#spaghetti eastern

[ordosmarkzero]

Tampopo

[motsimages]

I live in the West of the country. There are cows and goats and sheep all around me. There are giant farms with a big house in the middle. I quite literally live in the most Western part of the country and still, nothing quite like going to Portugal and speak of it as if you had just crossed the Mississipi with fellow cowboys. Sure, I might have gone to the beach in Portugal, but if that is not The West, what is?

[mishkakagehishka]

Have you ever tried Clamato?

Idek what that is. Google says it's only distributed in the US, Canada and Mexico - I'm eastern euro

[simchafisher]

What's for supper? Vol. 317: Little Bear food

What’s for supper? Vol. 317: Little Bear food

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Happy Friday! Another week of nippy weather, and I’m really settling into cozy fall cooking. I’m doing some planning for Thanksgiving, by which I mean I bought a second potato masher at the thrift store. I have always been a wiggly line potato masher kind of gal, but now I’m branching out into the grid-on-a-circle style, and I have high…

[androidinvasionmusic]

The #Tweetcore Radio Hour, Episode 3

The #Tweetcore Radio Hour, Episode 3

In this episode of The #Tweetcore Radio Hour, I play tunes by The LaLaLettes, Fuzzruckus, Unlucky Mammals, Bottlecap Mountain, The Star Crumbles, The Kintners, Voodoo Planet, Spaghetti Eastern Music, Snap Infraction, and Quizboy! I also chat with Brian Lambert about the healing power of music and the distinction he sees between underground and indie music. Give it a listen!

[matchalovertrait]

So many people, so many different thoughts and opinions!

Previous / Next (Transcript under the cut)

Transcript:

(1.) [Andrea] You have 30 minutes to make an appetizer using all four of the basket ingredients. The timer starts... Now!

(2.) [Alex] I'm making a raclette with an assortment of merguez sausage, vegetable flatbread, pea shoots, and a side of shakshuka sauce. I think everything will go nicely with the melted cheese.

(3.) [Alex] I'll add ham, salami, steamed potatoes, and olives. I'm kind of playing it safe, but I hope the variety of flavors work out for me. It's all part of my strategy to at least get to the second round.

(4.) [Lewis] I've calmed down now. I decided to make a salad with pea shoots, crumbled sausage, flatbread croutons, and a shakshuka vinaigrette.

(5.) [Lewis] It's a salad. I can't possibly mess this up.... right?

(6.) [Dulce] I went with pizza wedges with a flatbread crust. They'll have shakshuka sauce, pea shoots, and merguez sausage. Of course, I'll be adding some mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

(7.) [Dulce] The pizza wedges are going to be soooo cute and fun. I'll also put some bacon bits and garlic. I can't put too many things, though. The wedges aren't going to be that big.

(8.) [Rubiya] I'm making spaghetti with merguez sausage meatballs, shakshuka sauce, and pea shoots. I'll add the vegetables from the flatbread to my sauce and use the rest of the flatbread to make garlic bread.

(9.) [Rubiya] Could I have made shakshuka? Yes, but that's rather predictable. Also, as someone from a Middle Eastern family, I refuse to use premade shakshuka sauce. I must make it from scratch.

(10.) [Andrea] It's time to introduce the two judges here today who are joining Michelin-Starred Chef, Mia D'Angelo-Ramirez.

(11.) [Mia] Thank you, Andrea. I'm always accompanied by amazing people, but I think the viewers and contestants will find today's lineup quite astounding.

(12.) [Dulce] Wow, it's actually her... I look up to Chef Mia a lot as another Mexican-Italian. I don't have Italian blood like her, but I was born here. I want to be on her level someday.

(13.) [Lewis] Oh my gosh..... I know Chef Mia is in every episode, but I still got nervous again when I saw her at the judges' table. She is so beautiful and talented.

(14.) [Carlo] Mia, you flatter me.

[Andrea] Chef Mia is right, though! Folks, here we have Executive Chef and Food Entrepreneur, Carlo Mancini.

(15.) [Alex] Chef Carlo Mancini??? He's the real deal. It's too late to change my appetizer now, so I have to impress him with my raclette.

(16.) [Rubiya] Chef Carlo Mancini. This will be fun.

(17.) [Andrea] And here's Grammy Award winner, Sofia Bjergsen!

[Sofia] Thank you so much. I've already been having a blast here. Not many people know this, but I was actually in culinary school for a bit before I decided to pursue music full-time.

(18.) [Dulce] THE Sofia Bjergsen??? I have all of her vinyl records! My favorite song by her is My Love Knows. I know the entire choreography for that song... here, I'll show you!

(19.) *My Love Knows by Sofia Bjergsen starts playing*

(20.) *My Love Knows by Sofia Bjergsen starts playing*

(21.) [Alex] Okay, I'll admit that I'm a fan, but what is she doing here? Isn't she on a world tour right now?

(22.) [Andrea] We are overjoyed to have the three of you as judges. Please, talk amongst yourselves while I check on the chefs.

[homunculus-argument]

I like that "spaghetti westerns" are called that. It sounds so arbitrarily dismissive but sums the genre up nonetheless. You could make a whole parody genre of the genre itself, pick a historical time and place and start filming movies with varying degrees of historical accuracy somewhere completely different. A series of samurai-movies set and filmed in Finland called maksalaatikko-easterns. Have fun pronouncing that btw.

[fellow-traveller]

So I just bought the latest JoJo magazine. Haven't read it thoroughly yet but there's a lot of stuff on Part 3-6 which is kinda cool. But I'm kinda reminded from the book that Polnareff was born in 1964. Should he be alive in 2024, he'd be 60 years old.

But it makes me wonder how old Hol Horse actually is.

He never had an official birth year, like the main characters in SDC, so we can only assume by his background, which, unfortunately, we don't have that either.

(whatever past this point is just what I got from a few hours of reading, so apologies dear curators of history and translators of CDDH if they are not accurate...)

While I haven't finished the Crazy Heartbreakers novel yet, I'm just gonna use that as the basis for Hol Horse's background, canon or not. So we go with the fan translation that Hol Horse originated from an "Eastern European country that had ceased to exist in 1999". Meaning, he was most likely born in Czechslovakia, Yugoslavia or East Germany of the Eastern Bloc, between 1950-1970.

What's interesting about these three no-longer-existed nations is that they were famous for Osterns i.e. Eastern European Western cowboy films. Osterns that were exact replicas of Spaghetti Westerns most likely started with Yugoslavia's Winnetou (1963), and Czechslovakia's Lemonade Joe (1964). Additionally, two famous non-Soviet cowboy films that were allowed screening in the Eastern Bloc were Magnificient Seven (1960) and Gold (1969). I'm omitting East Germany cowboy films at this point since most of them tell the Western stories from the Red Indian's perspective.

So it's safe to say that Hol Horse, who stole time to watch a cowboy film in the cinema that inspired his cowboy persona, must have been a child between 1960 and 1969. Assuming that movies at that time had no age ratings, and that age 4 is the average minimum for one to be allowed to enter a cinema, Hol Horse could have been born anytime between 1956 and 1965.

Taking the samples of the famous Osterns and Westerns listed that tell a tale of a skilled gunslinger in a typical spaghetti cowboy setting who became an unexpected hero and saved the fair maiden by the end of the film, only one truly stood out: Lemonade Joe.

Lemonade Joe is a satirical cowboy film that tells the story of a lone cowboy and skilled gunslinger named Lemonade Joe, who loves a non-alcoholic soda called Kolaloka (sounds almost like Locacaca, doesn't it?). Using his gunfighting skills, he convinced a town to embrace the soda and stop consuming alcohol, while also courting the daughter of a missionary.

What I found most interesting is that another name for this film is "The Horse Opera."

Now, I don't know if Araki or Kadono (the writer of CDDH) ever found inspiration from this film. This is purely on the assumption that our beloved Hol is just a goofy yet capable cowboy that suits the satire genre so well.

So! Assuming that this was probably one of the many films that inspired our Hol to be the cowboy he was meant to be (and also inspired his Stand), since Lemonade Joe was screened in 1964, we can then assume that Hol most likely was born in 1960. Which makes him the same age as Avdol. And also makes him at the ripe age of 39 during the CDDH's run.

He's definitely old. But still the best cowboy in JoJo ♥

[queen-susans-revenge]

Things My Momma Taught Me

(reprinted: I actually wrote this years ago, but just stumbled across it again. And we're not too far off Mother's Day, so.)

So I was walking around the Tenderloin looking for stray twenty-dollar-bills that might have fallen into gutters, and I was thinking, as I often do, about my mother.

A few years ago my mom got all upset because she heard that today's youth lacked moral guidance. So she sat me down and she said, "Daughter," she said:

Don't ever cross a picket line.

Work for Greeks.

Don't you ever eat something that you find dead at the side of the road, unless you were in the car that killed it.

I'm not sure where my mom got her fine Depression-era set of ethics, except that I think she heard the last one on a radio show. Her enduring affinity for Greek employers (and her corresponding loathing for the French) probably stems from her experience working as a waitress in Alsace and Italy. Apparently, if you innocently drop a plate full of spaghetti in somebody's lap, and they have to go and make a big stink about it, your Greek boss will defend you, whereas your German boss will take the comp'ed meal out of your paycheck, and your French boss will probably slap you across the face.

Anyway, it's the first point that really stuck with me: I'm convinced that, in the Final Judgement, when the goddess Ma'at weighs our hearts on her golden scales, the murderers will make out better than the scabs. (And bad tippers will be thrown straight into the jaws of the crocodile.)

But speaking of my mom's international wisdom:

It's best if you don't eat raw oysters in a Mexican street market.

Here followed a tale of heartbreak and amoebic dysentery. But my mom survived both the oysters and the French, and pulled herself up by her bootstraps to become the world's leading eastern North-American paleoethnobotanist, which was always a lot of fun to write in the little blank under "Mother's Occupation." Now when she calls me up, her conversation tends to go something like this:

"It turns out you can tell the species of acorn just by looking very closely under the microscope. So that's very exciting. I'm going to have to try that on my own acorns when I get home. Mmph. Excuse me. I was pulling a cork out of a wine bottle, with my teeth."

But all intrepid globetrotting archaeologists need their endearing phobias. For Indiana Jones it was snakes. For my mom it's blimps. I don't know if she was a Hindenburg victim in a past life or what, but it's really no fun being in a car with her if there's a Goodyear Blimp in sight. She keeps scanning the sky anxiously, wondering if it's following her, wondering if it's watching us. Also among her bizarre phobias is the conviction that I'll be sent to jail someday…ha ha! Trés absurd!

Laugh, damn you.

Anyway, back to the blimp thing. For a woman of science, Mom is actually very attuned to signs and portents. There was this one time that a headless pigeon fell from the sky, literally at her feet.

These are bad times.

"These are bad times," she told me. "Bad times, when headless pigeons fall from the sky." And I can't deny it.*

But the last thing my mom taught me, the biggest thing really, and more important than Fortean events, is the definition of love. I remember when I was a little kid, I got worms. Just like a dog. Tiny little white wrigglers that squimed around in my asshole. And they itched and would keep me awake at night. So I remember that, in the weeks it took for my de-worming pills to work, my mom would spend an hour or so every night picking these worms out of my butt so that I could get to sleep.

That is love, in all its shocking profundity. When you spend hours picking worms out of somebody's buttcrack, that is love.

So, I love you too, Mom. Thanks for picking the worms out of my butt. Thanks for getting me drunk all those times. Thanks for teaching me right from wrong, and thanks, in advance, for posting my bail.

Happy Mother's Day.

*later she called me back up to tell me it was a good portent actually. It happened because a hawk had moved in to the neighborhood.

[dunmeshistash]

I honestly didn't realise they were making the wrong dish honestly 😭😭 maybe it's because I'm from southeast asia so I just never knew they were talking about spaghetti or that Marcille was Italian 😭 Just realised this, I thought the whole "Marcille is Italian" was a joke the fandom made up 😭😭

-🐰

I am just as confused! I also assumed it was a joke until I saw someone saying Donato was a Italian surname, and I just assume it was supposed to be spaghetti related pasta dish cause that's what izutsumi says (maybe she's confused why they made an eastern archipelago dish when trying to make a northen one)

[llynwen]

hi you're European right? I'm curious to know your thoughts about how the American south is portrayed in true detective bc I've been there and yes it's exactly like that but even moreso. Haunted ass beautiful country

Thank You So Much for such an interesting ask!

In the case of many europeans who were born before the Internet was such a big thing, we mostly learned about the us from films and shows. my childhood experience was watching reruns of spaghetti westerns and early 2000s rom coms, family comedies and kids movies, and feeling that the technicolor reality of america was somehow so much better than the Gray of eastern europe. the discrepancy isn't as noticeable now as it used to be when i was a kid, but you could Smell the post-sovietness some days. the life i saw in the movies was anything But the bleak, overwhelming reality of the early 2000s in my country that just made you feel nauseous and gave you a migraine. like i remember being Shocked at the technology of CDs and MP3 players. it was 2007.

the consensus was always that america was somewhere where everything was better. bigger. brighter. america was where you went to be happy. where you could breathe.

then, as i grew up, i obviously realized that this was a load of bullshit. i don't remember when the shift took place, but sometime in my teenage years, i suppose. by that time, my english has gotten good enough to actually participate in social media (that are predominantly american, like tumblr for example. i've been here for a decade) and actually engage in discourse. to learn about the Real america and what life looked like for the average person. and it wasn't great. guns, systemic oppression, privatized healthcare, the capitalist rot. none of that was present in the movies of my childhood.

now, in true detective, the south reminds me so much of how eastern europe felt in my childhood. it's nowhere near similar to it visually, the nature and architecture and people are all different, but it is Stifling, Suffocating, like the sky is gonna come down on your head. the ash and aluminum line actually describes it so good. what i was most surprised by, though, was the people. starting from marty (let's not focus on rusty here as we can all agree he doesn't really belong with the rest of the characters), he is a perfect example of the average family man. i love his character Because he's a shit and a cringeass loser, but in the scenes of him interacting with his daughters in '02, the feeling that he evokes in me is Disgust. and i feel like that's a common archetype of the father-provider that thinks his role in the house ends with making money. he sits in his chair, makes everybody miserable with his very presence, and expects the food to be brought to him. that man has never scrubbed a toilet in his life. i know men like him. i've met them, talked to them. i'm related to them. they're everywhere. that disgust feels intimate. now, the other characters that surprised me were the side characters, the people rust and marty go to question. tyrone's mother, the prostitutes, dora's friend at the scrap yard - they remind me of my people. now, i really don't want to come off as classist or some shit like that - but in both the show And my reality, the divide between the working class and the educated crowd is Stark. that is not to say that one is better than the other (i firmly believe that a lack of education can make you happier, if you think about it. content with a simple life, happy to work in a mine your whole life, live in a wielka płyta apartment and go to the sea once a year. if that. this is very specific to my region, sorry). the way those side characters talk, behave, even look - that is Nothing like the movies. they're not the flashy main characters, they're imperfect in every sense - they Look like people, have flaws, crooked teeth, they don't dress like supermodels, they can be stupid, they drink and smoke and cheat and lie. they're Human, not movie protagonists. and i love that reality in the show. makes it feel that much more authentic.

i don't know how specific that is to the south; are the people like that in other places? are the fishermen in luisiana the same as in minessota? is the suffocating feeling specific to the iberia parish, or is that just how it is in small town america? i dont know. the problem is, i wanna find out.

see, i never lost that childhood wonder. call me naive, but i still wanna Go. i still want to see the american dream with my own two eyes, even if it means i'm gonna watch it shatter in real time. i graduate college in a little over a year with a masters degree, and for right now my plan is to find a way to go work at a ranch in montana or wyoming. that's all i want. my favorite thing about america is not the culture, not the people, not the Possibility, but the Space. ironically, the stolen land is what compels me most. i want to experience that open space, to Breathe, and for the first time in my life feel my lungs filling up fully. i will be disappointed, full stop, but i want to have that experience.

the american south is a fascinating place to me, always has. the specific mix of cultures, the tradition and lack of it, even the bigotry and hate, it's all endlessly interesting. as you said, haunted but oh so beautiful. it scares the shit out of me. i need to go and feel it bite me.

[sysboxes]

what are some weird food concoctions (example: m&ms on pizza) that yall like? And what’re some weird drink concoctions?

(a cultural thing that is regarded as “weird” by others counts)

and is there a backstory to why you like the food and drink? Like is it a childhood thing, something a loved one liked, something you just randomly discovered, something passed down by generations, etc

mod wonder - for weird drink concoctions, i love mixed drinks, like cranberry and apple juice or a variety of soda mixes. for food, depends on what you’d count as weird. oh except, don’t cancel me for this, i eat damp cheerios. i can’t have liquid milk, or any kind, but hard cheerios are sometimes too dry for me, so i add a little tiny bit of water to make them damp, but not full on wet. i also eat matzah with charoset or butter, which isn’t really weird, but might be to someone who’s not jewish

Mod Luxray 🐈‍⬛️⚡️- OKOK SO FOOD watermelon, Tajin, creole seasoning, and whipped cream[cool whip works best], mush it all up and freeze it, you get a sweet with a slight spice sorbet-icecream ass things its SO GOOD. Drinks have to be Lime Jarritos, brisk ice tea-lemonade, and milk/cream, creates a cream soda type thing, back story for both is my mommas friend growin up would always make these for me while i was in the hospital, which was alot, so its become something of a comfort food

Mod Avon 📖 - Lmao I just talked about wildcard sodas! Love that. But for me, I don’t tend to go too wild on concoctions (the autism texture thing goes hard for me). People get upset with me over gummy bears in blended custards though. Like those blended custards at Rita’s? Love gummy bears in those. It reminds me of the good memories I still have of my family.

Mod Jester 🖍 - Not really sure if it’s weird but we love mac and cheese and peas so much. We first thought it was weird when our mom introduced it to us but we tried and loved it. The texture is mainly why we keep going back to it.

Mod Weeping ❤️ - Mac and cheese and peas, mac and cheese and plain lays or salt and vi what lays in between bread (Mac and cheese chip sandwhich 😎), mayo on peas-, spaghetti and peas, and chicken sandwhich with mac and cheese (preferably baked mac and cheese tho?). Mac and cheese and peas was a childhood thing, the Mac and cheese and chip sandwhich was something my brother and I made up, the mayo on peas is something my hip moms family taught me and they called it “cowboy peas” and said it was a southern USA thing but I have never met another person who did this so they may have been lying lmfao, spaghetti and peas was something an upstairs neighbor did and we had to eat it or not eat basically-, the mac and cheese chicken sandwhich was bc of that Chick-fil-A TikTok hack that went around for a bit. Also, and this is a PICA thing that we just never stopped doing, those fucking paper lollipop sticks bro- also some middle eastern foods and thing that ppl generally dont like in the USA unless they’re from there? Various things we ate bc we had PICA as a kid but I don’t count those. And then drinks idk. (Fuck that was so long sorry-). Oh wait- also something a little in our Sys likes- is these wack ass snack concoctions she makes of really spicy chips plus sweet cereal (like O’s) plus something more “plain” like pretzel balls she picks the salt off of

mod plush 🌻 — unfortunately i’m a very average food concoctor. fries and milkshakes, ketchup in mac and cheese (bonus if it’s cheeseburger mac), etc. if you asked me what foods i didn’t like, well, we could be here for hours…

[kate-les-bridge-stewart]

So my buddy @timeandspacenovelist created a little au that I decided to build off of and it kinda turned into a sorta spaghetti western breaking bad with osgate and thasmin lol

This is a classic spaghetti western setting, late 1890s in small town USA

Yaz is the sheriff and 13 is her deputy

Graham runs a local saloon that basically acts as the town square

Ryan is one of Grahams bartenders

Dan runs a local barber shop

Three of the masters are the main bad guys in town; dhawan, missy and simm

They run 3 of the biggest criminal organizations in the whole eastern USA

Missy runs a massive illegal drug manufacturing operation, Simms group acts as the distributor for said drugs

Dhawan runs a hitman group and also just acts as the military for the other two groups

All three of them work as a triple alliance

12 is the undertaker and the main medical doctor in town

Clara, amy, and bill all work with 13 and yaz to help fight crime and solve cases

Osgood is the local gunsmith/weaponsmith and shes renowned across the country as one of the best in her field

One thing about osgood though is that very little is actually known about her...

Kate is a seasoned military veteran who's known as one of the best sharpshooters/snipers of the century

She settled down in this town for retirement (and also to be with osgood) but she occasionally helps yaz and 13 with cases

9 is the town mayor (since he seemed the most competent out of 10 and 11)

Clara acts as a negotiator and the detective that does most of the interrogations and interviews

Amy and bill act as sorta spies or investigators

Bill also looks for, stores, and bookkeeps evidence for cases

River runs a brothel and gives yaz and 13 tips on any criminals that come thru there. She may also do a bit of vigilante work on the side 😏

Remember how I said theres very little known about osgood? Well, theres a reason for that...

You see, osgood has a bit of a naughty streak to her.

She works with every major criminal organization on the eastern US. She acts as a bank for them to store and hide their assets and money

She also manages shipments of any supplies the groups might need, mainly weapons or drugs

She organized a certain level of mutual cooperation amoung all the criminal groups and sometimes helps negotiate any major disagreements between them (but only if they threaten to cause harm to the system she built)

Kate knows about this and often helps serve as her bodyguard

Osgood obviously wanted to conceal her identity so she uses the code name "Medici" as a reference to the de Medici family of italy, known as one of the richest and most powerful families to ever exist (they were so powerful cus they formed the first bank which made them reeeeeally influential as you can imagine)

I'm gonna add to this soon but I just wanted to jot down the main points of this au first

[warningsine]

Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour once said she conceived the idea for her debut film, the vampire thriller “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night,” while skateboarding down West Coast streets one night. As her black chador whipped behind her like the wings of a bat, Amirpour had a vision of heroine: A young Iranian girl who skateboarded around the streets of the fictional Bad Town, her chador rippling behind her like a cape.

Through combining traditional and modern elements of Iranian culture, as well as including both Western and Eastern influences, Amirpour creates a masterpiece that transcends all previously drawn boundaries. “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” is a melting pot of influences, seen in the pairing of chador and fangs, seen in the Iranian tattoos on a crass pimp and, most importantly, seen in the soundtrack itself.

Contrasting the stark, noir aspect of the entirely black and white movie, the soundtrack of “A Girl” is an eclectic mash-up of Iranian songs, both old and new. Novel Iranian bands like Radio Tehran and Kiosk stand next to classic singers like Dariush; it’s a playlist that not only beautifully melds past and present, but also shapes the fictional world of “Bad Town.”

Much like its lack of color, “A Girl” lacks excessive dialogue, choosing instead to let its characters speak through the music that fills the negative space.

The main character, The Girl (played by Sheila Vand), is a pointed collection of contradictions: She is mostly silent, entrapped in shadows, yet the music that accompanies her pays homage to vibrant ‘80s synthpop. At the beginning of the film, The Girl dances alone in her room while Farah’s “Dancing Girls” plays; the song contains both Farsi and English lyrics, yet the techno wave of its background melody, along with the lone disco ball The Girl sways back and forth under, is reminiscent of American bands like a-ha and Blondie. Farah’s lyrics — “she’s just a normal girl / dancing to her favorite song” — create a sense of intimacy and vulnerability at odds with the fantastical vampire nightmare.

Even though the scene contains no dialogue, it speaks volumes about The Girl. Its contrasting components divulge a multi-dimensional character who moves past the flat trope of the stereotypical horror movie monster. Instead, we get a vampire who puts on makeup surrounded by muted fairy lights and saves abused prostitutes, then brutally murders an insolent pimp.

The soundtrack is not just a voice for the characters, but a shape for the movie as a whole. The largely instrumental band Ferderale makes several appearances throughout the film. The American-based ensemble is heavily influenced by soundtracks from the ‘60s & ‘70s era of Italian “Spaghetti Western” genres and, through this, allows “A Girl” to transcend cultural boundaries. Songs like “Sarcophagus” and “Black Sunday” feature dramatic orchestral declarations, bringing to mind the theatrical standoffs of iconic Old Westerns, while the underpinnings of folk melodies speak to conventional Iranian films. A spectral woman’s voice is often intermittently added as a glossy layer over the entire compilation; its echoing European opera sound traces the barren desert setting in fine lines of elegance.

Ferderale’s “Sisyphus” narrates a relatively simple, but quintessential, scene within the film: An unnamed character in drag dances with a balloon to music in a courtyard. The fringe on her button-down shirt and ostentatious silver buckle of her belt is at odds with the hijab on her head. It’s a strange juxtaposition replicated in the song as it weaves together musical elements from a variety of different eras.

The band allows the fictional Bad Town to exist within multiple spheres, blurring the lines between distinct movie genres and distinct cultures. It’s a quiet gesture, this remix of convention to include input from other cultures, but a powerful one. With “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night,” Amirpour constructs a story without limitations; instead, it masterfully traverses the rift between Eastern and Western ideals and finds a way to mend the disconnect.

What it means to me as an Iranian woman, more than just as a good horror movie, more than even a movie empowering Iranian women, is that it celebrates the power of opportunity. It’s doubtful Amirpour would have been able to create a movie of this magnitude if her family had remained in Iran, instead of taking the chance to immigrate to Europe and, later, to California.

Even though Iran’s culture is based predominantly around the arts — seen in the timeless impact of poets like Hafiz and Saadi — its current political climate has an iron grip around the advancement of artistic expression; it places tight restrictions over any creative production, not allowing for deviation from the established norm.

Many of the artists featured on this soundtrack, though Iranian-based, produce and perform their music outside of Iran; the radical socio-political commentary found in the lyrics of songs from bands like Kiosk or Radio Tehran is explicitly forbidden in Iran. Instead of remaining silent, they chose to immigrate to Europe, Canada and (mainly) the U.S, becoming the voice of a majority of Iran’s younger generation and permitting Iranian culture to continue to progress.

In light of President Donald Trump’s recent ban on travel on seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran being one of them), pieces of art like “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” and its soundtrack need attention: The future of Iran lies within the ideas of its youth. When young Iranian citizens emigrate to search for new prospects, they are not fleeing from the historic culture of their homeland. Rather, their innovative ideas push the culture to evolve in order to accommodate new perspectives, redefining what it means to be Iranian.

With its multifaceted soundtrack, “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” represents the endlessly creative potential of the Iranian youth.

It’s an ingenuity that I saw whenever I strolled the streets in Iran: Young artists with revolutionary ideas on the brink of looking to make a life for themselves, many of them exploring the option of moving to America.  And even though the ethnocentrism in the continuing view of America as “the land of opportunity” is a problem in itself, it does not draw away from the fact that, for many bright students, closed borders means closed opportunities as well. 

[rabbitcruiser]

Great Basin Highway, NV (No. 1)

In the U.S. state of Nevada, U.S. Route 93 (US 93) is a major United States Numbered Highway traversing the eastern edge of the state. The highway connects the Las Vegas area to the Great Basin National Park, and provides further connections to Ely and Wells. US 93 also provides the majority of the most direct connection from the major metropolitan areas of Las Vegas and Phoenix (via Boulder City, Kingman and Wickenburg with a final link to Phoenix via US 60) to the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area (with a final connection to Boise via Interstate 84 from Twin Falls, Idaho).

U.S. Route 93 in Nevada is known as the Great Basin Highway from Interstate 15 in North Las Vegas to Interstate 80 in Wells. It begins at the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge in Boulder City. The highway overlaps U.S. Route 95 from State Route 173 in Boulder City to Interstate 15 in downtown Las Vegas. It runs to the Las Vegas Valley passing through the cities of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas. US 93 merges with Interstate 15 at the Spaghetti Bowl interchange and overlaps I-15 for approximately 21 miles. After overlapping I-15, US 93 heads northwest towards Alamo.Signage along the Scenic Byway section of US 93, as seen in 2014

Near Crystal Springs, US 93 curves right while intersecting State Routes 318 and 375. US 93 continues east to mountainous terrain to the town of Caliente. The highway turns left to go north to Pioche. 80 miles later, the highway turns left at an intersection with U.S. Routes 6 and 50. From State Route 318 to the US Routes 6 and 50 intersection, the highway is a Nevada Scenic Byway. Near Ely, the three U.S. routes separate. US 6 turns left before the intersection US 50 and 93 separate, heading southwest. US 50 and 93 separate, with route 50 heading northwest towards Austin, Nevada and route 93 heading northeast.

Source: Wikipedia