in tight spaces. It's not what you think, you pervert.* either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

*Reaching For The Light: Orgy of the first class.* 2 stars

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

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - K19: Hangar 18 *Having NASA accidentally cause a UFO to crash, in the desert, is "the best thing since sliced computer" only it hurts the UFO denying crooked President's chances for re-election & they'll need a shady coverup.* between 2 1/2 & 3 stars w/ riffing & 2 w/out

"Ten Forward Crank Calls" *"Brain cells are sucked into a blackhole" & four letter words fly into the phone lines for a chubby Star Trek fan's Trekkie talk show.* 1 star

Beavis & Butthead: Sausage - Riddles Are Abound Tonight *"The Seminiferous Tube-loidial Buttnoids have left my pants" or "turds can see in the dark, like bats."* 2 1/2 stars w/ riff 2 w/out

--- Monstervision w/ Joe Bob Briggs: Wes Craven's Deadly Friend (1986):

*Joe Bob says this flick is the Breakfast Club version of Bride of Frankenstein

*Drive-In Totals... 6 dead bodies... 7 gallons blood (some spurting w/ 3 bloody noses)... exploding head.. head disguised as basketball... exploding robot... father charbroiling..gratuitous brain surgery... incest fu...

*Joe Bob wants to get biblical w/ Krisy Swanson but thinks better of it because of Alan Thicke

*You know that you're in for a horror funride when the first on screen creature (robot) attack is against a sleazy redneck

*80s robots were great. This one even sees in Sega CD vision. All pixelated.

*In my opinion, this flick is also like Zapped meets Frankenhooker

*It's a wacky neighborhood when the old bat from Throw Mama from the Train is a shotgun wielding crazy lady living behind a locked fence.

*A robot's first reaction to seeing douchebags on dirtbikes is to vice grip their testicles. Can we unleash robots on Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory?

*The schmaltzy TNT voiceover for drama guy lays the sap on thick for TNT's big network premier for Gilbert Grape.

*Rockapella sing us a Folgers "Best part of wakin' up" mornin' tune. I can't drink the coffee for the vomit in my mouth.

*Snuggles, the fabric softener bear, is taking a stroll through a forest filled with cute animals. Real animals. Snuggles is a nightmare creature created out of industrial chemicals & soulless corporate greed. He's unnatural. An abomination of cuddliness.

*Joe Bob hates cute robots, Star Trek conventions, & Little House on the Prairie.

*The "Stand your ground" law triumphs again & the robot menace is toasted, for now.

*Quirky "life is ugly, you betcha" comedy approaching horror Fargo on TNT is sponsored by SEARS & no irony is seen in that. I don't think, by TNT or SEARS.

*Sprint commercial featuring Fall scenery. This episode of Monstervision is late 90s. The late 90s had a real Autumn vibe to a lot of things. Dawson's Creek, Scream & I Know What You Did Last Summer, Marcy Playground's Sex & Candy, Duncan Sheik, Eagle Eye Cherry, GooGoo Dolls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, "Sunny Came Home," "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone," Jewel, Barenaked Ladies, Halloween H20... All of 'em & many more

*Firefighters prefer Yukon sport utility vehicles & the Energizer Bunny outruns a Hummer filled with a reject A-Team. Absurdity & the beginning of America's obsession with big ass family tanks that would dominate the roads post-2000

*Hope Floats on VHS. Turds float too. & the turd that is Hope Floats on VHS is out there floating around at plenty of 50 something year old women yardsales across the the cowboy states of America

*"Mom's like you choose Jiff" & dad's like Bob Villa choose tools from SEARS. Don't not be how corporate America assumes you to be. Buy these creamy peanut dips & wrenches

*Burt Reynolds must have been buddies w/ Ted Turner. Ted sure had his movies played alot on TBS & TNT. Burt was popular. No doubt. Burt even had alot of generic made for TNT movies in the late 90s. I can understand the demand for Smoky & the Bandit & others, but not the made for TNT shit.

*Jack Palance in a western version of A Christmas Carol. Another made for TNT movie. & Lifetime + Hallmark have made me hate made for tv Christmas movies, but how could you not like the idea of a forgotten Jack Palance Christmas flick?

*The parents from Happy Days are slumming in a collect calls commercial.

*Paul Hogan was still an action comedy hero in the late 90s. Only he was doing it in Subaru ads. This one he's in disguise / drag wearing the mask of a woman. Unintentionally creepy.

*Essence of Emeril... Emeril Live... I'll never get the fascination w/ over the top food chefs & their tv shows.

*Grace Jones in an ad for TBS Superstation's 15 nights of Bond movies. I guess she was easy to get being a D-list celebrity & all after the 80s.

*Paul Reiser is in a bookstore explaining internet for new users / dummies using AT&T Worldnet. At least it's not an ad for America Online.

*Joe Bob says TNT censors won't allow exploding heads by basketball decapitation because idiots in Florida will try it & congress will go crazy.

*Hendrix has only one burning desire. Let him stand next to your Pontiac Sunfire. He doesn't really want to do that. He's dead, like Kristy Swanson, in this Monstervision movie. But in this soulless & artsy Pontiac commercial where yuppies are escaping a cityscape dystopia in their Sunfire, listening to Hendrix, he does.

*NFL moms of big, mean linebackers sure are funny. Thanks, Campbell's chunk soups ads for making me endure the meaty veggie soupy sacky mommy comedy.

*There's a "Bob Fest" in Colorado every year, where all Bobs in the world can attend. Bob Dole will be there. Bring your Pentax film camera.

*"Relax, Go Nuts" with Planters & a wacky beaver on a camping trip. I hope some idiot saw this & lost a finger or two trying to feed a Planters peanut to a beaver or a badger.

*"Rowdy" Roddy Piper is on the set of Burt's old guy cop action made for TNT tv movie. He's talking about the need for aspirin on the set, for the old guys, in this sneak peek.

*Joe Bob wants to know why Kristy Swanson is looking more supermodel than zombie

*The shoot first ask questions later cops put an end to cyborg/undead Kristy Swanson's reign of terror.

2 1/2 stars for the confused flick close to 3 for Joe Bob & between 1 1/2 & 2 for TNT & their ads

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

Classic Comedy Central: Penn Jillette promotes Earth Girls Are Easy *He makes it seem like it wouldn't be a waste of an afternoon.* close to 3 stars

Fred Olen Ray's "Cyclone" 1987 *Everyone's favorite genre movie mad scientist, Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), was working on a super-motorcycle more high tech than an F-16 jet. When he's assassinated, on a punk rock dance floor, via a tech conspiracy, his 80s blonde bombshell girlfriend has to take over safeguarding the project from falling into the wrong hands. The whole thing drips with so much 80s goodness, one would swear it was a modern day homage.* close to 3 stars

Flaccid Ego Psychic Reading Call In Show *"This is not a bodega, honey." There's a correlation between how far someone's head is tilted back as they're talking & the amount of shit that they give. The further back, the less shit given.* either zero or 2 1/2 stars (for a second)

"Amok Assault Video" *"An open keyhole policy" to mass hypnosis & mass halitosis.* close to 3 stars

Rescue 911 w/ Shatner: Brave Dog vs. Rattlesnake *The dog, Lady, was a terrible actress during the re-enactments. She did well during the fight with the snake, but she broke character & smiled too much during the vet E.R. part .She needs to take acting lessons from Shatner.*

2 stars

Penn & Teller Bullshit!: Self Helpless *There's a sucker "re-born" every minute.* 3 stars

Jake Byrd Goes Tea Bagging *"We're a little Tea Party, short & stout, when we get all steamed up hear us shout 'No more taxes, get the immigrant out!'"* 2 1/2 stars

--- Phone Losers:

*Tenants From Hell - Striking Oil: Crude & deluded.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Carlito the Perverted Janitor - Bank Customers: Good loan agents love to kiss & tell.* 2 1/2 stars

*Home Security - Hidden Cameras: I don't want home security watching over me while I pee.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Homeowners Association - Naked People: Old, black couples don't have sex. Yeah, right.* 2 1/2 stars

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

Goth Public Access Channel (youtube) *"It's no fun being dead. Enough has been said." So why the morbid fixation?*

1 star

--- USA Up All Night w/ Rhonda Shear: Jason Takes Manhattan & Fortress of Amerikkka

*Rhonda is in an S&M shop with a gimp.

*Louis Gossett Jr. is an Olympic coach in a USA original movie. He's not the first actor that I would think of for a role like that. But maybe he's the most badass.

*Painful rectal burning? Admit you have it & get Preparation H. Doctors' orders.

*Trading erotic voicemails with "Girls of Paradise" seems like a one way street. A horny moron calls in a 1 800 number to nervously drool over his love for T & A, the voice model makes only one recording for any & every guy who calls in.

*Go back in time to when you weren't old & too feeble to open the mayo jar. If you believe that & buy our pain relieving cream, we also have ocean front property in [insert cliche dry state here]

*Couch fishin for loose change to buy extra Pop Tarts. Not me, the guy in the Kellogg's ad

*Pacific Blue, USA networks lame bicycle beach cops show from the late 90s. They recognize how boring being a beach cop must be, so they spice it up with a special west coast loco gangbangers episode.

*Big Easy. A sleazy, but probably all too tame show about New Orleans on USA network. Can't think of original programming? Exploit a city's reputation.

*Rhonda has an oversized spiked dog collar put on a poindexter

*Win a Nintendo 64 block party (sounds like it could have been fun) via Kellogg's & Kmart

*A kid in a "No Fear" t-shirt visits his square dad's Rent-A-Center style store in an ad

*Don't talk to your kids about the dangers of sniffing to get high, & wind up feeding soup to your newly vegetable loved one. I always preferred that trippy drowning anti-sniffing ad from the same time period.

*"Had a hard day?" "Talk to some of the most exotic women in the world." the world = Tampa, Florida. Some of the most exotic = ordinary skanks.

*What does chomping into a Nestle's Crunch sound like? This ad swears it sounds like a pink Cadillac convertible, filled with lightbulbs, falling off of a tall building. I think Elvis just cried. Not sure which he cried for: the pink Cadillac or the candy bar.

*Private eye James Belushi is following around split personality Linda Blair who hired him to follow herself around. Looks sleazy & potentially good.

*Rhonda dons kinky boots, leather, & a gay man's biker's hat in a black & white moving photo hanging on the wall. Sounded like maybe Velvet Underground was playing in the background as well.

*It's okay to be like your mom. You're closer to 40 than 20 & it has a sickly brown colored candy coating. Oh, what am I talking about, you ask, it's Advil.

*If you ever see a whitebread goodlooking man or woman sitting on a New England beach or pier during a windy day, do not approach. They may look harmless, but they're usually filming an embarrassing human condition commercial.

*Diamond studded sex handcuffs. Nice. But why is Rhonda being so camera shy? Was she burntout with the show by this point, five or six years into its run.

*Bill Cosby's former tv wife, the one that he doesn't cheat on by serving PM cold medicine to ugly white women, is in an argument with her much better looking & non-raping actual husband about Pop-Secret popcorn.

*Cable in the classroom provides a parent's guide to the information superhighway that is cable tv

*"Someone out there knows what I'm going through." somewhere out there in psychic phone network mystery world that is

*Bonkers for Babies! & Animal Bloopers on Zoo Life Video. Jack Hanna (the animal guy from Carson, Leno, Letterman) believes that "Animals Do Feel Love." They also have a funny bone, and it's used for more than just Chinese medicine.

*Zipper crotches on leather lingerie wearing limbless & headless mannequins & more Rhonda voice-over work

*Archie Bunker's real life son died from drugs. Maybe he should have spent more time with him instead of arguing with Meathead.

*Rhonda finally makes an on camera appearance with poindexter in the adult video section of the sex shoppe

*"Virtual reality bites" have a Butterfinger Blast. Blood sugar induced hallucinations?

* 1 800 number for a TimeLife coffee table book on "how To fix" home remodeling & repairs. For only 3 easy payments of 9.99. Pretty steep if you think in 20tens terms & how easy it is to just go online & find the same info, but this is 1996 or 7, here, in the ad.

*Going back in time from 97 to 92, Rhonda is at the WBF World Fitness Expo doing a bit of cute jogging in place.

*Rhonda sings the theme song from Fortress of Amerikkka.

*Rhonda tells fat jokes about Roseanne. Roseanne probably hated Rhonda. Tom Arnold probably loved her.

*Rhonda flirts with a WBF bodybuilder / foreign accent guy whose thighs are bigger than Rhonda's waist

*Rhonda gets the bodybuilding champ to take off his shirt. He probably was having a panic attack just by wearing it anyway. Meatheads & shirts don't get along.

*Rhonda's hormones are out of whack here & the bodybuilders' steroid use as well.

*An Amazon chick shows up to tell how this fitness expo ain't no beauty pageant

*A mullet-haired meathead talks about bringing rock & roll fire into his bodybuilding expo routine. Thankfully, rock & roll died a long time before this. It's just corpse abuse.

*Rhonda tries to find out how much moolah an 80s-RickJames-pimp-looking black Hercules has won from the competition. He pulls out a check from his fanny pack. Fanny packs are very manly.

*World's Strongest Samoan pauses from picking up sedans to lift Rhonda up into the air by her butt

*Troma presents Fortress of Amerikkka!: In the cruel absurdity of Amerikkka, human life is worthless.

2 stars for the sex shoppe, 2 stars for the ads, 1 star for the body building expo, 2 1/2 stars for Rhonda, either 1 or close to 2 1/2 stars for Jason 8 (for the countless time on basic cable & mostly bloodless), & more than 2 1/2 stars for Amerikkka!

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

Troma presents "Lust For Freedom" *Troma tries their hand at the exploitation genre staple of women in a private prison hell. Highlights include a big mean looking Indian with a scarred face that drives around a black van across the desert & kidnaps women for the prison. He's like something out of a Jim Morrison song & he looks like the creepy brother of Bob from Twin Peaks. Another trashy fun part of the movie involves prison lady badasses in wrestling matches to the death. Plus there's an 80s hard rock soundtrack including the song "Rock You To Hell."* 3 stars

Beavis & Butthead: Sugartooth - Sold My Fortune *The boys mistake the word fortune for futon, and ponder why selling a futon would cause so many fights at the Sugartooth concert. Also, Beavis is intimidated by Urkel's size.* close to 3 stars with riffing 2 w/out

Kung Fu: Sun & Cloud Shadow *The path of peace is blocked by a mountain.* close to 3 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn: Place Of Dead Roads *The last stop before hell is a cafe, belonging to a cartel, serving plenty of coochie.* 2 1/2 stars

Public Access TV Gold - Don't You Want To Save Our Planet? *Fast Times Sean Penn look-a-like is for real about his love for his fellow parasite man. Vocal solo.* 3 stars

--- Dead Comics Society --- Commercial Breaks (1991):

*McHale's Navy every weeknight at 5 on the Comedy Channel. In color too. Antenna tv or MeTV shows this too, but in black & white.

*An ad for Billy Crystal's City Slickers. One of comedy's own was a blockbuster star still at this point.

*Coast bar soap ad where a "Thinking Man" bronze statue takes a refreshing bath in the rain.

*As seen on tv "No More Runs" panty hose w/ smart nylon. Run a nail file or a chainsaw right down the leg. Do not attempt while wearing, ladies

*Plenty of Stand Up comedy back in the day on comedy channels. Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Poundstone, Howie Mandel, Carlin, pretty much all of the recognizable faces. And not just a weekend special like Comedy Central, these days. Stand up comedy was pretty much the face of the network.

*Jack Benny is creeped out by a kid wearing an ole timey clown mask. He's speechless, or once. Another show too old for current Comedy Central. One day Southpark will be on a TVLand type network & kids will get a weird feeling seeing how antique it looks. Much like seeing this clip of Jack Benny would make Comedy Central's current audience feel.

*KC Bold is like fireworks in one's mouth. It's important to always see the inventor of the baked beans or the bbq sauce or the George Foreman grill to know that the product / meal will be satisfactory. Did George actually invent that sidways waffle iron & grease trough?

*Devry with their 9 locations, in 1991, will teach you the tech knowledge that you need to succeed. Having a neatly trimmed little mustache is up to you.

*Ah, hah hah! The classic & unintentionally funny Suzanne Summers "Thigh Master" ad. She is so smiley while squeezing her crotch muscles. & just like the "Shake Weight," seeing a guy use it is just as amusingly awkward.

*Two Drink Minimum. A self aware title for another all stand up comedy show on the network. This one only has B to C list comics like 'The Amazing Jonathan"

*Alan King's "Inside the Comedy Mind" w/ such guests as the eccentric Steven Wright. We're too post-modern for something like this now. Inside the comedy mind? How lame, turn it on Louis CK's FX show or bring up a FunnyOrDie video. Alan King's "Inside the Comedy Mind" is no Zack Galifianakis' "Between Two Ferns." #hastag #hipster

*A middle America housewife is tired of having tried every diet from the "celebrity" to the "grapefruit." Her doctor finally puts her on some Medifast diet (we know it worked because obesity was cured & Medifast is currently the largest corporate brand of all time). She makes up for the weight loss by wearing oversized glasses & a lady business suit with shoulderpads larger than a NFL linebacker's.

*One of those classic scrolling certificate degrees from home ads. Learn everything from "gun repair" (only in America) or vcr repair (hopefully whoever took that is retired by now & not jobless).

*Short Attention Span Theater hosted by a very young Jon Stewart. This was before talking to cabinet secretaries & skewering political mishaps, for close to two decades, sucked all the life out of him.

*The very vintage Steve Allen Show weekdays on the Comedy Channel. Another show that deserves to still be on a classic channel somewhere. This clip had one of the first tv appearances of Elvis. How many viewers of current culture even care about or know whoElvis is, much less Steve Allen? Very few.

more than 2 1/2 stars

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

"V The Hot One" ---xxx--- (1977) *An example of how the fantasy in pornography is so different from reality: Valerie "V" asks her husband if he's ever been with a whore. (she's curious about whores) He says that he was with many when he was younger. (He then tells a digusting experience.) She's even more curious. (In reality the woman would be furious or detested with him.) Here, Valerie has spent a lifetime giving in to her whorish impulses.* 2 1/2(maybe classic)

"Tickle the Ivories w/ Janis Wolfe (Bad Public Access Show) *A very plain (& refreshingly un-self-aware) woman plays piano & reads psalms.* 1 star

"Topless Anti-Fashion" (DDTV San Francisco Public Access 1995) *A Lil' Kim look-a-like exposes painted nipples in what seems like a real life version of something Damon Wayans would parody on In Living Color.* 2 stars

Jake Byrd: Sara Palin Superfan (2008) *Bend over & grab your Arab ankles (Hussein Obama) or love Alaskan beaver (Palin Power).* 3 stars

Mr. Plinkett's Cop Dog Review *Put a dog on the cover of the dvd & dumb parents will rent it for their kids. Even though the dog commits suicide halfway in & becomes a ghost dog.* 0 for Cop Dog & 3 for Plinkett

"Best of The New Tom Green Show" (2003) *Short lived talk show that captured the same kind of crappy hip young adult audience NBC's Jimmy Fallon would a decade later. Also another attempt by MTV to tame & market a cult & avant garde artist (idiot?) to the American public (about as successful as his first MTV show in 1999 & his box office bomb of a movie "Freddy Got Fingered" 2001?).* 2 stars

Robin Williams - Improv with The Second City *Robin could improve any "hellhole."* close to 2 1/2 (would be more if it were recorded professionally instead of by an audience member, in the back row, with a cheap camcorder)

"Satarded Satanic Panic" (youtube) *Before she became a high priestess in the corporate church of the global economy, Oprah bought in to the goofy fearmongering going on in the Reagan years. Either a nutbag or a decoy evangelical pretending to be a reformed participant in a unbelievably ridiculous occult sacrifice story has Oprah taking his side over the more logical minded, yet still pretentious within his constitutional religious rights, devil-worshipper.* 1 star

Penn & Teller Bullshit!: Alien Abductions & End of the World *These crazies are actual doctors & best selling authors. Meanwhile, I'm not prepping for doomsday & I have no repressed memories of being probed. On top of that, I'm flat broke & live off of a diet of mostly beans while hardly leaving my house. I'm not paranoid, just lazy & unmotivated. I'd rather not survive an apocalypse or fly away w/ little green men.* 3 stars

Weird Al Yankovic: Headline News *Tru Al TV presents World's Dumbest Musical (Criminals).* close to 3 stars

Uncharted Zone: Ken Manning - Gulf Breeze UFO *Lookin' for a lost shaker of Martian salt.* between 2 & 2 1/2 stars

5 Dollar Wrestling: Next 5 Dollar Wrestling Superstar, Jimmy the Snake Roberts *DDT stands for "drop dead twice."* close to 3 stars

Vh1 Classic Pop Up Video: Latoya Jackson - Heart Don't Lie *The black sheep of the Jacksons in a video all about puppy love.* close to 2 stars w/ pop ups & 1/2 a star w/out

"Pauly's Totally Buff Special" *MTV's "The Weasel" Pauly Shore butchers the English/Spanish/human language drooling the international language of love (lust) over California bimbos.* either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars (for an idiot time capsule)

"Alien Lust" ---xxx--- 1985 *"A story of bizarro desires!" Nothing too out of this world, except for maybe the corny cartoon alien penis monster sex scene finale.* close to 2 stars or mostly 1/2 a star

X Files: The Erlenmeyer Flask *The hybrids fall from Olympus. The finale of the "Deep Throat" story arc.*

3 stars

Tales from the Crypt: Collection Completed *Grumpy bulldog M. Emmett Walsh begins his retirement by outcrazying his animal hoarding, eccentric wife when he uses taxidermy on all her beloved pets.* 3 stars

Harvey Keitel in "Corrupt" *"The public seek the police in order to be punished for their illicit desires." Johnny Rotten & Harvey make a cerebral odd couple.* close to 3 stars

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revmolly · 7 years

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Resist/Dance ~ An Easter Sermon

My first Easter sermon at First Church Berkeley! It included compulsory group dancing. And I still didn’t get tomatoes thrown at me!

Rev. Molly Baskette ~ First Church Berkeley UCC “ResistDance” ~ John 20:1-18 Sunday, April 16, 2017 ~ Easter Sunday

I know a lot of people named Jesus.

There is, obviously, the person who brings us together today: the radical, brown, refugee, outsider, preacher, prophet, child of God who could not stay dead no matter what they did to him.

But I know others. There is Jesus, our cheerful and capable janitor here at Beth El. And I just met another Jesus, the undocumented man I met at the sherriff’s office on Thursday, when Rev. Rachel and I went to advocate for the rights and dignity of our immigrant neighbors. Jesus is everywhere, if you have eyes to see.

When I graduated from seminary, my husband Peter and I moved to Mexico for a year, to work at an orphanage, the Casa San Jose. As problematic as we now know orphanages to be for child development, the Casa was a pretty happy place, all in all. I’m Facebook friends with many of the kids we tended back then. They are young adults now with families of their own, some of them in LA, with or without documents, making a life. And they unfailingly talk about the joy of that time in their childhood--how much fun they had, how they took care of one another, how in spite of the trauma and burdens they bore, they felt safe and loved.

When we lived there, there were 141 kids on site. And three of them were named Jesus. Clearly, we had a problem. How to differentiate between all the Jesuses? The eldest, a handsome teenager, got to be, simply, Jesus. The next youngest became Chuy, an affectionate nickname for Jesus in Mexican culture. And the youngest of all was 4-year-old Chuyito, little tiny Jesus. Chuyito was a dead ringer, I imagine, for the original model, childhood edition: curly brown hair, winsome brown eyes. He barely ever said a word, and always hung his head to the side, in curiosity or skepticism, as if anticipating the day when he would be debating the Pharisees.

Chuyito loved to crawl into my lap and stay there for hours, and I loved him there, because we were both pretty homesick and lonely, and when life is hard you need a soft place.

My favorite memory of Chuyito is not from that year, but a couple years later. When Peter and I left the Casa to go home to the US, we discovered we were homesick for Mexico, and so we’d travel back with a group from whatever church we were inhabiting, and give them a chance to fall in love with the kids the way we had. On our first trip back, our group brought a backpack for each of the hundred-plus kids, stuffed to the brim with clothes, art supplies and toys, and handed them out on our last night together. The boys, including Chuyito, put their backpackson immediately and refused to take them off. Then we strung Christmas lights, rented a DJ and a speaker, and had a giant dance party on the patio. Bankers and little boys do si doed and swung one another wildly to salsa music and Madonna alike. Chuyito, now a full-on boisterous 7-year-old, danced like a maniac for hours with his backpack on, until his movements finally slowed, until he fell asleep, face down on the tile. With his backpack on. Even Jesus needs to rest.

I have a friend, a UCC minister, who suffers from pretty debilitating depression. You’d never know it. She seems happy enough, and is one of the funniest people I know. But her depression has almost ended her marriage; it has hobbled her parenting; it caused her more than once to reconsider her career as a person who has to be hopeful as a profession.

My friend told me something once I’ll never forget. There are times when medication doesn’t do its job, when prayers fail her, when nothing is working to shift the great gray elephant of depression that sits on her soul. And this is what she does in those moments: she changes one thing. Just one thing. “If I’m lying down, I get up. If I’m standing up, I sit down. If I’m inside, I go outside. If I’m outside, I go inside. If I’m alone, I get with people, if I’m with people, I get alone. If I can change one thing, then I can change more things. If I can change more things, then perhaps I can change everything--or, God working in me can, anyhow.” All she has to do is make one little movement.

I myself have never suffered from a lasting or truly devastating depression. To be perfectly annoying about it, being happy has always come pretty easily to me. But this year has tested me severely. Some mornings, including this week, the news has flattened me to the bed, immobilized me as surely as a deep depression. Pick your poison: Syrian children sarin gassed, America making mushroom clouds in Afghanistan, North Korea testing ICBMs, flying coach while Asian on United. Health care under threat, public schools under threat, the rights and lives of immigrants and refugees, black folks, Muslims, queer and trans under threat. We don’t know who will live and who will die before this bitter cup has passed from us. All this against a backdrop of winter rain, such needed rain but a rain that now feels like it will never end, a perma-rain that chills the soul as well as the body, a new and possibly forever climate-chaos abnormal.

I’m trying to remember that this is an Easter sermon.

If I often feel despair these days, I who have every advantage, how must it be for those who don’t share my privileges? Those who face actual and immediate threats to their lives? The undocumented, the brown-skinned, the broke? I have my whiteness to shield me from ICE and the cops, my paycheck to shield me from poverty. I even have a faith to shield me from sorrow if I choose it, to hide in a La La Land of Easter joy where everything turns out all right in the end.

And yet I have met so many people, who no matter how systems and circumstances might conspire to kill them, have mastered the art of defiant joy. I guess that’s what you do when people want you dead--staying alive is your only countermove.

And Jesus, himself broke and brown and unhoused, is the best example of living big and beautifully in the face of violence and death. I’m always amazed by his capacity for resurrection. Jesus made a decision. He could have stayed dead. He’d discharged his duty to the human family. He taught us everything he knew, offered us an entirely new way of being human, he loved us hard in spite of our frailties, and in return we rejected, abandoned and crucified him. Who would sign up for more life in the face of that?

I confess that sometimes it just seems like a whole lot less WORK being dead. If you’ve had a near death experience, or even surgery under general anesthesia, you know what I’m talking about. There is something truly compelling and even seductive about the idea of slipping away, into a place beyond pain, beyond suffering. A place of eternal rest that no fear or sarin gas can touch.

Jesus lived through the worst we could do to him; he reached that moment of peaceful surrender, and he made a decision to come back.

And he didn’t do it by half-measures, either. He didn’t shamble out of the grave, explaining himself. He didn’t try to stay under the radar to avoid the authorities. He came back in a BIG way. We cut him down but he leapt up high. He made resurrection into a Broadway show tune, complete with the choreography of hapless disciples running all over the stage.

The early church fathers came up with a word to describe the Trinity: perichoresis, literally, circle dance. They understood God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit as movement, constant flow from the beginning of Creation. And being dead did not exempt Jesus from his place in the dance.

Did you know that some researchers at Oxford did a study? They taught a group of volunteers, each in private, the same dance moves. Then they taught another group, individually, all different dance moves. They noted everyone’s pain tolerance levels by putting extra-squeezy blood pressure cuffs on them. [who comes up with these studies? I have no idea] Then they set them all free in the same room, on a dance floor, with headphones on.

The ones who had learned the same dance began to sync their movements. The ones who knew different moves, or heard different music, each did their own thing. And when the experiment was over, they measured each one’s pain tolerance again. The ones who had moved in sync were able to stand significantly more pain than before. But the ones who heard different songs, or were taught different dance moves to the same music, experienced either no change in pain perception, or actually felt more pain than they had at the start. Perichoresis, dancing in sync, had legitimately made the synched dancers able to bear more pain.

Of course, they didn’t control for people who find any kind of dancing in public painful. :)

Dance is the body’s jazz hands for the soul. Dance is God on the move. We dance our babies around the kitchen. Practice the moves to Thriller in our bedroom for hours. Dance is the mosh pit, the all night rave, Asian grandmas at Zumba class--all of them just as much church as where we are right now. Dance is the 7-year-old Mexican orphan tearing it up on a tile patio; a 3 year old in the aisles at church who will not be stopped but just HAS to dance to every hymn. Dance is Ghost Ship, the young ones gathering before the fire that night, ready to worship at the altar of joy, and now dancing at home with God; and dance is this community, today on Easter, rising from our own ashes.

Dance is resurrection: the mom in chemo doing a three minute dance party around the living room in defiance of her white blood cell count. Dance is a flash mob practicing for the Climate March, to show how the Earth will rise up against us if we don’t rise up for Her.

Dance is what we do when we have too many feelings and not enough words. Dance don’t cost a thing--it belongs to everybody without regard for ability to pay. To dance is to let God move through us, reanimate us no matter what grim reapers are haunting us, the perichoresis that began before everything, the music still playing, healing us, body and soul.

Dance is THIS GUY. To dance is to laugh in the face of death, and all its minions. They have not won--whoever “they” are--if we can still dance.

Every day, someone, somewhere, faces the powers of death. But then they change one thing. They make one little move. They put down the bottle. They call the therapist, the DV hotline, the immigration lawyer. They pack a bag. They write their name on the application. If they are lying down, they get up. They join the dance.

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bluesakurablossom · 7 years

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Life's Gift of Love: Mikey's Love Story

As teenage leukemia victim Skylar Richards stared death in the face she could not have imagined that the illness would lead her to love and happiness. For many years her life has been dominated by her desperate struggle against the disease, but in an echo of meeting and saving an orange banded turtle, she had found reason to live again. Can love really overcome a deadly obstacle? Chapter 1 Name: Skylar Anderson Age: 18 Height: 5'7 Hair Color: None Eye Color: Green Skin Color: Pale white Ethnicity: American Personality: Loving, courageous, stubborn, sarcastic, artistic, and gentle hearted Skylar's Pov... Late in the winter of my eighteenth year, I decided I was severely depressed. Probably because I have one of the most deadliest diseases coursing the blood and bones. Leukemia. I have had this disease for over ten years now and there has been no signs of improvement. I rarely left my small apartment I rented in the middle of Manhattan except to leave to go to work. I often would just sit with the many pets that I own that I saved from critical situations and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to be thinking about death. Whenever you hear or read anything about leukemia, one of the most serve side effects is depression. But the fact is that depression wasn't a side effect, it was clear sign that I was dying. Well pretty much everything else is really. I have been living on my own for three years now since I left my mom. We really drifted apart after my dad had left me when he found out that I had been diagnosed with this disease. I think really she blames me for all of us not being together anymore. Even after I left thinking I would be finally able to get happy again having my own independence, it seemed to not change. Something just felt missing from my life. I went to my local hospital to see my regular doctor and she agreed that I was swimming in a pool of clinical depression and that I need to do something before it gets any worse. The chemotherapy I had been getting was depressing as hell. I had to met there every Thursday in the same room, laying on the same uncomfortable bed, and getting poked and prodded by needles. I was honestly at the point of why do I even bother still come in every week to get this treatment when it doesn't seem to be doing anything to help cure this. I would always get the treatments in the same arm and I feel like I have lost the feeling it in every time a needle get pushed in. I noticed that the nurses that would give me these treatments would tell me every time that I look like I have been improving, but really they are just masking the truth, trying to lift my spirits. When really they should just flat out tell me and not butter me up. Luckily my life did have some good in it. I had a really good paying job at the tattoo parlor near my place. I earned my license to start my own practice by the time I had turned seventeen. To celebrate, I even got my very first tattoo at the place I work at and they hired me just a week later. I was working my way up to take over the shop when my boss Bryan would retire and I was getting rather close. I never knew why I liked tattoos so much. I guess they just show what you really are inside, a true imprint of what makes you, you. I started getting into designing my own art work when I turned thirteen and continued on doing this until I applied for school to get my tattoo license. Even though that my job did give me some happiness and temporary relief from the depressing hell that I so call my life, it really just hurts me that I really have no one to be with or talk to. Sure I have my boss and co workers but they all have their own lives to attend to and family was out of the question. I was at home watching TruTv Top Funniest, trying to get a good laugh going after coming back from chemotherapy at the hospital, but the sound of my vibrating phone interrupted my attention. It was my mom. Me: I refuse to take anymore of this chemotherapy Mom: Do you want to get better or not? We have talked about this many times Skylar, you won't get better if you allow your stubbornness to get in the way Me: What's even the point?! I am not getting better, I am stuck where I have been for nearly over a decade! Mom: Skylar, you are a teenager nearly grown, you are not a little kid anymore. You need to try to find something to get your energy back up and go out and make friends, get out of the house, and live your life Me: Speak for yourself, I barely had a life after dad left me and you and I separating, and you are not the one with a deadly disease coursing through your body! I threw my phone on the couch refusing to answer anymore messages. I really hate that mom and I fight all the time. We were so close, she was my best friend in the whole world. But after dad left us, it seemed like that strong bonding chain just broke, like a pair of chain cutters came along and separated us both. I wanted my family back, this wasn't meant to happen. I was suppose to be getting all the love and support I need in order to cope and navigate through the difficulties of battling a life threatening disease. I wanted to be happy again. There is only one thing in this world that is shittier than someone like me getting cancer so young, is that I am allowing it to consume every bit of chance of happiness. About now I had enough and I had to get out of the house for a little while before I would scream. I got up from the couch passing my sleeping cat on her little bed curled up. She immediately woke up and followed me into my bedroom, jumping on my circular bed. "Hey Kisa you pretty kitty", I said, smiling a little petting her head My fluffy calico cat with yellow eyes purred rubbing her head against my hand. She always could help me bring a little smile to my face. I changed out of my sweats and slipped on a long sleeve pink shirt, putting a short camouflage shirt over it, and slipping into dark blue skinnies. I slipped on my pair of pink vans and I grabbed my short red bandanna tying it around my bald head. The day that when my hair started to fall out it was the saddest day of my life. I would just be taking fists full of my pale blonde hair and let it fall into the trash can. I opted to shave the rest of it off because so much was falling out at one time and it was covering everything. But for some reason I didn't cry when I saw my newly shaved head. To most people baldness is the sign of sickness, and even though I was told I had a beautiful head, I never saw myself that way. It looked like a permeant defeat. I had grabbed my green tote bag that was carrying my oxygen tank inside and I slipped on the breathing tubes up my nose and hang over my ears. I hated wearing these things. It made so vulnerable to the world, but I had to wear it to help with my breathing when it came to the smog that floated up in the air in this place I called home. I adjusted the pressure making high concentrated levels of oxygen fill up my nose. "Love you Kisa, see you later", I said, giving her ear a few scratches gently I grabbed my phone before putting it my pocket and locking my door on the way out. I walked down three flights of stairs before making my way out of the door and out on to the sidewalk. It was turning out to be a casual night, everything seemed to be pretty normal. Or so I thought. When I was walking along a quiet street I was feeling finally relaxed after dealing with the stresses of home, work and therapy. I considered my walks through the neighborhood to be a great therapy for me in order to relieve stress and break free, if only they could help me with leukemia. I heard my phone vibrate again and I checked to see it was mom again. I sighed annoyed as I continued walking reading her long text of why we are not so close anymore and why did I choose to do the things I wanted to do in life. I really didn't want to deal with it as I have already enough of her bickering from earlier. I clicked on the text and I clicked delete as the message went into the trash can. "Why do you think mom? Jesus christ", I said, to myself Right when I was about to walk again, my heart nearly stopped beating when a metal object was thrown in front of my face stabbing into the concrete, just barely an inch from hitting me. I could of literally seen my life flash before my eyes as I almost slipped backwards towards a staircase. "Holy chalupa", I said, panting hard I walked up to the object and I yanked it out of the wall and it was a flying ninja star. I recognized it from doing designs for some of my clients. It was really beautiful, even more than just seeing picture and designs. It was a gleaming silver with six sharp points and in the center was a design I have never seen before. There was a turtle in the middle of outlined in black. "Wow", I said, looking at the object with amazement I then heard screams as I barely had time to turn and duck down as another star came flying towards me barely snagging on my bandanna. "What in the world?!", I said I saw from across the street that there was an intense fight was being taken place. Not like a local street bar fight that would be easily defused by the police, I am talking about like mixed martial arts fighting. There were many men fighting some huge shadow and I tell you what he was kicking ass. One the men went charging towards him and he back flipped kicking him in the jaw, causing him to fall on his knees. Another man went up on his right, wielding a sword in his hand and he tried to strike at the huge shadow. But he was quick to jump back at each strike and he grabbed one of his arms and head butt him right in the face. "Ow, gonna feel that in the morning", I said, to myself I decided to get a closer look on the action and I snuck close enough at the edge of the alley and knelt down to keep a low profile, not wanting to become apart of it. Another man then used a long stick and grabbed a hold of him by choking him from behind. I gasped and I immediately grabbed the first thing I saw in front of me, an empty beer bottle and threw it across the air. "Duck!", I called out Luckily he heard me and duck his head down just in time as the bottle smashed into bits into the man's face. He then swooped his legs out from under him and he fell on his back. Another man then charged at him from the side and pinned him against the brick wall and he kneed him int he gut and ridge hand him on the side of the head, then side kicked him into a dumpster. I then saw one other man get up and pull out a long stick and I could see electricity between the two metal prods. He then struck him in the back, making the huge shadow scream in pain. "Oh god!", I said, to myself Two more came charging in with the same prods shocking him repeatedly. He struggled to reach out and crawl away from the torture devices, but one stomped on his back a few times with such brute force and even then stomping down on his head into the concrete, where I could slightly hear bones cracking. He groaned in pain before it started to silent, going unconscious from the electricity shocking him. Several men grabbed his huge muscular arms and began to drag him away as he limply laid against the ground. I knew this was beyond dangerous, but I wanted to help in some way without getting myself killed or the victim in the process. I then looked down at my tote bag and I unzipped it open seeing my oxygen tank inside and across from me was a metal pipe laying on the ground behind a pile of junk. I quickly reacted and pulled my tank out of my bag unhooking myself from it as I laid it on the ground and I grabbed the pipe and getting in front of the tank. "Hey dingbats!", I called out The figures stopped what they were doing and looked towards me, I then spun the pipe in my hand. "Surfs up!", I said I then whacked the metal pole down on the regulator on my tank smashing it open and the air entering the tank caused so much pressure that it started smoking up and it went flying like a rocket towards them. The tank crashed into one figure and it ricocheted off the brick walls knocking each figure to the ground, like a balloon letting all its air out releasing a cloud of smoke. The air tank smashed one more in the head before it landed on top of his chest, knocking the wind out of him. "Woo!", I said, doing a victory jump I picked up my bag and slinging it over my shoulder as I started making my way over towards the person those figures beating up. He was struggling to his feet and I started to jog over, but I stopped suddenly when I saw the huge size of this person crawl on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet. I was not quite sure I would recognize someone that muscular. His muscles were huge in size, bigger than what I would see on a body builder. His long and slender shadow had covered me completely from the light of the lamp post above. Something was dangling around his neck in two strands, like long hair or dreadlocks or something. He didn't appear to have any hair on top of his head, kind of like me. He looked about my age, maybe a little older. His posture was poor as he stood up from the ground picking up a nunchuck. "Are you okay?", I asked, walking up He suddenly whipped looking me at in my direction, the prettiest blue eyes were looking at me. Even though I couldn't see his face so well I was already intrigued by the beauty of them. When I came closer making sure I didn't injure when I let my tank go flying, he took off running. A mixture of confusion and concern struck me as I started to run after him down the alley. "Wait! Wait! Come back! I won't hurt you!", I called out I then saw him jump against one of the buildings and jump across towards the other beside it, doing a zig zag. I skid to a halt as I reached the end of the alley and I looked up to the rooftop, to see he looked back down at me before taking off disappearing into the night. I then heard a flapping noise coming from behind me and I saw this artwork that looked to be in Japanese in orange and purple spray paint and there was a yellow sticky note right in front of the now dried graffiti. I gently took it off the brick wall and saw there was a message on it. "Thanks, I owe you one-Mikey" "Mikey?", I said, to myself I flipped over the note to see nothing more than just the message and I looked back up to the night sky where I guess now known as Mikey had disappeared to. How could a normal human have such ability to jump that high and disappear that quickly, let alone fight like a professional? I then looked back down at the note and held it with both of my hand and I saw at the bottom of the note there was smiley face winking. "Well then, I guess you owe me one...Mikey", I said

#tmnt mikey #tmnt 2016 #turtlebaes

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