#true this musical is latino-coded

[cto10121]

Found this 2023 abridged amateur production of the Mexican RetJ with better production values!!!!

[ammcgee-author]

206. Whiteness

Not all Whites are “White.”

Historically, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, and Latinos were only considered “white” by resemblance, or comparison, to the general population; or not at all.

The Irish were also sometimes considered “non-whites” despite all appearances to the contrary.

While you may believe this would create solidarity between Blacks, Non-White Whites, and mixed-race individuals… It instead creates competition.

Whiteness is positively associated with the following traits: Purity, Beauty, Virtue, Intelligence, Honesty, good grammar, trustworthiness, politeness, electricity, civilization, technology, architecture, scientific progress, education, evolutionary-superiority, power, vaccines, medicine, industrialism, Colonialism and Racism.

No wonder everyone wants to be “White.”

I was born in California, and when I was a child most of the children I went to school with had Western European ancestry, and resembled the Germanic “Aryan” Ideal: with Blonde hair, blue eyes, and tan skin. Tan skin is very important to the Germanic/Californian Ideal of Whiteness, because German doctors often prescribed sunlight and vitamin d to cure all matter of physical and mental afflictions. That’s why there were once so many German and Austrian immigrants in California. Therefore, to be tan is too be healthy. To be tan makes White People (TM) appear more racially white, or Caucasian.

When Italians, Hispanics, Jews, and Mexicans tan; they often look less white.

This standard of beauty is very different than in Asia, where they still adhere to the Feudal code that was once so popular in Europe: that to be fair-skinned is to be high-born, whereas to be tan is to work in the fields, like a commoner. Perhaps that’s how Americans once justified Black African Slavery, and maybe remnants of this beauty standard still exist in the current exploitation of Mestizo immigrants, in America?

Pamela Andersen, though her natural hair color is light brown, is a physical representation of the perfect Aryan ideal. Strong, healthy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and perhaps most importantly: golden-skinned. What Hitler sought to create was a world full of women as beautiful as Pamela Andersen. No one can say he wasn’t an idealist, no one can say that he wasn’t ambitious. David Hasselhoff, with his combination of Nordic and Romanesque features, is essentially the male equivalent of the Nazi/Aryan ideal… Hitler sought to create armies, fleets, legions, full of David Hasselhoffs.

No wonder his music so popular in Germany.

(Hasselhoff’s, not Hitler’s.)

The Nazi Ideal is Baywatch.

Most of Hitler’s “revolutionary” ideas of Racial-Superiority, Eugenics, and Euthanasia came not from Germany; but rather from doctors and scientists at Stanford University in California. California is famous for its selective-breeding, and Stanford pioneered some of the first selective-breeding programs. They’re very “Liberal.”

Stanford also has a wonderful hospital, where I had my last heart-surgery.

When I was in kindergarten I lived in a cul de sac with lots of beautiful Aryan children. My best friend and neighbor was Jewish. She had curly brown hair, hazel green eyes, and was allergic to pretty much everything but air; though for roughly six months out of the year, she was allergic to that, too. My two strongest memories of her was are when she had her tonsils taken out, and I brought her a “Little Mermaid” velvet poster, that you color yourself with included neon markers; and being jealous of her because she celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah.

She had a Christmas train on her dining room table, that went around the menorah, no wonder I was jealous!

Some stereotypes are true: In our kindergarten class photo almost everyone wore pale paisley dresses, I wore a modest plaid skirt with a polo shirt that had a matching plaid kerchief sewn into the pocket, like a Catholic school-girl, and my Jewish friend wore a bright fuchsia dress with puffy sleeves that her grandma picked out for her.

Our dads were businessmen, our moms were yoga moms.

My first experience of racism was when I was in elementary school, after my parents divorced, and our family moved to a small town in Oregon.

I remember people asking me what race I was, and I would just say, “White” because I was fair-skinned, but then they would say, “Yeah, but what else are you?” While squinting their eyes as if examining a strange and exotic creature they had never seen before, and trying to guess what it was based on animals they have seen before.

I remember walking around town with my mom, and adults looking at me and commenting to my mother, “Wow! You have a lot of children, don’t you?” There were three of us. Fewer children than most families in town had.

Though these same people would compliment my sister for her light-blue eyes, her Aryan blood is strong.

At school my friends all listened to TLC and wanted to be them. They would argue over who was T-Boz, Left Eye, and Chillie when role-playing. I thought it was weird, because they were white.

I’m mixed-race and as far as I know my bloodline includes: Scottish, Irish, German, Spanish, and Mexican Mestizo (or Native American) heritage. As a child I looked Asian, as an adult I appear Hispanic, Latina, or White; depending on who you ask.

I’m pale, and look like a vampire.

(Except when I’m not, except when I don’t.)

Except when I tan.

My second best Jewish friend was my Abusive ex who often lied about his ethnicity on white-power forums like Stormfront dot com; saying that he was Spanish when he wasn’t.

He said he liked me because I’m “Mexican.”

(I didn’t know all that when we were dating.)

But my most significant and traumatic experience of Racism came from when I was living with my dad for a short time and going to a majority Black/Mexican junior senior high-school in the San Diego Ghetto.

A gang of Black and Mexican (mixed-race) girls jumped me because they were jealous that the most popular boy in school, a Black kid by the name of Marcus, liked me.

When I asked why I was attacked, after both me and the girl who initiated the confrontation were sent to the principle’s office, she was crying that the other girls “instigated” her into trying to beat me up, because the boy she liked, liked me. When I asked her, “Why would they do that?” She casually mentioned how they didn’t like me because I was “white.” Her casual attitude towards this type of Violent Racism, like it was the most natural thing in the world… Shocked me.

I didn’t know that the other girls didn’t like me because I was “white,” and based on my previous experiences of Racism coming from white-people; (TM) I didn’t even know that I was white enough to be considered “white”.

I was targeted for elimination, because of my race.

The worst Racism I’ve ever experienced came not from White people, but people of color.

I was deeply complimented, and insulted.

I’m still traumatized by the incident.

It’s not my fault some guy liked me.

It’s not fault for being “white.”

I didn’t even know I was.

Racism hurts, and is very destructive; regardless of whether it comes from whites or non-whites.

It makes no difference.

Everyone is jealous.

That’s my experience as a mixed-race person, that’s my experience of “Whiteness.”

— A.M. McGee

[ranxel]

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[centrally-unplanned]

The In The Heights ‘whitewashing’ drama is another one of those cases of left-discourse eating its own over the worst possible examples of the supposed crime. Its totally true that media has a tendency to cast lighter-skinned actors & actresses (particularly actresses) in roles. It has much more to do with audience demand than any racism on the part of casting directors, but that doesn’t make it any less disheartening for darker-skinned industry participants, aspirants, and audiences - market demand is not a blank moral check. So you can go ahead and have those conversations around the industry.

In the Heights is the worst possible example of this ‘problem’. A musical meant to accurately portray the Washington Heights/Inwood district of Harlem (NYC), its cast is virtually all Hispanic, but only one of its main cast members is what people would consider Afro-Latino. As such it is getting accusations of white washing, which of course the creators kowtowed to immediately and issued the requisite apologies. The problem is these accusations make no sense based on the numbers.

Washington Heights is a 70% Latino neighborhood, with 20% white and 10% black population (2% Asian as well, I am rounding). Okay so only 10% black, but “Afro-Latino” is different, right? It is, and certain Latino populations are overwhelmingly Afro-Latino. So what Hispanic ethnic groups live in Washington Heights?

Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans, apparently. I (fortunately) do not have a “tier list of Hispanics by whiteness” link, but you are gonna have to trust me that it is extremely common knowledge that Puerto Ricans and Cuban-Americans are the palest Hispanics around this side of Argentina. Dominicans are a bit more wide-ranging but certainly not on the ‘dark’ side of the tier list. Of course there are Afro-Latino Puerto Ricans, many of them, but in the numbers if you go to a place like Washington Heights, the Hispanic population looks more-or-less like the cast of the movie does. Because of course it does! That was the intent!

“That doesn’t change the fact that they should still have some representation” okay I agree, how about 20% of the main characters are afro-latino/black, and similarly for the background characters? That makes sense, right, roughly matching US demographics? Well they did that! Remember how ‘only one of the main characters is afro-latino’? ...how many main characters do you think a movie has?? Like most other movies, it has about 5, which is hey, 20%! It does have ~3 supporting characters, and then background characters, who are quite diverse, like one would expect. Could maybe one more role have been Afro-Latino? Yeah, I guess? Is...that what this is over? Literally one casting switch and the criticism goes away?

Look, a dirty secret of Hollywood activism is that black representation is actually quite fine to possibly even overrepresented given their demographics, as they slot in at just ~12% of the US population and bat at 10-15% of roles in TV and film (its better in TV than film, and its complicated, not saying there are zero issues) Hispanics, meanwhile, despite approaching 20% of the US population hit a dismal 3-4% of leading roles, and not much more supporting. Its really common for Hispanic actors to be treated as ‘pretty-much white” and not count as diversity, while pushes for “diversity” are actually just code-words for more black roles with Asian-American and Hispanics thrown under the bus. Its a trap leftist circles fall into around media all the time, and to be honest some of the criticisms are so obviously self-interested “only I count as real diversity” its laughable. This fake non-troversy is just a particularly shining example of that trend.

[sneek-m]

Monthly Listening: March 2020

It’s been a rough time, but we got through another month. Here’s what I checked out in March. Here’s also a playlist for the month. 306 songs!

2020 albums

Anna Takeuchi -- Matousic (Teichiku)

Arca -- @@@@@ (XL)

Aseul -- Slow Dance (Astro Kidz)

Ayami Muto -- Mirrors (Tsubasa Plus)

Bad Bunny -- YHLQMDLG (Rimas)

Bed In -- Rock (Space Shower Music)

Bktherula -- Love Santana (Shop FMM)

Blanck Mass -- Calm with Horses OST (Invada)

Brandy Clark -- Your Life Is a Record (Warner)

Cardo -- Game Related (EI$G / TFM / BYLUG)

Caribou -- Suddenly (Merge)

Cidergirl -- Soda Pop Fanclub 3 (Universal Music Japan)

Christine and the Queens -- La Vita Nuova EP (Because)

Cloque. -- Naked Blue (VAP)

Code Orange -- Underneath (Roadrunner)

Coremagazine -- Titbit EP (self-released)

Dokkoise House -- Floating House (Ohagi)

DPR Live -- Is Anybody Out There? (Dream Perfect Regime)

Eunki -- Undefinable: Love

Foodman -- Dokutsu EP (Highball)

Four Tet -- Sixteen Oceans (Text)

Gigi Masin -- Calypso (Apollo)

Haru Nemuri -- Lovetheism (TO3S)

Hilary Woods -- Birthmarks (Sacred Bones)

Hook -- Crashed My Car (GC)

Irreversible Entanglements -- Who Sent You? (International Anthem)

Itzy -- IT’z ME (JYP)

J Balvin -- Colores (Universal Music Latino)

KALMA -- Teen Teen Teen (Jvckenwood)

Kamisama Club -- Jura (Kanikani)

Kaela Kimura -- Zig Zag (Jvckenwood)

Kelsea Ballerini -- Kelsea (Black River)

King Krule -- Man Alive! (True Panther)

Knxwledge -- 1988 (Stones Throw)

Lil Uzi Vert -- Eternal Atake (Atlantic)

Loathe -- I Let It In and It Took Everything (Sharptone)

Los -- NO Love (WhiteHouse / Empire)

Lucky Kilimanjaro -- !magination (Dreamusic)

Lucy Gooch -- Rushing EP (Past in the Present)

M!LK -- Juvenilizm Seishun Shugi (SDR)

Magical Punchline -- Magical Supermarket (Dreamusic)

Mariana Montenegro -- La Mar (self-released)

Mashinomi -- Tsuranatte Odoriva EP (Pony Canyon)

Metome, Uratomoe, Speedometer -- Dark, Tropical. (P-Vine)

NCT 127 -- NCT #127 Neo Zone (SM)

Nicolas Jaar -- Cenizas (Other People)

Omar S -- You Want (FXHE)

Peder Mannerfelt -- Like We Never Existed (Voam)

Pantha du Prince -- Conference of Trees (self-released)

R.A.P. Ferreira -- Purple Moonlight Pages (Ruby Yacht)

Raspberry Bulbs -- Before the Age of Mirrors (Relapse)

Sadness -- Atna EP (self-released)

Sejeong -- Plant (Jellyfish)

Sightless Pit -- Grave of a Dog (Thrill Jockey)

Sik-K -- Officially OG (H1GHER)

Soccer Mommy -- Color Theory (Loma Vista)

Suso Sais -- MFM Mix 012 (Music from Memory)

Triangulo de Amor Bizarro -- Triangulo de Amor Bizarro (Mushroom Pillow)

Ulla -- Tumbling Towards a Wall (Experiences)

Violet Cold -- Noir Kid (Emin Guliyev)

Vladislav Delay -- Rakka (Cosmo Rhythmatic)

Waxahatchee -- Saint Cloud (Merge)

The Weeknd -- After Hours (The Weeknd XO / Republic)

Windy & Carl -- Allegiance & Conviction (Kranky)

WNC WhopBezzy -- WW3 (WNC Da Label)

Xydo -- X (groovl1n)

YeYe -- 30 (Rallye)

You’ll Melt More! -- Surpriser (You’ll)

Young Nudy -- Anyways (self-released)

Yuka Ueno -- Konya Atashi Ga Naitemo (King)

Yumi Zouma -- Truth or Consequences (Polyvinyl)

Non-2020 albums

Aiko -- Akatsuki No Love Letter (Pony Canyon)

The Future Sounds of London -- Dead Cities (Astralwerks)

Kinki Kids -- F Album (Johnny’s)

Mac Dre -- Thizzelle Washington (Sumo / Thizz Entertainment)

Richie Rich -- Seasoned Veteran (UMG)

Tokyo Shoki Shodo -- Sweet 17 Monsters (Cherry Virgin Records)

Tomomi Kahara -- Storytelling (Orumok)

The Treacherous Three -- The Treacherous Three (Sugar Hill)

[tcm]

How THE BARBARIAN (’33) helped Ramon Novarro Realize His Dream by Raquel Stecher

The year 1933 found actor Ramon Novarro at a crossroads in his life. After a successful career in silent movies and a fluid transition into talkies, he was offered a lucrative contract with MGM. It would be his last movie contract and he knew his days as a leading man were coming to a close. Acting wasn’t Novarro’s true passion. Instead, he dreamed of becoming an opera singer, a vocation highly regarded in his native country of Mexico. By the mid-1930s, he was essentially keeping up the movie gig to help finance this dream. According to Novarro biographer Allan R. Ellenberger, “Ramon was entertaining the idea of leaving films and devoting himself entirely to his music… his love of music was still not enough incentive for him to quit. He wanted to secure the financial independence of his family before abandoning films for good.” Novarro agreed to star in MGM’s THE BARBARIAN (’33) with plans to leave immediately after production for a European concert tour.

Novarro became an overnight sensation in Hollywood with Rex Ingram’s THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (‘22) and secured his legacy with the lead role in director Fred Niblo’s biblical epic BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST (’25). He was one of the celebrated “Latin Lovers”, a trio that included Rudolph Valentino and Antonio Moreno. Novarro wasn’t on the same level as Valentino or matinee idol John Gilbert, but he had on-screen charisma, box office appeal and an exotic yet accessible persona that garnered him legions of fans. The Mexican star rarely played actual Latino characters. Instead, Novarro became a veritable chameleon playing everything from French, German, Spanish, British, Italian, Austrian, Russian, Israeli to Persian, Chinese, Indian and Native American.

THE BARBARIAN saw Novarro reprising his previous role in Rex Ingram’s THE ARAB (’24). The story was based on Edgar Selwyn’s play The Arab which enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in 1911 and was later adapted to film by Cecil B. DeMille for Paramount Pictures in 1915. Riding the coattails of the phenomenal success of Valentino’s THE SHEIK (‘21), MGM again Selwyn’s story with Novarro as their star. However, by 1933 the story was already considered old-fashioned. Writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett took a stab at adapting Selwyn’s play but gave up with Hackett proclaiming, “It was all so false, all hooey.” The script was eventually handed over to writers Anita Loos and Elmer Harris who took on the task of bringing the story up to date and adding the sensational touches that Depression era audiences craved.

In THE ARAB, Novarro plays Jamil, the disgraced son of a Sheik turned dragoman (tour guide) who falls in love with the daughter of a Christian missionary. Novarro’s leading lady, Alice Terry, was white and the threat of miscegenation, a big no-no in early Hollywood, was thwarted by allowing the audience to imagine a future reunion essentially pausing the romance but avoiding a sad ending. The writers took a few elements of Selwyn’s story but essentially fashioned a completely new tale of an Egyptian dragoman who seduces white women out of their precious jewels. MGM assigned their new leading lady Myrna Loy in the role of Diana, Novarro’s love interest. The writers fixed the miscegenation issue by having Novarro’s leading lady Diana reveal herself as half Egyptian.

THE BARBARIAN did well at the box office and according to film historian Lawrence J. Quirk, it was “well received and slightly arrested [Novarro’s] downward slide.” In the film, Novarro showcased his singing skills with Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed’s original song “Love Songs on the Nile,” which Novarro sung in both Arab and English.

Novarro and his co-star Myrna Loy became fast friends. Loy saw him off at the train station and a photograph of the two parting ways made headlines. To give the film a boost, the MGM publicity team used this to spread a rumor about a romance between the two stars. In her memoir Being and Becoming, Myrna Loy said, "it was preposterous. Ramon wasn't even interested in the ladies and I was seeing Arthur [Hornblow, Jr.] exclusively, so the publicity department had chosen a most unlikely pair."

THE BARBARIAN was scandalous enough to be banned from a re-release in 1934 once the Production Code was fully enforced. It’s best known for a tantalizing scene depicting Loy nude in a bath adorned with flowers (in reality she wore a nude body stocking). As for Novarro, he left Hollywood behind, not for good, but for 20 glorious weeks as he got to live out his dream of being a professional singer. He made 34 stops on his concert tour and his devoted fans flocked to see him perform.

[tempestshakes01]

happy and anxious. 

happy because i love my apartment and i love Lil Cup of Joe. he is a terror and the sweetest boy ever, and i feel so much love for him. this is why i can’t be around an animal for an extended period of time. i will die for any creature i get attached to and lil joe is now my baby. 

but i am anxious because i put of working when my brother brought home a puppy. he didn’t ask me to, but he’s an idiot who’s never home and bought a puppy to make him come home. i gave him 3 days and when his habits didn’t change, joe was being left alone and untrained, and i needed a running buddy--well, i took over. joe’s now potty-trained and knows a few (one) command. i take him everywhere to socialize him. he’s mine. but i’ll never say that to nick. who still needs to go therapy. i don’t know him. i don’t know what goes on in that head of his. it’s like we switched personalities in our 20s. i went from the quiet, serious type to basically a manic 13 yr old boy. he went from a wildly charismatic clown to a brooding hipster. what makes him laugh? what is he thinking? what is he passionate about? how does he talk to other ppl for hours but he can barely speak to his family for more than half of one? what did we do?

i got really angry the other night thinking about the fights i’ve had with my parents this past year. 

1) washington d.c. - mom and i got into to it in front of the fuckin white house at dusk. i was so emotional and upset at being there, right there where trump fucks over our country, and my mom was being...well, the woman fox news molded. i was furious and trying to keep it nice, so i asked if we could just stop. stop talking. i was gonna blow up. and my mom was like, “why do we stop when you say stop, but when i ask to stop, you continue?” which...is it true? i didn’t think so, and because i can’t keep my mouth shut, i argued until i walked away. i walked into the crowds and then i kept walking. i kept walking. i kept walking.  

it was terrible. i texted her “i’m gone” and i left. 

i forgot the details but i wandered that area of d.c. got a coffee. tried not to cry. and then...remembered how much trouble my mom’s phone was giving her, that her gps apps weren’t being accurate, that she wasn’t confident at the metro, and that it was now dark. that she was alone in an unfamiliar city with a camera bag strapped to her screaming “i’m a tourist!” 

i felt like utter and complete shit. it was one of the most despicable things i’ve ever done. later, i told some people and they were like “she’s a grown woman! you were both upset!” but no. i can’t make excuses like that. i knew that my mom was scared. i burst into tears. a crazy sobbing girl in the middle of d.c. i immediately texted her and told her to get back to me when she got to the hotel. 

an hour later, back at the hotel, my mom couldn’t even look at me. couldn’t speak to me. i knew i had to apologize and i did, wording it carefully because i walking on a minefield. i again blocked out most of the conversation, but it quickly dissolved into a mess of confessions. i was wrecked. at first because of what happened, but as our conversation turned into an argument, i became furious again. over how she interpreted some of our interactions. over how i “blamed” her for my anxiety and anger. i told her i got my anger from her. that i was slow to it like my father, but when something lit inside me it burned bright and hot and deadly like her. that her grudges and cold shoulders hurt me so, so badly when i was a kid (which she then explained wasn’t a grudge, just her processing her anger...but that was way, way into the night). oh god, it was so bad. so bad. she confessed how she felt about all us kids. told me about her problems with andi and nick. told me she wanted to move away from us. told me she didn’t want a relationship with me or them if it was going to be like this. 

i didn’t sleep. just cried and cried. like i did when i was a kid. sobbed in the bathroom and then under my covers. we barely talked the next day, but it slowly became okay. i didn’t know how to explain how much i loved her, so i tried to show her.      

in the end, we were ok enough. 

2) driving 30 hrs across the country - my dad and i were talking and he told me how he didn’t get us, and that we were hurting mom by rejecting her or something. he was upset and my dad doesn’t get upset, so i got upset and moody. and he was like “why are you like this? just with me? just with us. you’re so cruel.” and i knew it was true but it still took me an hour to snap out of it. and i apologized. 

--

but i feel sometimes angry bc i got the emo dump from both my parents. about both my siblings! and they don’t even talk to them about it! my parents don’t even touch nick anymore! they leave him alone because it’s easier that way and he wouldn’t listen even if they tried to talk to him! and my sister would get super huffy and feel judged and act out in some way and take the kids! so. i get it but i hate it!!! because i got the feelings dump! i got the tears and the hours of psychoanalyzing why we are the way we are! and i hate that i feel burdened by it sometimes?

 i want to be there for my parents but sometimes i’m that petulant child that still wants a mommy and daddy, not two parents who are human and exist with their own emotional life. and that’s so unfair to them and wrong of me, but i feel that way because i’m the child that gets this brunt of this side of them.  

but it’s because in my own way im the most difficult and this shit spills out when i push them. 

--

my parents (mostly mom) are only getting more set in their ways and defensive of their opinions. my mom...my mom who taught me so much about art and the world and appreciating different cultures and music and lived life with such vigor and wonder...i can see that fading and hardening. she’s stubborn about what she like and doesn’t have much interest in anything new. she’s offended and hurt when i gently bring up her how she used to be. 

my dad’s always been this way. very traditional, but kind. spoiled, but hardworking. likes what he likes. but he’s eating more greens. he’ll try what i make because i made it. we listened to latino usa and old radio lab podcasts that whole drive from wa to tx, and he loved it, and we discussed the episodes. and i loved him so much because he gave them a shot and we connected. 

but my mom. my mom. i miss her and she’s right there, but she’s not. and i know i’m part of the reason she’s retreated into herself and her more ‘sturdy’ beliefs and the friends who share them. she’s so quick to judge and harsh about it these days. is it age? is it us? is it this horrible world?

--

i came home to this. i came home and how quickly people change bc i didn’t expect my mom to be so old. in spirit. she’s tired. she doesn’t trust me. we’re working on being gentle. i’m working on not being so quick to anger.

my dad and i...i’m thrilled we’re getting along so well after i treated him like shit during the ~separation years~ between my parents. i was awful to him and he knew why, but he never called me out on it. 

my sis and i are fine. i’m so relieved she got out of that last relationship with that TERRIBLE PERSON and came to her senses, and somewhat grew up. we kick it. she cooks for me. we don’t completely jive cause she’s hood, but can code-switch between worlds, and i’m suburban through and through, so i’m not as cool or smooth as she is. i’m her dorky weird little sister and i appreciate her love for me. 

my brother? a mystery. a complete mystery. 

and i’m reminded of how he called me on my birthday and started weeping and asking about therapy and saying he’s sorry he never believed in my anxiety because it’s true--you don’t ask for, you don’t know why it appears, and it wrecks you. and he deals with it now for no discernible reason and he sounded so, so broken over the phone that i was shaking and crying when we hung up.

but now he’s as chill as ever and takes minimal care of his puppy because the 1st dog he got was pretty hands-off from the jump, but she was grown and pooed and peeded everywhere for months (he says no, but that’s selective memory), so now lil joe is mine and i need to get a job because the lack of structure is killlllllllllllllingggggg me. but i don’t want to leave lil joe :( 

--

it’s funny how i never set out to write all this shit, but it comes spilling out. 

huh. wait.

i left and i worked on myself but then i missed my family.

did i come back to work on the family? to work on my relationship with them? is that my purpose here and why i felt compelled to return?

--

went climbing with GA. i was totally afraid of falling and bouldering isn’t as fun to me as top rope, but i wanna keep at it. 

trying to set something up with B and A. my buds. i love em. 

gotta set something up with L because I have a feeling we’ll be good friends here. and weirdly, BG contacted me even though I haven’t talked to him since college? and even then we weren’t that close. he was just inching toward asking me out and never managed it.

--

fav emmy looks: zendaya (obviously. omg, whatta babe), maisie williams (whatta look, suits her perfectly, killed it), gwen christie (whatta jesus babe), that girl in the billowing mint green dress, anddddd clea duvall (a babe in a tux). 

vm continue to make me sad and hopefully things go well with tour for them. it’s nice to see them getting along with charlie and tanith. with bby charlie and tati and max’s kid coming along...oh boy for scott’s emotions. he’s gonna ignore the HELL out of those sad feeling for what couldvebeen with tess and he’s gonna plan hard for his and j’s future offspring instead. (can i also predict that i think one thing scott’s gonna have trouble with in his marriage--oddly enough--is keeping the marriage a partnership and not bulldozing over his spouse with his wants and needs ...wait, that’s not odd lol) 

--

anyway, gotta take joe out to pee. gotta get to bed soon because i wanna be on the trails by 7am and then maybe to the climbing gym. this face maybe a potato but my body can improve! (i’m thicc at the moment thanks to texas food 🤧) 

[fibula-rasa]

(Content Warning: anti-Latino bigotry in coded language)

Romantic Romero

by Elisabeth Badger

Excerpt from Modern Screen (August 1939)

Full article & transcription after the JUMP

ONE OF Hollywood’s most contradictory personalities is tall, dark, sinister-looking Cesar Romero. If you belong to the misguided group who take Cesar at his face value and think of him as a cross between a gangster and a parlor snake, prepare to readjust your opinions—for Cesar has the most misunderstood face in town.

Though he has never given a bad performance, Cesar hasn’t been allowed to get very far in the movies, chiefly because his physiognomy isn’t the dimpled, curvaceous type that is the mark of the glamor boy, and manna at the box-office. The planes of his face, the implications of his mysterious eyes and sometimes cruel mouth, have more significance and less sunshine than is seemly in a public idol, especially a movie hero.

But in private life, Cesar is one of the most sympathetic, amiable and universally well-liked men in pictures. You can’t find a girl or man of his acquaintance who doesn’t say, “What a sweet guy!”

In the field of romance, likewise, he’s far from what he seems. Confirmed column-readers get the impression that Cesar is a philanderer, an accomplished side-stepper of matrimony. Actually, he has more good, sound old-fashioned ideals about women and marriage than most of the dimpled delegation.

“Everyone has the idea that I go with a different girl every night,” he said reproachfully, “whereas very few of those items in the columns are true. One girl at a time is enough for me.”

Red-headed Ann Sheridan was the girl at the time. But Cesar didn’t specify how much time is allotted to each girl, so I can’t guarantee that the romance still thrives—what with Ann being elected Oomph Girl, and Cesar having to wear a beard for weeks and weeks for his role in “The Return of the Cisco Kid.” However, Ann’s case will serve to exemplify Cesar’s point of view about women.

“Why do we have to marry?” he demanded, when I asked about their intentions. “Isn’t it possible to be attracted to each other, fond of each other’s company, without being expected to end up in matrimony? I’m very fond of Ann, I love her company, and we have loads of laughs. But I don’t intend to marry her, and I know she wouldn’t want to marry me.

“I’m the last person in the world that Ann should marry. A girl like that, with a career that interests her more than anything else, should marry someone who can help her. A producer or a director. Certainly not an actor.

“Besides,” he continued, distributing his six-feet-two more comfortably on the divan, “I have a lot of ideal about what I want marriage to be. I’ll be very cautious about whom I marry because when I do, I expect it to last forever. No divorce for me! And I can tell you one thing—my wife will be a non-professional. It isn’t possible to have two careers in one marriage—not mine anyway.”

CESAR DISMISSED the idea that an actor’s leading women are a threat to marriage. Even though stars do with great regularity discard their mates in favor of the most recent leading lady, the surprising Mr. Romero has no fear of such pitfalls. He thinks it would be a poor husband who couldn’t withstand that temptation.

“What would worry me would be clash of temperament, ambition and working hours. That’s what I’ll never marry an actress. An actor’s wife has to efface herself, in a sense, and adapt herself to his way of life, and care more for his success than her own.”

I pointed out that if marriage is his ultimate object, he’s wasting a lot of valuable time these evenings, for Cesar seldom goes out with anyone but actresses.

He nodded assent. “But I don’t know anyone else,” he said simply. “I have been very much in love—once, in the East, before I came to Hollywood. She was a woman ten years older than I and she had two children, but I was completely in love with her. I never wanted to be apart from her. That, to me, is the real test of love.

“I’m afraid that has spoiled me for everything else. I’m sure if it hadn’t been for that experience. I would have thought many times since that I was in love. But because I know what it is really like, I’ve never been able to deceive myself. I’ve always known it wasn’t the real thing. That thought has probably cheated me out of a lot of fun.

“I’ve been infatuated, of course—crazy about various girls for the moment. But really being in love, to me, is being unhappy unless that person is with you every minute—the feeling that you want her with you, must have her with you, all the time. I’ve never felt that way about any other woman.”

Few men have been exposed to more high-powered blandishments. Cesar has been in Hollywood since the first “Thin Man” picture, which is quite a span of years. In that time his career has gone through various phases, but he has never really had a real break professionally. He’s become well-known principally through his extra-studio activities which included going to the most prominent parties, dancing with stars who could appreciate his professional smoothness, and beauing all the glamor girls to places well within the range of the candid camera’s eye.

It was rather a strange set-up—young man with a relatively small salary and a minimum of fame, finding himself always in the thick of the most successful and celebrated. But that role was a familiar one to Cesar. His adult life had always been that way.

ELDEST SON of a well-to-do Cuban family, he lived in comparative luxury for fourteen years in New York City, where he was born. Just as he reached an age when money begins to have some meaning, his father’s business crashed with the collapse of the sugar market. The Romeros took refuge on the New Jersey shore where they had always spent their summers, and devoted themselves to painful economy. When he wasn’t in school, Cesar worked in various lowly capacities at a big New Jersey department store.

But the social standing of the Romeros did not stop with their income, so Cesar found himself in the anomalous position of delivering packages at a lady’s door in the afternoon, and brushing shoulders with her at a fashionable dance in the evening.

He had quite a career in the department store—progressing from wrapper to stock boy to truck driver. One summer, he endured the rigors of a soldier’s life at the Plattsburg Military Training Camp because his father saw an advertisement in the paper: “Send your boy to Plattsburg and swap him for a man.” Cesar went under protest, and doesn’t think the swap quite came off. His family moved back to New York so he could have his last three years of schooling at the Collegiate School there.

“That period of my life seemed very glamorous and exciting,” he recalled. “The Collegiate boys used to take the Spence School girls out every afternoon that we could afford it. I had just enough money to walk to the girl’s house, take her in a taxi to the Ambassador tea dance, and get her back to her house in a taxi—and then walk home. It was not considered cricket (Continued on page 84)

ROMANTIC ROMERO

(Continued from page 29)

for a girl to order anything more expensive than cinnamon toast and tea, and if she did, she was never invited again.”

There must be honor among glamor girls in those matters, too, for though Cesar still takes out girls whose expensive whims are far beyond his income, figuratively speaking, they stick to the cinnamon toast and tea.

AFTER graduation, his father’s friends got him a job as a runner for a Wall Street bank. He lived alone in a little hall bedroom and continued his double life. At night he was the perfect dancing partner at innumerable debutante parties. While by day he tramped around Wall Street with a pouch full of valuables shackled to his wrist. This being handcuffed to a mail-bag, for practically nothing a week, was what got Cesar down. It was inevitable that a boy who could dance that well wasn’t going to see much of a future in Wall Street. He was ripe material for a girl friend who itched to go on the stage and urged him to become her dancing partner.

They worked, they rehearsed, and at last they were engaged for a spot in a musical show. Cesar gave up his job, and sent word to his family that he had gone on the stage. They were staggered. So was the audience. The act lasted exactly one night. But Cesar now had his foot in the door of a theatrical career, and wouldn’t remove it. He worked hard on new routines, changed partners several times, and finally, after a long heartbreaking siege of ups and downs, became a successful ballroom dancer. He was featured at all the smartest night spots, among them the famous old Montmartre—which is where producer Brock Pemberton saw him and gave him the lead in the road company of “Strictly Dishonorable.”

That tour was Romero’s start as a legitimate actor. Shows on Broadway followed, and then M-G-M’s screen test which brought him to Hollywood and a long series of villainous roles.

Cesar’s swarthy coloring, and particularly the bony structure of his face, give it a sinister cast, but when you look closely you see that his eyes are kind; his mouth, gentle. On the day I talked to him he looked positively spiritual, because he was wearing a beard. It was grown for his role as a dirty but benevolent Mexican in “Cisco Kid,” but seen without the serape and sombrero, it made him look as if he might perform miracles.

The tragedy is that no one will cast Cesar in the kind of role his sympathetic personality deserves. Even at Fox, where he is now under contract, more often than not he gets parts that don’t do his popularity any good. But the protests are mine, not his. Cesar doesn’t feel sorry for himself at all.

“I’m grateful to be earning enough to take care of my family,” he said, “so my father has no more worries. They are all out here now—my mother and father, two sisters and a brother. They don’t live with me. Oh, no!” He shook his head with a laugh. “I’ve lived alone too long to be able to live with my family again. But they have an apartment in the same building. I’m very happy to be able to take care of them and have them with me.

THE greatest disappointment I’ve had was not getting the part of Dr. Saffi in “The Rains Came.” I wanted it terribly and I think I could do it well,. But they won’t give me a chance. Tyrone Power’s going to do it. He isn’t the right type for the part, but I’m not a great star and I’m not box-office.

That’s the sort of thing that can happen to a man when his bone structure is against him.

[keepingupwithlinmanuel]

A room full of Nina Rosarios

Miranda, who is also the force behind “In the Heights,” kicked off the second “America Adelante” conference, hosted by the Center for Public Leadership. The conference drew together Latino students from across the University, as well as more than 40 Latino leaders in business, arts, and government. Through a series of panel discussions and networking events, the conference tried to foster connection and collaboration between the students and guests.

“I feel really underqualified to be here,” Miranda joked as he took the stage with Amanda Matos, M.P.P. ’19, an HKS student and co-founder of the WomanHOOD Project, a Bronx-based mentorship program for girls of color.

Since both Matos and Miranda are proud Nuyoricans — New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent — Matos fired off a few home-based warm-up questions: Yankees or Mets? The A train or the 1? Once they’d covered the basics (Yankees and the A train), Miranda settled in for a more serious discussion on code-switching, activism, and staying true to one’s roots.

“I’m in a roomful of would-be Nina Rosarios right now,” Miranda said, referring to a character from “In the Heights” who leaves her neighborhood to attend Stanford University, becoming the first person from her block to attend college. Miranda shared some of his experiences of attending Hunter College and Wesleyan University, and gradually coming to see his dual cultural identity as “a superpower.”

...

Matos asked Miranda how Latinos can create solidarity and stay connected to their heritage while building bridges with non-Latino allies and supporters. “Give us some best practices,” she urged.

Miranda’s response was simple. “I think continuing to support ourselves and our humanness is so important,” he said. “That’s what ‘Hamilton’ does: It represents the other strand of the American story that we export. It celebrates the one founder who wasn’t from here — who grew up in the Caribbean. We’re a nation of immigrants, and we ought to be proud of that story.”

“Latinos in the U.S. — both immigrant and native-born — are a group that has been growing in size and influence and will continue to grow,” said Erika Carlsen, the assistant director of fellowship programs and Latino initiatives at the Center for Public Leadership, who organized “America Adelante.” “How do future public leaders understand this community, and the challenges and incredible potential benefits related to it?” She cited the great economic power of Latinos, and the need to build networks among young and seasoned Latino leaders to address key policy issues.

Matos agreed. “As Latinx students and students who care deeply about communities of color, it’s important that we have an infrastructure to build power, solidarity, and strategy on the most pressing issues impacting our communities,” she said. “I hope students will see that they are all leaders now, and that we already have the power and skills to continue creating good in the world.”

Carlsen and Miranda paid tribute to Lisa Garcia Quiroz ’83, M.B.A. ’90, a longtime executive at Time Warner who was also a champion of diversity both at her alma mater and in her workplace. Garcia Quiroz, who was instrumental in organizing the first “America Adelante” conference in 2016, worked tirelessly to mentor and encourage young Latino leaders until her death in March from pancreatic cancer. HKS has established a graduate fellowship in her honor.

“There’s no shortage of ways to do good,” Miranda told his audience, citing the examples of Garcia Quiroz and activists such as the high school students from Parkland, Fla., who have spearheaded the #NeverAgain movement. “I can get as overwhelmed as the next person,” he admitted. “What I try to tell myself is: Don’t think of it as this tidal wave. Think of it as: There’s no shortage of lanes you can go into and do good.” Miranda’s own efforts have included several recent collaborations with other musicians and composers in support of hurricane relief for Puerto Rico and for the movement against gun violence.

“That came out of being inspired by these kids,” Miranda said of “Found Tonight,” his duet with “Dear Evan Hansen” star Ben Platt in support of March for Our Lives on March 24. “We sort of made the Marvel/DC crossover. I asked myself: What’s the thing I can make for them that will put wind in their sails?”

If “Hamilton” is the origin story of American democracy — “It’s how Spider-Man got bit by the bug,” Miranda said with a laugh — his activism on current issues, including voter registration, hurricane relief, and speaking out against gun violence, are part of a chapter in that book.

“What we’re seeing is a huge accumulation of everyday voices,” Miranda said, praising the wave of activism and political engagement from many corners of American society. “The success of ‘Hamilton’ has given me a huge megaphone, and it helps me to think of it as a literal megaphone. I try to use it sparingly, so that what I say will be helpful.”

He closed by urging his audience to support each other and make their voices heard. “Our stories,” he said, “are more necessary than ever.”

“I’m starstruck, but not for the typical reason,” said Amanda R. Matos, a Kennedy School student and fellow at the Center for Public Leadership, who moderated the conversation with Miranda.

“It’s not because of ‘Hamilton’ or ‘In the Heights’ or anything like that. I’m honestly just starstruck because it is rare for me to be in spaces with other uptown New Yoricans.”

...

“Art is the thing that allows us to engage with the other side on not an ideal level, on a human level. I think our stories are more necessary than ever when, when, people are painting us with the same brush,” Miranda said.

“I think ‘In the Heights’ began with the death of ‘The Capeman.’ It was a punch in the stomach because my heroes had created something that didn’t work,” Miranda said. “It was like that cool water in the face like, ‘Hey! No one’s making your dream musical. You go make your dream musical!’”

Miranda also spoke on his activism following Hurricane Maria and called on students to take on a cause that matters to them.

“The one that bugs you in the shower, the one that keeps you from sleeping at night—that's the one you have to get to work on the next day, because it will feel meaningful to you and we need it. We need it on all fronts,” Miranda said.

“Whether that is immigration reform, whether that is hurricane relief, whether that is police brutality, whether that is, insert whatever hurts your heart the most, and get to work.”

[maes--story]

CONCEPT: Choose an original character you have created. All questions must be answered from the character's perspective. The character should remain "in character" throughout the interview. The character may refuse to answer a given question, but must say something in reply to it. The character must answer truthfully, but that does not necessarily mean that their answers must be true, only that the character believes them to be true. Have fun.

CHARACTER: Mae valentine

SETTING:

CATEGORIES: . DESCRIPTION . VITAL STATISTICS . FAMILY . PERSONALITY . ABILITIES AND TRAITS . RELATIONSHIPS . HISTORY AND INFLUENCES . BELIEFS . PERSONAL TASTES AND OPINIONS . SELF IMAGE . KEY SOCIAL INFLUENCE . GOALS AND DREAMS

DESCRIPTION:

1: What is your full name? Mae valentine

2: Do you have a nickname, pseudonym, or alternate identity? dazy(because she tend to daze off when she works a little to much)

3: How tall are you? 6.0(as tall as the fearsome 4)

4: How much do you weigh? n.a

5: What kind of build do you have (are you thin, fat, gangly, muscular, etc.)? thin

6: Describe your hair. What colour is it? What style do you keep it in? pig tails;brown

7: What colour are your eyes? hazel

8: What is your ethnicity? n,a has a mom that is latino and speaks spanish/english

9: Do you have any unusual physical features? no,but inside it something else

10: Are you considered to be attractive? *shrugs*

11: What does your voice sound like? haven't found a voice for her yet

12: What kind of accent do you have? n.a

13: Do you have a favourite quote or commonly used saying? mae keeps in mind from what her father said "who are you and what do you see? despite everything,its still you)

14: Is there any particular facial expression that you are known to wear often (dour glare, cheeky grin, etc.)? confused,yet aware look

15: Are you known for having any particular mannerisms (gestures, habits, or ways of doing things)? somewhat goofy

16: Do you have any allergies, diseases, debilitating injuries, or other physical weaknesses? depression

17: Do you have any scars, tattoos or birthmarks? no

18: How good is your personal hygiene? good

19: Do you wear perfume or cologne? no

20: What is your preferred style of dress? casual,but with a lab coat

21: Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? If so, are you nearsighted or farsighted? glasses;farsighted

22: Do you wear jewellery or other accessories? no

23: Are you left or right-handed? right

VITAL STATISTICS:

24: How old are you exactly? 37

25: When is your birthday? may,14

26: Where were you born? in a small town where its not so welcomed

27: Where do you live now? st. canard

28: What is your nationality? no

29: What is your occupation? lab-tech

30: Do you belong to any exclusive groups (guilds, clubs, teams, religious sects, etc.)? no

31: Do you hold any rank or special position within your occupation or group (team captain, chairman, chief engineer, head nurse, treasurer, etc.)? no

32: What social class do you belong to? no

33: Do you hold any noble titles or estates? no

34: Do you have a criminal record? it wasn't her fault,but yes-ish

FAMILY:

35: Who are/were your parents? Tell us about them. loving and caring people that helped others along the way,even their daughter that had issues with others.father musical,mother teacher

36: Do you have any siblings? If so, tell us about them. no

37: Who are/were your grandparents? no

38: Do you have any aunts, uncles, or cousins? no

39: Do you have a notorious or celebrated ancestor? If so, tell us how their legacy affects you. no

40: How close are you to your family in general? very close

PERSONALITY:

41: Are you basically an optimist, a realist, or a pessimist? optimist,but a little bit with a realist

42: Are you spontaneous or do you always need to have a plan? knows what to do,but if the situation is at dire,mae needs to have one and fast

43: Do you like to take risks or do you prefer to play it safe? both

44: Are you generally laid back or are you inclined to worry? in bewteen

45: Do you like to make jokes or do you prefer to keep things serious? in between,but mostly serious

46: How well do you work under pressure/to a deadline? n.a

47: Do you prefer to work with your head or your hands? both

48: Would you call yourself a perfectionist? yes and its a must or else it might get massy

49: What makes you happy, and why? when ever she helps others because she wants to continue like her parents did! and also it gets her at least some connection with people

50: What makes you sad, and why? death of her parents

51: What makes you angry, and why? betrayal because it feels like they never cared for her in the first place.the lonesome feeling like someone has left her

52: What gets you excited, and why? being apart of something because she feels like shes needed for something important(also wants to because she wants to talk to people,even though social communicationis very little to her personality)

53: What makes you stressed, and why? when people are endangered or hurt because she does no want to let them feel the same way she did

54: What makes you frustrated, and why? shadow blight because of their actions torward others

55: Are you short tempered? How well do you keep your cool? she keeps it cool,until something unsettles her

56: How easily do you get depressed or discouraged? shes already depressed but she keeps it inside like everything is just fine

57: When was the last time you cried? when her parents died and when shadow blight took over

58: Do you have any fears or phobias? What is your greatest fear? being lost in shadow blight forever and cant find her way out

59: What gives you a feeling of satisfaction or fulfilment? that she was able to help/make a friend

60: Do you adhere to a code of conduct which guides or restricts your actions? not that i know of

61: Do you make promises or oaths? If so, do you keep them? she promises to stay and be with them and make everything okay

62: Do people consider you to be trustworthy? yes and no(because of shadow blight,so she lies about whats wrong with her)

63: Do you have any secrets? If so, does anybody know about them, and how did they find out? shadow blight,depression

64: List three of your quirks or other defining characteristics. a bit out there,playing along to get a little closer,awkward when having social connections

65: Do you have any bad habits? If so, have you tried to kick them? n.a

66: Do you have any good habits? n.a

67: Do you have any vices? n.a

68: Describe what would be a typical day/week for you? perky,yet,out of breath

(something for ideas)

credit idea post to:https://www.deviantart.com/fifteenthapostle/art/Interview-Your-Character-267273852

[socialjusticeartshare]

First She Was Separated From Her Family, Now She’s Separated From School

A refugee child, once separated from her mother at the border by Trump, now struggles with online school.

Every weekday morning, a 12-year-old refugee named Génnezys logs into her seventh grade online classroom. She sits at a tiny table in a corner of her cluttered living room. Before logging in, she tapes her phone to a chair and dials my number on FaceTime. Once we’re connected, I peer into the screen of a laptop lent to her by her public middle school. For hours, I observe coronavirus pandemic-era education for Génnezys and about 20 other children of multiple races, nationalities, and economic circumstances. What I see is both heroic and tragic.

Génnezys is one of the thousands of immigrant children who were torn from their parents in 2018 by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border. I wrote about the desperate efforts of Cruz, her incarcerated mother, to find her 10-year-old daughter. They were reunited after about six weeks. Cruz later borrowed $6,000 from a friend for a coyote to smuggle her three-year-old daughter into the U.S. The child was detained for a few days then released to Cruz.

I asked Génnezys to invent a pseudonym to protect her family from U.S. government reprisal, and she came up with a fanciful one based on the Spanish pronunciation — HEH-neh-sees — of the first book in the Old Testament.

Today the family resides in a small Southern city. Cruz works as a janitor, earning a bit less than $10 an hour. They live in a small apartment with one bedroom, which Cruz and the girls share with her boyfriend. He is also an immigrant, and he pays half the rent. He’s employed in construction, and he leaves for work very early in the morning. Cruz goes to work after taking her four-year-old daughter, whom I’ll call Bety, by bus to a daycare center. With school strictly online now because of Covid-19, Génnezys stays in the apartment all by herself from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., often supervising an 8-year-old girl who has her own school computer with headphones. This child’s Latina immigrant mother works, too, so Génnezys acts as babysitter. Before online school started in September, she worried intensely that being without an adult in the home would be lonely and scary. I live hundreds of miles away, so I volunteered to sit with her via FaceTime. She says that she feels much better when I’m with her.

During the first two days of remote school, the teachers, all young or middle-aged white women, cycled though a dither of confusion and kind but mostly fruitless efforts to actually see and hear their students. One problem was that the online platforms were glitchy. The class links often crashed, leaving the students, including Génnezys, with blank screens. But by week’s end, the kinks were worked out — yet the students remained silent phantoms.

“Know that I see you. I hear you. I’m with you,” one young teacher intoned to the kids right after introducing herself. They had names like Hassan, Rasheeda, Yennifer, and Travis. “Black Lives Matter,” the teacher added. She was met by silence from her new students, and she could not see their reactions either. She asked them to turn on their mics and cameras, but getting them to comply was harder than pulling their teeth. “What did you do all summer? How did you deal with Covid? Talk about your family!”

A boy with an Arabic name turned on his mic just long enough to say that he had a baby sister. Indeed, the loud wailing of an infant could be heard. The teacher skipped a beat, then the boy’s mic went dead. No other students turned on their microphones. Not even Génnezys, who had earlier proved she was not shy. When the teacher mispronounced her name on the first day of school, Génnezys politely but firmly corrected her. She is a brilliant girl who knew no English whatsoever two years ago yet speaks it almost perfectly now, and who scrolls through the internet on her own initiative for details about the accident that crippled Frida Kahlo.

Though she has defended her name and sometimes has been the only student to answer her teachers’ questions about math, Génnezys remains strenuously silent about most of the details of her life. The family all got sick in late May, with many days of fever, coughing, muscle aches, nausea, dizziness, and diarrhea, as well as loss of appetite, taste, and smell. They recovered, but Cruz is suffering now from hair loss — a condition just recently recognized as a complication of Covid-19.

When Cruz got sick, she was employed in housekeeping at an upscale chain hotel. She said she fell ill after being ordered to enter and clean a room occupied by a woman who was coughing. She was not given PPE for the job.

Cruz estimates that in her building complex of a few dozen apartments, about 20 other people came down with Covid-19. “No one died, but some were carried off to hospitals in ambulances,” she said, adding that all were immigrants from Latin America.

Latinos comprise fewer than one in five residents in the county. But they make up about half of the people in Cruz’s census tract, while just across a main thoroughfare almost everyone is white and owns a house.  In Cruz’s tract, many of the Latinos live in cramped little rental apartments.

During the outbreak and their own illnesses, Cruz and her children were never tested for Covid-19. Nor did she contact me, though she instructed her preteen daughter to call me for help if she took a turn for the worse. The family just stuck it out, but Cruz was fired by the hotel because of her sickness and missed work. She got the janitorial job just as soon as she felt better. She couldn’t self-quarantine: She had rent to pay, kids to feed. None of this is something Génnezys wants to talk about in online seventh grade.

She doesn’t turn on her camera either.

It’s hard to know exactly why the students as a group refuse to show themselves to their teachers or to each other. Middle school is the empire of peer pressure — pressure not to stand out, even in normal times, when rows of children are looking at and breathing with each other, along with a teacher in a real room. But the kids’ reluctance now seems at least partly due to how dispirited and disconnected their virtual classrooms feel. Génnesyz’s teachers practically stand on their heads coaxing interactions with the students, but the teachers’ energy seems TV-ish, abstract.

The kids are alone. They have no books. The only class that resembles normal school is math. As in times past, the teacher writes figures on a board and explains what they mean. The other classes are a mishmash of hyperactive YouTube science videos with men who speak too fast, and a woman with a white coat and test tubes performing experiments — work the students normally would be absorbed with in a classroom lab, but which they can only stare at now from afar, wall-eyed. An art class features hip-hop music, whose teaching intention is muddled, and digital choose-and-drag stickers and emojis. Strange, sci-fi cartoon people in Génnezys’s American History class purport to recount the high points of the antebellum human bondage, the Civil War, and the Black Codes. After that lesson, I asked Génnezys if she understood what a slave was. She still didn’t know — though she did remember the cartoon guy saying that a man named Frederick Douglass had been forcibly separated from his mother. She knew what that meant, from firsthand experience, but didn’t mention it in class. With me, she minimized her experience. She’d learned that Frederick Douglass was an infant when he was taken. “But, um, I was 10 when it happened,” she said. “I was a big kid, not a little kid.”

One teacher conducted a lesson about why students should participate in small- group, online “breakout” chat rooms. “Because they help us get to know each other?” said Génnezys, daring to speak.

“Very good! Thank you for that, Génnezys!” chimed the teacher, saying all the syllables correctly. Then she warned the students that they must use “appropriate language” in the chat rooms, and that their language was being watched.

This teacher also held a “correct answer” contest, with her pupils silently checking T’s and F’s on their screens. “True or false: If you fight at a school bus stop, you will be punished as severely as if you’d fought a school. True! Right, Brian! Brian gets a point! He’s pulling ahead of Corinne! Next question. True or false: If you touch the private body part of someone else at school, whether on purpose or by accident, you will be punished the same, either way. Yay, Corinne! She’s back in play!”

But there are no school bus stops now. There are no “someone else”s at school.

Génnezys has another reason not to turn on her camera: She is ashamed of her clothes. She fits a girl’s 14 now, but her wardrobe dates from a year ago, when she was size 10 and 12. Her shirts are too tight for her rapidly developing body. In the morning she puts on her mother’s dresses. They are several sizes too large.

Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants

Cruz can’t afford to take her daughter shopping. She just lost another week of work, and wages, due to Covid-19. Two co-workers at her janitorial job tested positive and one is in the hospital. Because Cruz worked closely with both infected women, she was quarantined for 14 days. She had no proof that she had already contracted Covid-19. She had to stay home, along with Bety, who ran around the apartment laughing, yelling, and rifling Génnezys’s little desk while her sister tried to pay attention to online class.

An employee from the county health department came by to deliver some onions and pieces of fruit. Cruz finally got a negative test result but still had to finish the quarantine. Génnezys did not tell her teachers what was happening.

Génnezys also avoids the camera because of what Cruz calls “her obsession.” On the second day of school, a teacher asked, “What is your favorite thing to do?” Amid the mass silence, Génnezys activated her mic and bravely answered: “Play with slime,” she said.

“Slime?” said the teacher, nonplussed.

“Yeah. Slime.”

“Ah. OK. Yeah. Slime. Well, that sounds relaxing!”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Slime” is a faddish kid product that’s been around since the 1970s. Back then, it was valued by boys for its gross-out appeal. Now it’s prettier, smells nice, and is all the rage among preteen and teen girls. Many make it from a home recipe involving glue, borax, food coloring, and plastic beads from craft stores like Michael’s.

Génnezys was already into slime by age 10, back in Central America. Cruz’s partner there, an extremely violent man who was neither of the girls’ fathers, was terrorizing and assaulting Cruz and the children, threatening them with death. The girls witnessed the violence. Cruz made plans to hide Bety with her sister and flee to the U.S. with Génnezys. Meanwhile, Génnezys discovered slime. “In my country,” she remembered, “it was called moco,” which is Spanish for snot. She pushed it, pulled it, rolled and wrapped it, over and over and over. It calmed her, Cruz remembers.

After a grueling trip north, including a stay in a filthy, crowded stash house, things got worse at the border when the Trump administration took Génnezys from Cruz and shipped her 2,000 miles away to a child detention center. There, she was warehoused with mostly older Central American girls who’d come to the U.S. by themselves, pregnant or already with babies.

After spending six weeks with these young women, according to Cruz, 10-year-old Génnezys was using racy language and discussing sex. After she was reunited with her mother, she experienced night terrors and walked in her sleep for three months. She had three sessions with a psychologist. Then, said Cruz, “She entered a new phase of her life: adolescence,” and “she hardly talked about what happened.” Even so, Cruz added, “Two weeks ago, after Génnezys had an eye exam that showed a problem with one of her eyes, she mentioned to me that an older girl in the detention center hit her hard in that eye with a ball. That was two years ago. She’d never told me till now. Sometimes I worry about what’s in her head.”

Outside of her head is slime: jars and jars of it in all colors and textures, from shiny and glistening to rough and frothy. “I love YouTube slime videos,” Génnezys told me. The site has a plethora of young girls extolling their slime collections, as well productions with sexy women’s voices doing ASMR routines, and images of long, manicured fingernails digging languorously into the goo.

“I worry about it,” said Cruz. “It’s such a waste of money. But she would rather have slime, even, than clothes that fit her.”

If Génnezys were to activate her camera for her classmates and teachers, they might see her furiously and endlessly twisting, pulling, and punching her strange doughs as she fidgets at the computer and tries hard to do her schoolwork. A few months ago, Wired magazine interviewed a neuroscientist and psychologist who suggested that people might be gravitating toward slime during the Covid-19 crisis to simulate the feeling of touching actual people.

As a Central American refugee child, Génnezys has been traumatized by murderous violence, forced family separation, poverty, and plague. More and more, however, nonrefugee children in America are joining her in the grief and fear of being apart and alone. How many of these kids are scrunched over their own computers, secretly toying with slime?

“I don’t know,” Génnezys said when I asked her that question. “Maybe I’m the only one. Before the virus, I didn’t play with it in school because school was good. Now, I don’t think I could do school if I didn’t have slime. Without it I’d be dying.

“Dying of what?”

“Boredom.”

Article Source

[jazzviewswithcjshearn]

Ambrose Akinmusire: on the tender spot of each calloused moment (Blue Note, 2020)

Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet; Fender Rhodes: Sam Harris: piano; Harish Raghavan: bass; Justin Brown: drums; Genevieve Artadi: vocals (track 3) Jesus Diaz: vocals, percussion (track 1)

Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has been on the scene for over two decades, first debuting with Prelude... For Cora (Fresh Sound, 2008) but really making a splash with his Blue Note debut, When The Heart Emerges Glistening in 2010. For that recording, he enlisted Walter Smith, III on tenor saxophone, pianist Gerald Clayton (soon to make his own Blue Note debut), Harish Raghavan on bass and Justin Brown on drums-- what was immediately apparent on that recording was the striking individual trumpet sound, quite heady writing which shared a lot in common with the  jazz tradition both American and European, the provocative, poetic tune titles that also dealt with the experience of being black in America.  With on the tender spot of each calloused moment, the trumpeter makes perhaps his deepest statement to date, finding him back in the quartet format that dominated 2017's double disc A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard and eschewing the more album length concept of Origami Harvest last year.

Before anything is said of the music which is excellent, haunting, and relentlessly challenging the album speaks to the trouble social climate that our world is currently in.  Not only is the society dealing with COVID-19, but the senselessly brutal May 26. 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, in which the officer drove a knee into Floyd's neck for an appalling 8:46 and killing him.  The riots in direct response to this atrocity have lead America to a breaking point, no longer are people dealing with racial injustice, and with a gleam of hope Americans, black, white, Asian and Latino are joining together to say enough is enough. Akinmusire appears on the cover in a stark black and white portrait, his hair in cornrows, shadow and light playing off each other, bearded, and in a black hoodie, bringing to mind Trayvon Martin.    The trumpeter has always aimed to present his music in extremes, on Origami Harvest the use of cliched misogynistic hip hop phrases, at times in completed random places were rendered with an almost darkly humored absurdity, but  on the tender spot of each calloused moment serves as a not so frank wake up call to society to look at what it's doing.

For the album which Akinmusire considers a sequel to his initial Blue Note offering, he brings back his long standing quartet.  The group includes pianist Sam Harris (not to be confused with 80's Star Search winner and 80's pop, R&B singer) Harish Raghavan on bass, and drummer Justin Brown whom appeared on 2017's A Rift  In Decorum, augmented by special guests including Knower's Genevieve Artadi  and percussionist Jesus Diaz.  The trumpeter presents perhaps his most ambitious social and artistic statement to date, that pulls on subtle touches of contemporary pop production, new music, R&B and the avant garde into a mixture purely his own.  While the music does indeed feel a bit similar in tone and mood to When The Heart Emerges Glistening, it draws more upon the uncompromising nature that marked the double live album, which is in no small part to how in tune the quartet is.  As they embark on the suite like  “Tide of Hyacinth”, they deftly demonstrate how the trumpeter works at extremes.  The first section of the three part tune is a busy, roaring collective avant improvisation, the trumpet spattering Jackson Pollack like fragments into the atmosphere, with Raghavan's extended bowing techniques, and Brown's treated cymbals and thwacking dead toms.  The second section is more driving, Brown's cymbals acting as flowing waves, with Akinmusire's intense winding melody setting the stage for Harris' piano, focusing on color and texture.  The third section throws something that at first seems like a non sequitir, but makes complete sense when one keeps in mind the concept of extremes.  The voice of percussionist Jesus Diaz joins the fray, singing in the Yoruba dialect that initially the trumpeter wanted his father to sing.  Diaz' section adds a grooving, joyous Afro-Latin element, the 2-3 clave an intriguing feature, and the piece closes on this joyous note. “Yessss” seems to be a reflection on the history of the African American struggle, Akinmusire's varying vocal inflections and deep blues undercurrent lament the seeming progress, but the longing in his tone appears to be saying “What progress have we made really? there's much more to be done”.  The gradual solo build over synthesizers and a back beat from Brown's dead snare bring the track into a more contemporary vein reminiscent of D'Angelo, and a nice send off.

“Cynical Sideliners” with Akinmusire on Rhodes, and the child like vocals of Genevieve Artadi, is a bizarre lullaby.  The track could be seen as a subtle indictment of those who are sitting and complaining  about the current social upheavals but ultimately doing nothing.  Artadi delivers the lyrics with a detached naivete that is disconcerting against the pillowy Rhodes chords, but it also is because of this exact mood that makes it such a striking piece on the album.  “Mr. Roscoe (consider the simultaneous” is a reflection on the great Art Ensemble of Chicago co founder, multi instrumentalist, Roscoe Mitchell, and in this piece, Akinmusire who was a member of Mitchell's quartet balances the essence of the unique composed and improvised structures the multinstrumentalist oft employed.

Still, Akinmusire's aim through all the music with trademark poetic titling is to reach for the heart.  Harish Raghavan's double stops and extended solo set the mood for “Interlude (that get more intense) featuring Harris' tornado of pianism, and another deeply emotional trumpet solo, that finds Akinmusire considering the thematic possibilities of a triplet repeating in morse code as the tumult dies down.  What really touches the emotions deeply however is the closing “Hooded Procession (read the names aloud) which continues a series beginning with “My Name is Oscar” on the first Blue Note. The pieces evoke serious thought about the horrors of all the black men and women falling victim to police violence as well as the senseless mass shootings over the past decade.  The “Hooded Procession” of the  title is almost an answer to that of “a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie” on Origami Harvest, and the trumpeter's solitary Rhodes chords this time, with no spoken word as the listener thinks of names like Ahmad Arbury, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Elijah McClain, the list goes on and on is heart wrenching and chilling.  The tribute to Roy Hargrove, simply titled “Roy” is also a sobering reminder of one of the greatest trumpeters of the modern era, and the fostering of talent that he so nurtured.  Ambrose Akinmusire now carries the mantle for those of his generation.

Sound:

on the tender spot of each calloused moment is very realistic tonally, Akinmusire's trumpet is full of body, with a warm glow.  Listening to the album using the Schiit Modius DAC enhances the stereo image, and the Modius' warmer than neutral character is an advantage.  On pieces like “4623” which use effects, the bathroom  tile type reverb is quite palpable. Occasionally though, Raghavan's bass is so rich in depth of tone that it occasionally fights with Justin Brown's resonant bass drum, in the audio space.  Brown's effects treated toms with their thudding attack and dead snare have a particular presence, and Sam Harris' piano is weighty, realistic and accurate.

Concluding thoughts:

Ambrose Akinmusire is a true artist whose work challenges the viewpoints and thoughts of the listener.  As an improviser he remains fearless creating lines that grab attention, and with his quartet, he has a band that is so in tune with his aesthetic, that it's clear from the first note it can be no one but Akinmusire, his tone and ideas so distinctive.   on the tender spot of each calloused moment is the most realized chapter to date in the trumpeter's discography from his political and societal stance, to the group interplay and impassioned improvisation.

Music: 9/10

Sound: 8/10

Equipment used:

HP Pavilion Laptop

Focal Chorus 716 Floor Standing Speakers

Schiit Modius DAC

Musicbee (for WAV file playback)

[run-the-secret-show]

Trip to the Collingwood & Co Studio

On Thursday I arrived per invitation to Tony’s studio in Acton-Town to attend a meeting about TSS with Glynn Hayward and Helen Shroud. Andrea Tran also popped in later on and we all had a wonderful chat together.  I was there for 4 hours (for what was supposed to be a 1 hour meeting), with Helen and Tony regaling me with tales of inside info and what-could-have-beens. I was allowed - even encouraged - to record the whole “interview”, but it turns out that the phone I was using didn’t actually save it (A real “Secret Spider” moment for sure). Everyone was absolutely charming, and apart from the recording flub it was a lovely day that couldn’t’ve gone better.

Highlights include, to the best of my recollection:

• If the website is to return it might have to be heavily re-structured to cope with Flash essentially being a dead platform at this point. • Roy was voiced by Tony’s son Harry • The Commander in Secret Spider is called Vin, and the female actor from World Savers is Jilly • Ray’s name is Raymondo not Ray Mondo - and it’s Zebulons not Zurbulons. • VANITOR IS CANON AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN CANON • CD “drinks too much” - the lines “I’ll stay here and hold the port” and “12%? That’s all the proof I need!” are references to this, in addition to his wine-bottle wrapping in Secret Santa and his favourite food in one of the books being Madeira cake, the main ingredient of which is wine.  • Victor’s lesser-noticed catchphrase of “Aw, c’mon..!” is inspired by the fact that Alan Marriott actually says it quite a lot in real life.  • Masters were located for 2 full 1/2-hour Nicktoons broadcasts, completely uncompressed, and there are likely more - although we still don’t know exactly how many were modified.

• Masters for 4 previously-unknown shorts were discovered, with the theme of “What’s The Deal With _____?” - Helen was greatly surprised they weren’t on the DVDs as the Profile shorts had taken their place. (can’t find the photo of the master as we only found it towards the end of the day but I have a pic of Helen’s copy)

• An unused villain was going to be The Puddle Heads, sworn nemesis's of The Floaty Heads - he couldn’t find the concept art for them so he drew one in front of me to keep! I shouldn’t say much about them except that you might be seeing them sooner than you think... • There were initially plans for each 4-digit code in the episode to each unlock something different individually on the website - this was never implemented as they never made enough goodies to cover 52 different codes. • Helen used to have a copy of the show’s entire soundtrack on her iPod until it broke. • Tony knows about the DeviantArt fanfics. To hear him actually say the site’s name out loud was a very surreal moment indeed.  • The disclaimer that the Bogie Ball blooper was “deemed Too Gross for national television” is actually true - everything except the end of that scene was actually going to be in the original episode but the BBC said it was too much. • There’s a 4th BTS called “The Music Of the Secret Show”, which would’ve been with Roger Jackson - we found the master for the 3rd one (“The Sounds Of The Secret Show”) but not the 4th. • There were also 4 PP Lectures made, which means there are two of those that have never been released either. • The Space Wasps (from What’s In The Box and Planet PP) have a different origin in both simply because they needed to reuse the assets. • Tony had the entire plot to the potential Series 3 opener all planned out, and gleefully recounted the first half of it to me in great detail. I’ll keep the specifics mum for the time being just in case it ever ends up happening after all - but I’ll say that it would’ve been amazing. Also Tony totally should’ve been a VA, his voices were great. • Everyone was fascinated by the number of international dubs I’d managed to collect, and when I showed them the Latino-Mexican intro there was much groaning and laugher all ‘round. Speaking of which, we discovered a sampler-disc of the Catalan dub that even Tony was surprised they had:

• The reason why it’s never revealed what CD won his medal on the Mantlepiece for is because nobody could think of anything funny enough to warrant revealing. • Unbeknownst to anyone, the physical masters for episodes 7 and 28 were AWOL from their designated boxes and remain unaccounted for, although they are still stored digitally - I know this because I re-sorted their entire TSS disc-archive for them while I was there. Andrea was happy for the heads-up and Helen gladly suggested I make a note of it on the box. • Martin Hyder was hired almost by accident - he was called in just to record the Temp Track for Stephen Fry’s lines in the pilot as Fry had to record them separately. Someone asked Martin to fill in a line for Ray, and he suited the role so well that they casted him on the spot. • The One Breath Lady was both voiced by and inspired by one of the writers, Jimmy Hibbert. Tony recounted that Jim had a habit of speaking in run-on sentences for so long that your eyes would be watering on his behalf, willing him to actually inhale some air and take a goddamned breath once in a while.  • There was an event known as “Spy Day” in which a whole bunch of children were brought together to do TSS-themed spy activities. There are two separate recordings of this. • Tony knew that Nicktoons had once broadcast The Martian Dub (Sep 20th ‘08) but Helen was unaware. Her reaction to finding out was amazing. • Anita’s parents were never given a backstory simply because they were never relevant to the plot - Anita’s aquatic origins shall remain a mystery.... • Glynn and I both agreed that due to internet speeds and technology advancing a truly substantial way since 2006, remastering the site’s audio from 22050Hz to 44100Hz is completely feasible, and that I could even help resample it. Tony and Helen admitted they’d lost us completely during our nerd-out which we all had a good laugh over.  • Tony asked completely of his own volition if I knew of TheSecretShow4You, which is of course our friend and empress, the Vanitor Queen. He greatly admires how much she has come up with over the years and says he loved the 10th Anniversary video. • Helen was very surprised to learn that the first 24 episodes had reaired all throughout last April this year in Germany - presumably Disney Germany renewed their licence. Speaking of which:

• The Spider was supposed to appear in Secret Sleep - about 6 minutes in, crawling on the front edge of the bed just before PP falls asleep. Neither DVD nor Broadcast version has this due to a rendering error, although they didn’t actually believe me at the time:

The top photo is from “The Book Of Revelations” - a pair of .pdfs that track every single hidden thing from every episode along with a few other things. They are now in the Google Drive folder under “Books” for your viewing pleasure. • I gave Tony my still-shrink-wrapped copy of the Italian Vol4 DVD as a gift for basically putting up with my wall-of-text emails over the last three years. In return I was presented with a take-home copy of the 2004 Pilot version of Lucky Leo as Tony still had a few copies left. It is now in the Drive under “Rare Broadcasts” - you will notice more than a few differences to the final version, I’m sure:

• There was an entire marketing pack produced of which only two exist. Photos of literally everything from it are in the “Studio Visit 02/11/17″ folder, along with all the master discs that we found in the cupboard.

• Two Betamax masters were found as well - I don’t know about you but I thought that was absolutely amazing:

The second tape contains an 11-minute Interview with Tony about the show which has never been shown outside the industry. • A prototype of the UK version of Vol2 was also discovered, along with two different prototypes of Vol1 - Sadly none were found of 3 or 4 as BBC WW were actually the ones who pressed them, Col & Co simply handing the files over to them to compile.

And last but certainly not least: • This morning, the day after the meeting, Glynn emailed me several files from his archive of the website which were previously lost - the U.Z.Z./T.H.E.M. Doorhangers, the CD Cutout, The Spiderbikes game (literally called spaceinvaders.swf) and the rarest of all, the 2007 Easter Exclusive Site Map - available now at your local Website Downloads folder. He also kindly sent some original concept art for the games that he’d drawn himself back in the day, including one that never made the cut, of which I will make another post about separately. (if you want a sneaky peek, look in the Cocept Art & BTS folder...!) One final thing, for now at least - While I was there Helen and Tony deigned to show me the trailer for their newest series, “Thorgar” -  I was “the first person under 30 to see it” and I can tell you now it’s absolutely amazing. Seriously, as soon as it starts airing you guys need to watch it immediately, it’s spectacular. 

[granvarones]

I was born in Tonalá, Jalisco in Mexico but I grew up in East LA since I was two years old. Growing up in East LA was one of the most, luckiest opportunities. While coming into a whole new country not having to lose my culture because east la is heavily populated by Latinos, overall Mexicanos, and Mexicans who carry their culture from Mexico very strongly to their everyday activities. The music, the trucks, the family and traditional culture you get to see in Mexico but you have it in la. But it was also something made me further question how far would I get in life, how true could I be about my true identity knowing that not much had changed but just the zip code. A country, but the culture hadn't really changed because I was still growing up where machismo ruled essentially, family values, where the man was supposed to be a certain way and women were supposed to be another way and they had to play different roles. So in essence, where I grew up, it gave me an identity, it gave me a culture but it also gave me

I'm the youngest child of three. There is my brother, who is four years older than me then my sister and then me. Just seeing how my older siblings were treated. My brother had to go work at a young age. He went to work with automobiles, very “manly” construction stuff, my sister had to stay at home and clean the house and since I was the youngest my mother would just keep me…she worked in sweatshop for most of her life, working like 16 hours a day. I can't send you to your brother because that's too dangerous but I’m going to keep you with your sister and help her clean up the house. So it was sorta interesting for me because I saw my brother play that “manly” masculine role and I would be with my sister and watch her play that “feminine” role.

That's where I began to see the gender roles played differently. We, as a community, valued “man” roles more than “women” roles. But I watched my mom master both of those roles. My mother was a single mom, she worked her ass off to provide for us and she was unafraid of having to work really late at night with her manager. And she would put him in his place whenever she needed to. And I saw my mother play that “masculine” role to protect her three children, Seeing how my mom, who didn't have complete knowledge of law, she still knew that she had some rights as a woman and she maximized her opportunities and never let anybody impact her personal health and safety because she knew that would impact her children's safety.

As child, I would rather play with dolls than with trucks. I wanted to be a princess. Once my sister and I were playing and she put me in a dress and I rocked that dress! I thought I looked wonderful. I felt the most alive and happy to be with my sister. My mom showed up from work and she started to cry. She took off the clothes and beat me. She said “This is not for you!” I remember crying. My brother and sister stayed by my side when I cried. They would say “It’s ok. Mom just doesn't understand right now. She is under a lot of stress.” They always took care of me. My brother protected me. If someone called me “fag”, he would beat the shit out of them. He always had a sense of my queerness and would say that he would always protect me. Brother taught to never be afraid of my community. My sister always encouraged me to speak up and to take leadership roles. She was would say, “You can do this. Run for that leadership role.” I sometimes think that was her dream but because she wasn’t a man, she felt that she couldn’t do it. She is the reason why I am loud ass now in the streets fighting for undocumented communities. She helped to give me that courage.  

Right now you see the masculine me. Whenever i am showing my genders, they are polar opposites. My Carlos gender is very masculine presenting and feminine gender loves the accessories, loves the whole contouring make-up but I don't do drag. She is a part of me. A very important part of me. It feels nature and comfortable. It makes me feel whole. I don't do performances as my “woman” gender, it just who I am. She went underground the day I got beat as a child and she pops up here and there when I need her for survival. Some days, I get home and I'm like “Roxanna is going to come out. It's been a stressful day. I just need to sit down, eat strawberries and feel beautiful.”

Monserat Padilla, Seattle, Washington

Interviewed & Photographed by: Louie A. Ortiz-Fonseca

*Monserat was interviewed last summer. This photo represents their masculine gender expression. Their pro-nouns have since changed. When commenting and sharing this beautiful story, please use She/Her/They/Them pronouns.*

Monserat is also doing amazing work with Latinx trans, queer and undocumented folks in Seattle. Please click the link to support their work.

https://www.youcaring.com/lgbtqdacarecipients-940185?fb_action_ids=10207871246099071&fb_action_types=youcaringcom%3Ashare

[beimanorthrun-blog]

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Rendezvous with the Fat Man, Taylor Swift’s Lessons, Nature’s Natives

In 1972, Jan Sherman was a beautiful 22 year old actress/stunt woman who fled the Hollywood ‘rat race’ by moving to the island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain.  Her life changed forever after attending an eclectic party of expatriate artists and hippies when the hostess invited her to South America to buy and smuggle a kilo of cocaine. Talent agent and sister of Jan, Gail Sherman Jones unveils her new book, Rendezvous with the Fat Man, about the true saga of her sister’s double life. www.talentplusloslatinos.com

Music megastar, Taylor Swift, turns thirty this year and shares thoughts on lessons she’s learned. She says 2019 is the year for sharing and caring.

More than 18,000 plant species are native to the United States and approximately 6000 species are endemic to California. Natives are drought tolerant and wildlife attractors bringing songbirds, lizards, salamanders, butterflies, frogs, hummingbirds, bees, and other pollinators into the landscape. Goddess Gardener, Cynthia Brian guides us through a native garden. www.CynthiaBrian.com

Bio:Gail Sherman Jones is Owner-Director of Talent+Plus/Los Latinos Talent Agency, the oldest talent agency in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1981. She represents actors/models for TV commercials, videos, print work, movies, & TV series. Previously, she taught Spanish & social studies for 12 years at a middle school in the Latino barrio of East San Jose, CA.  RENDEZVOUS WITH THE FAT MAN is her first book initiated by the death of her sister Jan in 2013. Gail discovered Jan’s unpublished manuscript in her estate exposing her secret double life as a cocaine smuggler from 1972-1980. Jan made 11 trips to South America, scoring 7 kilos of coke, netting over $500,000 ($2 million today). Gail’s screenplay of the book is being considered for a film by a major production company in LA. www.talentplusloslatinos.com

Listen at Voice America Network, Empowerment Channel: https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/114587/rendezvous-with-the-fat-man-taylor-swifts-lessons-natures-nat

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JUST PUBLISHED: Be the Star You Are! Millennials to Boomers Celebrating Gifts of Positive Voices in a Changing Digital World and Growing with the Goddess Gardener. Available at www.CynthiaBrian.com/online-store

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When you are looking for upbeat, life-changing, and mind-stretching information, you have come to the right place. Host Cynthia Brian takes you on a journey of exploration that will encourage, inspire, and motivate you to make positive changes that offer life-enhancing results. It's party time on StarStyle®-Be the Star You Are!®. And YOU are invited! Join us LIVE 4-5pm Pt on Wednesdays or tune in to the archives at your leisure. Come play in StarStyle Country. Catch up with all broadcasts on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/starstyle-be-the-star-you-are!/id669630180?mt=2

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