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theragamuffininitiative · 3 months

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Beneath West End Run 👀

Ahhhhh, yes! So, I promise all my stories are not fairytale retellings (regrettably), but this one is my other of that genre. XD

Beneath West-End Run is a Pied Piper retelling, set in a 1980s town in the American midwest, surrounded by farms and wind turbines, and the consequences of broken promises to a mythical trickster. It follows the story of a boy named Gill, a family coming apart at the seams in the wake of tragedy, a runaway named Eliza, mutated rats, and a curse that preys on the most vulnerable, stealing them away to a strange other world - never to be seen again. Gill is the only boy in the town who followed the Piper's music and yet was left behind to tell about it after, and the only one who can find out what happened and if the Piper's curse can be undone.

(Bits from my pinterest inspo board)

Thank you for asking! I really love this one and writing in Gill's narrative voice. It's very clipped and matter-of-fact but slightly poetic. Something like throwing 100 Cupboards, Arthur and the Invisibles, Gregor the Overlander, and The Black Book of Secrets into a blender. XD

Excerpt below the cut bc it's kinda long for an excerpt lol

I wasn't far from the Run when I met Eliza.

Eliza was not from West-End Run. She came from deep down south, where she claimed that the fishermen catch fish already fried, and tea can be mistaken for maple syrup by the ignorant. Where Eliza came from, all the men have guns, all the women cook better than all the other women, and all the children are as feral as coyotes and cougars. That's what she told me, anyway.

I was sitting on the top rail of some fence outside of town.

When Eliza came up the path and clambered onto the fence, gripping the bulk of her lemon-yellow skirts in hand, I didn’t say much. I was too busy watching for the slip I knew was coming.

There was a grating some distance off, on the wayside of the road that led out of town, and I had seen the air dance around it the night before. It wasn’t much of a movement, only a sort of wavering, but I knew it would be stronger come daylight.

So I came out, saw that the air still danced like heat ripples over summer asphalt, and situated myself on a section of the fence that was far away enough to be perfectly safe, and close enough for a decent view. Since dawn, six people had safely walked past the grating.

It's not unusual for people to surreptitiously gather around a coming slip and watch. There was never a crowd, as that was called indecent, but there was always someone watching and that was called duty.

That's why I ignored Eliza sitting beside me until she spoke.

“What are you looking at?” she asked in a soft drawl.

I looked over at her for the first time and knew she wasn’t from West-End. You can just tell when someone is and when someone isn’t. Someone else might have asked her what she was doing out on her own, or if she needed help, or if she was running away.

I didn’t.

West-End Run is where the questions decide to live whenever they possibly can. Why? Maybe it's because the questions don’t all the time like being answered. They want to be an anonymity. They want to astound and amaze. They want to look on ordinary, explained things and point and laugh and then go dancing off back into their mystery. They come to West-End Run, where we don’t ask too many questions, we don’t train a whole passel of scientists, and detectives sometimes find a job is hard to get. We like our questions, our mysteries.

Still, sometimes the wildness that gets strung around the town like a great ball of string starts to get tight and something, somewhere, cracks and unravels a bit and the strange things get out to the rest of the world. Sometimes they are wonderful things. Sometimes not so much. But once they get out, inevitably, they get answered, and suddenly the wildness is gone right out of them. To put it another way, I like zoos. Always have. But I still don’t think I will ever forgive the first man who looked at a lion and decided to cage him.

The girl in the lemon-yellow dress was staring at me and I realized I was staring at her. She was waiting for me to say something.

I went back to watching the grate in the road.

Another person walked past it and seemed drawn toward the iron-capped hole. They walked away slowly, glancing back over their shoulder twice.

“My name’s Eliza,” the girl with the lemon-yellow dress told me.

“Gill,” I said.

A woman laden down with grocery bags walked down the roadside as a few cars passed by.

She looked slumped and tired and I felt something in my chest rise as if to prompt my tongue into protesting, calling out a warning. I kept silent and Eliza and I watched.

The woman stopped a few feet away from the grating, and the bags she had slung over her shoulders and back just sort of slid off to the ground, lying in a heap all around her except for in front of her feet. She walked forward with slow, halting steps.

Even from the fence, I could see the air was writhing, confusing the shape and outline of the road and of the things around it.

The woman stood over the grating for a long while, her shoulders straightening, her head set high and lofty on her neck until she stood like a queen, despite all her commonness. She began to sway in time with a tune no one else heard.

Then the slowness of it all stopped and she flung herself to the ground, threw the grating off and disappeared into the gaping hole. The air around the hole stilled and I hopped off the fence, trotting toward the hole.

I stood over the opening in the ground. There was nothing to see but darkness, the sort of deep shadow that you know means a vast empty place, like the deep part at the end of the Run. How deep that tunnel ran, or where it led, I wasn’t sure. But I looked and saw the vastness and quickly covered the hole with the grating once more.

#thanks for the ask!#aster friend #wip: beneath west end run #the pied piper of hamelin

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nealiios · 3 years

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The Supernatural 70s: Part I - Corruption of An Innocent

"We're mutants. There's something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us - we're soldiers writers."

-- with apologies to the screenwriter of "Stripes"

Dear reader, I have the darkest of revelations to make to you, a truth when fully and wholly disclosed shall most assuredly chill you to the bone, a tale that shall make you question all that you hold to be true and good and holy about my personal history. While you may have come in search of that narrative designer best known for his works of interactive high fantasy, you should know that he is also a crafter of a darker art, a scribbler of twisted tales filled with ghosts, and ghouls, and gargoyles. I am, dear innocent, a devotee of horrors! Mwahahahaha!

[cue thunderclap, lightning, pipe organ music]

Given the genre of writing for which most of you know me, I forgive you if you think of me principally as a fantasy writer. I don't object to that classification because I do enjoy mucking about with magic and dark woods and mysterious ancient civilizations. But if you are to truly know who I am as a writer, you must realize that the image I hold of myself is principally as a creator of weird tales.

To understand how and why I came to be drawn to this sub-genre of fantastic fiction, you first must understand that I come from peculiar folks. Maybe I don't have the Ipswich look, or I didn't grow up in a castle, but my pedigree for oddity has been there from the start. My mother was declared dead at birth by her doctor, and often heard voices calling to her in the dead of night that no one else could hear. Her mother would periodically ring us up to discuss events in our lives about which she couldn't possibly have known. My father's people still share ghost stories about a family homestead that burned down mysteriously in the 1960s. Even my older brother has outré memories about events he says cannot possibly be true, and as a kid was kicked off the Tulsa city bookmobile for attempting to check out books about UFOs, bigfoot, and ESP. It's fair to say I was doomed - or destined - for weirdness from the start.

If the above listed circumstances had not been enough, I grew up in an area where neighbors whispered stories about a horrifically deformed Bulldog Man who stalked kids who "parked" on the Old North Road near my house. The state in which I was raised was rife with legends of bigfoots, deer women, and devil men. Even in my childhood household there existed a pantheon of mythological entities invented explicitly to keep me in line. If I was a good boy, The Repairman would leave me little gifts of Hot Wheels cars or candy. If I was being terrible, however, my father would dress in a skeleton costume, rise from the basement and threaten to drag me down into everlasting hellfire (evidently there was a secret portal in our basement.) There were monsters, monsters EVERYWHERE I looked in my childhood world. Given that I was told as a fledgling writer to write what I knew, how could anyone have been surprised that the first stories I wrote were filled with the supernatural?

"The Nightmare" by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

My formative years during the late sixties and early seventies took place at a strange juncture in our American cultural history. At the same time that we were loudly proclaiming the supremacy of scientific thought because we'd landed men on the moon, we were also in the midst of a counter cultural explosion of interest in astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, extra sensory perception, and flying saucers. Occult-related books were flying off the shelves as sales surged by more than 100% between 1966 and 1969. Cultural historians would come to refer to this is as the "occult boom," and its aftershocks would impact popular cultural for decades to come.

My first contact with tales of the supernatural were innocuous, largely sanitized for consumption by children. I vividly remember watching Casper the Friendly Ghost and the Disney version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I read to shreds numerous copies of both Where the Wild Things Are and Gus the Ghost. Likely the most important exposure for me was to the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? cartoon which attempted to inoculate us from our fears of ghosts and aliens by convincing us that ultimately the monster was always just a bad man in a mask. (It's fascinating to me that modern incarnations of Scooby Doo seem to have completely lost this point and instead make all the monsters real.)

ABOVE: Although the original cartoon Scooby Doo, Where Are You? ran only for one season from 1969 to 1970, it remained in heavy reruns and syndication for decades. It is notable for having been a program that perfectly embodied the conflict between reason and superstition in popular culture, and was originally intended to provide children with critical thinking skills so they would reject the idea of monsters, ghosts, and the like. Ironically, modern takes on Scooby Doo have almost entirely subverted this idea and usually present the culprits of their mysteries as real monsters.

During that same time, television also introduced me to my first onscreen crush in the form of the beautiful and charming Samantha Stevens, a witch who struggles to not to use her powers while married to a frequently intolerant mortal advertising executive in Bewitched. The Munsters and The Addams Family gave me my first taste for "goth" living even before it would become all the rage in the dance clubs of the 1980s. Late night movies on TV would bring all the important horror classics of the past in my living room as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla all became childhood friends. Over time the darkened castles, creaking doors, foggy graveyards, howling wolves, and ever present witches and vampires became so engrained in my psyche that today they remain the "comfort viewing" to which I retreat when I'm sick or in need of other distractions from modern life.

ABOVE: Elizabeth Montgomery starred in Bewitched (1964 - 1972) as Samantha Stephens, a witch who married "mortal" advertising executive Darren Stephens (played for the first five seasons by actor Dick York). Inspired by movies like I Married a Witch (1942) and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), it was a long running series that explored the complex relationship dynamics between those who possess magic and those who don't. Social commentators have referred to it as an allegory both for mixed marriages and also about the challenges faced by minorities, homosexuals, cultural deviants, or generally creative folks in a non heterogeneous community. It was also one of the first American television programs to portray witches not as worshippers of Satan, but simply as a group of people ostracized for their culture and their supernatural skills.

Even before I began elementary school, there was one piece of must-see gothic horror programming that I went out of my way to catch every day. Dark Shadows aired at 3:30 p.m. on our local ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma which usually allowed me to catch most of it if I ran home from school (or even more if my mom or brother picked me up.) In theory it was a soap opera, but the show featured a regular parade of supernatural characters and themes. The lead was a 175 year old vampire named Barnabas Collins (played by Johnathan Frid), and the show revolved around his timeless pursuit of his lost love, Josette. It was also a program that regularly dealt with reincarnation, precognition, werewolves, time travel, witchcraft, and other occult themes. Though it regularly provoked criticism from religious groups about its content, it ran from June of 1966 until it's final cancellation in April of 1971. (I would discover it in the early 1970s as it ran in syndication.) Dark Shadows would spin off two feature-length movies based on the original, a series of tie-in novels, an excellent reboot series in 1991 (starring Ben Cross as Barnabas), and a positively embarrassingly awful movie directed by Tim Burton in 1991.

ABOVE: Johnathan Frid starred as Barnabas Collins, one of the leading characters of the original Dark Shadows television series. The influence of the series cannot be understated. In many ways Dark Shadows paved the way for the inclusion of supernatural elements in other soap operas of the 1970s and the 1980s, and was largely responsible for the explosion of romance novels featuring supernatural themes over the same time period.

While Dark Shadows was a favorite early television program for me, another show would prove not only to be a borderline obsession, but also a major influence on my career as a storyteller. Night Gallery (1969-1973) was a weekly anthology television show from Rod Serling, better known as the creator and host of the original Twilight Zone. Like Twilight Zone before it, Night Gallery was a deep and complex commentary on the human condition, but unlike its predecessor the outcomes for the characters almost always skewed towards the horrific and the truly outré. In "The Painted Mirror," an antiques dealer uses a magic painting to trap an enemy in the prehistoric past. Jack Cassidy plots to use astral projection to kill his romantic rival in "The Last Laurel" but accidentally ends up killing himself. In "Eyes" a young Stephen Spielberg directs Joan Crawford in a story about an entitled rich woman who plots to take the sight of a poor man. Week after week it delivered some of the best-written horror television of the early 1970s.

In retrospect I find it surprising that I was allowed to watch Night Gallery at all. I was very young while it was airing, and some of the content was dark and often quite shocking for its time. Nevertheless, I was so attached to the show that I'd throw a literal temper tantrum if I missed a single, solitary episode. If our family needed to go somewhere on an evening that Night Gallery was scheduled, either my parents would either have to wait until after it had aired before we left, or they'd make arrangements in advance with whomever we were visiting to make sure it was okay that I could watch Night Gallery there. I was, in a word, a fanatic.

ABOVE: Every segment of Night Gallery was introduced by series creator Rod Serling standing before a painting created explicitly for the series. Director Guillermo del Toro credits Serling's series as being the most important and influential show on his own work, even more so than the more famous Twilight Zone.

#horror #70s #occult #supernatural #television #writing

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maddie-grove · 3 years

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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2020

My main takeaways:

I’m glad that I set certain reading goals this year (i.e., reading an even mix of different genres and writing about each book I read on this tumblr). I feel like it really expanded my horizons.

There are a lot of proper names on my Top 20 list this year, which possibly means something about identity? That, or I just tried to read more Victorian novels.

Be horny, and be kind.

Now...

20. The White Mountains by John Christopher (1967)

In a world ruled by unseen creatures who roam the countryside in tall metal tripods, all humans are “capped” (surgically fitted with metal plates on their heads) at age fourteen. Thirteen-year-old Will Parker looks forward to becoming a man, but a conversation with a mysterious visitor to his village raises a few doubts. This early YA dystopia has gorgeous world-building (notably a trip to the ruins of Paris) and expert pacing. The choices Will has to make are also more surprising and complicated than I ever anticipated.

19. What Happened at Midnight by Courtney Milan (2013)

John Mason wants revenge on his fiancée Mary after she skips town following her father’s death...apparently with the funds that her father, John’s business partner, embezzled from their company. When he tracks her down, though, she’s working as a lady’s companion to the wife of a controlling gentleman who refuses to pay her wages, and John’s fury turns to sympathy and curiosity. This is a smart, well-plotted Victorian-set novella about a couple who builds a better relationship after a rocky start.

18. Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1943)

It’s 1773, and fourteen-year-old Bostonian Johnny Tremain has it all: a promising apprenticeship to a silversmith, the run of his arguably senile master’s household, and...unresolved grief over his widowed mother’s death? When a workplace “accident” ruins his hand and career, though, he must “forge” a new identity. Despite its jingoism and surfeit of historical exposition, I fell in love with this weird early YA novel. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking portrayal of disability and ableism, and, to be fair, Forbes was just jazzed about fighting the Nazis.

17. Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf by Hayley Krischer (2020)

After universally beloved jock Sean Nessel rapes starry-eyed junior Ali Greenleaf at a party, his queen-bee friend Blythe Jensen agrees to smooth things over by befriending his victim. Ali knows Blythe’s motives are weird and sketchy, but being friends with a popular, exciting girl is preferable to dealing with the fallout of the rape. This YA novel is a complex, astute exploration of trauma and moral responsibility.

16. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (2017)

Rothstein details how the federal U.S. government allowed, encouraged, and sometimes even forcibly brought about segregation of black and white Americans during the early and mid-twentieth century, with no regard for the unconstitutionality of its actions. He brings home the staggering harm to black Americans who were kept from living in decent housing, shut out of home ownership for generations, and denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth for generations. It’s an impactful read, and I was honestly shocked to learn Rothstein isn’t a lawyer, because the whole thing reads like an expansion of an excellent closing statement.

15. My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf (2012)

In this graphic memoir, Backderf looks back on his casual, fleeting friendship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a high school classmate who amused Backderf and his geeky friends with bizarre, chaotic antics. Backderf brings their huge, impersonal high school to life, illustrating how the callousness and cruelty of such an environment allowed an isolated, troubled teen to morph into something much more disturbing without anyone really noticing. It’s a work of baffled, tentative empathy and regret that stayed with me long after I finished it.

14. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876)

Gwendolyn Harleth, beautiful and ambitious but with no real outlet, finds herself compelled to marry a heartless gentleman with a shady past. Daniel Deronda, adopted son of her husband’s uncle, finds himself drawn into her orbit due to his helpful nature, but he’s also dealing with a lot of other stuff, like helping a Jewish opera singer and figuring out his parentage. I love George Eliot and, although this bifurcated novel isn’t her most accessible work, it’s highly rewarding. The psychological twists and turns of Gwendolyn’s story are a wonder to experience, and Daniel’s discovery of his past and a new community is moving.

13. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)

The Roths, an ordinary working-class Jewish family in 1940 Newark, find their quiet lives descending into fear, uncertainty, and strife after Charles Lindbergh, celebrity pilot and Nazi sympathizer, becomes president of the United States. This alternate history/faux-memoir perfectly captures the slow creep of fascism and the high-handed cruelty of state-sanctioned discrimination, as well as the weirdness of living a semi-normal life while all of that is going on. Also: fuck Herman and Alvin for messing up Bess’s coffee table! She is a queen, and she deserves to read Pearl S. Buck in a pleasant setting!

12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

Young David Copperfield has an idyllic life with his sweet widowed mom and devoted nursemaid Peggotty, until his cruel stepfather ruins everything. David eventually manages to find safe harbor with his eccentric aunt, but his troubles have only begun. Although the quality of the novel falls off a little once David becomes an adult, I don’t even care; the first half is one of the most beautiful, funny, brilliantly observed portrayals of the joys and sorrows of childhood that I’ve ever read.

11. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt (2017)

Greenblatt examines the evolution and cultural significance of the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible to the modern day (but mostly it’s about Milton). I can’t speak to the scholarship of this book--I’m not an expert on the Bible or Milton or bonobos--but I do know that it’s a gorgeously written meditation on love, mortality, and free will. Greenblatt brought me a lot of joy as an unhappy teenager, and he came through for me again during the summer of 2020.

10. The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg (2019)

Self-conscious seventeen-year-old Jordan is mortified when his widowed mother hires Max, an outgoing jock from his school, to help out with their struggling food truck. As they get to know each other, though, they realize that they have more in common than they thought, and they end up helping each other through a particularly challenging summer. This is an endearing, exceedingly well-balanced YA romance that tackles serious issues with a light touch and a naturalness that’s rare in the genre.

9. Red as Blood by Tanith Lee (1983)

In nine wonderfully lurid stories, Tanith Lee retells fairy tales with a dark, historically grounded, and lady-centered twist. Highlights include a medieval vampiric Snow White, a vengeful early modern Venetian Cinderella, and a Scandinavian werewolf Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tale retellings are right up my alley, and Lee’s collection is impressively varied and creative.

8. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908)

Unnerved by an impulsive make-out session with egalitarian George Emerson on a trip to Florence, young Edwardian woman Lucy Honeychurch goes way too far the other way and gets engaged to snobbish Cecil Vyse. How can she get out of this emotional and social pickle? This is an absolutely delightful romance that gave a timeless template for romantic comedies and dramas for 100-plus years.

7. My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)

Jim Burden, a New York City lawyer, tells the story of his friendship with slightly older Bohemian immigrant girl Ántonia when they were kids together on the late-nineteenth-century Nebraska prairie. It was a pretty pleasant time, give or take a few murders, suicides, and attempted rapes. This is one of the sweetest stories about unrequited love I’ve ever read, and it has some really enjoyable queer subtext.

6. Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn (2012)

In 1956 Maryland, gawky teen Nora’s peaceful existence is shattered by the unsolved murder of her friends Cheryl and Bobbi Jo right before summer vacation. Essentially left to deal with her trauma alone, she begins to question everything, from her faith in God to the killer’s real identity. Hahn delivers a beautiful coming-of-age story along with a thoughtful portrait of how a small community responds to tragedy.

5. The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France, with translation and introduction/notes by Robert Herring and Joan Ferrante (original late 12th century, edition 1995)

In twelve narrative poems, anonymous French-English noblewoman Marie de France spins fantastically weird tales of love, lust, and treachery. Highlights include self-driving ships, gay (?) werewolves, and more plot-significant birds than you can shake a stick at. Marie de France brings so much tenderness, delicacy, and startling humor to her stories, offering a wonderful window to the distant past.

4. Maus by Art Spiegelman (1980-1991)

In this hugely influential graphic novel/memoir, Art Spiegelman tells the story of how his Polish Jewish parents survived the Holocaust. He portrays all the characters as anthropomorphic animals; notably, the Jewish characters are mice and the Nazi Germans are cats. I read the first volume of Maus back in 2014 and, while I appreciated and enjoyed it, I didn’t get the full impact until I read both volumes together early in 2020. Spiegelman takes an intensely personal approach to his staggering subject matter, telling the story through the lens of his fraught relationship with his charismatic and affectionate, yet truly difficult father.

3. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire (2010)

McGuire looks at a seldom-explored aspect of racism in the Jim Crow South (the widespread rape and sexual harassment of black women by white men) and the essential role of anti-rape activism led by black women during the Civil Rights movement. This is a harrowing yet tastefully executed history, and it’s also a truly inspirational story of collective activism.

2. In for a Penny by Rose Lerner (2010)

Callow Lord Nevinstoke has to mature fast when his father dies, leaving him an estate hampered by debts and extremely legitimate grievances from angry tenant farmers. To obtain the necessary funds, he marries (usually!) sensible brewing heiress Penelope Brown, but they face problems that not even a sizable cash infusion can fix. This is a refreshingly political romance with a deliciously tense atmosphere and fascinating themes, as well as an almost painfully engaging central relationship.

1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)

Fanny Price, the shy and sickly poor relation of the wealthy Bertram family, is subtly mistreated by most of her insecure and/or self-absorbed relatives, with the exception of her kind cousin Edmund. When the scandalous Crawford siblings visit the neighborhood, though, it shakes up her life for good and ill. I put off reading Mansfield Park for years--it’s practically the last bit of Austen writing that I consumed, including most of her juvenilia--and yet I think it’s my favorite. Fanny is an eminently lovable and interesting heroine, self-doubting and flawed yet possessed of a strong moral core, and the rest of the characters are equally realistic and compelling. Austen really made me think about the point of being a good person, both on a personal and a global scale.

#books #reading #rape #racism #genocide #murder #(it was a more cheerful reading year than these tags indicate)#(or was it? i don't know)

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learningrendezvous · 3 years

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Women's Studies

BELLY OF THE BEAST

By Erika Cohn, Angela Tucker, Christen Marquez, and Nicole Docta

Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, BELLY OF THE BEAST exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.

When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California's women's prisons, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes -- from inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations -- primarily targeting women of color. This shocking legal drama captured over 7-years features extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, demanding attention to a shameful and ongoing legacy of eugenics and reproductive injustice in the United States.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 81 minutes

GLOW: A WILD RIDE TO HEAVEN

Director: Gabriel Baur

"Someone who glows so brightly is not going to grow old," Fellini once prophesied about Irene Staub, aka Lady Shiva, one of the greatest of all Swiss divas. Thanks to her aura and talent, many doors opened for Irene during Zurich's exuberant years between 1968 and the late 1980s. Discovered by a pioneer of Swiss fashion design, she made the break from streetwalking to being part of the fashionable art scene. Finding work as a model, she also pursued her dream of becoming a singer, starting out in a legendary Zurich underground band. But Lady Shiva lived life in the fast lane; torn between the stress and strain of success, a yearning for freedom, and self-destructive urges, she died far too young under circumstances that have never been fully explained.

Using never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with prominent contemporaries, director Gabriel Baur brings us back to a vibrant age of boundless possibilities, in which the sky seemed the only limit for people like Lady Shiva...an age that to this day still kindles a yearning in us.

DVD (German with English Subtitles) / 2020 / 100 minutes

I'M MOSHANTY - DO YOU LOVE ME?

Director: Tim Wolff

The world's second largest island, Papua New Guinea is one of the most dangerous places to be a woman, with 70% reporting that they experienced domestic violence and sexual violence before the age of 15. Sorcery accusation killings and family violence take the lives of thousands of women every year and HIV infection rates are the highest in the Pacific. Transgender women are most often homeless, unemployed, denied education and medical care and living under the constant threat of robbery, rape and murder.

I'm Moshanty - Do You Love Me? Is a musical tribute to the late, legendary South Pacific recording artist and transgender activist Moses Moshanty Tau and the LGBTQI community of Papua New Guinea. With their lives still haunted by colonial-era sodomy laws and deadly religious bigotry, Moshanty stands as a beacon of hope for the transgender and LGBTQI community of the entire South Pacific.

Filmed over a weekend in the fall of 2017 and including her last live performances, the film celebrates the transgender activist with a mother's heart, teeth of gold and a voice like a coronet. Hear her journey from a tiny Motuan village to the top of the regional music industry. In her last interview, she shares her personal truth and her greatest desires as a woman with her millions of fans.

In 2017, a diagnosis of throat cancer threatens to silence the activist and a failed surgery leaves her unable to sing. Finally, an entire nation, from ordinary citizens to Ministers of Parliament, is asked to grieve for their brightest light and their most heavenly voice. Who could ever sing the songs of Moshanty?

DVD (English, Tok Pisin, With English Subtitles) / 2020 / 57 minutes

ALL WE'VE GOT

By Alexis Clements

ALL WE'VE GOT is a personal exploration of LGBTQI women's communities, cultures, and social justice work through the lens of the physical spaces they create, from bars to bookstores to arts and political hubs.

Social groups rely on physical spaces to meet and build connections, step outside oppressive social structures, avoid policing and violence, share information, provide support, and organize politically. Yet, in the past decade, more than 100 bars, bookstores, art and community spaces where LGBTQI women gather have closed. In ALL WE'VE GOT, filmmaker Alexis Clements travels the country to explore the factors driving the loss of these spaces, understand why some are able to endure, and to search for community among the ones that remain. From a lesbian bar in Oklahoma; to the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio run by queer Latinas; to the WOW Cafe Theatre in New York; to the public gatherings organized by the Trans Ladies Picnics around the US and beyond; to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, the film takes us into diverse LGBTQI spaces and shines a light on why having a place to gather matters. Ultimately, ALL WE'VE GOT is a celebration of the history and resilience of the LGBTQI community and the inclusive spaces they make, as well as a call to action to continue building stronger futures for all communities.

DVD (Color) / 2019 / 67 minutes

BLACK FEMINIST

By Zanah Thirus

BLACK FEMINIST is a lively and illuminating documentary that explores the double-edged sword of racial and gender oppression that Black Women face in America.

Frustrated by the lack of intersectionality in the women's movement and the misogyny plaguing the Black liberation movement, filmmaker Zanah Thirus set out to shine a light on the complexities and power of Black feminism. Featuring interviews with a wide range of scholars, writers, business owners, veterans and comedians including former Ebony Editor-in-Chief Kyra Kyles, professor Carrie Morris, and author Tami Winfrey Harris, the film lays bare the everyday lived experiences of Black Women everywhere.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 53 minutes

NICE CHINESE GIRLS DON'T: KITTY TSUI

By Jennifer Abod

Nice Chinese Girls Don't is a portrait of Kitty Tsui -- an iconic Asian American lesbian, poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder who came of age in the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement in San Francisco.

In Nice Chinese Girls Don't, Kitty Tsui recounts her emergence as a poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder in the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement in San Francisco. She narrates her experience of arriving to the States as an immigrant from Hong Kong by way of her own original poetry and stories.

Tsui wrote the groundbreaking Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire, the first book written by an Asian American lesbian. She is considered by many to be one of the foremothers of the API, Asian Pacific Islander, lesbian feminist movement.

In 2018, APIQWTC, Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community honored her with the Phoenix Award for lifetime achievement. In 2019, her alma mater, San Francisco State University inducted Tsui into the Alumni Hall of Fame. Her forthcoming books include Nice Chinese Girls Don't, Battle Cry: Poems of Love & Resistance, and Fire Power: Poems of Love & Resilience. Tsui currently lives in Oakland, California, and is writing a screenplay, Unmasked.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 20 minutes

NO TIME TO WASTE: THE URGENT MISSION OF BETTY REID SOSKIN

Directed by Carl Bidleman

Celebrates legendary 99-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story.

NO TIME TO WASTE celebrates legendary 99-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman presenting her personal story from a kitchen stool in a national park theater to media interviews and international audiences who hang on every word she utters.

The documentary captures her fascinating lifeâ€”from the experiences of a young Black woman in a WWII segregated union hall, through her multi-faceted career as a singer, activist, mother, legislative representative and park planner to her present public role.

At the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Betty illuminates the invisible histories of African Americans and other people of color. Her efforts have changed the way the National Park Service conveys this history to audiences across the U.S., challenging us all to move together toward a more perfect union.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 52 minutes

NORMAL GIRL, A

Directed by Aubree Bernier-Clarke By Shawna Lipton, Pidgeon Pagonis

A NORMAL GIRL brings the widely unknown struggles of intersex people to light through the story of intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis.

Activist Pidgeon Pagonis was born intersex, not conforming to standard definitions of male or female, and experienced genital mutilation as a child. Now Pidgeon is fighting the medical establishment, seeking to end medically unnecessary surgeries and human rights abuses on intersex people in the United States and around the world.

An estimated 1.5% of the population is born with intersex traits. While most of these babies are healthy, their bodies are treated as a medical emergency. It is common practice for doctors to perform genital surgeries on intersex infants--often with disastrous results including total loss of genital sensation, lifetime synthetic hormone dependence, and being assigned a gender with which they do not identify.

Through the story of Pidgeon's remarkable journey and fight for bodily self-determination, A NORMAL GIRL brings the widely unknown struggles of intersex people to light.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 14 minutes

SHUSENJO: COMFORT WOMEN AND JAPAN'S WAR ON HISTORY

Director: Miki Dezaki

One of the most heated issues in Japan and Asia today is over something that occurred 80 years ago: the Japanese Imperial Army's sexual enslavement of an estimated tens of thousands of Korean women and others in military brothels during World War II. Many nationalist Japanese conservatives (with the surprising support of Western media influencers) believe the women were mostly willing prostitutes, not 'sex slaves', and that the estimated number is far smaller than are claimed. But contemporary historians, activists and - most significantly - the surviving victims and their families, believe otherwise; the denial of their suffering so long ago has created an entirely new trauma.

Director Miki Dezaki, a second-generation Japanese American who learned about comfort women from his Japanese immigrant parents, questions why accounts in the Western media have often sided with the Nationalists. With a keen eye for detail and precision, he interviews historians, advocates and lawyers who discuss the evidence: historical documents related to the Japanese military's direct role in managing the brothels, and harrowing testimonies by former comfort women. 'Shusenjo' is a deep dive into this impassioned subject - bringing to light the hidden intentions of the supporters and detractors of comfort women.

DVD (English, Japanese, Korean with English Subtitles) / 2019 / 120 minutes

ARCHIVETTES, THE

By Megan Rossman

For more than 40 years, the Lesbian Herstory Archives has combated lesbian invisibility by literally rescuing history from the trash.

Founded in the 1970s in a New York City apartment, The Lesbian Herstory Archives is now the world's largest collection of materials by and about lesbians. For more than 40 years, the all-volunteer organization has striven to combat lesbian invisibility by literally rescuing history from the trash.

Frustrated by misogyny and homophobia within academia, Deborah Edel and Joan Nestle co-founded the archives for those conducting research, both professional and personal. Over the years, the organization has witnessed many of the major milestones in LGBTQ+ history and has weathered several storms. Today, with its founders in their seventies, the archives are facing new challenges, including a change in leadership and the rise of digital technology.

Exploring the fascinating origins of the organization, THE ARCHIVETTES is a tribute to second-wave feminism and intergenerational connection, as well as an urgent rallying cry for continued activism in a politically charged moment.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 61 minutes

FEMALE PLEASURE

By Barbara Miller

#FEMALE PLEASURE accompanies five extraordinary women around the globe fighting to reclaim female sexuality.

The film introduces us to author Deborah Feldman from Brooklyn's Hasidic community, sex educator Vitika Yadav in India, manga artist Rokudenashiko in Japan, Somali activist Leyla Hussein, and former nun Doris Wagner in Europe, courageous women who are all struggling to end the harmful cultural practices like genital mutilation and the shaming of the female orgasm that lie at the root of rape culture and patriarchy. Not only highlighting the issues that have contributed to the sexual marginalization of women, the film also calls these atrocities, embedded within cultural and religious norms, by their actual names: rape, assault, child trafficking, abuse. We witness these female activists who were taught to be silent confronting the very entities that have oppressed them.

Both an urgent call to action and an empowering plea for self-determined joyful female sexuality, #FEMALE PLEASURE is ultimately an inspiring tool to help women, no matter their cultural or religious background, to reclaim their bodies and celebrate their sexuality without shame or suffering.

DVD (English, Japanese, German, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 101 minutes

TO A MORE PERFECT UNION: U.S. V. WINDSOR

Director: Donna Zaccaro

To A More Perfect Union: U.S. v. Windsor tells a story of love, marriage and a fight for equality. The film chronicles two unlikely heroes, octogenarian Edie Windsor and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, on their quest for justice: Edie had been forced to pay a huge estate tax bill upon the death of her spouse because the federal government denied federal benefits to same-sex couples...and Edie's spouse was a woman.

Deeply offended by this lack of recognition of her 40+ year relationship with the love of her life, Edie decided to sue the United States government - and won. Beyond the story of this pivotal case in the marriage equality movement, the film also tells the story of our journey as a people, as a culture, and as citizens with equal rights.

Windsor and Kaplan's legal and personal journeys are told in their own words, and through interviews with others, including Lillian Faderman, a leading scholar on LGBTQ history, and Evan Wolfson, who first at Lambda Legal and later as founder of Freedom to Marry was the godfather of marriage equality in the US and now worldwide. Legal observers, including Jeffrey Toobin from CNN and Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio, also lend their insights.

DVD / 2018 / 63 minutes

WE ARE THE RADICAL MONARCHS

Directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton

Follows the Radical Monarchs, a group of young girls of color on the frontlines of social justice.

Set in Oakland, a city with a deep history of social justice movements, WE ARE THE RADICAL MONARCHS documents the Radical Monarchs--an alternative to the Scout movement for girls of color, aged 8-13. Its members earn badges for completing units on social justice including being an LGBTQ ally, the environment, and disability justice.

The group was started by two fierce, queer women of color, Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest as a way to address and center her daughter's experience as a young brown girl. Their work is anchored in the belief that adolescent girls of color need dedicated spaces and that the foundation for this innovative work must also be rooted in fierce inter-dependent sisterhood, self-love, and hope.

The film follows the first troop of Radical Monarchs for over three years, until they graduate, and documents the Co-Founders' struggle to respond to the needs of communities across the US and grow the organization after the viral explosion of interest in the troop's mission to create and inspire a new generation of social justice activists.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 4-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

YOURS IN SISTERHOOD

By Irene Lusztig

YOURS IN SISTERHOOD is a performative, participatory documentary inspired by the breadth and complexity of letters that were sent in the 1970s to the editor of Ms.- America's first mainstream feminist magazine. The film documents hundreds of strangers from around the U.S. who were invited to read aloud and respond to these letters written by women, men and children from diverse backgrounds. Collectively, the letters feel like an encyclopedia of both the 70s and the women's movement- an almost literal invocation of the second-wave feminist slogan "the personal is political." The intimate, provocative, and sometimes heartbreaking conversations that emerge from these performances invite viewers to think about the past, present, and future of feminism.

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 101 minutes

FEMINISTA: A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF FEMINISM IN EUROPE

By Myriam Fougere

FEMINISTA is a lively and inspiring feminist road movie that explores the largely unrecognized yet hugely vibrant pan European feminist movement. Filmmaker Myriam Fougere joined an international group of young feminists who were traveling across twenty countries â€“ from Turkey to Portugal, by the way of the Balkans, to Italy, Spain and Portugal â€“ to make connections and unite forces with other women. She witnessed these determined activists participating in political gatherings, supporting homegrown local feminist struggles, exchanging strategies, and inventing new ways to resist and fight for change. Revealing how feminism is transmitted from one generation to another, FEMINISTA provides a rare glimpse into a widespread feminist groundswell movement, possibly one of the largest and unrecognized mass political movements that is very much alive and well throughout Europe today.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 60 minutes

FINE LINE, A (EDUCATIONAL VERSION)

Directed by Joanna James

Explores why less than 7% of head chefs and restaurant owners are women, when traditionally women have always held the central role in the kitchen.

Featuring intimate interviews with world-renowned chefs like Dominique Crenn, Lidia Bastianich, Cat Cora, Elena Arzak, Elizabeth Falkner, Maria Loi, Sylvia Weinstock, Michael Anthony and others, A FINE LINE explores pressing issues faced by women in the culinary arts and across all industries, including sexual and workplace harassment, access to capital, unequal pay, and lack of paid family leave and affordable childcare.

An uplifting American success story about perseverance, family, and food, A FINE LINE follows the personal story of Valerie James, a small town restaurateur with a larger than life personality who raised Joanna as a single mother on a mission to do what she loves while raising two kids and the odds stacked against her.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 56 minutes

CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE

Directed by Jennifer Townsend

Explores the same women's and men's reactions to the groundbreaking film, "Thelma & Louise", 25 years ago and today.

Powerful, authentic, and timely, CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world. It revisits the journey of Thelma & Louise through the lens of viewers who saw that iconic film in 1991 and shared intimate, personal, stories at that time. The same women and men were tracked down 25 years later. Are their responses different now? Has anything changed in the way women are treated?

Interview commentary mixes with clips from "Thelma & Louise" to reveal why this cinema classic continues to resonate with millions of viewers, the world over. Christopher McDonald, who played Thelma's husband, and Marco St. John, who played the truck driver, offer an insider's viewpoint.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

REVIVAL, THE: WOMEN AND THE WORD

By Sekiya Dorsett

THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians, including Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nikki Finney, and Alexis Deveaux. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood - one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2016 / 82 minutes

SIBERIAN LOVE

By Olga Delane

In rural Siberia, romantic expectations are traditional and practical. The man is the head of the household. The woman takes care of the housekeeping and the children. But filmmaker Olga Delane doesn't agree. While she was born in this small Siberian village, as a teenager she migrated to Berlin with her family, and 20 years of living in Germany has changed her expectations. SIBERIAN LOVE follows Delane home to her community of birth, where she interviews family and neighbors about their lives and relationships. Amusing and moving, this elegant film paints a picture of a world completely outside of technology, a hard-farming community where life is hard and marriage is sometimes unhappy - but where there are also unexpected paths to joy and family togetherness. Through clashing ideals of modern and traditional womanhood, SIBERIAN LOVE is a fascinating study of a country little known in the US and of a rural community that raises questions about domesticity, gender expectations, domestic abuse, childcare, and romance. Excellent for anthropology, women's studies, sociology, Russian and Eastern European Studies.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 82 minutes

VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH

By Maha Marouan and Rachel Raimist

When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 32 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Women_202101.html

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justforbooks · 4 years

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Terence Conran, Designer and Retail Magnate, Is Dead at 88

An entrepreneur of mercurial moods and missionary zeal, he created an empire to market his designs and later opened restaurants in London, Paris and New York.

Terence Conran, a London designer and retailing magnate who eased the gloom of postwar British austerity with stylish home furnishings affordable on a teacher’s salary, and then suffered financial reverses before reinventing himself as an international restaurateur and doyen of modern design, died on Saturday at his country home in Berkshire, England. He was 88.

His family confirmed the death in a statement, without specifying the cause.

Blind in one eye since childhood, Mr. Conran was an entrepreneur of mercurial moods and missionary zeal who created an empire to market his designs, stores known in Europe as Habitat and in America as Conran Shops. After his business declined, he opened restaurants in London, Paris and New York — notably Guastavino’s, a dining cathedral under the tiled terracotta arches of the Queensboro Bridge in Manhattan.

He wrote scores of books on design, cooking and other subjects; turned a London warehouse riverfront into a fashionable South Bank commercial development; founded the Design Museum, Britain’s only museum for contemporary products and architectural designs; and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He also married four times, had five children and collected wildflowers, butterflies, old master paintings and Bugatti pedal cars.

Detractors called him a cynical self-promoter who sold simplistic ideas to the masses, like “democratized luxury,” and struck it rich with a sure thing: the inevitable desire of Britons to climb from grinding wartime privations into a consumer class that could afford to replace the threadbare old sofa with something seen as “modern” and in “good taste.”

But admirers said he tried, with remarkable success, to revolutionize the sensibilities of a rising British middle class, offering not just better food but an idea of what a sunlit breakfast on Sunday should be; not just mod touches for the drab suburban semi detached but a taste of la dolce vita: Scandinavian furniture, Italian lighting, French cookware, Bauhaus-style modular shelving and splashes of Pop Art on the walls.

In a career that spanned six decades, he had only one actual job: At 19, he worked briefly for an architect who helped design the 1951 Festival of Britain, a national exposition intended to give Britons a sense of recovery from the war. It also gave him a frank look at a people weary of shortages, and a glimpse of the future of commercial design.

“They came along in their dreary wartime mackintoshes, gas-mask cases filled with Spam sandwiches, and found bright cafes, music, flowers, modern furniture and a spirit of something that none of them had ever experienced in their lives,” Mr. Conran told The Daily Telegraph, the British newspaper, in 2011.

Over the next decade, he designed simple furniture and sold it in an arcade in Piccadilly; opened his first restaurant, a sandwich-and-salad bar called Soup Kitchen that had one of London’s first espresso makers; and created new lines of fabrics and moderately priced, functional home furnishings.

In 1964, he opened his first Habitat store in Chelsea. Its staff had uniforms by Mary Quant and hairstyles by Vidal Sassoon.

By the late 1980s, after acquiring other chains, he owned 900 stores in Britain, Europe, Japan and America, selling furniture, housewares and clothing. His company, the Storehouse Group, had 35,000 employees and billions in revenues.

But overexpansion — including additions to the upscale Butler’s Wharf on the Thames, where he installed his Design Museum in 1989 and lived in a glass penthouse — corroded his empire. So did his failure to integrate interests reaching into publishing, office products, architecture and real estate. He resigned as chairman in 1990. Storehouse was dismantled, and Habitat was taken over by Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant.

Mr. Conran kept some Conran Shops and recovered in the 1990s, opening many theatrically dazzling restaurants, including Le Pont de la Tour and Mezzo in London, Alcazar in Paris and Berns Salonger in Stockholm. In New York, he and his partner, Joel Kissin, opened Guastavino’s in 2000 under the Queensboro Bridge. The site was dramatic but out of the way, and a few years later became a catered event space.

In 2005, he was named the most influential restaurateur in Britain by CatererSearch, the website of Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine, and his resurrected fortune was estimated at more than $100 million.

Terence Orby Conran was born on Oct. 4, 1931, in the London suburb Kingston upon Thames, to Gerard and Christina (Halstead) Conran. His father was a businessman. His mother, who had a taste for art, nurtured Terence’s creative talents. When he was 13, his left eye was permanently blinded by a sliver of metal that flew up from a lathe he was using.

He attended Bryanston, a private school in Dorset, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He did not graduate, but a teacher there, the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, became a lifelong friend and mentor.

His first marriage, at the age of 19 to the architect Brenda Davison, lasted six months. He and his second wife, the novelist Shirley Pearce, had two children, Sebastian and Jasper, designers who held various professional and executive positions with their father’s enterprises over the years; they were divorced in 1962. He and his third wife, the food writer Caroline Herbert, had three children, Edmund (known as Ned), Tom and Sophie, and were divorced in 1996. He married his fourth wife, Victoria Davis, in 2000.

He is survived by his wife and his children, as well as 14 grandchildren, one great-grandchild and a sister, Priscilla, a designer and restaurateur.

Mr. Conran became a disciple of Elizabeth David, whose books Europeanized British cooking. Besides design and cooking, his own books explored home furnishings, textiles, gardening and other subjects. An authorized biography, “Terence Conran,” by Nicholas Ind, was published in 1995.

In addition to his 145-acre estate in Berkshire, Barton Court, Mr. Conran had an apartment in London.

From 2003 to 2011, Mr. Conran was provost of the Royal College of Art in London. Besides his 1983 knighthood, a title he said he used only to make reservations, his honors included the Minerva Medal, the highest award of the Chartered Society of Designers, and the Prince Philip Designers Prize for lifetime achievement.

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john-taylor-daily · 4 years

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Full text of the article:

Want to feel really old? Oh, go on then. Duran Duran turn 40 this year: the band, that is, not the members. For them it’s worse: Simon Le Bon is 61, John and Roger Taylor, each 59, and Nick Rhodes, the baby, 57.

As you would expect of a pop group who always appeared happiest hanging off a yacht in ruffled Antony Price suits, accessorised with a supermodel and a cocktail, they intend to celebrate in style, coronavirus permitting. So the plan, announced this week, is that on July 12, exactly 40 years since their first gig at the Rum Runner in Birmingham, they will perform in Hyde Park, headlining a bill that includes Nile Rodgers & Chic and their pal Gwen Stefani. Four of the original five will be there: the guitarist Andy Taylor, 59, left the band in 1985 and, after rejoining in 2001, walked out again five years later. In the past, the guitarist Warren Cuccurullo has filled in; this time Graham Coxon from Blur will take his place.

Then in autumn Duran Duran are releasing a new album, their 15th, which they are halfway through making.

Growing up in the West Midlands, I was a Duranie; my first gig was theirs at the NEC in Birmingham. To give an idea of the level of devotion, I had house plants named after each of them. John, his initials “JT” written on the pot in nail varnish, was a begonia; Rhodes, a busy lizzie; Le Bon, a rubber plant; Roger and Andy Taylor were cacti. My memory, foggy on so much, still holds the name of Nick Rhodes’s cat at the time (Sebastian). The household appliance “JT” would choose to be? “A refrigerator, so I would stay cool.”

But despite previous opportunities, I’ve avoided them bar an awkward backstage handshake with Le Bon. In the meantime, they have notched up record sales of 100 million, had 21 Top 20 hits in the UK and, unlike many bands who came to fame in the 1980s, they produce different, exciting, if not always lauded albums, working with new producers and musicians. They’ve had top five albums in each of the four decades they’ve worked. Their last album, Paper Gods (2015), produced by Mark Ronson and Rodgers, was their most successful for 25 years.

Now 46 and with no desire to anthropomorphise greenery, I meet Rhodes, the keyboardist, and John Taylor, the bass player, once described as having the squarest jaw in rock. Rhodes suggests his “local”, Blakes hotel in Chelsea, near the home he shares with his Sicilian girlfriend, Nefer Suvio (he and Julie Anne Friedman divorced in 1992; they have one child together, Tatjana). Taylor, just in from Los Angeles, home to his second wife, Gela Nash, who runs the fashion label Juicy Couture, invites me to his flat in Pimlico. Le Bon, still happily married to the supermodel Yasmin Le Bon with three grown-up daughters, is busy in the studio and Roger Taylor, four children and with second wife Gisella Bernales, is otherwise occupied.

Rhodes, who joins me in the bar at Blakes, has the same peroxide mop and alabaster skin that were always his trademark. He wears black trousers by the English designer Neil Barrett and a Savile Row jacket dressed down with a rock T-shirt from the Los Angeles company Punk Masters.

Four days later, I arrive at Taylor’s flat in a garden square where he greets me at the door dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, with sculpted bed-hair. I’m reminded of the time my brother splashed Sun-In on his to emulate Taylor’s bleached New Romantic fringe.

It’s good to have them back. They started on the new album in September at Flood Studios in Willesden, northwest London, and, as well as Coxon, have been working with three producers: Giorgio Moroder, Ronson and the DJ Erol Alkan. “The whole place is filled with analogue synthesizers, so it’s just joy for me,” says Rhodes, who began life as Nicholas Bates but renamed himself after a make of electronic keyboard.

Rhodes met Moroder — the “godfather of electronica” and the man behind Donna Summer’s I Feel Love — through a mutual friend of his girlfriend. “We talked about music and what had happened to us,” Rhodes says. “He is as sharp as a razor, 79 going on 45.” They worked with Ronson, who has produced Amy Winehouse and Adele, in LA. “The first thing Mark always says is, ‘Let me hear the rest of it,’” Rhodes says with a laugh. “He is quite competitive.”

Taylor, who leads me into a room that’s more gentlemen’s club than rock-star pad with an open fire, armchairs, brown furniture and bad Victorian paintings, says the break of five years has refuelled them. “We have to starve ourselves of creativity long enough that when we do show up we have something to say,” he says. “[The studio sessions] are quite exhausting because we have been down this road. We can finish each other’s sentences and I guess, to some extent, we can do that musically as well. We are working with the same cast; it’s like a soap opera. That’s why collaborators become so important as you need to keep the spirit lively.”

Rhodes, who says the new album is more “handmade” and “guitary”, explains the working dynamics: “John and Roger’s rhythm section often drives a track. Simon, the lyricist, gives all the songs our identity; it’s his voice that tells you it’s Duran Duran. My part has more to do with sonic architecture.” That may be the most Nick Rhodes phrase yet.

We move on to Andy Taylor. “Forty years ago we had Andy in the band and he was a strong flavour and a northerner and brought a rigour,” says John Taylor. “Filling that vacuum has always been one of the major challenges of version two of the band; we did it with Warren Cuccurullo and with Graham on this record. But it’s not the same. Andy didn’t mind telling people what they were doing wrong.”

He pauses. “We had a reunion with Andy [in 2001] and that was enormously difficult, actually.” How so? “That’s a book really,” says Taylor, who has written about the saga, along with his struggle with drink and drugs, in his excellent 2012 memoir In the Pleasure Groove. “Or it’s a mini-series.”

“It was very uncomfortable for us,” Rhodes says of Andy leaving in 1985. “For sure, it had become stressful over the previous year — we were all burnt out from not having stopped for five years — but we didn’t see it coming at all.”

What are relations with Andy like now? “I don’t really have any,” says Rhodes. “I haven’t seen him for many years since he left the last time. I was not even slightly surprised when it did fall apart. I was relieved. As much as Andy is a great musician he is not an easy person to play with.”

I mention to Taylor that Andy has just announced his own UK dates in May, playing Duran songs. “Uh-ha,” he says. He didn’t know. Does he mind? “I don’t mind at all. All power to him,” says Taylor. “I would rather he be out playing.”

Taylor has the sanguine air of someone who has spent decades nuking his demons (he’s currently working on guilt; he had a Catholic mother). He has been sober for 26 years after an addiction which in part led to the break-up of his marriage to the TV presenter Amanda de Cadenet in 1997. Was it hard at first? “It was like turning round an ocean liner,” he says, his voice posh Brum with a California chaser. “I work a daily programme and that’s what keeps me sober. It’s not something that just happens; it takes a lot of attention.”

We move on to the themes of the new, as yet untitled, album. Le Bon lost his mother recently, so we can expect songs inspired by loss. Taylor says he took inspiration from “the challenges of long-term relationships . . . Take a song like Save a Prayer, which personally I think is one of the greatest ever songs in praise of the one-night stand,” he says. “It comes to the point where you can’t write something like that. It’s not age-appropriate; yet it is sexy. So how do you write from the perspective of someone who is trying to keep a long-term relationship together? That is the challenge of any late-age pop star. How do you make it chic, to use one of Nick’s favourite words.”

It is hard to forget how impossibly chic Duran were in the 1980s: from their beginnings in Birmingham (Nick and John, anyway), where they met when Rhodes was 10 and Taylor 12, to a world of famous friends, beautiful partners and exotic travel. Le Bon married Yasmin after seeing her in Vogue, Rhodes was with the shipping heiress Friedman and Taylor the teenage de Cadenet. Andy Warhol was a close friend of Rhodes.

While others were singing about the dark side of Thatcher’s Britain, they were . . . more opaque. “In the 1980s a lot of what we did was somewhat misunderstood because we were living in the same gloomy years with high unemployment and miners’ strikes and civil unrest as everybody else,” Rhodes says. “But our answer to it was we have to get away from this and make it a little brighter because it didn’t seem like a particularly promising future.” Don’t expect that coronavirus torch song any time soon.

Their association with Bond — they wrote the 1985 theme A View to a Kill — only added to the glamour. What do they make of the new one by Billie Eilish? Rhodes admits that he mostly listens to classical music these days but “was thrilled to hear Billie Eilish. I think it’s by far the best Bond song since ours.”

But not better than yours?

“I am very happy that she reached No 1.” Duran’s got to No 2.

Taylor is more critical. “I thought it was lacking in a bit of Billie Eilish to be honest. It could have been madder. It was a little bit too grown up,” he says.

Is it as good as A View to a Kill?

“No!” says Taylor, theatrically. “Although,” he admits, “it was the most difficult three mins that we have ever produced.”

It had a great video, in which the boys slunk around the Eiffel Tower. Taylor frowns. “I hate that video. So stupid. I can’t watch it.” One for the fans, then.

A secret of their longevity, Rhodes says, is not bowing to nostalgia. “I like to keep my blinkers on and look forward.” Having said that, he sounds ready to write his own memoir. “I would do a book yes,” he says. “I haven’t read John’s on purpose. I even wrote a foreword for it for the US version without reading it, but I did own up to it. I think mine would be very different from a lot of the rock biographies. The one that sticks with me is David Niven’s.”

Rhodes featured in Warhol’s diaries and Warhol, the subject of a show at Tate Modern in London that opened this week, would surely feature in his. He “invented the 20th century”, Rhodes says. “Andy was making reality TV in the Sixties. Can you imagine what he would have thought about the internet? It was all his dreams come true, but he would never have got any work done.” Rhodes says he stays off social media for that reason. “It’s not that I don’t like it; I fear it. I am going down a rabbit hole I may never get out of.

They’ve spent twice the time being famous as being unknown. Are they the same people they were in Birmingham 40 years ago?

Rhodes nods. “Yes, yes,” he says. “There have been big changes — marriages, divorces, kids, moving countries in John’s case — but when we are all together we have known each other for so long there is no room for anyone to behave in a way that would be unacceptable. There is no room for divas. We have lasted longer than most marriages; it is like being married to three people but we each get to go home on our own every night.”

Taylor tells me: “Without getting into recovery talk, a lot of that is about scrubbing away the masks that you tend to accrue to cope, so I think I am as close to that person as I was 40 years ago.”

Rhodes says tolerance is the key. “Sometimes when I arrive at the studio it is really bright, maybe someone is writing, and so everyone accepts I can’t cope, and so the lighting comes down.” I tell him I once read he always wears dark glasses before noon. He laughs. “Pretty much. That’s funny. I am hyper-sensitive to light. It’s not just pretentiousness. “

They appreciate they will have to prepare physically for the dates. For Rhodes, a terrible insomniac, that means “fruit and vegetables and grains” and lots of walking. But no workouts (“I am not a big fan of gymnasiums”). Taylor says he needs to start practising bass and the need to get back in shape is “keeping him awake at night”. “I like to run, I do Pilates, I do yoga and I think about everything that enters my mouth, everything. I am 90 per cent vegan. I don’t drink, take mind-altering chemicals. I am on and off sugar.”

Perhaps the greatest sign that they still have it is that their children want to see them play. Taylor just heard from his daughter, Atlanta, who lives in New York and is soon to be married to David Macklovitch from the Canadian band Chromeo.

“It’s a surprise when you get a text from a child and they say, ‘You’re playing Hyde Park — my boyfriend and I want to come.’”

#duran duran #DD40

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toyahinterviews · 3 years

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TOYAH TALKS SHEP FARMING IN BARNET WITH PHIL MARRIOTT 13.11.2020

PHIL: I'm so thrilled to be with Toyah Willcox on zoom! How are you? TOYAH: Woooo! I'm OK. It's really good to see you. I haven't seen many people in the last seven months so it's so good to see you! PHIL: I was just going to say – likewise. The last time I saw you was at Wise Buddha, a studio just off Oxford Street in Central London and we could see each other face to face TOYAH: That was about 18 months ago PHIL: I know! How have you been? TOYAH: I'm really good. Well, I'm really confused because I live in a market town, on a square, one High Street and I'm bang in the middle of all of this. I have a chemist next door, we did have a bank next door but we bought it and that's now our offices. So I'm looking outside my window and there is all normality. There's no sign of any kind of lockdown and I'm wondering if I'm being lied to because I've got people on park benches, drinking coffee, talking to everyone, eating and I'm thinking “I thought this was a lockdown!” I'm so confused! PHIL: It's crazy, isn't it? I went past a bar yesterday and they were walking in and out and my partner said "hang on a minute! It's meant to be lockdown!" I think it was take-away, it just felt like normality, it just felt normal. It's weird TOYAH: This feels normal. None of that terror of last April. Everyone's just having a lovely time out there and I'm thinking someone's played a joke on me because I've been indoors for so long PHIL: We do need it though, don't we … By the way I've been loving your lockdown shows every Saturday. It's been a real ritual. I've been pottering around and then I've been switching onto your Toyah At Home show on Saturday morning TOYAH: Oh, thank you PHIL: It's been fantastic, really enjoyed those. And they've been really honest as well because you've been talking about your life and feeling nostalgic and talking about what's happening at the moment and we don't normally get to see that – you walking around your house, showing things in your house, your books. It's been brilliant

TOYAH: I'm going to keep it up because normally on my working year I'm running an office. I run the band, I run the record side of things, I run the gigs – booking them and I never get time for any of that so it's been fantastic for me and for my husband Robert. We've been kind of been able to address what fans need

That might sound silly because fans just need to see you live and (to) do your music – well, lockdown has proven much more than that. I'm going to try and keep it going and try and prioritise the connection we've made with the fans and stop prioritising the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy we both have to deal with. So it's been great on that level it's been a fantastic year! PHIL: It's been really good for the fans as well like you say because they really appreciate it because they're feeling a bit lonely and isolated and it's good to have that company as well, isn't it? TOYAH: It's been shocking. We do a lot of celebrity messaging. We were a bit doubtful about it at first. We thought "oh gosh is this a step too far?" It's been a absolute joy and occasionally you get the odd message from someone saying "I'm so desperate, I'm so alone, can you just say something to help shake this blackness off me" We've really really loved every minute of doing these messages and also realising that our broadcasts have a deeper meaning than just us going "look at us". It's all become so much deeper and that is beautiful. It's affected my writing. The new album Posh Pop is really deep, it's really passionate and it really rocks and that could only have happened because of this exceptional year PHIL: We have to talk about Sheep Farming In Barnet. I can't believe it's 40 years TOYAH: Look what I've got! (Waves the box set about) PHIL: I know! I can't wait to see that TOYAH: This is an exclusive! PHIL: Amazing! TOYAH: It only arrived two days ago

PHIL: It's new images as well isn't it, like you've shown there, new photographs that we've not seen before. This is an album that was released in 1979 as an AP – an Alternative Play (above) and then it was released as an album in 1980 so you're obviously celebrating the 40th anniversary. What are you memories of this though because obviously a lot of stuff gets forgotten about. You've got a very good memory I have to say, watching your Toyah At Home videos. You seem to remember a lot of detail. Do you remember detail of that period? TOYAH: It's shockingly bad. My wonderful archive manager and he designed this, Craig Ashley, designed with Alan Sawyers – he writes a essay about each project. We're already onto Blue Meaning and then we're onto Anthem so we're 12 months ahead. We put this (Sheep) to bed three months ago. My memories were jogged by an essay that Craig had to send me. He knows more about my life than I do. He prompted my memory with this astonishing essay that's in here (shows the boxset) I thought "I did that?! I did that ?! Oh my God!" This is a long time ago this album but what I will say about it – I've always remembered that I think it's the one of the most relevant, one of the most original, ingenious albums of that period and it's never had that credit. Cherry Red (the record company) have really taken this on board and they are giving it the 100%. It's a beautiful album. There's a beautiful innocence but there's also so many pathways we opened for other people with this album. It's a fun album. It's a real danceable album. It's about youthful energy. It's beautiful and it's a side of punk that isn't that well known. It's great. I adore this album

PHIL: So this album was recorded – correct me if I'm wrong – Chappel Studios, New Bond Street wasn't it, in Central London - TOYAH: Yes! PHIL: Which is now the Mulberry store. There's something about quite poignant about that – it should always be that studio I guess but what are your memories of recording there? Do you have many memories of you actually recording it? TOYAH: Next door was Chanel and Hermes and I just pooh pooed them “Who wants to spend that on a handbag?” I don't want to spend half a million quid on a silk scarf. If only I knew, hindsight is a beautiful thing. The studio was upstairs, very very traditional. Almost old fashioned because the studio was a song writer's studio. There was quite a few studios in the corridor I was in. We were one of the first punk acts to go in. I found the whole recording process in this particular instance very difficult because we now know I sing without headphones on. I cannot do that (puts hands over ears) It just affects me emotionally. So this took about four albums to discover that. Steve James, our producer, realised that he was going to get the best performance out of me if he just put speakers in the room and I performed as live. That was a learning curve - it was a big learning curve. So the first songs we recorded - for me – were emotionally quite tough because I was just trying to learn how to work within this dead space. Recording studios – if you haven't been in one – have no sound reflection.

So we've got sound reflection here, I'm surrounded by mirrors, I can hear myself speak but in a studio it's a dead sound. It's really difficult to form notes in that kind of sound so … You asked me what was the experience like? It was a major learning curve of dealing with working within dead sound. Now, if I'm acting and I'm in a studio there's nothing more beautiful than dead sound because it makes you forget about the camera. So it was very very enlightening, it was energetic, we were an energetic team I think it was challenging for the whole band because Keith Hale was brought in as an arranger and that was frustrating for Pete Bush who is the main keyboard player on this album and he felt very threatened by that. But all this rather glorious usurp thing and power play is the result of this album. That and the fact that we honed every song in front of a live audience, which is such a privileged thing to so. We would do these incredible long encores that were as along as the actual show because the audience would never let us go We would run out of songs so we'd start to play them stuff we were formulating in soundcheck and this is how we came up with these glorious arrangements because we knew what affected the audience before we went into the recording studio. That is something that all young writers should have the privilege to do today because to watch an audience affected by a bridge or a chorus – you just know what you need to do as a songwriter. So much of today happens away from a live audience and this is all about live audience work. It was magnificent PHIL: The album title itself – it still raises eyebrows today, doesn't it? Sheep Farming In Barnet. It's one of those really distinctive album titles that really stand out -

TOYAH: I know! Well, I lived in Barnet and bang in the middle of this urban kind of chaos with the A406 was a field with sheep in it and I just thought "sheep farming in Barnet?" So I wanted to call the album something that didn't relate to an emotion and didn't relate to another song. I wanted something completely out there. This is me (show the album cover) having broken in to Fylingdales - the early warning system - where they had sheep grazing and when we broke in we found an awful lot of dead sheep and we were arrested ten minutes after that was taken Bill Smith the art director was with me as was Gem, my boyfriend at the time and we had to hide the film down my pants. We knew we would not be body searched. We were literally just marched off the premises so we got the film out. So that whole "sheep farming in Barnet" was just a big question mark of what is our reality? PHIL: Is that something you do today? Stuff the - TOYAH: Guerilla filming? PHIL: Just stuff the evidence? TOYAH: Everything? Yeah, everything goes down my pants. As I get older it it's one of my things I do with my personal dementia – everything goes down my pants (Phil laughs) PHIL: I remember NME did a review – I think it was a three star review, it should've been more obviously but for the NME that was pretty good. At the time they called you a "post punk Grace Slick" - TOYAH: I have no problems with being the punk Grace Slick. My goodness that woman was a great voice PHIL: It's a nice comparison. Now, the album was split into two parts – much like Kate Bush's Hounds Of Love which had the Ninth wave as the 2nd part - TOYAH: Yeah! This was 1979! (waves the box set about)

PHIL: I was going to say – you did that before her. Both brilliant albums obviously but this had Heaven and it had Hell and there is a lot of darkness in this album because there's a lot of vivid imagery when you listen to those lyrics. I suppose it's the horror and sci-fi fan in you, is it? TOYAH: It's very dark poetry. I mean Neon Womb is quite innocent. I was making a movie with Katherine Hepburn called The Corn Is Green. I had to get on the tube train. The first tube train of the morning in Battersea which was six in the morning and I had to walk over to Victoria to get the train. And I just remember being alone in this tube that was neon lit and I thought "this is like a neon womb."

So that's where that name came from. Indecision I wrote in my home in Birmingham, the lyrics came there and I was doing lots of TV promotion for the film Jubilee and I just couldn't make up my mind what to wear so Indecision came out of that. And then Waiting is very dark Waiting is about if we looked at the planet and it only had burn layers and every burn layer was a war and you'd cut through them you'd see a very different planet. We wouldn't see a green planet. So Waiting is about layer upon layer upon layer of wars that we've had in the past … Let's say – let's be brave about this – 50 000 years? It's an endless theme on this planet. So that's what that one is about. Danced is about a second coming because I was brought up in extreme religious education by parents who weren't religious So because I was a rebel and because I was really out there as a child and I've always been a bit like this - they thought to cleanse my soul I should go into extreme religious education which I had from the age of about 10 ten right through to 14. So that has affected the poetry of my life a lot and that's what Danced is about.

Danced is saying the 2nd coming is coming – this is fantasy – but it ain't going to be a human being! It's someone coming from up there so that's what Danced is about. I'm always questioning the metaphor of what I've been taught and there's so many metaphor's in this (shows the box set). But I think that's what the fans like is that I use the imagery of metaphors to question things

PHIL: And there are so many anthems on this as well, particularly for fans that have been with you from day one. You know, Danced. You mentioned Neon Womb as well. These are real live favourites. There's a couple of of tracks I've never seen you perform live, Computer being one of those. Is that something that you would think about playing? TOYAH: Yeah! In lockdown we had to do the DVD filming (for the disc in the box set). Nigel Clark of Dodgy, my neighbour, came round and we performed Computer. He performed it beautifully, he even did backing vocals and that's on the DVD version of this (shows the box set). It's gorgeous so we could put that in live now but there's so much material, my whole back catalogue, I have to capture in shows today, an hour and half shows I have to capture about 28 albums. And remember 14 of those songs are hit singles. So we chop and change and we try and fit everything in. Computer might come into the show but then we'll get people complaining we can't fit in Neon Womb, Danced and everything else PHIL: Too many songs to play TOYAH: There's just too many songs to play. You got Our Movie as well. I get a big call for Victims Of The Riddle but that is impossible to sing live. It's in an octave higher register than I normally sing in today and also it's one of those songs once you've done the first two lines everyone goes to the bar or starts talking. So we've decided if the fans demand a song and they don't listen to it – we don't do it!

PHIL: I want to talk about the digipak that you have in your hands of this album because it's a real treat isn't it, for fans because there's a lot of versions they've never heard before. We mentioned Computer just then. That sounds quite different in its demo form. Are you quite happy to release these demos because obviously these have never been released before. It's so great to hear these now after so long TOYAH: This is the first album released where Joel Bogen (the original Toyah band guitarist and composer) and myself have actually been corresponded with about having permission of them going on the album. So one of my top selling albums in the world now is an album called Mayhem which is demos that Joel and I never wanted to be heard and ironically that is the world top selling Toyah album

So this time around now Cherry Red own the whole back catalogue they have agreed that will never happen again so we're even re-vamping Mayhem for its re-release. So there are 30 additional tracks, most of them unheard going onto this. It's a double LP and a live DVD and there's even DVD footage that's never been seen before PHIL: It's a real Christmas present, isn't it? TOYAH: It's perfect! PHIL: Yeah! TOYAH: When we do demos they're pre-producer arrangements so obviously when you get into the studio and having heard the demo and hopefully played the song live in front of an audience you can then re-work it. So doing a demo is like trying out a recipe for a cake and if you feel that you can improve – then you improve and most of the time that's what people do do PHIL: So Victims Of The Riddle is your debut single which is featured on this album. There was another version on the single B-side which was called Vivisection. To me that seems like a kind of outspoken view of your hate for animal experiments. Was that the case? Was it that obvious? TOYAH: Yeah PHIL: It was?

Above: Toyah with her rabbit WillyFred in 2016

TOYAH: Yeah. I like to think it's not so awful today and I think a lot of people, a lot of human beings stepped forwards and said "you can test that on us." So stop breeding animals to test on. So I put my hand up here – I'm against vivisection but I've had hip replacement, I've had life saving surgery for cancer. Animals have paid so that I can live. So it's not as if I've even avoided every aspect of the results of vivisection.

Where my argument is and if the make-up industry - which has something like a £6 billion fund for testing - keeps testing on animals they're never going to change the world and protect and do good husbandry to animals. Now at the time we were making this … '79 … this was … I mean it was rampant. Animals were just being treated so badly I was a very experimental singer in the beginning, I use my voiced as an instrument thus the stylisation on Vivisection. And I wanted to use this as a wake up call to those who didn't know about the cruelty to animals but also the amount of people who were willing to be human test people.

And it was just – if you don't bring that into your audience's intelligence then no-one could do anything about it and I think the greatest revolution we have had in the 40 years is we've stopped buying things unless they adhere to an ethic we believe in.

So good husbandry, non-cruelty to animals, respect for animals, understanding that animals do have souls, they do have an emotional life, they feel pain as much as they feel joy and this was what that was about PHIL: I'm glad you answered that question that way because I certainly saw it as very influential at the time – like you say it was a different time back then, in the 70's and the late 70's. There was a lot more of that nastiness going on and as a result more people have become vegetarian and vegan as well over the years, particularly the last five years people have become vegan which is great. So it's a good shift, isn't it?

TOYAH: It's very good. I think in a year's time when we have a vaccine for Covid and there has been human guinea pigs involved here ... I think one of the biggest outcomes of Covid and Covid history we probably, worldwide, will become vegetarian. What I mean by that is the easiness within Covid is mutating within the animal circuit and if we keep consuming animal flesh we are probably going to help Covid mutate even more. I'd like to think that one of the kind of strange blessings of this exceptional year is that the majority of the planet will become vegetarian PHIL: Siouxsie and The Banshees did the Kaleidoscope album a few years ago which I saw at South Bank, I know you're a fan as well, of Siouxsie - TOYAH: Yes! PHIL: Is that something that you (want to) do with Sheep Farming? Do it as a whole? TOYAH: (I'll) do it with any album but people want Siouxsie. I've had to - this is my career “Let me in! Let me in! (bangs the air with her fist) “Give me a fucking job!” Siouxsie, you know, gets invited because people absolutely adore her. I'm not on Siouxsie's level but I think what will change for me because in the last 40 years my catalogue has been with a record label that has actively allowed it to die and now Cherry Red- as soon as they announce these releases – I mean this went number one in the pre-order charts across the board and Cherry Red have released the demand is huge But if you don't have the record company behind you and the PR behind you and the team behind you … I don't get invited to play whole albums at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. So I now think this is going to change quite radically and hopefully my work will get the respect it deserves. But it has to be out there for that to happen and in the last 40 years it's just been buried

PHIL: Last Goodbye, another track on this album, last time we spoke we talked about your love of horror TOYAH: Yeah PHIL: And you told me watch The House That Jack Built, which I saw after your recommendation and yeah – it disturbed me very much (laughs) TOYAH: That's an astonishing film. There's another one I'll recommend to you and it's very gentle. It's a love story but it also it also tiptoes into the surreal and horror and it's called Border. I just adore this film - PHIL: I've seen it, it's amazing. It really gets under your skin, doesn't it? TOYAH: It's gorgeous. That is like reading a really good book. It translates beautifully PHIL: Absolutely, a very atmospheric film. But Last Goodbye on Sheep Farming – it's quite an evocative lyric. Again quite a dark lyric. There is lightness as well, obviously, on Sheep Farming but I'm just going to read the lyric here : “He points the knife between her eyes. Its light reflects on the one he despises. Here's one for the pain, here's one for the lies. When flood flows out I watch her say goodbye” That is quite - TOYAH: It's a revenge song but I mean this is about the vulnerability of men and men are vulnerable and this is the ultimate revenge. He can take on someone who is more powerful than him and it's a woman. So I always like to kind of invert what people see as normal. I think woman are just as easily aggressive as men are and devious and plotting so it's revenge on someone who has psychologically destroyed someone else.

And I think historically – I need to place it in context – 40 years ago and even 50 years ago you never heard about women's prisons, you never heard about female criminals. It was always men. There were only three that we heard about when I was young that were serial killers. I'm not going to name them, let's not give them the publicity but what you didn't hear was about was petty female criminals, female prisons and female aggression. It was never reported 50-40 years ago as it is today. You know you've got Piers Morgan doing “Female Serial Killers” today so here we were in the punk movement, '79, and it was such an opportunity to be one of the first women in this movement that I could invert everything I'd been taught And one of them is about women being psychologically cruel which kind of covers a lot of the early work. So I was just inverting stories and turning them into myth really. And another thing that was emerging at this time … computers were being programmed at this time on a mass level. So a lot of people we worked with, our roadies would disappear at night to go and do binary programming into computers and this was going on 24/7 to get computers how they are today. So there was this kind of secret technology going on that fascinated us but we didn't understand I mean if we ever knew we would have a phone in our hand (shows her mobile) or we'd be able to talk like this (on Zoom) … that was science fiction. And another thing that science fiction back then … was … oh, it's going out of my head … ah yes! Was how games were developed. So Dungeons and Dragons was very much a fantasy game then and it was the only fantasy game as was – Lord Of The Rings was a book, you never realised it would be made into a really brilliant digitally composed film. So fantasy for me was very very important. It was escapism from a normality that could be not only boring but could also be dangerous so all of that reflects in my work as well

PHIL: I could sit and talk to you Toyah for hours. I know you've got other interviews to do because you've got so much to do in the coming weeks before this re-release, this re-vamp of Sheep Farming In Barnet. It's out on the 4th of December but I have got one last question which I invited people to send in and this is a question from Darren Anthony and he's asked which 3 things, if there are 3 things, would you change about your debut album if you could? TOYAH: Ohhh! Do you know, Darren, this is such a good question and the only thing I would change – because there's a beautiful innocence about this album – I would change nothing about the music. I would've changed immediately the technique I use for singing because I've only in the last ten years really gleaned my 100% technique. And I would … just … how can I put this? If you're a singer you understand “opening the throat”. I would open the throat more, I would've had more confidence as a singer Instead I'd get into the studio and lack of confidence would make me go (pulls shoulders in and head behind hands) I would just close up like that and the voice became quite small. So that's one thing I would change but I can only answer that in hindsight. Elusive Stranger is an incredibly popular song and I would've just not sung the intro in that octave. I would bring that down an octave which would make it far easier to sing live today.

And I can't find a third thing I would've changed. Perhaps the one thing I would've changed about the whole of the beginning of my career – I was very against my natural femininity where women who are hugely successful not only exhibit their femininity but they control their femininity and I saw my femininity as a barrier that I needed to either kind of break down or walk away from. So I probably would exploit it - in the right way, in the Madonna way – my femininity PHIL: I should say it's also out on white vinyl which I've ordered and I can't wait to see that either! TOYAH: Wahey! PHIL: To represent the golf balls on the sleeve TOYAH: Oh, I know! It's a clever design. It's clever. Phil - thank you so much and I hope see you sooner than the 18 months - PHIL: Yes, me too. Good luck and stay safe. Thank you, Toyah TOYAH: Good luck everybody!

You can watch the interview HERE

#toyah #toyah willcox #toyahwillcox #the toyah willcox interview archive #thetoyahwillcoxinterviewarchive #toyah interview #toyahinterview #toyah2020 #toyah 2020

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noramoya · 4 years

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LENNY KRAVITZ ALMOST WAS THE “SOMEBODY IS WATCHING ME”’s SINGER ...

IN WHICH A PRE-FAME KRAVITZ PALS WITH ROCKWELL, IN LOS ANGELES, NEARLY SINGS THE 1984 PARANOID-ROCK HIT !

As detailed in his new memoir Let Love Rule, Lenny Kravitz made some notable friends attending Beverly Hills High School in the early 1980s. One of his first friends was Kennedy Gordy — Berry’s son — who would invite Kravitz to his Bel Air mansion to hang out and listen to music. “On any given day at the Gordys, Diana Ross would be lounging by the pool,” Kravitz writes in the recently released book. “Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye would be playing cards in the den. The house was heaven!” Kravitz and the younger Gordy would frequently escape to a room with a stage, piano and microphone, quasi-forming a band and talking about the future.

One day, around 1982, Gordy “called to say he’d written a surefire hit that was perfect for my style. I had to hear it right away,” Kravitz writes. At one point, the two were inseparable, with Gordy joining Kravitz at the New Edition show where the latter would first meet future wife Lisa Bonet.

“He came over to my mom’s house with the first LinnDrum drum machine which was really big and heavy and he had some sort of Roland keyboard,” Kravitz tells Rolling Stone as part of his Special Edition interview. “He’s like, ‘I got this tune for you and I think that you’re really gonna dig this. And he sings me the song [begins to sing first verse] and he gets to the hook [sings hook] and I’m like, “Wow, that’s good.”

A teenaged Kravitz mulled taking Gordy up on the offer and recording the song. “Berry was a star maker. Berry could sign anyone he wanted. Motown was the big leagues. Was I stupid to turn this down?,” he writes. “As time went on, more opportunities would come my way, and I’d continue to turn down songs that had success written all over them. It wasn’t arrogance that made me pass over those opportunities. I wasn’t ego-tripping. If anything, it was the opposite. I never forgot one of my mother’s favorite admonitions: self-praise is no recommendation. No, it was simply that the opportunities presented to me up until that point hadn’t allowed me to be my true self. I always knew that if I couldn’t express my musical soul, I wouldn’t be worth a damn.”

Gordy took the song for himself, enlisted friends Michael and Jermaine Jackson, and, under the name Rockwell, turned it into an international and enduring smash hit that remains the perennial paranoia-rock anthem. “I asked God to give me it,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “The prayer was, ‘God grant me the creativity to write a song that’ll go to the top of the charts and tickle the taste buds of the music connoisseur.’ Everything came to me so easily after that prayer.”

The song would go on to spend 19 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and peak at Number Two behind Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.” It would eventually go gold, selling more than 500,000 copies three months after its release.

“I was like, ‘It’s really good, but it’s you. You should do this, man,'” Kravitz tells Rolling Stone. “At that time, he wasn’t thinking about himself as being an artist. Maybe he was thinking more about being a producer and a writer. But he offered me this song and next thing you know, the months go by and I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ I hear this song on the radio and the rest is history.”

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theothersideofthecinema · 4 years

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The Captive Lover – An Interview with Jacques Rivette, Frédéric Bonnaud

(September 2001)

Translation by Kent Jones

This interview was originally published in Les Inrockuptibles (25 March 1998) and has been republished here with the kind permission of the author.

* * *

I guess I like a lot of directors. Or at least I try to. I try to stay attentive to all the greats and also the less-than-greats. Which I do, more or less. I see a lot of movies, and I don’t stay away from anything. Jean-Luc sees a lot too, but he doesn’t always stay till the end. For me, the film has to be incredibly bad to make me want to pack up and leave. And the fact that I see so many films really seems to amaze certain people. Many filmmakers pretend that they never see anything, which has always seemed odd to me. Everyone accepts the fact that novelists read novels, that painters go to exhibitions and inevitably draw on the work of the great artists who came before them, that musicians listen to old music in addition to new music… so why do people think it’s strange that filmmakers – or people who have the ambition to become filmmakers – should see movies? When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. Their films would probably be better if they’d seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much. Actually, it’s when you see too little that you run the risk of being influenced. If you see a lot, you can choose the films you want to be influenced by. Sometimes the choice isn’t conscious, but there are some things in life that are far more powerful than we are, and that affect us profoundly. If I’m influenced by Hitchcock, Rossellini or Renoir without realizing it, so much the better. If I do something sub-Hitchcock, I’m already very happy. Cocteau used to say: “Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself.” You can always try.

Europa 51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)

Every time I make a film, from Paris nous appartient (1961) through Jeanne la pucelle (1994), I keep coming back to the shock we all experienced when we first saw Europa 51. And I think that Sandrine Bonnaire is really in the tradition of Ingrid Bergman as an actress. She can go very deep into Hitchcock territory, and she can go just as deep into Rossellini territory, as she already has with Pialat and Varda.

Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

I’ve never had any affinity for the overhyped mythology of the bad boy, which I think is basically phony. But just by chance, I saw a little of L’Armée des ombres (1969) on TV recently, and I was stunned. Now I have to see all of Melville all over again: he’s definitely someone I underrated. What we have in common is that we both love the same period of American cinema – but not in the same way. I hung out with him a little in the late ’50s; he and I drove around Paris in his car one night. And he delivered a two-hour long monologue, which was fascinating. He really wanted to have disciples and become our “Godfather”: a misunderstanding that never amounted to anything.

The Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang, 1948)

The poster for Secret Défense (1997) reminded us of Lang. Every once in a while during the shoot, I told myself that our film had a slim chance of resembling Lang. But I never set up a shot thinking of him or looking to imitate him. During the editing (which is when I really start to see the film), I saw that it was Hitchcock who had guided us through the writing (which I already knew) and Lang who guided us through the shooting: especially his last films, the ones where he leads the spectator in one direction before he pushes them in another completely different direction, in a very brutal, abrupt way. And then this Langian side of the film (if in fact there is one) is also due to Sandrine’s gravity.

The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)

The most seductive one-shot in the history of movies. What can you say? It’s the greatest amateur film ever made.

Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946)

I knew his name would come up sooner or later. So, I’m going to speak my peace at the risk of shocking a lot of people I respect, and maybe even pissing a lot of them off for good. His great films, like All About Eve (1950) or The Barefoot Contessa (1954), were very striking within the parameters of contemporary American cinema at the time they were made, but now I have no desire whatsoever to see them again. I was astonished when Juliet Berto and I saw All About Eve again 25 years ago at the Cinémathèque. I wanted her to see it for a project we were going to do together before Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974). Except for Marilyn Monroe, she hated every minute of it, and I had to admit that she was right: every intention was underlined in red, and it struck me as a film without a director! Mankiewicz was a great producer, a good scenarist and a masterful writer of dialogue, but for me he was never a director. His films are cut together any which way, the actors are always pushed towards caricature and they resist with only varying degrees of success. Here’s a good definition of mise en scène – it’s what’s lacking in the films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Whereas Preminger is a pure director. In his work, everything but the direction often disappears. It’s a shame that Dragonwyck wasn’t directed by Jacques Tourneur.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

It’s Chandler’s greatest novel, his strongest. I find the first version of the film – the one that’s about to be shown here – more coherent and “Hawksian” than the version that was fiddled with and came out in ’46. If you want to call Secret Défense a policier, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just that it’s a policier without any cops. I’m incapable of filming French cops, since I find them 100% un-photogenic. The only one who’s found a solution to this problem is Tavernier, in L.627 (1992) and the last quarter of L’Appât (1995). In those films, French cops actually exist, they have a reality distinct from the Duvivier/Clouzot “tradition” or all the American clichés. In that sense, Tavernier has really advanced beyond the rest of French cinema.

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Of course we thought about it when we made Secret Défense, even if dramatically, our film is Vertigo in reverse. Splitting the character of Laure Marsac into Véronique/Ludivine solved all our scenario problems, and above all it allowed us to avoid a police interrogation scene. During the editing, I was struck by the “family resemblance” between the character of Walser and the ones played by Laurence Olivier in Rebecca (1940) and Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941). The source for each of these characters is Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, which brings us back to Tourneur, since I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is a remake of Jane Eyre.

I could never choose one film by Hitchcock; I’d have to take the whole oeuvre (Secret Défense could actually have been called Family Plot [1976]). But if I had to choose just one film, it would be Notorious (1946), because of Ingrid Bergman. You can see this imaginary love affair between Bergman and Hitchcock, with Cary Grant there to put things in relief. The final sequence might be the most perfect in film history, in the way that it resolves everything in three minutes – the love story, the family story and the espionage story, in a few magnificent, unforgettable shots.

Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1966)

When Sandrine and I first started talking – and, as usual, I didn’t know a thing about the film I wanted to make – Bernanos and Dostoyevsky came up. Dostoyevsky was a dead end because he was too Russian. But since there’s something very Bernanos-like about her as an actress in the first place, I started telling her my more or less precise memories of two of his novels: A Crime, which is completely unfilmable, and A Bad Dream, a novel that he kept tucked away in his drawer, in which someone commits a crime for someone else. In A Bad Dream, the journey of the murderess was described in even greater length and detail than Sandrine’s journey in Secret Défense.

It’s because of Bernanos that Mouchette is the Bresson film I like the least. Diary of a Country Priest (1950), on the other hand, is magnificent, even if Bresson left out the book’s sense of generosity and charity and made a film about pride and solitude. But in Mouchette, which is Bernanos’ most perfect book, Bresson keeps betraying him: everything is so relentlessly paltry, studied. Which doesn’t mean that Bresson isn’t an immense artist. I would place Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) right up there with Dreyer’s film. It burns just as brightly.

Under the Sun of Satan (Maurice Pialat, 1987)

Pialat is a great filmmaker – imperfect, but then who isn’t? I don’t mean it as a reproach. And he had the genius to invent Sandrine – archeologically speaking – for A nos amours (1983). But I would put Van Gogh (1991) and The House in the Woods (1971) above all his other films. Because there he succeeded in filming the happiness, no doubt imaginary, of the pre-WWI world. Although the tone is very different, it’s as beautiful as Renoir.

But I really believe that Bernanos is unfilmable. Diary of a Country Priest remains an exception. In Under the Sun of Satan, I like everything concerning Mouchette [Sandrine Bonnaire’s character], and Pialat acquits himself honorably. But it was insane to adapt the book in the first place since the core of the narrative, the encounter with Satan, happens at night – black night, absolute night. Only Duras could have filmed that.

Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1959)

I’m going to make more enemies…actually the same enemies, since the people who like Minnelli usually like Mankiewicz, too. Minnelli is regarded as a great director thanks to the slackening of the “politique des auteurs.” For François, Jean-Luc and me, the politique consisted of saying that there were only a few filmmakers who merited consideration as auteurs, in the same sense as Balzac or Molière. One play by Molière might be less good than another, but it is vital and exciting in relation to the entire oeuvre. This is true of Renoir, Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Dreyer, Mizoguchi, Sirk, Ozu… But it’s not true of all filmmakers. Is it true of Minnelli, Walsh or Cukor? I don’t think so. They shot the scripts that the studio assigned them to, with varying levels of interest. Now, in the case of Preminger, where the direction is everything, the politique works. As for Walsh, whenever he was intensely interested in the story or the actors, he became an auteur – and in many other cases, he didn’t. In Minnelli’s case, he was meticulous with the sets, the spaces, the light…but how much did he work with the actors? I loved Some Came Running (1958) when it came out, just like everybody else, but when I saw it again ten years ago I was taken aback: three great actors and they’re working in a void, with no one watching them or listening to them from behind the camera.

Whereas with Sirk, everything is always filmed. No matter what the script, he’s always a real director. In Written On the Wind (1956), there’s that famous Universal staircase, and it’s a real character, just like the one in Secret Défense. I chose the house where we filmed because of the staircase. I think that’s where all dramatic loose ends come together, and also where they must resolve themselves.

That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977)

More than those of any other filmmaker, Buñuel’s films gain the most on re-viewing. Not only do they not wear thin, they become increasingly mysterious, stronger and more precise. I remember being completely astonished by one Buñuel film: if he hadn’t already stolen it, I would have loved to be able to call my new film The Exterminating Angel! François and I saw El when it came out and we loved it. We were really struck by its Hitchcockian side, although Buñuel’s obsessions and Hitchcock’s obsessions were definitely not the same. But they both had the balls to make films out of the obsessions that they carried around with them every day of their lives. Which is also what Pasolini, Mizoguchi and Fassbinder did.

The Marquise of O… (Eric Rohmer, 1976)

It’s very beautiful. Although I prefer the Rohmer films where he goes deep into emotional destitution, where it becomes the crux of the mise en scène, as in Summer, The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediathèque and in a film that I’d rank even higher, Rendez-vous in Paris (1995). The second episode is even more beautiful than the first, and I consider the third to be a kind of summit of French cinema. It had an added personal meaning for me because I saw it in relation to La Belle noiseuse (1991) – it’s an entirely different way of showing painting, in this case the way a painter looks at canvases. If I had to choose a key Rohmer film that summarized everything in his oeuvre, it would be The Aviator’s Wife (1980). In that film, you get all the science and the eminently ethical perversity of the Moral Tales and the rest of the Comedies and Proverbs, only with moments of infinite grace. It’s a film of absolute grace.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)

I don’t own a television, which is why I couldn’t share Serge Daney’s passion for TV series. And I took a long time to appreciate Lynch. In fact, I didn’t really start until Blue Velvet (1986). With Isabella Rossellini’s apartment, Lynch succeeded in creating the creepiest set in the history of cinema. And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground. Only the first part of Lost Highway (1996) is as great. After which you get the idea, and by the last section I was one step ahead of the film, although it remained a powerful experience right up to the end.

Nouvelle Vague (Jean-Luc Godard, 1990)

Definitely Jean-Luc’s most beautiful film of the last 15 years, and that raises the bar pretty high, because the other films aren’t anything to scoff at. But I don’t want to talk about it…it would get too personal.

Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)

Along with Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), it was the key French film for our generation – François, Jean-Luc, Jacques Demy, myself. For me, it’s fundamental. I saw Beauty and the Beast in ’46 and then I read Cocteau’s shooting diary – a hair-raising shoot, which hit more snags than you can imagine. And eventually, I knew the diary by heart because I re-read it so many times. That’s how I discovered what I wanted to do with my life. Cocteau was responsible for my vocation as a filmmaker. I love all his films, even the less successful ones. He’s just so important, and he was really an auteur in every sense of the word.

Les Enfants terribles (Jean Cocteau, 1950)

A magnificent film. One night, right after I’d arrived in Paris, I was on my way home. And as I was going up rue Amsterdam around Place Clichy, I walked right into the filming of the snowball fight. I stepped onto the court of the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre and there was Cocteau directing the shoot. Melville wasn’t even there. Cocteau is someone who has made such a profound impression on me that there’s no doubt he’s influenced every one of my films. He’s a great poet, a great novelist, maybe not a great playwright – although I really love one of his plays, The Knights of the Round Table, which is not too well known. An astonishing piece, very autobiographical, about homosexuality and opium. Chéreau should stage it. You see Merlin as he puts Arthur’s castle under a bad charm, assisted by an invisible demon named Ginifer who appears in the guise of three different characters: it’s a metaphor for all forms of human dependence. In Secret Défense, the character of Laure Mersac probably has a little of Ginifer in her.

Cocteau is the one who, at the end of the ’40s, demonstrated in his writing exactly what you could do with faux raccords, that working in a 180-degree space could be great and that photographic unity was a joke: he gave these things a form and each of us took what he could from them.

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

I agree completely with what Jean-Luc said in this week’s Elle: it’s garbage. Cameron isn’t evil, he’s not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can’t direct his way out of a paper bag. On top of which the actress is awful, unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time. That’s why it’s been such a success with young girls, especially inhibited, slightly plump American girls who see the film over and over as if they were on a pilgrimage: they recognize themselves in her, and dream of falling into the arms of the gorgeous Leonardo.

Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997)

Wild Man Blues (1997) by Barbara Kopple helped me to overcome my problem with him, and to like him as a person. In Wild Man Blues, you really see that he’s completely honest, sincere and very open, like a 12-year old. He’s not always as ambitious as he could be, and he’s better on dishonesty than he is with feelings of warmth. But Deconstructing Harry is a breath of fresh air, a politically incorrect American film at long last. Whereas the last one was incredibly bad. He’s a good guy, and he’s definitely an auteur. Which is not to say that every film is an artistic success.

Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)

I like it very much. But I still think that the great Asian directors are Japanese, despite the critical inflation of Asia in general and of Chinese directors in particular. I think they’re able and clever, maybe a little too able and a little too clever. For example, Hou Hsiao-hsien really irritates me, even though I liked the first two of his films that appeared in Paris. I find his work completely manufactured and sort of disagreeable, but very politically correct. The last one [Goodbye South, Goodbye, 1996] is so systematic that it somehow becomes interesting again but even so, I think it’s kind of a trick. Hou Hsiao-hsien and James Cameron, same problem. Whereas with Wong Kar-wai, I’ve had my ups and downs, but I found Happy Together incredibly touching. In that film, he’s a great director, and he’s taking risks. Chungking Express (1994) was his biggest success, but that was a film made on a break during shooting [of Ashes of Time, 1994], and pretty minor. But it’s always like that. Take Jane Campion: The Piano (1993) is the least of her four films, whereas The Portrait of a Lady (1996) is magnificent, and everybody spat on it. Same with Kitano: Fireworks (1997) is the least good of the three of his films to get a French release. But those are the rules of the game. After all, Renoir had his biggest success with Grand Illusion (1937).

Face/Off (John Woo, 1997)

I loathe it. But I thought A Better Tomorrow (1986) was awful, too. It’s stupid, shoddy and unpleasant. I saw Broken Arrow (1996) and didn’t think it was so bad, but that was just a studio film, where he was fulfilling the terms of his contract. But I find Face/Off disgusting, physically revolting, and pornographic.

Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

His work is always very beautiful but the pleasure of discovery is now over. I wish that he would get out of his own universe for a while. I’d like to see something a little more surprising from him, which would really be welcome…God, what a meddler I am!

On Connaît la Chanson (Alain Resnais, 1997)

Resnais is one of the few indisputably great filmmakers, and sometimes that’s a burden for him. But this film is almost perfect, a full experience. Though for me, the great Resnais films remain, on the one hand, Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) and Muriel (1963), and on the other hand, Mélo (1986) and Smoking/No Smoking (1993).

Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

What a disgrace, just a complete piece of shit! I liked his first film, The Seventh Continent (1989), very much, and then each one after that I liked less and less. This one is vile, not in the same way as John Woo, but those two really deserve each other – they should get married. And I never want to meet their children! It’s worse than Kubrick with A Clockwork Orange (1971), a film that I hate just as much, not for cinematic reasons but for moral ones. I remember when it came out, Jacques Demy was so shocked that it made him cry. Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a Martian. He has no human feeling whatsoever. But it’s great when the machine films other machines, as in 2001 (1968).

Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997)

I think it’s magnificent, I think that Costa is genuinely great. It’s beautiful and strong. Even if I had a hard time understanding the characters’ relationships with one another. Like with Casa de lava (1994), new enigmas reveal themselves with each new viewing.

The End of Violence (Wim Wenders, 1997)

Very touching. Even if, about halfway through, it starts to go around in circles and ends up on a sour note. Wenders often has script problems. He needs to commit himself to working with real writers again. Alice in the Cities (1974) and Wrong Move (1975) are great films – so is Paris, Texas (1984). And I’m sure the next one will be, too.

Live Flesh (Pedro Almodóvar, 1997)

Great, one of the most beautiful Almodóvars, and I love all of them. He’s a much more mysterious filmmaker than people realize. He doesn’t cheat or con the audience. He also has his Cocteau side, in the way that he plays with the phantasmagorical and the real.

Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)

I didn’t expect it as I was walking into the theater, but I was enraptured throughout the whole thing. Sigourney Weaver is wonderful, and what she does here really places her in the great tradition of expressionist cinema. It’s a purely plastic film, with a story that’s both minimal and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, it managed to scare the entire audience, while it also had some very moving moments. Basically, you’re given a single situation at the beginning, and the film consists of as many plastic and emotional variations of that situation as possible. It’s never stupid, it’s inventive, honest and frank. I have a feeling that the credit should go to Sigourney Weaver as much as it should to Jeunet.

Rien ne va plus (Claude Chabrol, 1997)

Another film that starts off well before falling apart halfway through. There’s a big script problem: Cluzet’s character isn’t really dealt with. It’s important to remember Hitchcock’s adage about making the villain as interesting as possible. But I’m anxious to see the next Chabrol film, especially since Sandrine will be in it.

Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

I’ve seen it twice and I like it a lot, but I prefer Showgirls (1995), one of the great American films of the last few years. It’s Verhoeven’s best American film and his most personal. In Starship Troopers, he uses various effects to help everything go down smoothly, but he’s totally exposed in Showgirls. It’s the American film that’s closest to his Dutch work. It has great sincerity, and the script is very honest, guileless. It’s so obvious that it was written by Verhoeven himself rather than Mr. Eszterhas, who is nothing. And that actress is amazing! Like every Verhoeven film, it’s very unpleasant: it’s about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that’s his philosophy. Of all the recent American films that were set in Las Vegas, Showgirls was the only one that was real – take my word for it.I who have never set foot in the place!

Starship Troopers doesn’t mock the American military or the clichés of war – that’s just something Verhoeven says in interviews to appear politically correct. In fact, he loves clichés, and there’s a comic strip side to Verhoeven, very close to Lichtenstein. And his bugs are wonderful and very funny, so much better than Spielberg’s dinosaurs. I always defend Verhoeven, just as I’ve been defending Altman for the past twenty years. Altman failed with Prêt-à-Porter (1994) but at least he followed through with it, right up to an ending that capped the rock bottom nothingness that preceded it. He should have realized how uninteresting the fashion world was when he started to shoot, and he definitely should have understood it before he started shooting. He’s an uneven filmmaker but a passionate one. In the same way, I’ve defended Clint Eastwood since he started directing. I like all his films, even the jokey “family” films with that ridiculous monkey, the ones that everyone are trying to forget – they’re part of his oeuvre, too. In France, we forgive almost everything, but with Altman, who takes risks each time he makes a film, we forgive nothing. Whereas for Pollack, Frankenheimer, Schatzberg…risk doesn’t even exist for them. The films of Eastwood or Altman belong to them and no one else: you have to like them.

The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)

I didn’t hate it, but I was more taken with La Femme Nikita (1990) and The Professional (1994). I can’t wait to see his Joan of Arc. Since no version of Joan of Arc has ever made money, including ours, I’m waiting to see if he drains all the cash out of Gaumont that they made with The Fifth Element. Of course it will be a very naive and childish film, but why not? Joan of Arc could easily work as a childish film (at Vaucouleurs, she was only 16 years old), the Orléans murals done by numbers. Personally, I prefer small, “realistic” settings to overblown sets done by numbers, but to each his own. Joan of Arc belongs to everyone (except Jean-Marie Le Pen), which is why I got to make my own version after Dreyer’s and Bresson’s. Besides, Besson is only one letter short of Bresson! He’s got the look, but he doesn’t have the ‘r.’

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myhauntedsalem · 3 years

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Woodland Opera House

“The Opera House is said to be haunted, and the story is featured in a number of different books on the subject. The ghost is supposedly that of a fireman who was killed during the 1892 fire that destroyed the original building and much of downtown Woodland. A burning wall collapsed on him during the fire, and the area where he is believed to have died is apparently the ‘hot spot’ of the supernatural activity.”

A weekly Tuesday tour around the Woodland Opera House gives guests a glimpse of the building’s past and its rich history of live theater performances and musical acts.

The tour, however, doesn’t explain the spirits who supposedly still lurk around the edifice; one of a fallen hero and the other, a Polish theater star.

The opera house, which was originally built in 1885, was destroyed when the downtown Woodland fire of 1892 claimed the building as one of its many victims.

Before the building came down, a firefighter named William W. Porter had ventured inside to free a fire hose. Porter never saw the brick wall behind him crumble, and in the fiery blaze, fall down on top of him.

Porter was the only one ever known to have died in the opera house.

In 1896, the Hershey family rebuilt the structure and it remained open for 17 years; but when motion pictures began to steal business away, the family closed the place and there it sat empty, decaying in the heart of Woodland for the next 70 years.

In the early 1980s, the city of Woodland renovated the Woodland Opera House, transforming it into what it is today. It now hosts more than 100 performances each year, and people work or perform there almost on a daily basis.

As some have recently discovered, however, perhaps the opera house hosts a few other things as well.

Several individuals have claimed they have seen, heard or felt paranormal entities within the opera house. Those who believe the stories are sure that one of the apparitions is the ghost of firefighter William W. Porter, still lingering around the last place he ever stepped a foot into alive.

According to the opera house’s manager, Cathy Oliver, audience members have complained of smelling cigars, or some sort of burning odor, even though the building prohibits smoking.

Oliver recounts another spooky story that will forever stick with her.

“Several years ago there were some ladies downstairs in the dressing room late one night that were doing some sewing. Nobody else was in the opera house. One of the ladies got up and walked away to do something and when she came back the thread was out of her sewing machine, so she thought, ‘OK, that’s weird’ but she just rethreaded it.

“She got up again to do something, came back and it was unthreaded it again. Then she said ‘I know for sure that this was threaded when I got up. Now it’s time for me to leave.’ ”

Rumors have circled that the opera house’s second spirit is a woman named Helena Modjeska.

Apparently Modjeska, a Polish theater actress from the early 1900s, has haunted several opera houses across the country at venues where she had performed.

As part of a documentary of the “Strange Phenomenon” series in which the Woodland Opera House is featured, one individual recounts a story told to him by his friend.

Supposedly, a man had come to watch a performance and had seats on the third floor balcony. During the show, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman sit down next to him and put her hand on his leg.

When he turned to her, the woman had disappeared.

For those who believe the stories and would like a thrill, feel free to take in the opera house on its weekly tours on Tuesdays. They’re open from 1 to 3 p.m. A showing of the “Strange Phenomenon” documentary is tonight at 7 p.m. at the Woodland Opera House, 340 Second St., Woodland. The film investigates “three of Woodland’s most iconic and haunted locations: the Woodland Opera House, the Gibson Mansion and the State Theatre. With interviews detailing the histories of each building and evidence of the hauntings acquired over a three-year stretch, this is guaranteed to be a chilling and insightful night in one of the most famous haunted locations in California.”

Perhaps someone, or something, might change any non-believing minds.

#Woodland Opera House #haunted locations #paranormal #ghost and hauntings #ghost and spirits

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evilelitest2 · 4 years

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Do you know of any good resources on how and why Reagan won? He seemed to have a lot of resistance from the Republican old guard and all four of my grandparents absolutely despised him. But he somehow won with what sounded like was a very unpopular platform, and I don't understand exactly what happened.

I mean most electoral histories will have you covered, are you looking from a cultural perspective or an electoral perspective, or just a general overview of the 1980 election? Personally I recommend the book “Backlash” on the larger reactionary movement of the 80s which is in no way relevant today...

But in short there are many reasons why Reagan won, many of them depressing familiar today

1) Ronald Reagan was an actor and was a really charismatic speaker, specifically he was very good at seeming friendly, approachable and non condescending. It was extremely easy to understand Reagan’s message if you weren’t paying attention and he didn’t seem like some sort of elite who understood policies or knew where Cambodia was on a map, because he didn’t either. With the possible exceptions of JFK, and OBama, Reagan is likely the most charismatic president in the last century and that makes a big difference in the election

2) Jimmy Carter was a bit of a mess. I love Carter and I think he is one of the most moral people to ever be president (judging on a scale) but...his administration was extremely chaotic, inept, and really bad at messaging.

3) Reagan cheated. At his most famous debate with Carter, it turns out Reagan’s team had actaully managed to get Carter’s debate plans before hand, so Reagan knew exactly what Carter was going to say which is why Reagan seemed so invincible in the debate

4) The Economy. Due to a wide variety of reasons including but not limited too the fallout of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil crisis, the natural eb and flow of the market, and the failure of Kenysian economics meant that when the 1980 election was happening, America was in a pretty bad economic place. Unemployment was high, inflation was spiraling and for many white people it was the first time they had ever experienced an economic downturn

This wasn’t really Carter’s fault, just like the economic boom in the 80s wasn’t really Reagan’s fault (though the initial crash certainly was) but that is how it was perceived.

5) The Failure of Kenysian Economics. Now when I say “failure” i don’t actually mean “this is a bad system” Kenysan economics got us out of the Great Depression after all and lead to the largest economic boom in US history. However they aren’t the end all, especially when politicians running things don’t really understand what they are doing. So while they aren’t nearly as awful as the Free market economics that would follow, people were becoming disillusioned with the prior economic model

6) Vietnam. Oh dear god Vietnam. Reagan would be the first president who didn’t preside over Vietnam in any way, which meant he wasn’t tainted by the total fuck up that was that war. America was still reeling from losing our first major war to a small nation that nobody had heard off before they started to kick our ass, and the battle over Vietnam has basically torn the country apart. A huge amount of people felt pissed and humiliated over the defeat, and rather than question why we went to war or the morality of our tactics, blamed protesters and leftists for not supporting the war enough, a stabbed in the back myth if you will. Also Vietnam was a Democrat fuck up, Republicans weren’t in power when it started under JFK and LBG, who collectively created the horrific circumstances of the war. The republicans who oversaw it were the comparatively (to Reagan) more ‘moderates” of Nixon and Ford. So American both felt humiliated and weak from looking a major war to a people we saw as inferior and was blaming everything associated with the left for it. Reagan’s “Make America Great Again” message was extremely attractive to a lot of people, and since he didn’t have anything to do with the war, you couldn’t blame him for its failure.

7) The Soviet Union. The presence of the USSR hung over every US election since Woodrow Wilson, but after Vietnam a lot of Americans felt like the USSR was winning. This was ironically utterly untrue as the Soviet Union would collapse only 11 years later, but the perception in America was that the US had been defeated by COMMUNISM and needed to get our groove back for round II. And Reagan was by far the most aggressively confrontational anti Communist president we have had since FDR, so much so that he accidentally almost triggered a nuclear war and destroyed all of civilizations...whoops. But that is what American wanted back then

8) The rise of the religious right. For most of the 20th century, while religion was certainly a thing which effected politics, the US political landscape was largely secular, religion being evoked more than it made its own demands. But due to rise of the Counter Culture movement, religious folks sort of went into panic mode and suddenly conservative fundamentalist Christianity was one the rise. And Reagan embraced them 100%, leading to the fundementalist cancer that lives with us to this day

9) The death of the Counterculture. At the exact same time as the Religious Right came into power, the group it was opposing had largely collapsed. I mentioned this before when talking about the civil Rights movement, but once overt legal segregation had been outlawed, what was left were the far more serious, complicated and unclear problems, which lead to a lot of hippies burning out, falling into infighting, declaring victory and going home, or turning to more radical and largely ineffectual approaches. And since so much of the counter culture was linked to to its fashion and aethetic, as the Hippie style/music/clothing/demeanor became lame and uncool, the causes behind them were seen as uncool as well. Also the most dedicated leftists quickly turned to auto cannibalism and spent more time fighting each other rather than focusing on their enemy a dynamic which the left can always be counted on (cough what happened to Counterpoints cough)

10) The larger cultural backlash. America as a whole was feeling threaten by the left, and by extention the progressive made for women, racial minorities, and sexual minorities, and was pushing back against them. The 60s and 70s was a moment of sudden shocking change which took the old guard by surprise and they didn’t know what to do, but once the left had burned themselves out a bit, the Right was able to reorganize, refocus their efforts, and remake their arguments to reassert the oppressive systems they so valued. And for a lot of Americans who were passively bigoted, the incredibly fast pace of change got them scared and they sought comfort in the return of the familiar. Again Reagan wasn’t just an actor, he was a cowboy actor from shitty kitch family films. And as we’ve seen before in terms of Whitelash or Male Fragility, fear of losing privilege can get people to vote against their own interest (cough union workers cough)

11) America was facing a big choice. After WWII, we were basically the only major nation with a good economy, which we were able to turn into a great economy, and had an over 20 year post war high. But other nations started to compete with us (most notably Japan) and our status as the singular nation started to be threatened by the EU, India, China, Latin America, and our own changing history. For the first time, Americans started to realize that maybe, not right away, but eventually, we would just be one nation among many again, rather than the only superpower. Simultaneous, the threat of Climate change first started to be noticed, and Americans started to realize that maybe we should tone down the materialism, the consumerism, and the reliance on fossile fuels. Carter infamously wore sweaters in the white house to save on gas and put solar panels on the roof, which was seen by many Americans (idiots) as weakness.

Basically we had a choice, we could either

A) Prepare our nation for the transformation period we were going for, and slowly start to move off oil as our economy changed and we had to make adjustments for it

B) FUCK THAT. THIS IS AMERICA AND WE DON”T COMPROMISE FOR ANYTHING. YOU KNOW WHAT...LETS BE EVEN MORE RECKLESS

Americans were asked to choose between accepting an uncomfortable reality or embracing a comforting delusion.

12) The Iran Hostage crisis. This made Carter look weak internationally and everybody knows that America looking weak is worth destroying our own internal economy.

13) The Democrats were in the middle of a civil war. The Civil Rights movement and the Great Society had torn the democrats apart which means Carter was never really able to get his own party to obey him like the Republicans did. WHats worse is that the aftereffect of the Vietnam War had basically crippled LBJ’s Great Society Program, meaning the Democrats were really chaotic

14) Finally, it is important to remember, the Democrats had held power from 1932 all the way to 1980s, the US was kind of a single party state for most of the century, and a lot of people were pretty sick of them. Corruption, incompetence and hypocrisy are around in every party and the democratic congress in particular was widely hated, so the Republicans felt like this new exciting thing, something which could maybe bring a new era in America. “Its morning in America”

And of course, Reagan was in many ways what white America wants, a giant self congratulatory message that lets us avoid dealing with real issues....

#Ask EvilElitest2 #Ronald Reagan #American Politics #1980 Election #Jimmy Carter #Vietnam War #Counter Culture #HIppies #Backlash #Republicans #Democrats #The Great Society #OPEC #enviromentalism

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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629

What color is your bedspread? Blue and yellow. Pick up the nearest book to you, turn to page 25 and read the first sentence. I’m on the rooftop and there isn’t a book anywhere near me at the moment. How many candles are in the room you are in? No candles, just two faint beams coming from our rooftop lights. What was your first word when you were a baby? My parents didn’t give much thought to stuff like that so they didn’t keep track of my first word, whatever it was. It was most likely either mommy or daddy though. How old were you in 1996? I was...somewhere in the universe, floating around lmao.

How old will you be in 2016? I turned 18 in 2016. How long until your birthday? A little less than three months before I turn 22. How many siblings do you have? Two. Are they older or younger than you? My sister is two years younger, my brother is five years younger. Are your grandparents still alive? I have three out of four. I lost my maternal grandfather in 2015. How many orange objects are there in the room you are in? The lights we have on our rooftop emit a yellow-orange hue. Have you ever run a stoplight? Never. I’ve seen enough car crash videos to know what could possibly happen if I was that impatient/if I drove too fast to brake. Do you have any children? Nope. Maybe by the end of the decade. Saying that and knowing that it isn’t 100% bullshit feels WILD. How was your first kiss? It was mostly her. I was too overwhelmed and shaking too much to remember. That whole time I was just in disbelief that I was already having my first kiss lol. Have you completed high school yet? Yeah, almost four years ago. I’m about to complete university/college this year. Do you have any relatives in the military currently? As far as I know, no. The only person I know who’s in the military is Angela’s uncle, who she’s told me about but we’ve never met each other. I also know Kate’s brother is attending military school instead of attending a ~traditional academic university, so to speak. Who got married at the last wedding you went to? Oh my, the last wedding I was in was in 2007, and it was between my uncle (my mom’s youngest brother) and my now-aunt. The new batch of weddings I’m going to be invited to now is definitely gonna be my friends’ and I’m STOKED. What time did you get up today? I first woke up at 6 AM, but I wanted to sleep in so I officially got up at around 9. When was the last time you stayed up all night? I haven’t had an all-nighter in around three years, but I did stay up until 4 AM partying with my friends a couple of months ago. We got back to Rita’s place by 5 AM, but I guess this still kinda counts as staying up all night. How long have you had a myspace, facebook, or whatever you use? I’ve had a Facebook since 2013 (I only made one since my English teacher in freshman year required us to make an account, but I technically wasn’t allowed by my parents so I had to sign up in secret). I made a Twitter three years before that, because it was a website that my parents didn’t know about yet so it was easier to sneak in and make an account for it. Who was the last person of the opposite sex you hung out with? My cousin, Jereth. We exchanged stories and played the Switch while waiting for 2020 to hit. Person of the same sex? Gabie. She came over last Friday. What color are your eyes? They are dark brown but appear to be black most days. Do you like them? Sure, it’s not like Filipinos have a choice lolol. Have you ever had braces? Yes, I had them for a year and a half in high school. I eventually lost my retainers and never got to buy another set, so everything that the braces did was to no avail since my teeth just went back to how they looked like pre-braces. :( Turn on your mp3, cd player, radio, etc. What song is playing? Khalid’s Talk just started playing on my Spotify. What was the last thing you drank? My second cup of barako coffee is keeping me company up on the rooftop right now.

Are you better at math or art? Math. I never accomplished anything presentable in art classes. Science or History? Oooooh, ya got me. I love both, but nothing replaces my love for history. Who was your 4th grade teacher? Ms. Belen, who is actually Satan in a middle-aged woman’s body. I won’t deny that I’ve wished for her death several times; she had her favorites and made her non-favorites know that she hated them. She was just that awful. Who was your best friend in 7th grade? Gabie! We actually met in the seventh grade and she’s been my best friend ever since then. Where did you go to pre-school, if you went at all? I went to the same school from preschool to high school, which we’ll hide under the name AA. We don’t have schools divided into primary, secondary, high school and whatever else y’all have in America. Who was the last person to call you? It was my mom. We went to the mall so I can spend time in Starbucks while she was looking for fancy china (we were going to have guests the next day), and she called to tell me she was gonna drive to another mall cos she couldn’t find any good plates in the mall we were currently in.

Did you smile in your driver's license picture? Yes. They told me I was allowed to smile, so I gave a hearty grin. Apparently that’s an unusual thing to do cos most people just give a closed-mouth smile or don’t smile at all, and the people at the LTO were very amused when my license was finally printed out hahaha. Do you have a job? Not yet, but that’s my goal by the end of the year. AHHHHHHHH WILD What is your favorite smell? Curry being cooked or cookies being baked. What's your favorite brand of gum? Bazooka is classic bubblegum flavor, so I’ll go with that. Have you ever dated someone & then dated their sibling? Nope. I think I’d find that super awkward, especially in my case because I see Gab’s sisters as my little sisters too lol. Who was your crush in 5th grade? My science teacher lmaoooo. We don’t talk about that era. Who was your first bf/gf? Gab. What color is the shirt you are wearing? Brown and black. What do you think of the 1980's? Pop music, big hair, Madonna, Michael Jackson. Have you ever dated someone more than 2 years older than you? I haven’t. How about 2 years younger? Nope. I’ve only dated one person and they’re the same age as me, so I don’t really know how I feel about age gaps in relationships. What brand of shampoo do you use? Dove. How long is your hair? It’s super long now that I hadn’t had it cut AT ALL in 2019. I want to have it long for my grad pic shoot so I’m probably not having it trimmed until February. If I lean my head a bit back, it already reaches my hips. If you could change one thing about yourself physically, what would it be? I’d have my teeth fixed. Is there a box of tissues in the room you are in right now? Nope, I’m out in the rooftop and there’s no reason to keep tissue in here lol. What time is it? 10:27 PM. Is their anything living (plant, animal, etc) in your room right now? We have plants on each corner of the rooftop. What color are the walls in your kitchen? White. All our walls are white, except for my brother’s bedroom which used to be the balcony until we had it renovated. His walls are creamish. Have you ever had a car accident? Mild ones. I’ve never been in a major crash where a car was totally destroyed or where someone was hurt. Do you have any major plans for today? There’s like half an hour left before the day officially ends, so I think I’m good. What kind of deoderant do you use? A...normal one? If you mean brands, I have a Dove one. What color is your toothbrush? Maroon and white. Do you own a digital camera? Nope. I stopped using those around seven or eight years ago. How old is the cellphone you have right now? It’s almost two years old. What are your initials, using the last letter of each of your names? NELZ. Do you know anyone named Tyler? I know a high school classmate’s stepbrother is named Tyler, but I don’t know anyone personally with that name. How about Reese? Katreen’s younger sister is named Reese. Diana? No. I know several Diannes, though. Shelby? That’s a no for me. Have you ever kissed someone who's name started with "C"? Negative. How about "L"? Also no. "E"? I haven’t. "B"? Andddddd nope. Are both your parents still living? Yep. What was the last thing you cooked? Nothing. How many times have you moved in your life? That I remember? Two. Do you live within 20 miles of your birthplace? Yeah, I think Manila counts as being pretty close to where I am now. Can you do a handstand? I can’t. I tried many times as a kid though (and hurt myself several times in the process). Is it after 11am? Well after, in fact. What day is it? Thursday, but it’s soon going to turn to Friday. What's the longest time you've ever spent on the phone? I was once on a Viber call for around eight hours straight with Gab back in like the early months of our relationship. That was insane. We never did it again after that lolol. How many pairs of brown shoes do you own? Just the one pair of brown heels. Are you on any prescribed medications? Nopes. What was the date 2 weeks ago from today? December 19th. If you aren't already married, do you expect to be married within 5 years? No. I’m giving myself between 7-10 years. How about 2 years? That’s an even bigger no. How many funerals have you been to in your lifetime? I’ve never been to a funeral, just wakes. I don’t think I’d like funerals, so I want to stay as unaware as I am now. Have you ever been far away from home on your birthday? Yeah. I was in Batangas for my 20th. I also went on a cruise around East Asia for my 18th birthday, but I was back in the Philippines by the day of my actual birthday. The cruise took place in the days leading up to it. Have you ever had a pet fish? Yes. My first pets were goldfish. Do you have any tattoos? Nope. Would you ever or do you have a nose piercing? Probably not. I wanted one as a teenager though. If you only had 30 days to live, what would you do? That’s pretty dark, but uhhhhhhhh I guess I’d spend all my money, party as much as I want, drink as much as I want, look for new owner/s for my dog, drive as far as I can, spend most of the time with my girlfriend.

#survey #surveys

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qualitytacolover · 4 years

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Megan Thee Stallion Hair is a symbol of pride for black women anime fans

New Post has been published on https://www.easypromhairstyles.com/megan-thee-stallion-hair-is-a-symbol-of-pride-for-black-women-anime-fans.html

Megan Thee Stallion Hair is a symbol of pride for black women anime fans

The highly anticipated release of Megan Thee Stallion's debut album Fever (May 17) has doubled as a national holiday for your sultry and self-confident fanbase. Although hip-hop heavyweight Juicy J and newcomer DaBaby make appearances, the Houston-bred "hot girl" remains the center of the show. And that's how we like it.

Megan's rise was one of the books. In early 2017, she catapulted into fame after attending a hip-hop cipher at Texas A & M University. People all over the country quickly noticed their conscious, deep-drawn river and so their fans, called "hotties", were born. Fast forward to 2019, and you stallion has hosted your own Spotify event, found fans, Rihanna, Kehlani, and SZA, and continues to release hard-hitting freestyles and other repeatable bodies of work.

She is also the first rapping woman signed at 300 Entertainment, home of Young Thug and formerly Migos. But with each ascent comes a humming crew of haters. One of the first sightings of this sad collective, properly known as "hotties," came in March when she shared a photo of her half-white, half-radiant red hair.

TODOROKI TINA pic.twitter.com/NSuvkATAxZ

– HOT GIRL MEG (@theestallion) April 22, 2019

The title was "TODOROKI TINA", a reference to the My Hero Academia character, Shoto Todoroki. Although a considerable number of people celebrated Megan's love for anime, there were those who questioned their affinity, men. For example, Twitter user @CourtneeHendrix user wrote, "No way Meghan the stallion watch anime. Your public relations team is firing. "

@TrippyTrxv also shared, "ngga yea i want to know what anime megan you stallion watches. Why? bc i love the shI and I like you. If she does not really see it, but dresses in anime halfway cosplay, I would be hurt. I would still do your music fw maybe tho. "Ultimately, these reactions ask the question: what would the stallion gain by showing people that he has fun?

The targeted criticism of naysayers is, to say the least, frustrating. After all, she's not the only woman who shares her love for anime (look at Southern rap goddesses Bbymutha and Purp Goddess), nor is she the first rapper, male or female, ever to do it. Emcees like Lupe Fiasco, Robb Bank $ and Migos' launch are also anime fans but have not been criticized to the same extent. If flagrant racist sexism is not the culprit, then what?

After the Global History of Anime, the first anime was probably released during World War I and created by Shimokawa Oten. The short, colorless rolls of film were either "disassembled", "disintegrated" or "destroyed", so little is known about the early days of this art form. Over the next few decades, anime developed into longer animations, with sound and color to boot. A report by Marwah Zagzoug states that during World War II, the Japanese government took control of the arts by threatening the artists who had also criticized the government. Those who disagreed with the new orders were forbidden to write and pushed to the margins of society. But those who stayed were supplied with artists' companies, militarized and charged with anti-propaganda propaganda.

After the war, anime finally returned to its original purpose: an outlet for joy and honest expression. One of the first visuals that had great success was the full-length feature Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent), which also produced an American adaptation in 1961. Although Global History states that this was not the first crossover, it proved that anime could be a lucrative industry. Finally, television expanded its reach and consumption ballooned in the 1980s with the release of Dragon Ball, the third best selling manga ever. The introduction of Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon in the 1990s soon followed and until then, anime had become the monolithic Global Phenomenon that continues to generate revenue and inspire people of all ages. The Black community is a proud and important part of your loyal fanbase, and women have always been just as invested as men.

The "I liked it before it was mainstream" statement is still a pretty youthful, 2011 Tumblr-era vibe.

Although easy-to-find literature and the Internet have undoubtedly enhanced the profile of this art form, the statement "I liked it before it was mainstream" is still a rather youthful, 2011 Tumbler era sentiment. Unfortunately, there are people who continue to operate out of this logic and in the case of anime, the culprit party is mostly men. When it comes to Megan Thee stallion and her hairstyles specifically, you either wanted to prove to you that she is really interested in or just did not believe that she was even interested. How dare to invest in an attractive, popular, talented black woman in it?

It's another reminder that people continue to pursue the hobbies of black women, no matter what they are. So much so that the stallion himself addressed the controversy in an interview with XXL: "You must stop thinking that way. Poor B * tches may also like anime. "Luckily, a number of supporters, Black Women, have not been afraid to defend Megan and also speak their peace.

"It felt really good to me [weil die Leute] have this misunderstanding .. that black girls did not see anime like black guys when most of us had the same channels and caught the same Miguzi or Toonami block lol after school, "says Taylor, who pokers on @ sheisresting on Twitter , "We were definitely separated from the American anime wave back then. It was fulfilling to see a black female rapper with one such..mainstream potential not only acknowledge anime, but also call himself a fan, while loosely cosplaying your favorite characters. I had the feeling that there are also many black cosplayers who are constantly being told that you can not disguise themselves as Japanese characters because you have the wrong color. "

Taylor was not alone. In fact, over 100 responded when I asked a tweet for black women who were fans of anime and Megan thee stallion. User @dualityofman wrote: ".. I thought your hair would be cool! I'm from Texas and I live in Houston, so I have a lot to do with her. Their liking anime was just another thing we had in common … .I feel like many men hate to see women happy and enjoy things. It's as if you could not call you ugly because it's obviously NOT YOU. Can not say that she is untalented because she is just near everyone [Männer]comes out. She can not insult your intelligence because she is at school. So, let's SH * t like you for anime. I'm just looking for a reason to be mad at a black woman. "

Todoroki Tina

pic.twitter.com/nXycHk0izm

– HOT GIRL MEG (@theestallion) April 1, 2019

Misogynoir is a term used by the black feminist Moya Bailey and is intended to emphasize the way black men interact negatively with black women. It is also part of the root problem Black men have with Megan Thee stallion music, looks, interests and behavior. What confuses you most is your conviction about it. You can not believe that you are interested in anime, and you hate it for it.

Also worthy of note is the close relationship of Japan to the Black community outlined by Cecilia D 'Anastasio for Vice. It has included the mistreatment of mixed-speed (Japanese and Black) people and in the context of anime, a tiny number of non-stereotypical depictions of Black people. Japan is also notorious for its ubiquitous use of Blackface, which made headlines last year. D 'Anastasio notes that regardless of all these racial crimes, blacks continue to cherish anime and honor him through cosplay and songs.

Rare moments that acknowledge the enduring power of Japanese animation and an underrated part of your fanbase should happen more often.

In 2016, writer Amber Dixon also talked about the hurtful separations she saw and experienced as a black anime fan. These include observing brown skin as a metaphor for dark energy in Sailor Moon, the minstrel – like face of Mr. Popo in Dragon Ball Z and Blackface, to cosplay black characters. Like D 'Anastasio, Dixon continues in the worship of Anime Fort and notices the early and emotional connection she felt specifically with Sailor Moon.

Twitter user @imninm adds, "I know more black girls who see anime more than any race or gender. Personally, I have anime look as I could remember, from Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Sailor Moon, Hamtaro, Dragonball Z. I never felt like it was showing a "boy" or anything like that. I just liked what I saw and I still do. "In other words, anime will always have a special place in the hearts of female viewers, including high-profile rappers like Megan Thee Stallion.

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Bulma Snow

Make up @akilaface

A post shared by Hot Girl Meg (@theestallion) on Apr 22, 2019 at 5:57 pm PDT

In November 2018, and again this past April, she emphasized her devotion with a different hairstyle inspired by Bulma, a predominant character in Dragon Ball (the first is Goku). This time, instead of an overwhelming amount of criticism, Megan's cascading, Seafoam green locks initiated a tender co-sign from FUNimation, a dubbing and distribution company. "Love the style!" Wrote the company, with a cutesy gif attached by Bulma. Rare moments that acknowledge the enduring power of Japanese animation and an underrated part of your fanbase should happen more often.

Men should be proud that such a celebrity woman like the stallion shares a common ground with you, increases solidarity, and makes room for even more people to become fans. It could also force certain men to accept that women did not want to interact with you or go out because they were nerds, but because they were unbearable. Conscientiousness, happy black, female fans and good music? Thanks, Megan. Stream fever now.

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lelandrussell-blog · 5 years

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How One Courageous Choice Changed the Course of My Life

"You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both." ~ Brené Brown

I’ve had an amazing life with many wonderful moments. I've also experienced challenging Transitions, moments when I had to face the fact that a phase of my life was ending.

One of those Transitions came in the late 1980s when the business that I'd been building for years with a close-knit team was no longer viable. What had been working, no longer worked. An era was ending.

Ready or not, I was now in Transition. William Bridges, the author of The Way of Transition, says there are three phases: Endings, The Neutral Zone, Beginnings.

The Neutral Zone was the most challenging for me. It was difficult living in limbo between a known past and an unknown future. I felt like I was locked in a car stuck in neutral. No matter how hard I tried, I could not engage the gears. I could not move forward.

The best advice I’ve ever heard about how to break free from the Neutral Zone came from Steve Jobs:

“Have the COURAGE to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Listen to The Whispers

Late one night I was explaining my predicament to my older and wiser mentor. "I'm trying as hard as I can to figure out what to do, but I'm stuck. I'm worried about my future. I'm losing faith."

After a pregnant pause, she leaned over and spoke softly in my ear. "The solution is simple, Leland."

“Stop the noise for a while and listen to the whispers. If you don’t, you will miss many important messages.”

I took her advice. By relaxing physically and mentally, I stopped the noise in my mind. I learned to cultivate calm and listen for the whispers. It took a while but finally, I heard one message very clearly: "Do something totally new. Do something bigger and better than you’ve ever done before.”

Unfortunately, that was all I got ─ a message with three key words: "New, Bigger, Better." It certainly lacked the specificity I was hoping for. It did, however, cause me to focus my thinking on a key question: What would be totally new for me?

I pondered that question for several weeks with no results. Then, another whisper, one word: LEADERSHIP. That was broad, but it was enough for me to shift my mind out of neutral and engage my creative gears.

I moved into learning mode. I read some great leadership books, like On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis, and The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership by Sally Helgesen. I subscribed to respected periodicals, like the Harvard Business Review. I attended conferences that focused on leadership.

At my first conference, there were compelling presentations and drill-down workshops on a wide range of topics. Hearing diverse perspectives about leadership from some of the smartest people in the field really fired my neurons, but it also left me feeling overwhelmed.

Absorbing so much knowledge in one dose had a definite downside — once my cognitive capacity was surpassed, the additional knowledge was just noise.

After the conference, I reflected on what happened. Was the problem merely too much knowledge in one dose? Maybe that was a part of it, but I sensed there was something else — the way I was "downloading" the knowledge. Everything was flowing into one big file folder in my mind in no particular order. It was a mess.

After doing some research, I concluded that the real problem was between my ears. I had no mental model, no master cognitive framework to help me organize, prioritize, and apply the knowledge I was downloading. This core concept ultimately affected everything that followed.

Something Bigger and Better

By learning relentlessly about leadership, I was following through on the first part of what my heart and intuition had whispered to me: “Do something totally new.” But I had not yet addressed the second part of the message: “Do something bigger and better than you’ve ever done before.” I wondered what that could be.

There were several possibilities and they all aligned around the theme of leadership and the critical importance of mental models.

To put what happened next into context, let's time travel back to 1989. It was the beginning of an era of unprecedented change unleashed by the end of the cold war. The world had become more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than ever before. What did this mean for leaders?

I remembered feeling overwhelmed by too much knowledge during my first leadership conference. I suspected that leaders might be having a similar problem dealing with the avalanche of new knowledge about how to manage change. That insight triggered the choice that changed the course of my life.

I would design and deliver an innovative leadership forum. It would provide leaders with a mental model for responding to the global change forces unleashed by the end of the cold war.

Looking back, it’s clear that it was a courageous choice because I was a novice in the field of leadership. I had no scholarly credentials or personal contacts who could give me advice. I was on my own sailing into the unknown.

In short, I had no idea HOW I would design and deliver an innovative leadership forum. I did, however, have self-confidence and I believed what W.H. Murray, the Scottish mountaineer, had said:

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

The bold idea was to create a macro mental model for responding to global change. I soon came up with one — The GEO Paradigm™.

"GEO" was an acronym for the three global change forces reshaping the world: Globalization, Empowerment, and Orchestration of Technology.

"Paradigm" is a way of perceiving the world. It frames the boundaries of your attention and defines the rules for success within the boundaries.

After that, just as W.H. Murray predicted, magical things began to happen.

My friend, William Shatner, agree to support the idea financially and be the spokesman. His involvement led to major organizations — Motorola, General Electric, Northern Telecom, and several others — becoming sponsors. Then, Fortune magazine agreed to promote it.

With that extraordinary support in place, thought leaders from a variety of fields agreed to contribute their insights. I spent several months conducting video interviews with over 80 of them — CEOs, prominent authors, top executive educators, and even a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton.

The format for the forum was, as intended, truly innovative. A multidisciplinary creative team helped me actualize the vision of a one-day "Knowledge Concert". The key GEO learning points were illuminated with panoramic multimedia sequences, thought leader insights on video, music-image videos, and stage scenes with live actors. All of this was grounded by short, single point presentations, small group dialogues, and an elaborate 100-page "Handbook for the Future" with application knowledge organized under three tabs — The Future Now, Blueprints for Success, Resources for Action.

When we delivered the GEO Paradigm™ Knowledge Concert to over 600 senior leaders, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Click here to see a 2-minute video overview of the forum.

When we asked participants what most appealed to them about the GEO Paradigm™ Knowledge Concert, the responses fell into three categories:

The ‘stickiness’ of the G-E-O acronym. It accomplished exactly what I had intended — it embedded a macro mental model that helped leaders make sense of the world that was then unfolding.

Actionable Knowledge for Mastering Change. Fortune magazine described the forum as an “advanced corporate education program to prepare senior management for the challenges of change.”

A Synthesis of Emerging Leadership Practices. One of the attendees summed it up this way: “They’ve have taken years of experience, results, and good concepts, and put all into a one-day presentation. It’s an amazing event.”

What A Difference A Day Makes

The ‘word of mouth’ about the one-day forum triggered ripple effects that continued for several years. Here are a few examples:

Over 1000 organizations around the world licensed the leadership development video —Tearing Down the Walls: The GEO Change Forces — that was created from the Knowledge Concert™ content.

General Motors licensed the GEO Change Forces video as the centerpiece of a series of change management workshops that ultimately reached 57,000 GM managers.

AT&T invited me to deliver a keynote address for a national leadership meeting on managing change. They also licensed the GEO Change Forces video to use in a series of large-scale events that the CEO held across the country to ‘rally the troops’ to deal with the challenge of change.

National associations in a variety of fields engaged me to customize GEO Paradigm™ Knowledge Concerts for their annual conferences and produce follow-up video learning packages for their members.

Last, but certainly not least, was the founding of GEO Group Strategic Services. Its initial mission was to help leaders meet change-related challenges and opportunities.

The firm has been the most enduring ripple effect. GEO Group Strategic Services is now celebrating its 30th anniversary.

There are three leadership lessons in this Knowledge Byte:

EXPECT TRANSITIONS - At points in your life, you will experience the challenge of Transition, moments when an era of your life is ending. A Transition has three phases: Endings, The Neutral Zone, Beginnings. The Neutral Zone is the most challenging because for a time you will be living in limbo between a known past and an unknown future.

CHOOSE COURAGEOUSLY - When you are in Transition, you must decide where to go next. Steve Job's advice is to “have the COURAGE to follow your heart and intuition." Brené Brown points out that "You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both."

CHOICES HAVE RIPPLE EFFECTS - A choice you make during a Transition can have ripple effects that go far beyond what you might imagine. In my story, one courageous choice changed the course of my life. But every choice, even small ones, also have ripple effects.

________________________________________________________

Thank you for reading this GEO Knowledge Byte™. I'd appreciate hearing from you.

If you add a comment below, I’ll get back to you.

Leland Russell | Founder & CEO | GEO Group Strategic Service

#leadership #strategic planning #performance #growth solutions

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boredout305 · 3 years

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Kristi Callan of Wednesday Week

Kristi Callan is best known for her tenure leading Wednesday Week. She presently plays in Dime Box, The Roswell Sisters and Cheap Chick.

Originally from Dallas, Kristi and her sister Kelly moved to Los Angeles in the mid-‘70s. The Callan sisters played with a pre-Dream Syndicate Steve Wynn in Goat Deity before forming Narrow Adventure with Kjehl Johansen (Urinals, 100 Flowers). Narrow Adventure morphed into Wednesday Week in 1983. Wednesday Week would sign a deal with Enigma Records, releasing What We Had (1987), before disbanding in 1990.

In the 1990s, Callan formed Lucky and Dime Box. With the help of Justin Tanner, Kristi also performs with the Roswell Sisters—her three-part harmony group which includes Kristian Hoffman (Mumps, James White and the Blacks). Spacecase Records is currently working with Kristi on a Narrow Adventure LP, culling unreleased tracks from 1981-1983. COVID-19 permitting, be on the lookout for Dime Box, Roswell Sisters and Narrow Adventure shows in late 2020/early 2021.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Photos courtesy of Kristi Callan

Narrow Adventure, left to right: Kjehl Johansen, Kristi Callan, Kelly Callan.

Ryan: Where did you grow up?

Kristi: My sister (Kelly Callan) and I are from Dallas, Texas, originally. We moved to Oklahoma next and then to New York. Our mother is an actress. It was an interesting transition, going from Oklahoma to public housing in New York in the mid-‘70s. We loved New York City. We then moved to Los Angeles in 1976. My sister and I were pissed about it. New York City is great. You can ride the subways anywhere and do whatever you want. I was just getting into music. The Ramones were starting to break out there. There was no decent public transit system in L.A. and we knew no one. We were miserable. It took us a couple of years to figure it out. Eventually, my sister got her driver’s license and we’d go to punk rock clubs. Things started getting a lot better. Music took up our entire lives at that point and we decided we wanted to form a band.

Ryan: You’re the youngest? Your sister Kelly is a bit older?

Kristi: Yes. Kelly is three years older.

Ryan: Tell me about the Undeclared (1979). I’ve read that was your first band with Kelly.

Kristi: There was this girl, Betsy, who I met in high school. She’s the one we named Wednesday Week’s first EP “Betsy’s House” after. I told her, “Betsy, you’re going to play bass.” She did and so we had a little band in high school that never went anywhere. I was on guitar and my sister Kelly was the drummer. We would practice in my sister’s room. Betsy eventually gave up trying to learn bass, so the band became my sister and I. Kelly had just started college at UCLA. She didn’t have a major; she was undeclared. That’s where the band’s name came from.

My mom’s the greatest. She’d let us practice and make a loud, awful racket at home. Her friend told her, “Oh, they’re doing this fair down the street. Your daughters should play it.” So we got this slot playing in a parking lot in Panorama City. It was just the two of us—me and Kelly. It was amazing and exciting. The wind was so strong it blew over Kelly’s heavy cymbals. Her first drum set belonged to the drummer of Iron Butterfly. Kelly found it in The Recycler. We’d always go to this record store, Moby Disc.

Ryan: I remember Moby Disc. There was a store in Canoga Park up until the early 2000s.

Kelly: That’s right. The one we’d go to was in Sherman Oaks and later they had another location in Santa Monica. We could walk to the one in Sherman Oaks. I’d stare at the album covers for hours. I was so uncool. I was an awkward 15 year old. I got to know the guys behind the counter, only the cool people got jobs at record stores. I told the guys at Moby Disc that I had a band. They responded, “Really?” “Yeah, it’s me and my sister.”

My best friend at Moby Disc was Dave Provost (later of the Textones, Wednesday Week, Dream Syndicate). Steve Wynn was friendly too and he asked me if we wanted to play together. I was like, “Sure.” That became Goat Deity (1980-1981). Steve lived with his parents on Sunset Boulevard and we started practicing at his house. We were into art punk and he was into more traditional stuff. He would play his songs with us; we’d play our songs with him. We recorded and did a show in the living room of my mom’s house. All the guys from Moby Disc turned up. After a while it became obvious that we weren’t meshing musically so we went our separate ways and our friend Kjehl Johansen, from the Urinals and 100 Flowers, said he’d play bass with us. That’s when we started Narrow Adventure (1981-1983).

Ryan: That’s interesting. Goat Deity was right in between The Suspects, the band Wynn formed at UC Davis, and The Dream Syndicate.

Kelly: Steve had been at UC Davis for school. When he finished, he came back home and worked at Moby Disc. Karl Precoda came down and rehearsed with us one day and he and Steve really hit it off. That was when we realized we were going in really different directions and decided to split off and go our separate ways. It was amicable—we all liked each other a lot, but musically it wasn’t the right fit.

Ryan: How did you meet Kjehl?

Kelly: We were seeing bands every night. I had a fake ID. My mom was cool with it, but she got apprehensive once. She read an article in the paper about punk rock being scary. So we took her to a show at the Starwood. The Plugz, who were my favorite band, were playing. Charlie (Quintana) was my age and Tito (Larriva) was always very nice to us. He bought my mom an orange juice at the show to reassure her all was well. The opening band that night was The Last. I didn’t want to see them because some obnoxious guy had told me that The Last were the best band in L.A. and I thought “I will never check them out if this guy thinks they’re cool.” But they were on the bill that night and were actually really good. Anyway, my mom saw The Last and said, “Look at these nice boys. They’re just kids like you. You’ll be fine.” She was right. They were nice and really good and we started going to see them regularly. Kelly and I got to know them, but mostly we hung around the people associated with The Last like Gary Stewart and Bill Inglot. Gary managed The Last. David Nolte, who was in The Last and who I’m now married to, said, “The Urinals are the best band ever.” He was right. It was through going to shows that we met everyone. Also, Kjehl, Kevin (Barrett) and John (Talley-Jones) went to UCLA, which is where my sister and I went. And I was always telling everyone about my band with my sister—even though we didn’t have much going on at the time.

We got Kjehl to join and then Gary Stewart got us our first show. I didn’t know how to book a show. I was 17 or 18 at the time. Gary said, “Narrow Adventure can open up for The Last at the Troubadour.” I was like, “Yeah, okay.” So, we went from a parking lot in Panorama City to my mom’s living room to the Troubadour.

Ryan: That’s moving on up.

Kristi: Right.

Ryan: It’s interesting how The Last and The Urinals, two stylistically different groups, formed such a bond. The Last’s Vitus Mataré recorded some great material during that period. The Narrow Adventure tracks he recorded must have been your first semi-professional recordings.

Kristi: Definitely. That was terrifying, going into that garage to record with this guy (Vitus) who I’d seen on stage but who I didn’t really know. I knew Vitus could play and I knew that I couldn’t. I had had music lessons and I knew some theory. But The Last had been playing big shows for years. I just had a big mouth.

Ryan: Tell me more about Narrow Adventure. I know you played a show on November 6, 1981, with 100 Flowers and The Last.

Kristi: Gary Stewart had gotten us that first show at the Troubadour. Afterwards I asked him, “Okay. What’s next?” He responded, “Well, now you need to get your own shows.” Narrow Adventure played a lot. I’d book us any gig I could find. Shows on Sunday at midnight. Thankfully, Kjehl was game for it. For Kjehl, Narrow Adventure was interesting and exciting because he had never played bass before. He bought a Hagstrom 8-string bass. He was totally into it. We’d play every other week. Once in a while, Gary would put us on bills like that November show you mentioned with The Last and 100 Flowers. Those were the best. Other shows would be with bands that I’d never heard of before or since.

Ryan: Can you describe the transition from Narrow Adventure to Wednesday Week and Kjehl leaving the band?

Kristi: Vitus and Gary were putting together the WarfRat Tales (1983) compilation. Vitus had recorded us and wanted two tracks for the LP. Vitus is the best. We were so excited. But he said, “You can’t keep the name Narrow Adventure. It’s the worst name ever. You should change it before we put this record out.” So we had to. It just so happened to coincide with Kjehl leaving the group. I think Kjehl had completed his experiment playing bass in a band. He was great. I remember we would lean on him. At the first show at The Troubadour we were like, “Okay, Kjehl, what do we do? Do we go on stage now?” We were terrified.

Ryan: That’s funny considering The Urinals had to go to Austin, Texas, to play their first off-campus show. They didn’t know how to book one in L.A.

Kristi: I know. Everyone figures it out differently and they went to Texas. Kjehl really didn’t know what was going on either. I was like. “You’re the one with some experience!” I was listening to old live Narrow Adventure tapes recently and Kjehl had great stage banter between songs. Narrow Adventure was his opportunity to play a different instrument and do something totally different from The Urinals, which I think was his first band. I know Kjehl sometimes had different ideas than John and Kevin with The Urinals and 100 Flowers. Kjehl wanted to get a little bit better musically—take lessons—while Kevin and John were fine figuring their instruments out themselves. We provided a different vibe for him. Narrow Adventure was something Kjehl tried and then he was done. I remember the concert to promote the Warfrat Tales compilation. It was really exciting. David (Nolte) played bass with us that night. Kjehl had already left and we were going by Wednesday Week then. But David couldn’t stay long. Joe (Nolte) demanded a lot with The Last. Our old friend from Moby Disc, Dave Provost played with us for a while after that until he got too busy.

Ryan: Vitus Mataré produced Wednesday Week’s debut EP “Betsy’s House.” It was recorded at Radio Tokyo, the studio owned by the late Ethan James (1946-2003). Did you get to know Ethan?

Kristi: Ethan was great.

Ryan: He always struck me as underrated and I liked his work with Jane Bond and the Undercover Men.

Kristi: I can’t believe he’s been gone for so long. Ethan was so patient. When we did “Betsy’s House” David (Nolte) was playing an incorrect chord so I said to him, “That’s a minor chord.” David responded, “No. It’s a major.” He was being so stubborn. He wouldn’t listen to me and I didn’t know what to do so I just put my head down. Ethan looked up and said, “David, Kristi wrote the song.” He quickly and effectively shut down that situation. That was Ethan in a nutshell. He was quiet and when he spoke it was usually the right thing to say. He respected women as musicians too which is great because it can be hard being a woman in music. Some guys won’t play with women in bands. People often talk down to you but Ethan wasn’t like that and neither were David and Kjehl. We went back and recorded at Radio Tokyo throughout the 1980s. Ethan made a lot of things happen. I liked Jane Bond and the Undercover Men too. You’re right. Ethan is an unsung hero. So many great records came out of Radio Tokyo. I go by there now and I just want to cry. It was such a cool studio and scene and now the area is completely gentrified.

Ryan: Wednesday Week’s next album What We Had (1986) was released on Enigma. How did you end up signing with the label?

Kristi: The funny thing is we were going to make a record with Rhino. Gary Stewart (Rhino’s A&R head, manager of The Last) said, “’Betsy’s House’ did well.” I borrowed money from my mother, brother and dad to put that out. Gary was right: it did well. I was able to pay them all back. Gary said, “The record sold. You promoted it.” I booked all of these tours. I had graduated college and I started freaking out: “What am I going to do with my life?” So I booked tours for us. We played a lot of colleges because they paid well. Gary was impressed and said, “Rhino will sign you and you can do another record with Ethan (James).” We said, “Okay.” I was always checking in with people back then. And I was talking with Scott Vanderbilt who unbeknownst to me was working A&R at Enigma. He asked me what I was doing. I told him we were going to make a record with Rhino and that Ethan was going to produce it. He said, “No. Enigma wants to put it out.” I was like, “Really? Enigma has all these different acts. They’re not really like us.” Honestly, we weren’t right for Enigma. Nevertheless, Scott introduced us to Bill Hein who ran the label. Bill was so nice. He was genuinely interested in signing us. He told us, “Well, if Rhino’s going to give you $5,000 to record, we’ll double it. You can go record with Don Dixon.” That sounded like a step up. Even though we liked Ethan and he was great, we wanted to try something different and grow. That was actually awful—having to go back to Gary Stewart, our biggest ally, and go, “Y’know, we’re gonna have to do this other thing with Enigma.” Of course, Gary understood it because he was Gary. But it was hard. In retrospect, we should’ve done the record with Gary and Rhino. We could’ve had a longer lifespan. Enigma was like, “Well, you didn’t sell records like Stryper or Poison. We’re done with you.” Rhino would’ve kept supporting us.

Ryan: Enigma always seemed like a label that would sign a bunch of bands and then throw them up against the wall, so to speak. What stuck, they kept. What didn’t, they dropped. Then they’d repeat the process.

Kristi: Yep. And that’s what they did. I think we could’ve had time to grow with Rhino. They would’ve put out another record. We were trying to be smart at the time.

Ryan: Although signing with Enigma wasn’t the right move in retrospect, was recording What We Had with Don Dixon a positive experience?

Kristi: Oh, yeah. It was great. We recorded with him again in February 2020. Dixon’s the best. Do you know anything about him?

Ryan: Yeah. I like a lot of the stuff he recorded. I’m a fan of Tommy Keene.

Kristi: Right. We went out there (Reflection Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina) to record, excited and very nervous. Dixon was very easy going. He could work with women. He wasn’t going to take the instrument out of your hand and play it himself. That would happen.

Ryan: It happened to The Bangles.

Kristi: My god. The shit The Bangles had to go through. The more records you sold, often the worse it got. “There’s too much money on the line, honey, let me play that part.” That wasn’t going to happen to us. Our response would’ve been, “Fuck you.”

Ryan: How did your brief tenure with Enigma go? Was it a situation where communication dwindled as time went on?

Kristi: Pretty much. And we were working with William Morris. That actually wasn’t a good decision. William Morris would book us on these shows that didn’t make sense. We should’ve been working with F.B.I. (Frontier Booking International).

Another time we were trying to be smart but weren’t: when we signed our contract we knew not to give away our publishing. That’s how all those songwriters in the ’50 and ‘60s got screwed, right? So we didn’t give them a penny. The problem with that is then Enigma had no skin in the game, so they didn’t do much for us. We didn’t understand how things worked back then. We did get a couple of placements in movies almost accidentally. Many people found out about Wednesday Week through a couple of our songs being in Slumber Party Massacre II (1987).

Ryan: You and your sister started your own imprint, Sweden Spins, to release Wednesday Week 45s and cassettes after your time on Enigma. Wednesday Week wound down in 1990. Did the experience with Enigma suck the life out of the band?

Kristi: Definitely. But with Sweden Spins, my sister’s boyfriend—who’s now her husband—he always had good ideas. He said, “You guys should start a fan club.” I was like, “No! That sounds stupid.” But we eventually did it and so many cool people were in that fan club. Anyway, my sister’s husband recommended we put out a single for our fan club members. We weren’t initially receptive to the idea, but we did it anyway. And he was right—people loved them. Sweden Spins was the imprint for our fan club. We released three fan club singles.

Getting dropped from Enigma did suck the life out of the band. We had different people coming into the group early on, but Heidi (Rodewald) solidified the lineup on bass. Then we had a revolving door with second guitar players until David (Nolte) joined. That lineup with Heidi and David was our best one. When Heidi left we thought, “Oh, it’ll be alright. We’ll figure it out.” She didn’t like touring because it’s stressful and quit right before we had a tour starting. Thankfully John Talley-Jones (Urinals, 100 Flowers) stepped in to play bass for us on that tour. It was great. But we needed a long-term bassist. We tried a bunch of different people. But the magic was gone. A group of people builds a sort of synergy. When someone leaves, it’s really hard to find it again.

Ryan: What have you been up to lately, Kristi?

Kristi: After Wednesday Week, David Nolte, Mike Lawrence, my sister Kelly and I had a band called Lucky. Mike Lawrence had been in Direct Hits with Paula Pierce. Our first Narrow Adventure show at the Troubadour was with Direct Hits and The Last. David and I started Dime Box in the 1990s. I got to play bass on a US and Ireland tour with David Gray before he was famous when my husband was in his band. That was cool. They were great guys. The ‘90s was a period where I was playing with everybody. I sometimes forget who all I played with back then.

In the 2000s I had kids so things got harder. Someone asked me to be in Cheap Chick—the all-female Cheap Trick tribute band. I love Cheap Trick. I wanted to be Robin Zander when I was a kid. I was initially embarrassed to be in a tribute band, but we have so much fun. We played in Las Vegas. We played in Japan.

Ryan: I’d join just about any tribute band for a trip to Japan.

Kristi: Yeah! And we played Rockford, Illinois, and Rick Nielsen called us up. He said he had a show that night so he couldn’t come see us, but he asked if we wanted to meet up the next day. We were like, “Fuck you. You’re not Rick Nielsen.” But it actually was him! So, we had breakfast with him the next day. What a giant thrill. He was a cool guy: “I heard good things about your band.”

My husband, our son and the drummer in my Americana group also have a tribute band to our old labelmates, The Smithereens. My husband was playing in a band (Dave Davies’ backing band) with Dennis Diken (The Smithereens’ drummer) and he thought it would be fun to make a tribute to them, so we do that now and then. Those songs are such a pleasure to play and we have a lot of fun.

I’m also singing in a three-part harmony group called the Roswell Sisters. There was a group in the 1930s called The Boswell Sisters. We do that kind of material. Do you know who Kristian Hoffman is?

Ryan: Absolutely. He was from Santa Barbara originally and played in the Mumps and with James White and the Blacks.

Kristi: Right. My husband David had been playing with Kristian a lot. They played with El Vez and Ann Magnuson together. Kristian’s husband Justin Tanner sings and arranges all the songs with the Roswell Sisters. Sometimes we do Kristian’s songs in these lush, three-part harmonies. The Roswells are me, Kristian, Justin, Lisa Jenio from Candypants and Pierre Smith who I knew from the ‘80s with his band The New Marines.

Finally, my band Dime Box plays regularly and is working on a new CD. The last release received critical acclaim and some nice airplay across the country, but the pandemic quashed the 2020 tour plans to support it. My son James (Nolte) plays with me in that band as well, along with Lyn Bertles (Cruzados), Nick Vincent (Holly & The Italians, Frank Black) and Alex Vincent (The Bots and Stop Thought). We like to keep busy. Kelly is in Dragster Barbie and, of course, Kjehl has 100 Flowers and a solo record coming out. Narrow Adventure made a video together and we are looking forward to touring to support our release in late 2021.

Dime Box.

#kristicallan #interviews #wednesdayweek #dimebox

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