#like in a world of instant gratification entertainment and screens... you have to pay money to go to the special place to get this one

[cactus-chowder]

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[mymindykim]

How to Raise Financially Smart Kids

We all know some things are much easier to learn when we’re kids — other languages are a great example. One thing that is also easier to adopt as a kid is a financial literacy. Unfortunately, a good chunk of parents doesn’t do much to set their kids up for financial success.

A study performed by the University of Illinois found that a whopping 36% of young adults find themselves financially at risk.

You may be wondering how the researchers determined this. Getting into scientific detail would be beyond the scope of this article, but we can explain the study and its implications in simple terms.

The researchers sampled a pool of over 3,000 adults to assess their financial practices, understanding of basic economic concepts, and overall financial aptitude. To be deemed “financially at risk,” participants needed to fulfill two essential criteria: they had no savings they could use to pay three months of living expenses, and they had no way to come up with $2,000 in an emergency.

While some members of the scientific community have described these criteria as “somewhat arbitrary,” they are undoubtedly helpful when it comes to presenting the bigger picture — many young adults are a setback away from bankruptcy.

[Source: Unsplash]

  1. Generational Ripple Effect

The 22% of young adults that the survey deemed “financially stable” had savings or checking accounts were less likely to use the services of payday lenders and were better at planning their finances overall.  However, even most of these individuals only described themselves as “moderately comfortable” about their financial literacy.

The study’s lead author, Gaurav Sinha, believes that this issue may lead to further financial illiteracy in future generations. In an interview with Science Daily, he expressed concerns about young people’s inadequate financial skills and their ability to ensure both theirs and the well-being of their children.

  2. How to Teach Your Children to Be Financially Stable

The findings of this study suggest a dire need for parents to become much more engaged in their children’s financial literacy at a much younger age. Our friends at MNYMSTRS financial literacy for beginners have presented us with three simple ways to set your kids up for financial success. 

Let’s explore them together below!

  Delayed Gratification

It seems that each new generation faces more difficulty when it comes to resisting the allure of instant gratification. Millennials have probably long thought that delaying gratification could not possibly be more difficult, but we would argue that Gen Z-ers have had even more distractions to deal with.

Since their early childhoods, almost everything they wanted has been instantly available. Want to listen to your favorite song? Just stream it on YouTube or Spotify. Need a new pair of headphones? Amazon Prime can deliver precisely the model you’re looking for on the same day. Are your friends talking about a new app or video game? Just press a button on your controller or tap your phone’s screen a few times, and it’s yours.

Whether it is physical possessions or digital entertainment, very little compels this generation to learn about the value of patience, persistence, and the power of time. It’s not their fault either — it’s just the hand they’ve been dealt.

Unfortunately, acquiring wealth is not a one-click sort of endeavor (at least not for the time being). If you want to reap the benefits of your investments, you need to sit back and wait for the stock (or crypto) market to do its thing.

It is your responsibility to teach your kids that not everything they want can be achieved instantly. Whenever possible, try to instill in them the value of delayed gratification. For example, if you have an allowance system in place, consider switching to monthly rather than weekly payments. This will teach them to pay attention and control how much money they have left until the next month rolls around. Just make sure not to budge when they inevitably come running for more cash after a week and a half.

If your kids are still too young to have an allowance or deal with money directly, have them plant their favorite fruit or vegetable, and observe the literal “fruits of their labors.” We don’t need to explain why this analogy directly applies to the world of finance.

  Embrace Technology

You might have had the mildly unsettling experience of seeing a kid try to swipe up a magazine cover like it was a touchscreen. We’re living in a new world, and for today’s kids, it is all they’ve ever known. For them, there was never a time without ubiquitous WiFi, smartphones, apps, and social media.

In the previous few paragraphs, we might have sounded like we had some kind of problem with technology. On the contrary, we think it is an excellent opportunity to grow. We’ve all used technology to collaborate, create, buy, sell, make friends, learn, etc. The point we’re trying to make is that, for this generation, technology is almost inseparable from the “real world.”

So, if you’re trying to teach a kid about finances, your best bet is to incorporate some technology to keep them interested. Thankfully, we’re not the first to think of this, and there is a wide array of software tools and apps geared towards teaching children about finances — even kids as young as five.

Apps like iAllowance, Rooster Money and FamZoo let children keep track of their allowance and chores while teaching them financial skills through a wide array of gamified visual tools. If you want to sneak in financial education without boring your kids to death and force-feeding lessons, use the technology they’re comfortable with.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

  Incorporate Experiential Learning

Children nowadays have access to all the information they need, and they’ve had it from a very young age. Learning to sift through the information, figure out what’s important, and which sources can be trusted is the journey of a Gen Z-er.

Back in the day, when a kid had a question about the world, they would default to asking their parents; now, the situation is a bit different. Sure, parents do get asked a question from time to time, but only if Google has failed to provide a satisfactory answer,

However, one thing that Google can’t impart to your child is the real-life experience of managing finances. That said, if you simply sit your kid down for a lesson, they’re probably not going to be very interested in listening.

This is where experiential learning comes into play. If you want your kids to pay attention, take them with you the next time you visit your financial advisor or show them how to balance a checkbook or fill out a check.

Things like setting up your family budget for the month or reviewing the interest you’ve earned on your savings account may sound like tedious everyday activities to you, but to your kids, it’ll be like entering into a new reality.

These activities will set the scene for you to have the all-important financial conversation with your children, and if there’s one thing you can’t Google, it is a practical experience.

  Closing Thoughts

Wouldn’t it be great if our educational system was more focused on teaching students how to be financially savvy? Unfortunately, at least for the time being, the burden of this responsibility lies with parents and caretakers.

However, this also means that if you can teach your kids how to be smarter with their money, they’ll likely have a leg up on their peers, putting them in a great spot down the road. 

Most importantly, by teaching our kids how to be smarter with their money, we instill the right financial habits in them before they develop the wrong ones on their own.

  About the Author

Ellie is a long-time marketer, currently working as a freelancer in Miami, Florida. She is also a passionate writer and loves to explore new, innovative and digital news.

In her spare time she is an eco-activist. Editor at Digital Strategy One.

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[lynchgirl90]

The #TwinPeaks Season 3 Blu-ray is a Wonderful Package for 2017’s Greatest Piece of Narrative Entertainment

David Lynch‘s stunning Twin Peaks season 3, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return, comes to Blu-ray as a must-have box set loaded with fascinating and revealing looks behind the production. Just as they did so many years ago, David Lynch and Mark Frost have created a TV event unlike any other before, and probably unlike anything that will ever come after it. Here, as one cohesive Blu-ray, we have the chance to watch the saga unfold from beginning to end, which might very well be the best way to experience the show. Our Twin Peaks season 3 Blu-ray review below pulls back the red curtain and journeys into the unknown. Join me?

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

The greatest piece of narrative entertainment from 2017 was not in movie theaters, but rather playing on Showtime over the course of one weird, wild summer. Defying the odds, premium cable channel Showtime parked a large amount of money on David Lynch’s doorstep and convinced him to come out of semi-retirement to resurrect his cult TV series Twin Peaks. The results were stunning.

Lynch, the brilliant, mad mind behind Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and more, hadn’t made a film since 2006’s Inland Empire, yet any fears that the iconic filmmaker might have grown rusty in his time off were quickly assuaged as the beginning of the new Twin Peaks unfolded. Lynch and Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost had pulled out all the stops to return audiences to a place both wonderful and strange, and we all got a lot more than we could’ve possibly bargained for.

The importance of the original Twin Peaks can not be overstated. TV as we know it today, everything we lump into the “Peak TV” category of high quality, cinematic television, can trace its roots back to what Lynch and Frost did with the original Twin Peaks. He brought the auteur theory and the avant-garde to mainstream primetime TV, and television has been paying tribute ever since. The original Peaks only lasted two seasons, but after its cancellation in 1991, the show took on a life of its own, its cult fandom growing to monolithic proportions. Lynch revisited the town with 1992’s prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which polarized audiences and took the mythology of the series into even stranger, near-indecipherable directions. Something curious happened after that: the show became even more popular, but the show that newer fans seemed to latch onto wasn’t actually the show that Lynch had created.

A meme-ification of Twin Peaks had set in, fueled by the Tumblr generation fond of sharing out of context screen grabs and quick gifs that may look amazing but don’t even come close to capturing the aura of what Lynch was going for. So when Lynch and Frost announced that “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” there was an uneasiness with how modern TV viewers would react to whatever it was they were about to witness. We live in the age of the live-tweet, where audiences have trouble putting their phone down to entirely focus on their entertainment, and are instead prone to firing off an instant reaction with the hopes of raking up a few “likes.” This is not the ideal type of viewing experience for something created by Lynch, and if audiences thought they were going to be in for instant gratification with the new Twin Peaks, they were setting themselves up for failure.

The same foul fate would befall the aforementioned Tumblr generation, who apparently wanted nothing deeper than endless shots of cherry pie, black coffee, and Audrey Horne’s saddle shoes. Anyone who dares to cruise the Twin Peakshashtag on Tumblr while the new series was airing likely found themselves in a world of woe, with Tumblr users bemoaning that the new Twin Peaks was denying them their dream of Special Agent Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne finally falling into each other’s arms at the Double R Diner while Shelly Johnson serves them up a slice of pie. In short, what they wanted was fan service. And fan service is not what David Lynch traffics in. I doubt the term even exists in his vocabulary.

Instead, Lynch provided viewers with one of the most audacious 18 hours ever committed to television. A daring, mind-warping journey back to the town of Twin Peaks and beyond. He blew a big, black hole into the very mythology of the show, and created something stranger than anyone viewing the original series would’ve imagined.

I Am Dead Yet I Live

The original Twin Peaks began as a procedural drama, then blossomed into something nearly unclassifiable. After local teen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found murdered, FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives in town to investigate. Cooper gets to know the town, and the townsfolk, as he tries to crack the Palmer case.

And then things get weird.

Twin Peaks made what many consider to be a huge mistake by wrapping up the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer rather quickly, and then becoming stranger and stranger until it found itself canceled. The problem: the series ended on one major cliffhanger, with Cooper trapped in The Black Lodge, an eerie, extra-dimensional location populated with backward-talking people, billowing red curtains, and flashes of lighting. Meanwhile, an evil Cooper doppelgänger, connected to the malevolent force known as BOB, took the real Cooper’s place back in the real world.

There was never any real chance that Lynch and Frost would quickly sew up this dangling thread, however. Instead, when Twin Peaks returned to Showtime, it expanded the mythology of the series and took viewers on a long journey that was all part of Cooper’s return to the real world. But Cooper isn’t the real focus of Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer is. For Lynch, Laura Palmer is a representation of horribly wronged innocence. Fire Walk With Me revealed the traumatic events leading up to Laura’s death, and Lynch’s focus seems to be on the cosmic injustice of it all. The cruel blindness of fate. Laura Palmer is a force of something pure and good in the universe, and no matter how hard Cooper might try, he can never really save her. But perhaps that’s not what’s important. Perhaps what’s important is that he’ll keep trying.

Twin Peaks season 3 has Cooper escape the Black Lodge by taking the place of hapless, corrupt Las Vegas dwelling insurance salesman Dougie Jones (also played by MacLachlan). In reality, Dougie is a “tulpa” ��� a being created from the selected thoughts of different individuals. Tibetan mythology describe tulpas as “extra bodies that were created from one person’s mind in order to travel to spiritual realms.”

Rather than have Cooper escape the Black Lodge and come back to the real world acting like his old self, Lynch and Frost have the agent stuck in a childlike state, as if all the years stuck in an alternate dimension has blasted away a part of his consciousness. Then, in the most delightfully devious twist of all, Lynch proceeds to keep Cooper in this state through nearly the entire series. There are triggers that we keep expecting will snap Cooper out of his Dougie state: coffee, pie, etc. But Lynch isn’t interested in an easy way out. Instead, he engrosses us into the life of Dougie Jones, as the traumatized Cooper adapts to his new reality with Dougie’s wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and son Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon).

You could practically hear the groans of certain viewers as Lynch refused to break Cooper out of the Jones family mold, yet this material provides us with some of the most incredible moments of the revival series, and gives Kyle MacLachlan a chance to shine, playing up both the comic relief elements of Dougie Jones (see: Dougie in a casino yelling “Hello-oooooo!” at slot machines) mixed with more heartbreaking scenes (see: Dougie watching Sonny Jim with a look of profound sadness on his face).

Twin Peaks sets up a horde of new characters, almost all of which become memorable almost instantaneously – a feat few other shows can pull off. There’s the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper), who are both trying to murder Dougie Jones before growing fond of him on the basis of a dream. There are two assassins (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth), who spend most of their time in a van shooting the breeze when they’re not shooting people. And most important of all, there’s Diane (Laura Dern), Cooper’s old flame who teams up with FBI Director Gordon Cole (Lynch) and company to find out what happened to the real Cooper. Dern, with her various wigs, foul mouth, chain smoking and multi-colored manicure, steals every scene she appears in.

But what of Twin Peaks, the town that started it all? Lynch brings us back to the town, and gives us a glimpse into the lives of old favorites: Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), Big Ed (Everett McGill), Norma (Peggy Lipton), Andy (Harry Goaz), Lucy (Kimmy Robertson), Hawk (Michael Horse), Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), and more, but the new season isn’t so much interested in closing out their stories as it is showing the effects of the passage of time. That’s not to say there aren’t narrative conclusions. In one of the new season’s most satisfying moments, Big Ed and Norma finally seal the deal on their romance after years apart. Lynch stages this in a lovely way, with Norma’s hands coming from just off frame onto Big Ed’s shoulders, while Big Ed closes his eyes in contentment.

These lovely moments are contrasted with stark, disturbing horror. In the opening episode alone, a nameless, shapeless monster escapes a containment unit and lays waste to a pair of lovers in a scene drenched in blood and confusion. And at the center of the series as a whole is the terrifying notion that evil, in all its forms, will almost always come out ahead. After nearly 18 hours, Cooper manages to alter time and save Laura Palmer from her teenage demise. Yet the aftershocks of this change are not ideal – the world as Cooper (and by extension, the audience) knows it has been altered forever. The final few seconds of the series find Cooper and Laura in a state of limbo, with Cooper absently wondering “What year is this?” before Laura, looking up at the house that once held such trauma and abuse for her in another life, emits a piercing, blood-chilling scream that seems to be echoing across time and space itself (note: if there was an award for Best Scream, Sheryl Lee would be the clear winner).

What are we to make of this cryptic, haunting conclusion? The beauty of Twin Peaks is that Lynch and Frost aren’t interested in providing us with clear answers. One of the quotes from the revival series states, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream.” This is as clear a Twin Peaks mission statement as we’ll ever receive. The series as a whole is a dream that the audience is living inside, and like dreams, the narrative is open to endless interpretation. And best of all, no interpretation can really be considered incorrect. You can take away a million different morals from Twin Peaks as a whole, but I think a strong case can be made for the unsettling message that evil – in all its forms – will frequently come out ahead. The important thing is for committed, determined people like Dale Cooper to continue to try to stop it anyway. Cooper may not always succeed, but we can take some sort of cold comfort in the fact that he’ll try anyway.

Phenomenon

The Blu-ray special feature Phenomenon is broken into three distinct parts: Creation, Life After Death and Renaissance. As a whole, this feature is a fun but mostly boilerplate look at the series as a whole. It’s quick and to the point, and was likely originally cut to serve as more of a commercial for the revival series than a truly in-depth look at Twin Peaks. Creation looks at the show’s origins, from its time on ABC to the fan reaction, including the popular “watching parties” that had audiences coming together to experience each weekly episode as a group. Life After Death examines the growing cult fandom that sprung up after the show had been canceled. Fan magazines and conventions gave Twin Peaks whole new life and kept the series alive for an entire new generation born after the first show had long been canceled. Renaissance is a crash-course in bringing the show back to life on Showtime. Again, there’s no real insight here or depth. Lynch and frost pop-up for quick soundbites, but anyone hoping for the creators to delve into the process of bringing Twin Peaks back from the dead need look elsewhere.

Behind the Red Curtain and I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun

Richard Beymer, who plays Twin Peaks character Ben Horne, shot these two mini-documentaries that appear in the Blu-ray special features. There’s no narrative thread to these two features. Instead, they provide a raw, uncensored look at Lynch and company on the Black Lodge set, setting up shots. These two features provide us with what will become a running theme of the behind-the-scenes footage provided on the Blu-ray: shot after shot of Lynch at work.

If you ever wanted to sit back and watch David Lynch direct, the features provided here are a gold mine. They also provide an amusing, even charming look at how normal it all is. Lynch deals with such strange, dark, violent material that it can be easy to think of him as a dark, brooding weirdo, but the footage here shows him as an affable, laid-back fellow who knows exactly what he wants from a scene and how to get it. These slice-of-life moments give us an opportunity to see Lynch help Kyle MacLachlan tie a necktie, or give Sherilyn Fenn a cigarette as he talks with her about her character. Speaking of cigarettes, get ready to see a lot of them. Lynch is constantly smoking in these behind-the-scenes moments, an American Spirit cigarette always perched in his mouth or resting between his fingers. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself longing for a smoke after watching all of this.

The only downside to this, and other behind-the-scenes features is that some of the magic of the show is lost. We’re peeling back the red curtain here, and seeing how the sausage is made. The otherworldly nature of Twin Peaks drops away as we see numerous crew members making everything come together. In one amusing moment, we see Lynch and company watching a clip from the original Twin Peaks on YouTube so they can match a shot up to a new scene

In A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks

Filmmaker Charles DeLauzirika put together this on-location feature that goes behind the scenes. Not much of the material here is very comprehensive, but it does provide a fly-on-the-wall look at the production, including actors discussing how strange it was to step back into roles they hadn’t played in more than two decades. The best moments come when we get to watch Lynch direct – almost always through a megaphone. If you’re looking for a bit more, however, this isn’t the feature for you. Instead, you should move quickly to IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks.

IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks

Without question, the best features on the new Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series Blu-ray release are the series of behind-the-scenes films bundled together as IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks. Longtime Lynch documentarian and friend Jason S. shot these 10 revealing, fascinating films (each runs about 30 minutes), covering almost the entire filming schedule of the new series.

Once again, we have Lynch constantly smoking his American Spirit cigarettes, but these features are much more in-depth than Behind the Red Curtain and I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun. We get to watch as Lynch and his crew come up with character names on the fly, and cracking up when he thinks up silly-sounding names. This feature also reveals how hands-on Lynch is: at one point, we see him sculpting one of the show’s props himself – a spout made of styrofoam that will eventually serve as the giant teapot-like contraption that took the place of the dearly departed David Bowie.

Again, the best moments are those when we get to watch Lynch direct, like a sequence where he chats with Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern in a motel room set. Lynch has nicknames for all his actors, and it’s charming to listen to him refer to Dern as “Tidbit” and MacLachlan as “Kale.” Later, he has to talk Dern into letting makeup artists cover her face in bread dough. After the scene is complete, Dern gets payback by applying the same dough to Lynch’s face. It’s a charming, funny glimpse into the carefree, friendly atmosphere prevalent on Lynch’s sets. “I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for David,” MacLachlan said once. “He pretty much brought me up in the film world and spoiled me; we’ve all spoken about how the set is, he creates the environment and the joyfulness and the creativity. I’ve been spoiled forever working with David.” The footage here is proof positive of that statement.

Still, there are moments where Lynch can lose his temper. In one sequence, not filmed on set but rather in a meeting with his crew, Lynch gets frustrated when he’s told that they’ll only be able to film in one location for two days. The filmmaker grows apoplectic at this time constraint, shouting, “Why do I only have two fucking days?” and complaining that given the chance, he could spend “weeks” on certain sets “dreaming up new ideas.”

The only negative thing I’ll say about this feature: the footage is (sporadically) narrated by Josef Maria Schäfers, in what I presume is an attempt to mock (or perhaps pay loving tribute to) the existential narration that filmmaker Werner Herzog usually gives his documentaries. The narration here is unnecessary and distracting and grows truly tiresome after a while.

Goodbye, Margaret

Other features on the Blu-ray include a series of David Lynch produced promos for the series. Lynch managed to avoid having to cut a proper trailer for the Showtime revival, and instead put together these abstract clips that teased the tone without giving anything away. Also included is a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, a series of alternating versions of the Rancho Rosa production logo that started each episode, and the full San Diego Comic-Con 2017 Twin Peaks Panel, which you can watch in full above.

As a whole, the Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series Blu-ray is a must-own for any David Lynch or Twin Peaks fan. There’s a wealth of material here beyond the series itself, but best of all is the opportunity to watch the episodes back-to-back, and watch as the create an elaborate, hypnotic saga the likes of which we’ll never see again.

Full list of special features:

BLU-RAY AND DVD:

IMPRESSIONS: A Journey Behind the Scenes of Twin Peaks

Phenomenon

Rancho Rosa Logos (2:25)

San Diego Comic-Con 2017 Twin Peaks Panel (61:26)

David Lynch Produced Promos

The Man with the Grey Elevated Hair (29:40)

Tell it Martin (29:08)

Two Blue Balls (24:14)

The Number of Completion (29:17)

Bad Binoculars (28:08)

See You on the Other Side Dear Friend (30:00)

Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers (26:44)

A Bloody Finger in Your Mouth (26:49)

The Polish Accountant (28:05)

A Pot of Boiling Oil (38:32)

Part 1: Creation (4:40)

Part 2: Life After Death (4:50)

Part 3: Renaissance (4:50)

Behind-the-scenes Photo Gallery

Piano (1:02)

Donut (:32)

Woods (:32)

People (:32)

Places (:32)

Albert (1:02)

In – cinema (1:32)

BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:

A Very Lovely Dream: One Week in Twin Peaks (27:09)

Behind the Red Curtain (29:17)

I Had Bad Milk in Dehradun (28:11)

Link (TP) 

[rcstartthemachine]

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

The greatest piece of narrative entertainment from 2017 was not in movie theaters, but rather playing on Showtime over the course of one weird, wild summer. Defying the odds, premium cable channel Showtime parked a large amount of money on David Lynch’s doorstep and convinced him to come out of semi-retirement to resurrect his cult TV series Twin Peaks. The results were stunning.

Lynch, the brilliant, mad mind behind Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and more, hadn’t made a film since 2006’s Inland Empire, yet any fears that the iconic filmmaker might have grown rusty in his time off were quickly assuaged as the beginning of the new Twin Peaks unfolded. Lynch and Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost had pulled out all the stops to return audiences to a place both wonderful and strange, and we all got a lot more than we could’ve possibly bargained for.

The importance of the original Twin Peaks can not be overstated. TV as we know it today, everything we lump into the “Peak TV” category of high quality, cinematic television, can trace its roots back to what Lynch and Frost did with the original Twin Peaks. He brought the auteur theory and the avant-garde to mainstream primetime TV, and television has been paying tribute ever since. The original Peaks only lasted two seasons, but after its cancellation in 1991, the show took on a life of its own, its cult fandom growing to monolithic proportions. Lynch revisited the town with 1992’s prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which polarized audiences and took the mythology of the series into even stranger, near-indecipherable directions. Something curious happened after that: the show became even more popular, but the show that newer fans seemed to latch onto wasn’t actually the show that Lynch had created.

A meme-ification of Twin Peaks had set in, fueled by the Tumblr generation fond of sharing out of context screen grabs and quick gifs that may look amazing but don’t even come close to capturing the aura of what Lynch was going for. So when Lynch and Frost announced that “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” there was an uneasiness with how modern TV viewers would react to whatever it was they were about to witness. We live in the age of the live-tweet, where audiences have trouble putting their phone down to entirely focus on their entertainment, and are instead prone to firing off an instant reaction with the hopes of raking up a few “likes.” This is not the ideal type of viewing experience for something created by Lynch, and if audiences thought they were going to be in for instant gratification with the new Twin Peaks, they were setting themselves up for failure.

The same foul fate would befall the aforementioned Tumblr generation, who apparently wanted nothing deeper than endless shots of cherry pie, black coffee, and Audrey Horne’s saddle shoes. Anyone who dares to cruise the Twin Peakshashtag on Tumblr while the new series was airing likely found themselves in a world of woe, with Tumblr users bemoaning that the new Twin Peaks was denying them their dream of Special Agent Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne finally falling into each other’s arms at the Double R Diner while Shelly Johnson serves them up a slice of pie. In short, what they wanted was fan service. And fan service is not what David Lynch traffics in. I doubt the term even exists in his vocabulary.

Instead, Lynch provided viewers with one of the most audacious 18 hours ever committed to television. A daring, mind-warping journey back to the town of Twin Peaks and beyond. He blew a big, black hole into the very mythology of the show, and created something stranger than anyone viewing the original series would’ve imagined.

I Am Dead Yet I Live

The original Twin Peaks began as a procedural drama, then blossomed into something nearly unclassifiable. After local teen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is found murdered, FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) arrives in town to investigate. Cooper gets to know the town, and the townsfolk, as he tries to crack the Palmer case.

And then things get weird.

Twin Peaks made what many consider to be a huge mistake by wrapping up the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer rather quickly, and then becoming stranger and stranger until it found itself canceled. The problem: the series ended on one major cliffhanger, with Cooper trapped in The Black Lodge, an eerie, extra-dimensional location populated with backward-talking people, billowing red curtains, and flashes of lighting. Meanwhile, an evil Cooper doppelgänger, connected to the malevolent force known as BOB, took the real Cooper’s place back in the real world.

There was never any real chance that Lynch and Frost would quickly sew up this dangling thread, however. Instead, when Twin Peaks returned to Showtime, it expanded the mythology of the series and took viewers on a long journey that was all part of Cooper’s return to the real world. But Cooper isn’t the real focus of Twin Peaks. Laura Palmer is. For Lynch, Laura Palmer is a representation of horribly wronged innocence. Fire Walk With Me revealed the traumatic events leading up to Laura’s death, and Lynch’s focus seems to be on the cosmic injustice of it all. The cruel blindness of fate. Laura Palmer is a force of something pure and good in the universe, and no matter how hard Cooper might try, he can never really save her. But perhaps that’s not what’s important. Perhaps what’s important is that he’ll keep trying.

Twin Peaks season 3 has Cooper escape the Black Lodge by taking the place of hapless, corrupt Las Vegas dwelling insurance salesman Dougie Jones (also played by MacLachlan). In reality, Dougie is a “tulpa” – a being created from the selected thoughts of different individuals. Tibetan mythology describe tulpas as “extra bodies that were created from one person’s mind in order to travel to spiritual realms.”

Rather than have Cooper escape the Black Lodge and come back to the real world acting like his old self, Lynch and Frost have the agent stuck in a childlike state, as if all the years stuck in an alternate dimension has blasted away a part of his consciousness. Then, in the most delightfully devious twist of all, Lynch proceeds to keep Cooper in this state through nearly the entire series. There are triggers that we keep expecting will snap Cooper out of his Dougie state: coffee, pie, etc. But Lynch isn’t interested in an easy way out. Instead, he engrosses us into the life of Dougie Jones, as the traumatized Cooper adapts to his new reality with Dougie’s wife Janey-E (Naomi Watts) and son Sonny Jim (Pierce Gagnon).

You could practically hear the groans of certain viewers as Lynch refused to break Cooper out of the Jones family mold, yet this material provides us with some of the most incredible moments of the revival series, and gives Kyle MacLachlan a chance to shine, playing up both the comic relief elements of Dougie Jones (see: Dougie in a casino yelling “Hello-oooooo!” at slot machines) mixed with more heartbreaking scenes (see: Dougie watching Sonny Jim with a look of profound sadness on his face).

Twin Peaks sets up a horde of new characters, almost all of which become memorable almost instantaneously – a feat few other shows can pull off. There’s the Mitchum Brothers (Jim Belushi and Robert Knepper), who are both trying to murder Dougie Jones before growing fond of him on the basis of a dream. There are two assassins (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Roth), who spend most of their time in a van shooting the breeze when they’re not shooting people. And most important of all, there’s Diane (Laura Dern), Cooper’s old flame who teams up with FBI Director Gordon Cole (Lynch) and company to find out what happened to the real Cooper. Dern, with her various wigs, foul mouth, chain smoking and multi-colored manicure, steals every scene she appears in.

But what of Twin Peaks, the town that started it all? Lynch brings us back to the town, and gives us a glimpse into the lives of old favorites: Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), Big Ed (Everett McGill), Norma (Peggy Lipton), Andy (Harry Goaz), Lucy (Kimmy Robertson), Hawk (Michael Horse), Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn), and more, but the new season isn’t so much interested in closing out their stories as it is showing the effects of the passage of time. That’s not to say there aren’t narrative conclusions. In one of the new season’s most satisfying moments, Big Ed and Norma finally seal the deal on their romance after years apart. Lynch stages this in a lovely way, with Norma’s hands coming from just off frame onto Big Ed’s shoulders, while Big Ed closes his eyes in contentment.

These lovely moments are contrasted with stark, disturbing horror. In the opening episode alone, a nameless, shapeless monster escapes a containment unit and lays waste to a pair of lovers in a scene drenched in blood and confusion. And at the center of the series as a whole is the terrifying notion that evil, in all its forms, will almost always come out ahead. After nearly 18 hours, Cooper manages to alter time and save Laura Palmer from her teenage demise. Yet the aftershocks of this change are not ideal – the world as Cooper (and by extension, the audience) knows it has been altered forever. The final few seconds of the series find Cooper and Laura in a state of limbo, with Cooper absently wondering “What year is this?” before Laura, looking up at the house that once held such trauma and abuse for her in another life, emits a piercing, blood-chilling scream that seems to be echoing across time and space itself (note: if there was an award for Best Scream, Sheryl Lee would be the clear winner).

What are we to make of this cryptic, haunting conclusion? The beauty of Twin Peaks is that Lynch and Frost aren’t interested in providing us with clear answers. One of the quotes from the revival series states, “We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream.” This is as clear a Twin Peaksmission statement as we’ll ever receive. The series as a whole is a dream that the audience is living inside, and like dreams, the narrative is open to endless interpretation. And best of all, no interpretation can really be considered incorrect. You can take away a million different morals from Twin Peaks as a whole, but I think a strong case can be made for the unsettling message that evil – in all its forms – will frequently come out ahead. The important thing is for committed, determined people like Dale Cooper to continue to try to stop it anyway. Cooper may not always succeed, but we can take some sort of cold comfort in the fact that he’ll try anyway.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

HitClips: Remembering the most absurd way we listened to music

If you were a child growing up in the late 90s or early 2000s, odds are you remember the most entertaining and hilariously nonsensical way of listening to music: HitClips.

In 1999, Hasbro's Tiger Electronics released the "slick micro audio systems" known as HitClips, tiny  memory card-like chips that contained a 60-second "clip" of a super popular song. In the early days, that meant tracks from Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Britney Spears, and later they included middle school anthems from Avril Lavigne, Hilary Duff, Simple Plan, and more.

SEE ALSO: Outdated ways of listening to music, ranked

While, from a tech standpoint, HitClips clearly weren't the most innovative devices, they had such a strong cultural impact that for years, people actually felt compelled to spend money on tiny snippets of full songs — a concept that, in hindsight, seems impossibly absurd.

So what exactly made HitClips so successful? And could they ever follow vinyl's path and make a comeback in today's world? To answer these questions, let's take a trip down memory lane.

y'all remember hit clips? i had all the slaps lmao pic.twitter.com/pzGbcOU2fO

— baby💮 (@m0delofiend) August 23, 2018

I recently uncovered my old HitClips players when attempting to clean my basement, but much to my dismay, my extensive song library — hot jams by A*Teens, Baha Men, Aaron Carter, Destiny’s Child, Dream Street, and dozens more — is still packed away somewhere.

Luckily, a single chip was with the devices. Unfortunately for us, that chip happened to be *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me," which is now almost exclusively associated with memes.

The history of HitClips

HitClips initially debuted as toys in select McDonald's kids meals, but became so popular that they transitioned to the main toy/electronics market. That's when things got really exciting.

From 1999 to 2004, HitClips captivated the minds of budding young music lovers, and over the years, the brand ambitiously moved from basic listening devices to tiny CD players and fun extras.

Back in the day, a player cost $20.00 and a cartridge went for $3.99, which seems like a lot of money, even now. But the price seemed worth it back then considering the collectible tunes quickly became status symbols for America's youth. In school hallways and on playgrounds, the more clips that swung from your keychains, backpacks, or belt loops, the cooler you were. Life was once as simple as that.

The basic player 🎶

Image: martha tesema/mashable

The anatomy of most original HitClips devices were the same. Each player was about two inches long, had a slot for the chip, a single headphone wire that connected to an earpiece, a "Play" button, and a clip on the back so that users could conveniently fasten the devices to their clothing.

One of the first HitClips players I ever purchased (picture above) had a headphone wire that was just 12 inches long, which essentially meant that unless you were extremely petite, there was no way you could clip that thing on your belt and listen to music at the same time.

HitClips eventually remedied this flaw, and though users still dealt with poor sound quality, no volume control, and an inability to enjoy music in both ears, I like other naive children considered these toys among my most prized possessions.

HitClips Discs 💿

Image: martha tesema/mashable

As if the tiny versions of cassette tapes weren't adorable (and unnecessary) enough, in 2003 (near HitClips' retirement,) Tiger Electronics created HitClips Discs that played not one, but TWO minutes of music. Ca-chingggg.

These li'l Oreo-creme-filling-sized discs completely upped the game, but also required completely new players. So in the spirit of not making the original HitClips chips completely irrelevant (they were pricey, after all,) several hybrid devices that played both varieties were invented.

The extras 😎

Image: martha tesema/mashable

As any true fan of the amateur listening device will tell you, the real HitClips magic lay beyond the straightforward players.

You were nothing unless you had some snazzy HitClips extras, like an FM radio scanner attachment, or a three-inch-long boom box that played your tunes out loud for all to enjoy. There was an alarm clock, a Dance Bot, and even a karaoke device called the HitClips Groove Machine that somehow featured Destiny's Child in its commercial.

one time as a kid my parents wanted to follow a big gator football game, but it wasn't being aired on tv on a channel we got so they used the only working radio we had: my little hit clips boom box with the radio receiver cartridge plugged in pic.twitter.com/2NGiWROzg9

— Bobby Schroeder (@ponettplus) July 3, 2018

These came in handy and made the very limited devices a bit more functional. Who wouldn't want to blast a minute of Smash Mouth's "All Star" over and over again?

Less is more: An elaborate sham

The allure of HitClips is best summed by a moment from an episode of The Office where Michael Scott keeps listening to the iTunes Music Store preview of James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover" on repeat after breaking up with his girlfriend Carol.

When his colleague Dwight Schrute asks, "Why don't you just buy the whole song?" Michael replies, "I don't have to buy it. I just want a taste of it."

Now, in this particular scenario, Michael was likely too cheap to purchase the full song. But the sentiment still remains. HitClips did an excellent job of making consumers feel like they needed only a taste of a song to be satisfied. And our silly little brains — distracted by the novelty of miniature music players and more collectible clutter for our keychains — cast aside any shred of reasonable thinking and believed this to be true.

Think about it: People were willing to spend money on part of a song when FULL SONGS existed for less. And in some cases, people (me) already owned the full songs and even full ALBUMS, but still chose to pay more money for a song clip. That's madness. And it worked, because by 2002, Tiger Electronics had reportedly sold more than 20 million HitClips devices, bringing in $80 million. And that doesn't include sales through 2004.

There's certainly an argument that HitClips were more convenient to carry around than Walkmans or CD players, but when you really sit back and think about the logic of it all, it doesn't seem to hold up. In reality, we all got duped with HitClips. But in the moment, all that really mattered was that we felt trendy AF.

Can HitClips make a comeback?

It's been about fourteen years since HitClips were discontinued, and though they'll always hold a special place in our nostalgia-hungry hearts, the thought of a resurgence today is truly laughable.

Nowadays iTunes gives you a 1:30 song preview for FREE, and charges $1.29 on average for a single track. So why would anyone go back to paying more for less music? 

Kids these days will never appreciate hit clips keychains and that makes me a little sad

— Tabby Moore (@tabbykmoore) August 27, 2018

Today we're accustomed to high-tech touch screens, shareable playlists, and instant gratification. In other words, we're spoiled. Imagine paying money for iTunes and Spotify song previews. You would NEVER — especially when you have access to free songs on YouTube and Spotify (if you're willing to endure a few occasional advertisements). And since streaming caught on, most people have stopped purchasing music altogether in favor of streaming service subscriptions. 

Though HitClips would likely still capture the interest of kids, for the adults who once owned them, reverting back song clips would be a bit like trying to switch back to dial-up internet. (Okay, MUCH less painful than that.) The point is, we're too advanced and too impatient now.

I will say, when I brought my devices to the office, my coworkers were really feeling them. And HitClips still remain a topic of nostalgia-tinged jokes.

When will sweetener be released on hitclips?? @ArianaGrande

— matt (@mattdaly) August 20, 2018

Fixin’ to drop my first mixtape, available on Hit Clips everywhere pic.twitter.com/86QYzQtZjx

— Tom Simmermaker (@tomsimmo) August 21, 2018

THIS JUST IN: OMAROSA SAID TO HAVE OVER 200 HITCLIPS OF THE PRESIDENT AND ALSO THE SPICE GIRLS pic.twitter.com/73ofq1G7HW

— Anthony Carboni (@acarboni) August 17, 2018

Foolish or not, these toys were an important step in music history that helped prep the world for the iPod's release in 2001. For many people, HitClips served as a first experience with a handheld, deconstructed mix tape. Unlike Walkmans and CD players, HitClips let you switch between songs and artists with ease. There was no skipping through tracks you didn't like — you simply selected the song you wanted from your collection of clips.

Sure, they were much less advanced than iPods, but the concept foreshadowed the mind-blowing tech to come. And after the iPod came out, HitClips helped fill voids in the hearts of those who were still too young to own an Apple product.

HitClips aren't likely to make a comeback, unless, as Twitter user @punchworm suggests, an ~extra~ brand tries to revive them for nostalgia's sake.

i just know that the product manager at urban outfitters is waiting for just the right moment to bring back hitclips

— nia (@punchworm) August 26, 2018

But if you're dying to live the HitClips lifestyle now, you can buy them on Amazon or eBay for a pretty penny. Until then, I offer you the best of both worlds with this HitClips-themed Spotify playlists.

But remember, you should listen to just a minute each song if you really want that nostalgic vibe.

WATCH: This multi-instrumentalist understands the rhythm of the subway

[gta-5-cheats]

Bet money on yourself with Proveit, the 1-vs-1 trivia app

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Bet money on yourself with Proveit, the 1-vs-1 trivia app

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Pick a category, wager a few dollars and double your money in 60 seconds if you’re smarter and faster than your opponent. Proveit offers a fresh take on trivia and game show apps by letting you win or lose cash on quick 10-question, multiple choice quizzes. Sick of waiting to battle a million people on HQ for a chance at a fraction of the jackpot? Play one-on-one anytime you want or enter into scheduled tournaments with $1,000 or more in prize money, while Proveit takes around 10 percent to 15 percent of the stakes.

“I’d play Jeopardy all the time with my family and wondered ‘why can’t I do this for money?’ ” says co-founder Prem Thomas.

Remarkably, it’s all legal. The Proveit team spent two years getting approved as “skill-based gaming” that exempts it from some laws that have hindered fantasy sports betting apps. And for those at risk of addiction, Proveit offers players and their loved ones a way to cut them off.

The scrappy Florida-based startup has raised $2.3 million so far. With fun games and a snackable format, Proveit lets you enjoy the thrill of betting at a moment’s notice. That could make it a favorite amongst players and investors in a world of mobile games without consequences.

“I could spend $50 for a three-hour experience in a movie theater, or I could spend $2 to enter a Proveit Movies tournament that gives me the opportunity to compete for several thousand dollars in prize money,” says co-founder Nathan Lehoux. “That could pay for a lot of movies tickets!”

Proving it as outsiders

St. Petersburg, Fla. isn’t exactly known as an innovation hub. But outside Tampa Bay, far from the distractions, copycatting and astronomical rent of Silicon Valley, the founders of Proveit built something different. “What if people could play trivia for money just like fantasy sports?” Thomas asked his friend Lehoux.

That’s the same pitch that got me interested when Lehoux tracked me down at TechCrunch’s SXSW party earlier this year. Lehoux is a jolly, outgoing fella who became interested in startups while managing some angel investments for a family office. Thomas had worked in banking and health before starting a yoga-inspired sandals brand. Neither had computer science backgrounds, and they’d raised just a $300,000 seed round from childhood friend Hilt Tatum who’d co-founded beleaguered real money gambling site Absolute Poker.

Yet when he Lehoux thrust the Proveit app into my hand, even on a clogged mobile network at SXSW, it ran smoothly and I immediately felt the adrenaline rush of matching wits for money. They’d initially outsourced development to an NYC firm that burned much of their initial $300,000 seed funding without delivering. Luckily, the Ukrainian they’d hired to help review that shop’s code helped them spin up a whole team there that built an impressive v1 of Proveit.

Meanwhile, the founders worked with a gaming lawyer to secure approvals in 33 states including California, New York, and Texas. “This is a highly regulated and highly controversial space due to all the negative press that fantasy sports drummed up,” says Lehoux. “We talked to 100 banks and processors before finding one who’d work with us.”

Proveit founders (from left): Nathan Lehoux, Prem Thomas

Proveit was finally legal for the three-fourths of the U.S. population, and had a regulatory moat to deter competitors. To raise launch capital, the duo tapped their Florida connections to find John Morgan, a high-profile lawyer and medical marijuana advocate, who footed a $2 million angel round. A team of grad students in Tampa Bay was assembled to concoct the trivia questions, while a third-party AI company assists with weeding out fraud.

Proveit launched early this year, but beyond a SXSW promotion, it has stayed under the radar as it tinkers with tournaments and retention tactics. The app has now reached 80,000 registered users, 6,000 multi-deposit hardcore loyalists and has paid out $750,000 total. But watching HQ trivia climb to more than 1 million players per game has proven a bigger market for Proveit.

Quiz for cash

“We’re actually fans of HQ. We play. We think they’ve revolutionized the game show,” Lehoux tells me. “What we want to do is provide something very different. With HQ, you can’t pick your category. You can’t pick the time you want to play. We want to offer a much more customized experience.”

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To play Proveit, you download its iOS-only app and fund your account with a buy-in of $20 to $100, earning more bonus cash with bigger packages (no minors allowed). Then you play a practice round to get the hang of it — something HQ sorely lacks. Once you’re ready, you pick from a list of game categories, each with a fixed wager of about $1 to $5 to play (choose your own bet is in the works). You can test your knowledge of superheroes, the ’90s, quotes, current events, rock ‘n roll, Seinfeld, tech and a rotating selection of other topics.

In each Proveit game you get 10 questions, 1 at a time, with up to 15 seconds to answer each. Most games are head-to-head, with options to be matched with a stranger, or a friend via phone contacts. You score more for quick answers, discouraging cheating via Google, and get penalized for errors. At the end, your score is tallied up and compared to your opponent, with the winner keeping both player’s wagers minus Proveit’s cut. In a minute or so, you could lose $3 or win $5.28. Afterwards you can demand a rematch, go double-or-nothing, head back to the category list or cash out if you have more than $20.

The speed element creates intense, white-knuckled urgency. You can get every question right and still lose if your opponent is faster. So instead of second-guessing until locking in your choice just before the buzzer like on HQ, where one error knocks you out, you race to convert your instincts into answers on Proveit. The near instant gratification of a win or humiliation of a defeat nudge you to play again rather than having to wait for tomorrow’s game.

Proveit will have to compete with free apps like Trivia Crack, prize games like student loan repayer Givling and virtual currency-based Fleetwit, and the juggernaut HQ.

“The large tournaments are the big draw,” Lehoux believes. Instead of playing one-on-one, you can register and ante up for a scheduled tournament where you compete in a single round against hundreds of players for a grand prize. Right now, the players with the top 20 percent of scores win at least their entry fee back or more, with a few geniuses collecting the cash of the rest of the losers.

Just like how DraftKings and FanDuel built their user base with big jackpot tournaments, Proveit hopes to do the same… then get people playing little one-on-one games in-between as they wait for their coffee or commute home from work.

Gaming or gambling?

Thankfully, Proveit understands just how addictive it can be. The startup offers a “self-exclusion” option. “If you feel that you need to take greater control of your life as it relates to skill-gaming,” users can email it to say they shouldn’t play any more, and it will freeze or close their account. Family members and others can also request you be frozen if you share a bank account, they’re your dependant, they’re obligated for your debts or you owe unpaid child support.

“We want Proveit to be a fun, intelligent entertainment option for our players. It’s impossible for us to know who might have an issue with real-money gaming,” Lehoux tells me. “Every responsible real-money game provides this type of option for its users.

That isn’t necessarily enough to thwart addiction, because dopamine can turn people into dopes. Just because the outcome is determined by your answers rather than someone else’s touchdown pass doesn’t change that.

Skill-based betting from home could be much more ripe for abuse than having to drag yourself to a casino, while giving people an excuse that they’re not gambling on chance. Zynga’s titles like Farmville have been turning people into micro-transaction zombies for a decade, and you can’t even win money from them. Simultaneously, sharks could study up on a category and let Proveit’s random matching deliver them willing rookies to strip cash from all day. “This is actually one of the few forms of entertainment that rewards players financially for using their brain,” Lehoux defends.

With so much content to consume and consequence-free games to play, there’s an edgy appeal to the danger of Proveit and apps like it. Its moral stance hinges on how much autonomy you think adults should be afforded. From Coca-Cola to Harley-Davidson to Caesar’s Palace, society has allowed businesses to profit off questionably safe products that some enjoy.

For better and worse, Proveit is one of the most exciting mobile games I’ve ever played.