#i am not an artist there's probably a million incorrect things here but!

[percocet]

you say a little decomposition never killed anybody.

"let dead dogs lie" by @sweatermuppet -> watercolour | [ref 1] [ref 2]

#silas denver melvin #poetry #art #.mine #i am not an artist there's probably a million incorrect things here but! #i was sketching for fun and thought these would look nice w watercolour <3

[deltastorm101]

So, I tried to calculate Control...

... and its Epic Games deal, with the help of my certified smooth brain™ and probably incorrect sources. I started this last night hella tired and with a headache, I have finished it up today hella tired and with a headache, and this is what I produced: bullshit! :D But hey, at least double checked bullshit that’s open for discussion and contribution and expansion. Also, I probably won’t list the sources because a) I’m lazy and b) I didn’t have to dig thaaat deep down to find all this so if you really wanna know you could probably hit google with it as well. Anyhow here we go lol So, the initial thought which got all of this rolling was the 2020-wrap-up-post Remedy linked on their twitter, and Epic’s linked publishing announcement in it: studios Remedy, Playdead and GenDesign will release their next next-gen games with Epic. Now, we all know Remedy are working on some sort of Alan Wake-ish thing as we speak (right? right?? god I hope so), which meanssss our boy will most likely be an Epic exclusive. Which makes me kinda sad because, well. I’m deep in Steam’s ass. Hell, I waited for Control for a full year before I played it because they can pry the Steam version from my cold dead hands. So I asked myself... was it worth it for them? How much money did they throw at Remedy (and 505 Games) to have them play along? Would they have reached more people from the get-go if they had released it on Steam right away? Did the individual programmer, designer, writer, artist, person behind it profit from this at all? (Also, like, about the rights and copyright thing,,,,, you’d think they could have learned from Alan Wake and its IP belonging to Microsoft and so not really being able to do anything more with it because they don’t ‘own’ it and shit) buuut anyway that’s not the point of this post, now it’s time to do some MATH BABEY

Ok, let’s start with some things we know. Facts. Figures. Data. Turns out my initial question, how much money was involved, could be answered by doing one (1) google search: according to Wikipedia, Epic gave Remedy and 505 Games €9.49mio. The total budget for the game was €26.9mio over the course of 3 years of development. We know that as of December 2020, over 2mio copies of the game were sold, with November 2020 being the best-selling month ever since its initial release in August 2019. This is where question 1) comes into play: how many of those 2 million copies were sold in 2019 and how many in 2020? Stay tuned, I think I found out.

We know that Remedy gets to keep 45% of the revenue, which, I assumed, means that 505 keeps the remaining 55% (probably a lot more going on there but shhh). We know that Control’s sales cooked up €17.84mio in 2019 (so months September – December), €17.7mio of those in the first month alone (O.O). Side note: because it came out at the very end of August, I’ll ignore that month and declare September the first sales month.

We know that 60% of sales in 2019 were digital ones (aka Epic Store, mostly), 40% physical ones (consoles PS4 and XB1), while in 2020, only 10% of sales were physical and a whopping 90% digital; which is people on Epic who wanted to get their hands on the first DLC and – you guessed it – the Steam release of the Ultimate Edition in August 2020.

Which begs question 2): what’s bigger, 60% of 2019 sales because ‘ooh shiny new game’, or 90% of 2020 sales because ‘yay steam release’? The answer may look obvious, but you have to take into account the dropping price, which I also researched for your pleasure and enjoyment.

For this I used a German website called idealo.de, which focuses on looking for the best deals for basically anything you can buy on the internet, and it also gives you diagrams that describe at which point in time the product was at which exact price. This is what it gave me: - release price: €60 - December 2019: €41 (PS4)/€44 (XB1) - mid-2020: €30 - Ultimate Edition release: €30 - December 2020: €14 (PS4)/€18 (XB1)/€30 (Ultimate Editions) At this point I was like “lol hold on i need chocolate for this cuz i’ll be here for some time *sweating*”

To continue this mess™, I see more questions: 3) How many employees does Remedy have, which positions do they work in and what are their salaries? 4) How many employees does 505 have, which positions and salaries do they have? 5) What’s the total revenue that Control has generated so far?

And also some more stuff like, are my numbers accurate, am I even grasping these concepts correctly, are there even more people involved or am I just trying to explain complete crap (yes) but let’s just ignore all of that shall we. At that point I went “oh shit what have i gotten myself into, this screen does not get my point across, i need pen and paper” and you know shit is gonna go DOWN when I do math on paper.

My paper math birthed the following calculation:

Following this up, we can calculate the end-of-2019 sales, if we set the price for September and October to €60, for November and December to approx. €45:

Now, you might notice that one of those numbers is big and the other is HUGE. Why might that be? Well...

- Covid19: everyone stayed at home and needed video games to play - More sale months of the year, naturally - dropping price: why get it for €60 when you can get it for 20 - Ultimate Edition: why buy it in June when you get more content in August aaaand... - it comes out on Steam.

With this in mind, let’s see what questions we can answer: 1) 661,110 copies in 2019; 1,338,889 copies in 2020 2) 60% digital sales in 2019 means 396,666 Epic copies; 90% digital sales in 2020 means 1,205,000 copies – most of it from Steam? Some of it? A good chunk? The bigger chunk? There’s no way of really knowing for sure but... you could read this into it. I definitely am. 3) Google told me Remedy had a little over 250 employees at the end of 2019... 4) ... and 505 has less than 100. I found no good sources for this, I think linkedin said 37, someone else said 50. I’ll just use the 50 figure, idk. No idea man. and for 5) I’ll contradict my point that the Steam release is what knocked the sales out of the park and assume that the number of sold copies stayed the same across all 12 months of 2020, which gives us this:

Ok and now we’re getting into the most dangerous of danger zones because I have no idea how companies or capitalism work, so for educated people™, the remaining calculations might read like a toddler wrote them; I apologize profusely and hereby present last night’s brain vomit:

As stated earlier, development took 3 years, but everyone wanted to get paid in 2020 as well so let’s use 4 years to find out the salaries, which is 48 months. Let’s assume the utopian idea that every employee on the line here gets the exact same amount of money (LOL ikr but shhhh, let’s live out our dirtiest equality fantasies for a second ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)). Which would mean...

And now without the Epic Deal™:

Quod erat demonstrandum. Remedy has been selling their souls to Epic for €350 a month since 2017. (I don’t mean this as maliciously as I’m making it sound, don’t worry xD)

OKAY SO, O B V I O U S L Y, I have not the slightest idea what on earth I’m talking about so read this like you’d read a good fanfiction. We don’t know the different salaries across the different positions (and genders HAH), we don’t know if other parties were involved, I’ve completely ignored the sum that Epic themselves get, I have ignored taxes, I don’t know if my numbers are accurate (they’re definitely not I mean 505 must have more employees than 50), if I made mistakes (yes), and also somewhere along the way I forgot to use the €26.9mio budget figure because, uuh, I have no idea where to use it, what it means, where did it come from, where did it go, cotton eye joe - but oh well, I’m not starting over, take it or leave it.

So... I can now officially say I have written hot steamy economics fic xD Man I put waaay too much time into this but damn was it fun. Good three-hour-deep-dive (two of them spent munching on chocolate half-asleep listening to psytrance to keep my brain twitchy). Real-life-theorizing. Fuck capitalism. Don’t do drugs. Pet a cat. Wear your mask. Call your grandparents.

If there’s typos in this I’m sorry but also I’m not, I can’t be bothered to proofread again lol. Goodnight imma catch up on the sleep I lost. Gotta love full moons

#this is the first post in ages in which i used punctuation and capitalization are you proud of me xD #dw it won’t stay like this #control #control remedy #alan wake #ok now go yell at me how stupidly wrong and dumb this is i’m ready #do you think my old math teacher would be proud #i think so #my economics teacher... not so much

[bittervitter]

ang0mang0′s “copycat” claims

I didn’t want to have to make another post about this, but since people on sonicfan799 / thatAnge / @ang0mang0′s Tumblr profile are getting riled up about this ridiculous drama that should have died ages ago, I figured I’d defend myself. Some people who are trying to support me have been saying incorrect things too, so I also wanted to clear that up. This crap has been going on for months, everyone is sick of it by now. Instead of being brief like I did for other social medias, I’ll be as detailed as possible this time.

[1] “she’s copying/imitating/heavily referencing from my art style!!!”

Like people have said a million times, no I’m not. And nor is anyone else. Just because someone draws the Sonic characters in a similar style to you does not automatically mean they took, copied or “stole” those ideas from you. You don’t own the concept of buff, fluffy bodies or chubby muzzles. COINCIDENCE, as much as you hopelessly deny it, is very much a possible thing- even in crazy situations such as this. There are several other artists who have similar art styles by mere coincidence. IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. As examples, these Instagram artists have similar styles: @ azulytoons and @ indigonite0 / @ magenta_mel and @ zer0finix / @ himemikal and @ natirix. NONE of these artists are “stealing” or referencing from each other- they just have similar art styles, and that is perfectly okay! They draw completely different things with completely different mindsets. The world does not revolve around you, ang0. Not everyone knows who you are, so some people who use the same traits that we do don’t even know we exist.

Also, to anyone unaware, an art STYLE is not merely how one chooses to portray a character. An art STYLE is also what brushes you use, how you sketch, how you line, how you colour, how you shade, how you choose to portray certain objects or ideas- basically your entire fucking understanding of how something’s supposed to look and how you LIKE it to look. It’s not just “chubby faces, poofy curly hair, buff bodies”. It’s everything in a piece AND that.

[2] “she’s tracing my art/ redrawing my ideas!”

Literally no. People have constantly asked you to provide evidence and you refused to. All you did was scream “but it’s so obvious, just look at it!” or “are you dumb? use your eyes!” and several other insults. If you want to prove a point or make someone see something, GIVE. EVIDENCE. The only person who actually provided “proof” was pin_kpeach, your ever so loyal whiteknight, but her “proof” only backfired and proved that the both of you are extremely delusional. In the drawings of ours that she layered over each other, next to NONE of the lines lined up. It looked like a clustered mess of scrap, and the reason for that is because IT WASN’T TRACED. In the one or two drawings where ONE. SINGLE. PIECE. actually lined up was entirely zoomed in to make it seem as though the whole thing was traced. No, honey, that’s not how you provide proof. That’s how you pull a muscle by reaching so desperately to lie about me. The rest of the drawings in those pictures didn’t line up at all, and one- or I believe both- needed to be titled to line them up in the first place. You could say that some people trace things and resize or rotate them, but if I were as dumb as you persist to say, then I wouldn’t have done something like that. Either way, one aspect of a drawing lining up is a common thing for people who have similar styles because- well, I just said it. THEY HAVE SIMILAR STYLES. If they draw something the same way, well fucking duh, it’ll match someone else’s drawing almost exactly sometimes.

[3] “she’s too petty and too much of a liar to credit me! saying the art isn’t hers will hurt her oversized ego!”

Ahaha no. The only one here with an inflated ego is you, ang0. You call me the egotistical one yet you act as though your life is falling apart just because someone else draws like you on the internet. Stop acting like a special snowflake, you are not the only one on this planet with an art style of that nature. I don’t credit you because crediting you makes no damn sense. Why should I credit someone who’s had absolutely no impact on my work whatsoever? What in the hell did you do for my drawings that makes you deserve so much credit? Did you sketch it? No. Did you line it? Nope. Did you colour or shade it? Not a chance. Just because I came up with a design for the characters that happens to look like yours does not mean I owe you jack shit. You cannot. own. a style. Get over it.

[4] “she worsened my depression and is the reason I can’t draw anymore! I have no motivation when there’s some idiot copycat stealing all my art!”

I don’t want to sound like that kind of person, but you worsened your own depression. You painted this false picture in your head and continue to hang onto that belief like your life depends on it. I haven’t done ANYthing to you. You came to ME with these stupid claims back when my art looked LESS like yours, before I even knew who you were. You’re making yourself feel horrible because you, for some paranormal reason, refuse to believe that you’re not the only one with that kind of style. This is why people call you childish, you’re like a whiny baby that can’t accept another child having a toy similar to yours. I can’t even decide whether I should say “grow up” because you’re older than me- not to mention you’re an ADULT.

[5]”she constantly sends her whiteknights to attack me, harass me and send me threatening messages!”

I’ve said several times to my followers NOT to harass you or your followers or anyone against me in this mess at all. I do not send anyone after you. People say things to you out of their own free will and with their own words. I can’t magically know when this happens, why they decide to and I especially can’t control anyone. I’m sorry that my friend Koro sent you all those DMs and horrible messages wishing a lot of very bad things onto you and your family- I asked her several times before and after not to do that, but I didn’t have a clue she did it until after the fact. Either way, don’t go around assuming that I put people up to this or I intentionally ask people to do these things to you. Why in the hell would I do that? What good does that do? All I wanted to do was talk things out but at this point, you don’t even take me seriously, so I can’t even try anymore. The few times we did talk you refuse to see my point of view and just see me as a liar. What the hell am I supposed to do then?

[6]”all vio does is lie, she’s so fake all the time, lying for her petty ego”

I’m not even sure how to respond to this but I thought I might as well bring it up. No matter what I do or say, ang0 sees me as nothing but some retarded liar that can’t help but lie their way around everything, even though I’ve been nothing but genuine all this time. It’s why I can’t even communicate with her anymore, because “shut up, stop lying you copycat” is all I get in response basically.

[7] her insane hypocrisy

Ange and pin_kpeach have said numerous times that I’m rude or insult her, and there have been times where I’ve been mean out of anger, but I know for a fact I apologized for it in DMs. Ange apologized too. I don’t remember ever insulting her after that, but ang0 doesn’t ever stop ridiculing and insulting me with almost every comment she makes on the drama. If she really was sorry, she wouldn’t have done it again, but I guess she said “fuck it” and just continued anyway. Pin_kpeach likes to say I’M the hypocrite for saying Ange is harassing me yet being rude to her a couple times, yet they do they exact same thing, but even worse?? I try my best to be as civil as possible, but ang0 and pink don’t waste a second calling me and my supporters all sorts of colourful names just because they don’t agree with her claims. In fact, here’s a list of every single thing ang0’s ever called me:

retarded, retard, stupid, idiot, dumb, low IQ, mentally ill, crazy, talentless, skill-less, copycat, art thief, (dumb) cow, fuckhole, asshole, bitch, wanna-be artist, unreasonable, clown, fake, liar, hypocrite, delusional, dick, stalker, bittershitter, dumbass, immature

There’s probably more than that, but that’s as much as I can remember. Not hard to forget when she repeats them almost all the time.

[8] gatekeeping ideas

Ange and pink act as if two people drawing a character in the same outfit automatically equals “du bist kopying mein style!!”. I can’t even begin to imagine the mental gymnastics you need to do in order to believe a thought process like that is logical. She thinks that anyone who draws Amy in a dress with a white under-skirt or white ruffles underneath is nothing but a copied idea from her. She thinks that me drawing Amy in a green tank top, blue backwards cap and blue sports shorts is copying her drawing of Amy in a green unidentifiable top (you could only see her back, she didn’t seem to have straps) and blue sports shorts with a slightly different design is automatically copied from her. The poses, shading, angle and idea behind the drawing were COMPLETELY different- but nonono, “this is stolen because the outfit is the same!” They also use the excuse of the whole chubby faces, curly hair, blah blah blah- see point [1] as to why that’s BS.

[9] her perception of my followers/supporters

Aside from Koro, I don’t know if anyone has seriously threatened or harassed her. Her followers comment on my posts, my followers only comment when she brings up the drama or whines about it. She insults my supporters when they don’t agree with her and act like they’re a bunch of immature brats who are wrong while she’s the high and mighty mature one seeing through non-existent lies. I’m used to her making fun of me, but I’m sick and tired of her insulting people who have nothing to do with the drama just because they don’t agree with her. Like, seriously? You call everyone immature and stupid yet you’re the one insulting people non-stop just because they realize how ridiculous and childish you’re acting. That’s why “childish” has become a popular adjective for you, ang0. BECAUSE YOU’RE BEING CHILDISH. CONSTANTLY. You get pissy, insult others and put people down but whine and cry the next minute because you constantly like to play the victim. Speaking of which...

[10] the victim card

I have absolutely no idea what ang0 goes through in real life, but there is no excuse for how she’s behaved during this drama AT ALL. Ange constantly defames her own artwork, calling it shit, calling it every bad name in the book, but doesn’t hesitate for a minute to gatekeep her style as if it was the best thing in the world. She says it’s because she “worked her ass off” and doesn’t want people just stealing her hard work. Okay, but you do realize that other people put just as much work into their own art, no matter if it looks like yours or not, right? She demands that people change their style to stop looking like hers, acting as if that can be done in a matter of minutes, because people having similar styles makes her uncomfortable. Well, surprise motherfucker- welcome to the internet. No one is original and everyone is original at the same time. People are bound to come up with similar ideas and you’re just going to have to deal with it. But despite the similarities, people are still original in their own right. If you believe that people can change a style so easily, why not just change your OWN style? Because you worked your ass off? Well, THEY WORKED THEIR ASS OFF TOO. So don’t act like you’re the only one who’s put effort into their craft. Art is hard, and that applies to EVERYONE- even professionals.

You blame me and other “copycats” for all your problems, blaming us for worsening your depression, ruining your passion for art- when you’re the only one who does this to yourself. Yes, there have been genuine art thieves in your life, and people who have stolen your art- but what I’m talking about are the people like me who DON’T steal your art or are merely inspired by you. People who say “you should be happy they’re inspired!” aren’t saying “you should be happy they’re copying!”. They’re saying that you should be glad that your work is so inspiring that people create their own unique ideas based off your own. Inspiration doesn’t require credit unless they’re purposefully taking a massive part of the original. But being inspired by a hair style or even a pose isn’t stealing. It’s inspiration, that’s it. I’m not inspired by you at all, but I can at least appreciate your art- even if you think I’m just being fake.

[11] ang0mang0′s history and why this shit doesn’t even make sense

Ange has said publicly and to me in detail about how she’s been accused of the same “art style theft” in the past. From what I’ve gathered or heard, people used to accuse her of copying a popular artist called myly14 who’s Sonic art is pretty much everywhere. Whether it be in edits, MVs or whatever else.  Looking at her old art when she went under the name sonicfan799, her art does look similar to myly’s, but ang0 insisted that she didn’t copy myly and didn’t even know who she was. She legit said “it’s not my fault my art looks like someone else’s”, so basically- it was coincidence. She said she changed her art style because she “isn’t an asshole and didn’t want to make the other artist uncomfortable”, even though art style theft isn’t a thing and no one needs to be forced out of a style just because someone else already draws that way. I have no idea what myly’s stance on that situation was, but the fact that it happened just proves how stupid her current claims are.

Ange says that her style is “too complex” to be coincidentally similar to someone else’s, even though the fact that it’s happened 30 times (according to her) just proves that no, ang0, no it fucking isn’t. Your style isn’t complicated at all. Detailed sure, but no style is too complicated to be similar to another’s. Being complex doesn’t make something any less likely to be identical to another complex style.If you didn’t copy myly14 in the past, what right do you have to accuse me of the same damn thing? If I really am copying you, then you have to admit to copying myly, because you can’t just lie about your past and then shit on me for doing the same thing. So it’s either you stop this nonsense or you drag this drama down with you to your grave and admit you copied myly14.

Another thing, myly14 didn’t even have a “simple” style. The fact that her art was almost instantly recognizable and popular meant that she had a signature style that stood out. Yes, she used a lot of the original Sonic style’s anatomy, but her stylization of said anatomy, her shading and the way she composed her pieces gave her a signature style. The most stylized thing I could see was how she drew muzzles, and guess who drew muzzles in a similar way as well? You did. People saw how your way of drawing faces and some parts of the body and thought it looked liked myly’s. The similarities in your anatomy, and not your shading or colouring, was what made people think you copied her. That exact same thing is happening between me and you. My shading, colouring and composition is entirely different from yours, but some parts of the anatomy are similar.

If you really didn’t copy myly14, you have absolutely no. fucking. excuse. to accuse me of the EXACT. SAME. SHIT. that happened to you.

You never needed or deserved to be pressured out of your old style just because people thought it looked similar to someone else’s, and that’s why I refuse to change my style now. Because it isn’t. fucking. fair. To ANYONE.

[12] how I feel (this is copied over from my DeviantART)

At this point I've grown used to what she has to say, but it still hurts. She thinks that I'm some kind of cartoon villain maniacally laughing behind a computer screen every time I post something because she's so deep into her belief that I really copy everything she draws and that nothing I've never posted has any true effort put into it. She genuinely believes she owns all my art and that I devote my entire gallery into recreating her image or some crazy shit like that. It sounds really dumb, but from what I've read from her poorly constructed comments and rants, that's basically what she believes.

She thinks I don't care at all about how all this affects her or anyone at all, but I do. It doesn't just hurt me in the sense that she makes me feel awful with all her insults, but I just feel so bad for her. I feel guilty in the sense that I couldn't do anything at all to help her, not that "shes prolly feeling guilty and made that april fools joke to let out some guilt!!". (If you don’t know, on April Fools Day, I changed my Instagram bio to say “clown” and call myself “the ultimate copycat” as a joke.) That was a really stupid reaction from her by the way... who the hell comes up with that? Now that she's going away for a month, I feel even worse because all I wanted to do was try to make her come to her senses and end this mess. I thought I could talk some sense into her- that didn't work. Her delusions are so strong, she's like a brick wall. I thought I could ignore the drama- that didn't work. She "clowns" and talks about it so annoyingly often. Not to mention people do things on their own to stir shit up. I thought I could support her regardless and maybe try making her feel better about her art- that didn't work. She thinks I'm fake and that everything I say is a lie. Because of me, she probably doesn't believe other people too- and that makes me feel even more terrible.

No matter what I do, I'm automatically the villain and she's the tortured, helpless artist that everyone is against because "everyone is dumb, supporting a copycat" and she's just "used to it, because she's dealt with so much shit already!". It's so ridiculous. If she would just try to actually better herself or the situation, she wouldn't feel so horrible all the time. Like... for god's sake, she relied on a video game to make her happy- that's not healthy, and just like I suspected, it didn't fucking work.

more of how I feel

Because of ang0, I just feel like garbage. My self esteem and confidence in my art was already low. Thanks to her, I don’t feel original (or as original) anymore- and I’m afraid to show many of my new or old ideas because she or her whiteknight pin_kpeach may spring out and say “copycat! stolen! you’re not original!” and a plethora of other insults. I can barely sketch or draw Sonic content without panicking and feeling worthless because all I have is her words and her opinions stuck in my head. She blames me for her demotivation and shit like that when she’s done the same thing to me. She thinks I don’t care about her or her art, when I do, but when I say that, she calls me fake. In reality, ang0 couldn’t give a damn about me and I’m pretty sure she’d be happy if I were dead. She has said before that she doesn’t care if I killed myself soo... there’s that. Anyway lemme not drag my feelings out too long, I just thought I’d say it to anyone willing to listen since her immediate response would’ve been “fake, liar” etc, etc. I really don’t want anyone to feel bad for me or anything like that, I just want people to listen and understand. That’s all.

a final note

I’m really thankful- like, REALLY thankful- for everyone who’s been on my side throughout this. I don’t like picking sides, and I’d hate to make people do so, but there doesn’t seem to be any in between to this at all. It’s either you believe I’m copying her or you don’t.  Most people don’t- thank goodness for that- but some do. And there’s nothing I can do about it. At this point, whatever man.

Please please PLEASE do not harass ang0. Don’t threaten her, don’t insult her, don’t do anything rash or fucking illegal. It’s all fair game if you want to POLITELY SPEAK to her, or try to start a discussion, but please don’t do anything stupid. And especially don’t do things in my name. If you want to debate with me or her, do research first- don’t just jump to conclusions or make assumptions.If you want nothing to do with this drama, then simply don’t say anything- just be aware of what’s going on, that’s all I ask. So nobody gets the wrong idea on either side.

Sorry for this being so long, I think I’m done for now.

Thank you if you read the whole thing.

[9.4.2020]

[krumbine]

Thoughts on 35: Birthdays in the Time of the Pandemic

The pandemic has taken T-Rex Cafe from me on my birthday.

It was a fledgling, two-year-run of a tradition but I honestly don’t give a shit. And not because I was ‘just’ there earlier this year for a much-needed dino/LEGO-themed catch-up with an out-of-town friend.

This would have been the year that the T-Rex Cafe tradition evolved into the Dinosaur World tradition (DID YOU SEE WHAT I JUST DID THERE?!) — Dinosaur World is an extraordinarily out-of-place Florida attraction found in a corner of the Sunshine State that’s closer to Tampa than Orlando. The Plant City (actual city name) location is great, because it might just be far enough outside the bubble of the Plastic City (not the actual city name) that it wouldn’t be suffocated to death by His Holy Mousiness.

Not that any of that matters.Dinosaur World is an open-air attraction with paths that weave through a foliage-dense park. It’s home to a single animatronic set-piece tucked away in a sad-looking museum that’s not winning any awards (the animatronics or the museum).

Please don’t think I’m underselling it. Dinosaur World is glorious.

It’s clear that the animatronics aren’t the star of the attraction — that designation goes to the massive dinosaur sculptures that litter the jurassic park. These dense, solid constructs have been fabricated across decades and it’s a joy going from a modern, somewhat realistic representation of a dinosaur to an older, derpy sculpture that just so happens to be the exact, anantomicaly-incorrect image you conjure when you find yourself thinking the words ‘Dinosaur World’.

Again, I am not bullshitting you even in the slightest: it is glorious.

The best part, by any measure of bestness, is the gift shop — and this is speaking as a dude who lives in Orlando metro, the global epicenter of that other pandemic afflicting the globe: gift shops. It’s so bad here that new strains of gift shops have evolved that no longer require a host attraction. In the Orlando area, you can find gift shops that are located at the exit of other gift shops.

Again, I am not bullshitting you even the slightest: the Dinosaur World gift shop bests all other gift shops with its tiny, useless clappers-not-slappers arms tied behind its back.

Generally speaking, I stand immune to senseless purchases of molded plastic that, generally, serve to only collect dust.

But in the Dinosaur World gift shop? I laugh in the face of budgets.

I’ll take this massive Spinosaurus. And that ill-fitting Dinosaur World cap. And that ridiculously amazing piece of framed lenticular art where the T-Rex foot LITERALLY LEAPS OUT OF THE PICTURE. Oh, and a couple of plush. Okay, sure, a few more plush for the niece and nephew, too.

This gift shop is big, unreasonably so. It has all the staples: dinosaur toys of every stripe, t-shirts, decorations, books, and even jewelry.

It. Is. Glorious.

I’m not going to Dinosaur World or its gift shop for my birthday, but on the other hand, I’m not going anywhere for my birthday. And I honestly don’t give a shit.

I’m personally in Week 4 of The Great American Quarantine but Florida as a whole only officially went into lockdown last Friday. This has created a fascinating dichotomy in the state — people like me who are old hats at this thing (yes, I know others have been in quarantine for long) and those who are just now experiencing life-stuck-at-home.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never felt stuck. I bought my house for a reason and I’m more than happy to work from it and avoid leaving it. Don’t get me wrong, my new-to-quarantiners, there IS an adjustment period. And depending on your life and who you are, maybe you never get out of the adjustment period.

Me, I usually take about two-to-three weeks to adjust to anything.

So as newcomers reach ‘peak quarantine’, I find my emotional self mostly equalized to pre-pandemic levels of dyspeptic misery and abject hopelessness, occasionally sidelined by the pure undiluted joy of creating a cool video or losing myself in a cathartic piece of writing.

I am not a ‘happy person’ and the mere notion abhors me. Not in respect to your own happiness, of course — you should be whatever flavor of happy you want, rock your-goddamn-happy socks off and go nuts. But me? That’s not my baseline and never was in 35 years. 

Life can be a miserable shit show and some people just needed a pandemic to see it.

Those moments of pure bliss I sometimes get to enjoy? Here’s what comes next: I finish project — which is a postpartum shit show in itself — and then I put that moment of bliss online where, generally speaking, no one seems to care.

Okay, look, I know it sounds like I’m sitting here on my 35th birthday complaining that nobody pays any attention to my creative work, but I’m not. I’m sitting here I’m on my 35th birthday complaining that nobody pays any attention to my creative work AND FOR SOME REASON THIS STILL SENDS ME IN A FUCKING SPIRAL DECADES INTO THIS GAME probably because the spiral was immediately preceded — as mentioned — by that fleeting moment of actual bliss, a genuine happy distraction for the professional unhappy person.

Really, I’m not complaining. Just sharing a little bit the depressed psychosis I call home.

It’s just me, myself, and my abyss. That’s the title to an unfinished song I was writing for the ukulele. I’ll get around to it.

But here’s the point: for me (and all those millions like me — you know who you are) the abyss (*cough* MY abyss) is always there. Always has been. Old buddy, old chum. I’m not always in it and most days it’s not even a passing consideration …. but I know it’s ALWAYS there.

Kinda how the abyss works.

So I don’t know whether to laugh at or feel bad for all those happy people in quarantine who are crashing down and just now getting a good glimpse at the dyspeptic misery and abject hopelessness of the world. 

For a lot of us, this gets worse. Maybe emotionally. Maybe physically. Maybe economically. 

For some of us, it’s always been this bad. Maybe emotionally. Maybe physically. Maybe economically. 

The advice from this professional unhappy person: figure out what brings you bliss, that thing you can lose yourself in, even if briefly, and commit. Be unapologetic. For me, it’s dinosaurs, animation, video editing, technology, and LEGO. If I can combine all those things, that’s a pretty happy distraction from the looming abyss. At least for a little while.

On the other hand, if you still have positivity exploding out of your asshole right now …. um, okay? Good for you? I don’t know if you’re stubbornly blind to reality or if we’re just wired that differently, but whatever. You do you, just don’t expect us unhappy people to get on your level. There aren’t enough spoons in the world for that shit.

A few more bits of advice from your future depressed quarantine avatar: fix your personal relationships and be selfish as shit. I’m 35 and twice-divorced, which means I’m lucky enough to be stuck at home right now with someone who understands every single beat of this post. I’m trapped inside with someone who adds to those moments of creative bliss, as opposed to being indifferent to them or — worse still — detracting from them.

Whatever your relationship issues, rip the fucking bandaid and deal with your shit because if you don’t, well, you’ll be quarantined with it. So sayeth the 35-year-old twice-divorced, professional unhappy Krumbine.

Life’s good. Sometimes. Mostly it’s a shit sandwich. But that’s okay, too. Because dinosaurs. And LEGO. And creating cool shit.

And donuts.

Yes, I think today would be a good day for donuts. 

Stay quarantined, my friends.

Love, Krumbine

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Krumbine is a professional video editor, digital artist, and creative wizard currently quarantined in Kissimmee, Florida. When not producing content for the likes of Visit Orlando, Orlando Sentinel, or AAA National, Jordan is probably yelling at a stubbornly defective Macbook keyboard, tracking creative projects in Trello, and animating quirky videos with LEGO and other various toys.

Leave a dollar in the Tip Jar: https://ko-fi.com/krumbine

Short stories: https://bit.ly/2XY5D7I Books on Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bsqK5Y YouTube: https://bit.ly/2W41nSG Twitter: https://bit.ly/2VH0Vbu Facebook: https://bit.ly/2VpnylZ LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2xnmk1e

http://www.krumbco.com

#writeblr #writer #musings #dinosaur #t. rex #pandemic #covid #quarantine #depression #amwriting #selfish #happy #sad #krumbine #jordan krumbine

[junker-town]

SB Nation reviews: The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Fox Photos/Getty Images

Style 10

Content 7

Overall 8.5

When you’re only allowed to leave the house once a day, it puts a lot of pressure on the morning walk. Do I point the buggy north or south? Fortunately for me, just down the road from my house is Crystal Palace park, which offers two great benefits: first, a lot of space for social distancing and the avoidance of joggers, and second, a chance to travel back in time a few hundred million years. Even luckier, this route — down to the park, round the dinosaurs, back again — is almost exactly the right length for my daughter’s first nap of the day. Synergy in the time of corona.

From time to time, I like to imagine that the Crystal Palace dinosaurs catch somebody entirely by surprise. An unsuspecting soul, ambling along the path, KeepCup in one hand and phone in the other. Then all of a sudden: horror. A creature — a monster — scaled and dreadful, clambering out of the water, out of deep time. Teeth from a nightmare; spikes serried along its back. Cracked, staring eyes. Mouth open to bite. To roar. To … to … hang on, it’s not moving.

But even if this does happen, the shock can’t last long. Once the brain catches up with itself, it will remind its owner that the dinosaurs have all been dead for a while now. And in any case, this doesn’t look like any dinosaur you know. The legs are wrong. It’s fat in the wrong places. It’s the wrong kind of strange.

Mike Kemp/In PIctures via Getty Images

When I first saw the dinosaurs, some 15 or so years ago, I laughed. They were funny. They were wrong. They were funny because they were wrong. I was 20-odd years old and so I knew everything; certainly I knew what dinosaurs looked like. I’d seen Jurassic Park. As a child, I’d memorised every name from Aardonyx to Zupaysaurus and back again. And so, as a young and irritating adult, I knew just how silly and incorrect these weird lizards were.

They were built in the 1850s by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a sculptor and natural history artist, in collaboration with various experts in early paleontology including Richard Owen, the man who came up with the word “dinosaur.” They were based on reasoned extrapolations from the available fossils and they were, for their time, as good a job as anybody could likely have done. They became a minor sensation, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert dropped by several times.

They even made it into literature — the titular hero of HG Wells’ Kipps takes his bride to be to walk among the “strange reminders of the possibilities of the Creator … huge effigies of iguanodons and deinotheria and mastodons and suchlike”:

Kipps meditated on the monstrous shapes in sight. “I wonder ‘ow all these old antediluvium animals for extinct,” he asked. “No one could possibly ‘ave killed ‘em.”

”Why, I know that,” said Ann. “They was overtook by the Flood …”

Kipps meditated for a while. “But I thought they had to take two of everything there was —”

”Within reason they ‘ad,” said Ann …

The Kippses left it at that. The great green and gold Labyrinthodont took no notice of their conversation. It gazed with its wonderful eyes over their heads into the infinite — inflexibly calm.

But neither history nor paleontology have been kind. The park was ravaged by fire in the 1930s and afterwards the dinosaurs became run down. Even now, despite their addition to the UK’s list of protected constructions and ongoing restoration efforts, they still seem quaint. Polish them however you like, but Hylaeosaurus looks like a Harryhausen, the Teleosaurs raise their long snouts to the air like they’re tooting on trumpets, and the Labyrinthodonts, whatever Wells might have said, look like nothing so much as a pond of idling toads.

Moment Editorial/Getty Images

Of all London’s many parks, Crystal Palace is the most post-apocalyptic. As such the dinosaurs, long-fallen monarchs dragged forward through time by their planetary heirs, suit their space well. So does the coronavirus, as it goes: the quiet skies, the awkward distance, the sense of the world moving from a known past to an unknowable future.

It is named for a vast Victorian glass exhibition house that was built in Hyde Park, up in central London, to host the Great Exhibition of 1851. After the exhibition ended the whole edifice was taken down and moved eight miles south, to preside over a newly defined park in a leafy suburb. New lakes were dug, dinosaurs were built.

The Palace is no longer there. It burned down in 1936, and subsequent movements to rebuild the thing have founded on issues of cost, of time, and a general sense that there’s always something more important to be getting on with. But you can walk around the space where it was, which is still freighted with its absence. Stone mountings support a great emptiness. Grand steps carved into the landscape lead nowhere at all. Guardian sphinxes sit at rest, with nothing to watch over.

These sphinxes were recently restored and repainted a startling shade of red, somewhere between blood and rust. This, apparently, was their original colour, back when they guarded the steps of the Exhibition, but it has the odd effect of making them seem somehow less historical than they did. Old stone, historical stone, is crumbling and grey, stained with water and furred with moss. It wears its time like a lined face; the past can be read into it. Here the search for the authentic has produced something jarring, a double anachronism: they seem neither new nor old, but rather to have fallen out of time altogether.

Being older, wiser, and significantly more tired, and being reconciled to the fact I don’t know everything and often barely know anything, which I understand to be the condition of adulthood, I no longer find the wrongness of the dinosaurs funny. But I like them a lot more than I did. There is something encouraging and heartening about their wrongness. They stand now not as monuments to the power of Victorian science, an empire extending itself into the distant past, but bear witness to the fallibility of humanity.

Because, dear reader, it turns out that I was wrong as well. Jurassic Park was wrong.

I remember, as a kid, being impressed by the teeth and the horns and all the rest but most of all by the seriousness of dinosaurs: the grand longnecks, the terrible sharptooths. Even The Land Before Time is clear that its characters’ frivolity is a consequence of their childhood; the adult dinosaurs are just as serious as they should be. The dinosaurs I grew up with, once I’d left that early childhood stage where everything can be any colour and started reading books with pretensions to accuracy, were drab creatures. They ran from grey through brown and on to dark green, with just the occasional flash of colour to keep things interesting. Serious colours: all the flavours of military camouflage

We know better now. We know — we think we know; we are currently advancing as our best guess; the science has changed — that dinosaurs, or at least quite a few of them, were riotous explosions of feathers, profusions of colour. Hilarious, dramatic, and even a little bit camp. I wonder, sometimes, as I push the buggy past the Iguanodon’s portly shape, how the feathering of dinosaurs might have altered my childhood obsession. Perhaps it would have been less serious, less taxonomic — I know all the names! I am insufferable! — and more playfully strange. Or perhaps I would have just got into stamps instead.

Imagno / Contributor / Getty Images

For Christmas, my partner and I bought our daughter an A to Z dinosaur poster, painted by the artist James Barker. The paintings are colourful, gleefully ridiculous, almost expressionist; a far cry from the greens and the greys of my youth. This is not an attempt to depict dinosaurs as they were, with as much accuracy as the moment allows. Rather, these are dinosaurs as they might have been. As it would have been fun for them to have been. Why shouldn’t Allosaurus be bright blue, with an orange head. Are you going to laugh at it?

The Crystal Palace monsters aimed for accuracy and so, as knowledge moved on, became ridiculous. Now they have been reclaimed, are celebrated in their wrongness. You can buy a T-shirt. Meanwhile the Crystal Palace sphinxes were restored with dutiful attention to authenticity, which has had the paradoxical effect of taking them out of all possible places. The dinosaurs on my daughter’s poster dance the line between these two: they are playfully, consciously incorrect. They peer out from behind their probable-feathers, a rainbow of possible-colours, and in their ambiguity they propose a relationship to the past that is imaginative and free. That takes what we know, acknowledges that we don’t know everything, and asks not what a thing should be, but what it could be.

Image courtesy James Barker

Fun fact: there was an Andrewsarchus. Not a dinosaur, not quite, but a prehistoric ungulate that slouched around what is now Inner Mongolia some 25 million years after the last Tyrannosaur lay down and died. As delightful as having my own almost-dinosaur was, however, it could not stop me cultivating an obscure jealousy of my brother, Peter, and his near-perfect overlap with the mighty Pteranodon.

[bobbystompy]

My Top 120 Songs Of 2017

Previously: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

The one saving grace is we do have 12 fewer than last year.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs for an artist, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track; not the ultimate factor, but it typically makes sharing the music easier

Speaking of… each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check any or every out for yourself

Oh, also, off the suggestion of Mike Gilkes -- and a few others -- I made this whole thing into a Spotify playlist, which you can peep here (includes 114 of the 120):

Let’s go?

120) Big Sean & Metro Boomin f/ 21 Savage - “Pull Up N Wreck”

Some mediocre, listenable rap made by dudes who know a bit better (well, at least 2/3rds of them).

119) Maroon 5 f/ Future - “Cold”

This song makes me feel mostly nothing... but the first minute of the video does have some solid Adam Levine alone-in-the-car acting.

/oh my god it has 119 million views

This was a lot easier to enjoy when I assumed it went unnoticed. Bonus points for the Wu-Tang shirt at the end.

118) Bleachers - “Hate That You Know Me”

Closed out 2017 undecided as ever on one Jack Antonoff. Should we hate him for dating Lena Dunham? Somehow respect him more? Give him mega credit for his big time pop songwriting collabs? Or is that a ding? Is he a nerd or the coolest guy in the cocktail bar? I do not know the answers to any of these questions, and this song is merely OK.

UPDATE: THEY GAWN

117) B.o.B f/ T.I. & Ty Dolla $ign - “4 Lit”

Real bad song with a mindless/terrible/misogynistic chorus. Yet... something about professional musicians sitting in a room and coming up with “4 Lit” as some sort of escalated to catchphrase to “lit” is just hilarious.

116) Prophets of Rage - “Unfuck The World”

Sure, this hits a lot of the same beats as Rage Against The Machine’s “Sleep Now In The Fire” from 18 years ago, but in these increasingly polarized, political times, I welcome their voice.

115) Kacy Hill - “Like A Woman”

This song is so chill and ethereal that it seems almost unfeasible for my punk/hip-hop/XX chromosome havin’ ass to completely sync with its wave.

114) The Decemberists - “Ben Franklin’s Song”

What happens when pop indie teams up with the lyrical stylings of Lin-Manuel Miranda? Well, this. I’m not sure if The Decemberists drop f-bombs in any of their other songs, but it pleases me to think it only happened here.

113) Offset & Metro Boomin - “Ric Flair Drip”

Mostly here for the beat.

112) Hurray For The Riff Raff - “Hungry Ghost”

A cool song that’s hard to put into a box. Indie? Pop? Rock? Forget labels, just enjoy.

(Minus a few points for the low hanging “girl/world” rhyme)

111) Wavves - “Dreams Of Grandeur”

I was pretty let down by the new Wavves LP, but this song sounds enough like the old stuff to be a net positive (despite being, like, 70 seconds too long)

110) Culture Abuse - “So Busted”

Culture Abuse got on my radar with last year’s all-timer, “Dream On”. It was an unrelenting, robotic pulverization. “So Busted” is more of a drug comedown; a ballad, even. While “Dream On” wanted to seek you out and kill you like a terminator; “So Busted” just wants a cuddle.

109) Trey Songz - “#1Fan”

This song is so dumb and funny and pseudo competent. Really not sure how the R&B guys get away with this shit.

108) The Killers - “The Man”

Is this in a movie? It should be in a movie. It’s kind of, like, a better version of what Arcade Fire has been trying to be.

107) New Lenox - “Protest Sweater”

A good song for the ending 2017 -- or any year, really -- and its run time (1:30) would make Joyce Manor proud.

106) Logic - “Everybody”

This is really good, but it reminds me so much of Kendrick that it becomes distracting.

105) Gorillaz f/ DRAM - “Andromeda”

Didn’t spend enough time listening to the new Gorillaz record, but I actually put the blame on them: it was long, man. So while I woulda loved to pick one of the songs with a cool cameo (hi, Vince Staples!), this is the one I actually had around the most. It’s all we’ve come to expect from this cartoon band -- kinda British, kinda futuristic, very undisturbed. Also, if it gets you back to the album before me, I heard that Damon Albarn told all collaborating artists to record their parts like the world was ending tomorrow.

104) Dropkick Murphys - “Blood”

If you know me at all, you know I historically have not been a fan of this band. But for whatever reason, this one connected -- bagpipes and all.

103) Captain, We’re Sinking - “Books”

CWS was never, ever going to top the falling-apart-desperation of 2013′s “The Future Is Cancelled”, but this song comes pleasantly close.

102) IRONTOM - “Be Bold Like Elijah”

My buddy Crooks rec’d this band, and the guitars give me Queens Of The Stone Age vibes in the best possible way. A bio on lastFM compared them to Arctic Monkeys, and you know what? I agree with that, too.

101) Jidenna - “A Bull’s Tale”

This song feels primed to explode and makes you wanna rip the shirt off your chest; only we don’t know if the bomb’s gonna blow in the middle or at the end.

100) Jeff Tweedy - “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”

Yeah yeah, the original version of this dropped in 2002, and yes, it’s just a cover by the dude who originally sang it. I... do not care. It made me appreciate the confessional regret all over again.

99) Talib Kweli f/ Yummy Bingham & Jay Electronica - “All Of Us”

It was all bad just a week ago

Kweli and Jay Elect are a collab made in conscious rap heaven, so this song was more than a pleasant surprise.

98) Rise Against - “House On Fire”

This song could have been on “Revolutions Per Minute”. Or maybe I’m just saying that because of the hand grenade lyric in the chorus.

97) HAIM - “Want You Back”

Can’t imagine there being a lamer song on this list. HAIM and Bleachers should get in a wuss rock beef that ends with pistols.

96) The Bigger Empty - “By Its Own (So What)”

My producer plays bass in this band. This song is super solid, and, maybe most importantly in these completely divisive times, unoffensive and approachable. Kinda Hush Sound-y.

95) Little Big Town - “Lost In California” (note: link is to live version)

From the bros and broettes who brought us “Day Drinking” comes this much more subdued track. If you squint, it doesn’t really even seem like country. Granted, if they sang “Alabama” instead of “California”, you could probably call that claim out immediately.

94) Lana Del Rey - “Heroin”

Another beautiful/dreamy song from an artist who’s near-perfected that niche.

93) Wavves & Culture Abuse - “Up And Down”

Wavves and Culture Abuse have already made appearances on this list, and we haven’t even cracked the Top 80. Fortunately, their collaboration scored a little higher than their individual outputs. Shout out to their uplifting outro “I’ll just get high and I’ll die alone”.

92) The Chainsmokers & Coldplay - “Something Just Like This”

This song played at my gym all the time, and I was positive it was Coldplay. Then someone told me it was The Chainsmokers. Then I looked it up on YouTube, and it says “The Chainsmokers & Coldplay”... so what’s the deal, assholes?

91) Lil Peep f/ Lil Tracy - “Awful Things”

I hadn’t heard of Lil Peep when I found out of his passing in 2017. After looking up some pictures, I was nearly 100% positive his music was not for me. This was incorrect. I haven’t really listened to songs that sound like his; it’s kind of like rap that treads this line of being bad while also kinda sounding like alternative rock; destructive love song that doesn’t flinch.

90) AFI - “Dark Snow”

Nothing new, but Davey Havok can still sing circles around almost anybody.

89) Dashboard Confessional - “Love Yourself” (link is to live, partial version)

Well, Dashboard covered Biebs, and we all lived to tell the tale.

88) Garrett Dale - “2016 Was...”

This song would be a blast as a singalong in a late night hotel room. There’s something calming about celebrating -- or at least acknowledging -- everything sucking.

87) Katy Perry f/ Skip Marley - “Chained To The Rhythm”

Got more than a few issues with this song, but it’s catchy, so they’re mostly forgiven. Even though it’s Katy Perry, I was pretty surprised to see it racked up 444 million views.

And seriously who the hell is Skip Marley?!

86) The Ramblin’ Boys Of Pleasure - “Glug, Glug, Glug”

Now is probably a good time to plug the lead track from my band’s b-sides record that came out this year (ten years in the making, baby!). Mandatory listening if you’ve ever bonged brandy, partied in Champaign, or counted down in a country voice.

85) Charly Bliss - “Glitter”

It’s been nearly a year, but it’s still somewhat difficult to calibrate this singer’s voice. Is it a little too saccharine, too childlike, or just perfect? You be the judge.

84) Emperor X - “Wasted On The Senate Floor”

This singer is real god damn frenetic.

83) Father John Misty - “Total Entertainment Forever”

/obligatory “yes, this is the one with the Taylor Swift lyric” reference

FJM has such a pro’s pro voice and makes super sound music... but it’s also kinda hard to have an overall opinion. The more 50-50 I get, the more I think it’s not all that great. The video is a microcosm. Like... why is Macaulay Culkin paying Cobain? Is this a commentary on capitalism? Oooh, nah nah nahs are nice! As divided as I still am, I’m pretty positive this song is good-if-not-great.

82) St. Vincent - “New York”

This song is further proof that soft, radio friendly music can still benefit from a well placed “motherfucker”.

81) Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness - “Dead Man’s Dollar”

As long as Andrew McMahon’s project is called “Andrew McMahon In the Wilderness”, I will make fun of him like clockwork.

This song is nice. I sometimes sing “I want Thon Maker” when he says “I want to make a” in the chorus.

80) Kele Okereke - “Streets Been Talkin’”

Kele’s most impressive feat was sneaking “bae” right into the chorus without me noticing until literally right now.

79) Rick Ross - “Summer Seventeen” 

How the hell did this dumbass song get so high up on the list? I have no explanation. Classic Roazy though -- aim high, fake it till you make it. When I started my new job in August, IT reset my password to “summer2017″, and I had this song’s hook in my head nearly every time I typed it in. All told, a pretty hilarious way to start a work day.

78) Michelle Branch - “Best You Ever”

This song sounds so dark and sultry, but I’m not totally sure why. Branch rules.

77) Calvin Harris f/ Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry & Big Sean - “Feels”

The best way to ruin this song for anyone is to point out how much the hook sounds like Katy Perry singing “Don’t be afraid to catch fish”.

76) Morrissey - “Spent The Day In Bed”

This is a very low maintenance lyric video. So you can either make fun of that or the “I spent the day in bed / I’m not the type, but I love my bed” line.

75) Red City Radio - “If You Want Blood (Be My Guest)”

The “We don’t need a god damn thing from you” chorus is a little punk cliche to win me over, but the Oklahoma City reference (”where our dreams come true and die”) is the line I’ve been waiting for since I found out RCR was from there.

74) Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs - “Talk 2 Her”

The closest we’ll get to a new Clash song in 2017.

73) Bad Cop/Bad Cop - “Womanarchist”

Factoring in the 2017′s themes (#MeToo, Harvey dead, etc.), this has to be the song title of the year. I smiled ear-to-ear watching this music video.

72) The Movielife - “Mercy Is Asleep At The Wheel”

Hey, The Movielife reunited!

71) The Rocket Summer - “Gone Too Long”

Unlike that lazy ass Morrissey, The Rocket Summer gave us a lyric video that basically passes as a legit music video.

70) Miguel f/ Travis Scott - “Sky Walker”

Me, every time I listen to this song:

“Ooh, beat is pretty solid.”

“Ah yeah, the hook’s good. I thought I really liked this song though...”

/falsetto part

“AW YEAH.”

69) Queens Of The Stone Age - “The Way You Used To Do”

Had never known about the Josh Homme/Elvis comparisons, but after hearing this, I totally get it now. Also: god damn it, man.

68) Macklemore f/ Skylar Grey - “Glorious”

What can we do to make Skylar Grey more famous? She Ginger Rogers’d for Em on “SNL” -- seriously, she played piano and sung Dido, Beyoncé, and Rihanna hooks (that’s a solid ass trinity!) -- has unarguably awesome songs, and never takes anything off the table. I honestly don’t care if she has another hit... let’s just, like, all Venmo her five bucks or something.

One of my fav music videos on the list so far. Be as skeptical of Macklemore as you want, but when his grandma offers him a drink (haha) then says she wants to “do it all” with their day together, it warms the hearts.

67) Direct Hit! - “Blood On Your Tongue”

Direct Hit! continues to be the best modern version of Green Day, The Ramones*, and themselves.

(* - without being Ramones-core)

66) Boyd & The Stahfools - “Party Penguin”

I’ve been in the game for a long while, but, for the first time in my career, I finally was part of a music video. If you told me it was a 2Pac parody that advertised craft beer, I’d, well, I’d believe you. We got Dave Hernandez on the hook, Mike Healy as Dr. Dre, and yours truly as Makaveli.

And all jokes aside, “On vacation like Bev D’Angelo” is one of my favorite penned lines.

65) Rancid - “Telegraph Avenue”

I like when Tim sings about grabbing his left-handed guitar.

64) Big Sean f/ Jeremih - “Light”

Sean Don made a forgettable 2017 album with many throwaway tracks -- but “Light” ain’t one of ‘em. I liked this song even before the touching video cemented its power.

63) blink 182 - “Parking Lot”

This is that weird mix of what makes all new blink really good and really eh at the same time -- Skiba involved (for better or worse), inspired Mark (for better or worse), and Travis’ overplaying (for better or worse). It’s for sure easier if you just turn your brain off and go with it.

Why does he reference Chicago in the verse then California in the pre-chorus?

I SAID “OFF”.

62) New Found Glory - “Your Jokes Aren’t Funny”

This song doesn’t break a ton of new ground, but it’s got this circular, easy chorus that keeps me coming back.

61) Teenage Bottlerocket - “Goin’ Back To Wyo”

Similar to Red City Radio writing about OKC, I can’t get enough of TB writing about their home. Did I blast this song while driving across the entire state alone this summer? Do you know me an ounce?

60) Frank Turner - “The Sand In The Gears”

A little dissatisfied with the current administration? Frank may be from across the pond, but he’s with you on this one, man. One of my favorite parts of this song is when he breaks the rhyme scheme just to angrily say “I thought that we were winning the war against the homophobes and the racists”.

59) Billy Bragg - “Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted”

Billy Bragg is here for all of us, with perspective, wisdom, and insightful guidance in tow.

58) Dave Hause - “The Flinch”

Send this one to an old flame if you’re hoping, you know, to maybe rekindle.

57) Selena Gomez f/ Gucci Mane - “Fetish”

That’s right -- “Bad Liar” got beat out by this significantly less popular single featuring one of my least favorite rappers.

/looks up play totals

”Fetish”... 130 million

“Bad Liar”... 214 million

Comparably popular, I say! For me, this one is all about the chorus -- and that beat’ll get you swayin’.

56) Jay Electronica - “Letter To Falon”

‘Cause who gon’ save them babies? / And finally put a definite to all those maybes

Death, taxes, maybe death again, and Jay Electronica never releasing a full length album. Our man has been on Roc Nation for nearly ten years. I hate him so much. /anxiously awaits his next move

Jay Electricity in his zone on this one; so comfortable, in full operation within the confines.

55) Laura Jane Grace - “Adore”

I don’t know who Amy Shark is, but LJG covered her song and punted my heart into Lake Michigan.

54) Russian Girlfriends - “Antidote”

Upbeat, direct song that starts kinda Metric-y with the riff but then gets more pop punk as it progresses.

53) Brian Fallon - “If Your Prayers Don’t Get To Heaven”

My fiancee laughed when I looked up how to play this song on the guitar and the guy who tabbed it out wrote “Typical Brian Fallon open chords” in the intro.

52) Cloud Nothings - “Enter Entirely”

If “Womanarchist” is the ‘best’ song title of the year, “Enter Entirely” is certainly the coolest. And please don’t let the very boring music video fool you -- this song gets after it, man. If you are a fan of rock music, it would blow me away if you found this song remotely objectionable.

(After seeing CN open for Japandroids on back-to-back nights this November, it feels criminal to have such a slow song represent the band, as their drummer is the Russell Westbrook of the indie scene. That dude does not tire and comes off as more machine than man.)

51) Conor Oberst - “Napalm”

Oberst released a 10-song album in 2016 that was super brooding and piano-y... then he released another album in 2017 (17 songs) that had every track from his previous record and seven new ones. Kind of a weird move, no? This is one of those seven; suffice to say it’s a little more upbeat.

50) Sorority Noise - “No Halo”

You could tell me this song came out in 2002, 2007, or both -- but not 2017. How is this not a time capsuled rival of Taking Back Sunday or My Chemical Romance? I don’t know, but if you like a lot of death, this one’s for you.

49) N.E.R.D f/ Rihanna - “Lemon”

Let’s lighten the mood back up with some RiRi rap. My buddy Crooks’ take: “That's how every 2017 hip-hop beat should sound.”

48) Kesha - “Praying”

It’s damn near impossible to talk about this song without talking about The Note. It occurs at 4:21, and it will make you a little faint.

Kesha dusts herself off and gets beyond empowered in this one. This song could legitimately soundtrack the entire #MeToo movement. When the drums kick in halfway through, you’ll be ready to fight back too.

When I’m finished, they won’t even know your name

47) The Smith Street Band - “Laughing (Or Pretending To Laugh)”

This soft, hopeful love song is almost *too* respectful when it comes to interactions with the opposite sex. I’m not sure there’s a more endearing 2017 lyric than “And I don't wanna marry you just yet / But at least let me get you a cider / And I don’t even think I’d have to pay for it / Hopefully there’s a couple left on the rider”.

46) Run The Jewels - “Legend Has It”

Whenever I think of this song, I will always have that image of El-P holding up that gun to the bunny’s head. This song is braggadocious, each line one-upping the previous in perpetuity. Man, they probably rule live.

45) Vic Mensa - “Say I Didn’t”

Vic Mensa's Roc Nation debut (CAN YOU HEAR ME AT ALL, JAY ELECTRONICA?!?!?!?!?!?) was real strong, and this one gives you a good taste of what he’s about. He’s intense but controlled and even gets a little soulful. And depending what sphere you come from, you’ll either be extremely more or extremely less interested after he drops a Weezer reference. If that gives you trepidation, maybe the Nate Dogg namedrop will reel you back in?

44) Kendrick Lamar - “HUMBLE.”

I like Kendrick Lamar and will always recognize his talent, platform, and body of work (there’s a real case to be made that his “Control” verse killed hip-hop, and it’s just been an animated zombie ever since). Having said that...

He doesn’t always make it easy. The all caps song titles, the weird high pitched flow, the massive reliance of “bitch” in his choruses... yet, he’s the same dude who begs for stretch marked butts and body positivity. I don’t know, man. By the time he hits the “I make a play fucking up your whole life” line, I’m nearly all the way back in.

Last complaint: that organ-y keyboard thing could be so much louder. The beat almost feels diet because of that decision.

43) PKEW PKEW PKEW - “Cold Dead Hands”

This song is about how you can’t freeze this band to death, because they’ll party their way out of the situation.

42) Weezer - “Any Friend Of Diane’s”

This song puts me in a trance; they sing the same chorus lyric a million times, and I still almost want more.

41) Taylor Swift - “I Did Something Bad”

If this song isn’t a hit in 2018, then I do not know anything. For as uneven and questionable as her new singles were, this song has none of that. By the time she’s rolling on the tremendously magnetic “over and over and over again” part, you’ll feel like it’s 2009.

Maybe the old Taylor is still alive after all.

40) Best Ex - “Someday”

What’s that, you want your pop with a lot less baggage? This song is currently at 1,042 views, which is further proof of no justice in this world. I remember grocery shopping with this in the headphones, and you woulda thought it was the happiest moment of my life by the expression on my smiling, dumb face.

39) White Reaper - “Judy French”

“There are no good new rock bands wahhhhh”

Nah -- you just suck at finding music when it’s never been easier in human history, I guess?

38) Anti-Flag - “The Criminals”

This band has always lived in this dramatic life-and-death world, and it’s been going on for so long, that it’s like their vision of what they were always rebelling against was willed into existence.

37) French Montana f/ The Weeknd & Max B - “A Lie”

My dislike of French Montana is so high that I sometimes think about having to answer for saying something heinous about him. Kinda like when Kevin Garnett was accused of calling Charlie Villanueva (who has alopecia) a “cancer patient.”

KG’s all-time response:

“I am aware there was a major miscommunication regarding something I said on the court last night. My comment to Charlie Villanueva was in fact ‘You are cancerous to your team and our league,’" Garnett said in a statement to the media on Wednesday.

Hahahaha.

French, you are a cancer to hip-hop and our league. His verse even references stupid Karl Malone, because why wouldn’t it? The good news is we have The Weeknd on the hook *and* in the first verse, so you can basically just pretend it’s his solo song with a few regrettable cameos.

36) The Penske File - “Oh Brother”

The Penske File make it look effortless sometimes. After hearing this song and doing a Malört shot with their singer, I have higher hopes than ever for their 2018 full length.

35) The Front Bottoms - “Don’t Fill Up On Chips”

TFB’s new album didn’t give me everything I wanted in terms of uptempo bangers, but the lyrics, sentiment, and craftsmanship are all still very much present.

34) Vince Staples - “Big Fish”

The Juicy J chorus might not win a Pulitzer (”I was up late night ballin’ / Countin’ up hundreds by the thousand”), but Vince is rapping invincible, and by the time the lyrics call back his monster single (“Norf Norf”), you won’t be questioning anything anymore.

33) Julien Baker - “Shadowboxing” (link is to live version)

I know that you don't understand 'Cause you don't believe what you don't see When you watch me throwing punches at the devil It just looks like I'm fighting with me

I swear, Julien Baker might be one of the only people on this planet with the power to shut us all up and listen.

32) Paramore - “Fake Happy”

Paramore is a band that does dumb shit all the time. Infighting, legal drama, horrible makeover after horrible makeover. Seriously, this is real:

But through it all, there’s that unbreakable Hayley voice, and it’s like everything is gonna be OK again. I mean, no, it’s not -- but let’s still enjoy these fleeting moments, full blown pop transition or not.

31) Nothington - “Cobblestones”

This song briefly sounds like Lucero before turning into no nonsense despair punk.

30) Lorde - “Perfect Places”

Such a phenomenal album closer; great to have her back in the pop music fold. Car, headphones, party, whatever -- this song goes all around you.

29) Remember Sports - “I Liked You Best”

If Kesha’s high note in “Praying” was pop music’s peak vocal moment in 2017, I’d like to nominate the “You made this me-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-hess” (2:37) part as punk’s.

28) Phoenix - “J-Boy”

This band makes such gorgeous music.

27) Drake - “Free Smoke” (no link)

Drake’s full album output, in minutes, for the last four years:

2013: 59 minutes 2014: N/A 2015: 108 minutes 2016: 81 minutes

And this doesn’t include stray singles, diss tracks, or cameos (2014 had “0 To 100″, for example). What I’m saying is, despite high quality material, Aubrey has saturated us with music for nearly half a decade. So even though I dig him lots, it was like “Really?!” when I heard he was releasing 2017′s “More Life” and “WHAT” when I found out it was another 81 minutes (the same length as 2016′s “Views”). Though the record is stylistically very different -- I keep hearing people use the word “grime”, though I have no idea what it means -- it’s still got bars. My favorite stray lines (they add up):

- “More life, more everything” - “I dunk text J-Lo / Old number, so it bounce back” - “Hilton rooms, gotta double up / Writin’ our name on a double cup” - “I fall asleep in sororities / I had some different priorities” - “Women I like was ignorin’ me / Now they like ‘Aren’t you adorable?’ / I know the question rhetorical” - “I make too much these days to ever say ‘Poor me’” - “I wanna move to Dubai / So I don’t never have to kick it with none of you guys”

But, it wouldn’t be Drake without making fun of him some. The song beings with, well, him sampling himself at an award show. The sample: 

And more chune for your headtop So watch how you speak on my name, you know?

Which begs the question: did he do the weird Jamaican accent knowing he was gonna sample it? It treads this weird genius/calculated doofus line. All I know is it makes me laugh.

26) Tigers Jaw - “Favorite” 

This song could make me pensive and unhappy on the sunniest of days.

25) Tee Grizzley - “First Day Out”

Like many, I first heard of Tee Grizzley from a LeBron James Instagram workout video. It was an easy sell: Detroit, ferocious beat, and the dude goes *hard*. I got a little too excited and emailed my hip-hop friends: “What the fuck is this? This is GOOD.”

This was before I realized he kinda sounds the same in every song. It’s no matter -- we’ll always have “First Day Out”, a brief time in June 2017 where I thought Tee Grizzley could be the next to run the game.

I can’t even be in public with my hoodie on

24) The War On Drugs - “Strangest Thing”

It’s very difficult to write about The War On Drugs without mentioning how transcendent it is to listen to them in the car. Everyone is right about that, but, for me, I also have to mention how much this dude sounds like Dylan. People say Springsteen, but I hear so much Bob. You don’t necessarily have to get “past” it, but you do kinda have to get used to it. Once you do, the lead guitar will carry you into the clouds. This music will make you contemplate and reflect.

23) Foxing - “Night Channels”

Let’s keep the mood contemplative; you almost feel sleepless if not completely locked in to this one.

UPDATE: This dropped in 2015, /sigh

22) Craig Finn - “God In Chicago”

This is more of a movie than a song -- and the visuals agree. Focus in on the lyrics, take in the story, and then do it again soon because you’ll catch new wrinkles each time. One of the year’s best videos, for sure. Punk News phrases it well: “Here he’s made a solo album of losers who have no idea they’ve already lost.”

21) DJ Khaled f/ Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper, Lil Wayne - “I’m The One”

No one wanted you to know he had sex in 2017 more than DJ Khaled. He made his infant son Asahd the “Executive Producer” for this video. Why? Because he’s an idiot. Khaled’s still existing fame continues to confound. He’s more faux-platitudes than man at his point. So why do the best artists in the world collaborate with someone so seemingly unintelligent? I don’t know, but this song bangs and was probably my Song of the Summer. We got JB on the hook, a dumb-but-amusing Quavo*, Wayne trying to gain footing, and Chance running across the finish line backward with Best Verse title belt. But Khaled won’t let you forget about him, blaring DJ tag and all. This song suffers for that, and it’s all his fault. 

(* - his ad lib of just repeating everything becomes charming once you start to get Stockholm Syndrome with the song)

20) Ed Sheeran - “The Shape Of You”

What a 2017 for the man behind the year’s best (super successful) pop song.  At the turn of the calendar, I barely knew who he was, but before we all knew it, there was a legitimate public outcry because he was on “Game of Thrones” for, like, two minutes. What a time. Oh, also, the “Come on, be my baby...” bridge gave me some “Real World: New Orleans” acid flashbacks.

Great meme, take us out.

19) Minus The Bear - “Last Kiss”

If the shattered neon heart didn’t give it away, this is a “the relationship is definitively over” breakup song. Seeing them play it at Riot Fest made me miss my late friend Luke; I wish he could have heard this.

18) Hot Water Music - “Never Going Back”

I’ve always maintained Chuck Ragan plays guitar and sings songs like a running back. Well, this song carpe diem’s me enough to play actual running back*.

(* - jk, would never do this unless it was against very small children)

17) Lucky Boys Confusion - “Good Luck”

My hometown heroes released their comeback album in 2017, and I’m not sure any track sums up the effort better. By the time Adam sings “Burned out, they call us / Screw ‘em, we got endless memories / Punk rock and the polish / I hope it gave you something to believe”, there are no dry eyes left.

(And yes, this could totally be an AM Taxi song, but with Ryan Fergus’ killer-fills-only drumming, I’m glad it wasn’t.)

16) Hodera - “Baltimore”

This song would likely have a Top 5 objective approval rating of any on the list.

...“The Wire” forever.

15) Iron Chic - “A Headache With Pictures”

It ain’t heavy, it ain’t heaven

If Hot Water Music is carpe diem, what is Iron Chic -- seize the life?! My favorite description of the band came from Sam Sutherland, who tweeted: “Whose day has already been derailed by the unavoidably weighty introspection of listening to the new Iron Chic record.”

They are a certified run-through-brick-walls outfit. One of my final 2017 memories of this song was subtweeting “Now I know” the night I got engaged and having my buddy Ricky think she might’ve declined the proposal. May have to include a ring emoji next time.

14) The Flatliners - “Indoors”

Had to listen to this, like, five or six times before its brilliant greatness overtook me like falling into a river. The chorus is so, so heartfelt.

Don’t sleep on the video, either (especially the end).

13) Sylvan Esso - “Die Young”

Though I have tickets to see them for the first time in 2018, I am not mega-versed in the catalogue of Sylvan Esso. But this feels like their best song. Imagine if Romeo and Juliet turned out OK.

12) Oso Oso - “Shoes (The Sneaker Song)”

Jade from Oso Oso would likely want all of the above stylized in lowercase -- but this ain’t Jade’s list. This was my favorite new band of 2017, and I do believe they made the year’s best album. It’s early-2000s emo at times, pop punk at others, and all ear candy.

11) Sincere Engineer - “Corn Dog Sonnet No. 7″

Staying in the new artist lane, I proudly introduce Sincere Engineer. This band sounds like if Modern Baseball had a little sister. By the time singer Deanna Belos sings “I’m still learning how to be”, you want to pat her on the back and give her all your best advice.

Fantastic music video -- and she confirmed to me this past weekend that it’s real mustard, not puffy paint (“I have a towel that is all yellow from cleaning it up”).

10) new.wav - “Girls”

Alright, so stick with me on this: new.wav is the band, covering The 1975′s song “Girls” in the style of “Enema of the State”-era blink-182. Confused? Yeah, I was too, but check it out. Maybe more impressive than the arrangements/performance is how they were able to match blink’s production style -- no easy task.

9) Jay-Z - “Family Feud” (starts around 5:30; partial version)

Shawn Corey Carter wants to get right with everyone -- America, his peers, and, of course, within his own home. And though I may never understand the “New n****s is the reason I stopped drinkin’ Dos Equis” lyric, I’m on board with about all else. Similar to the Oso Oso record, “4:44″ is such an album that it feels unfair to single out a song to represent all of its parts. Stripped from the LP, the song does not hit as hard, but in the groove of the record, it’s the apex. And despite Hov seemingly desiring peace, the song does have more than a few call outs:

- “My stash can’t fit into Steve Harvey’s suit” - “And old n****s, y’all stop actin’ brand new / Like 2Pac ain’t have a nose ring too” - “Al Sharpton in the mirror takin’ selfies / How is him or Pill Cosby s’posed to help me?”

In the latter stages of his career, it’s hard to call everything Jay does ‘necessary’, but “4:44″ definitely checked that box.

8) Rozwell Kid - “Wendy’s Trash Can”

Vacillated all year between this one and “Michael Keaton” and literally flipped a penny my cousin Maggie loaned me to decide. “Wendy’s Trash Can” was heads.

7) The Weeknd - “Reminder”

This one got backdoored in as a latter single from The Weeknd’s 2016 album. One of my favorite parts about Abel is how little he has had to change to succeed. Sure, it’s silky smooth, but he hasn’t sacrificed the drugs, darkness, or ego that should offend (but doesn’t because it he pulls it off so well). After bragging early in the song about he won a kids award for singing about cocaine, he calls out peers for biting his sound, blings out his entire crew, and, well:

When I travel 'round the globe, make a couple mil' a show And I come back to my city, I fuck every girl I know

/clutches pearls

6) The Bombpops - “Be Sweet”

The guitar riff in this song is why I fell in love with punk music. Also, super cool story behind the lyrics:

“'Be Sweet' is an homage to our dear friend, the late Brandon Carlisle of the band Teenage Bottlerocket," vocalist Jen Razavi told AP. "Back in 2010, we were partying in a hotel room with Brandon and Ray Carlisle. There was a guitar in the room and Brandon was showing us an idea he had for a song. He had written it for his wife, but he told us we should play it and change the lyrics to 'getting rad with my boyfriend.' He wrote down all the lyrics on four sheets of hotel notepad paper. Since then, the melody and the chord progression were forgotten, but I still had the lyrics. So we wrote our own version of the song in the studio and used every single lyric that Brandon had written down.

Did I mention the video has an “In Bloom” feel? Stop reading, go listen.

5) Action Bronson - “Let Me Breathe”

Action Bronson ain’t givin’ nothin’ up. This is my pick for rap song of the year. It’s got TV brags (”I got two shows, I’m about to pitch another”), a tight chorus (”Let me breathe for a minute / White Range Rover blowin’ trees all in it”), and whimsy shit too (“Honey bouncin’ up and down, she nearly broke my dick”). Ghostface’s disciple is having more fun than just about anyone.

4) Japandroids - “North East South West”

Only a Canadian band could get me to care this much about my own country. The Vancouver duo penned an Americana ode to the road -- but there’s a twist... they talk about their cities too. For every New Orleans, there’s a Toronto. For every California, a Vancouver.

Maybe they’ll be the ones to end all the border wars.

3) Alex Lahey - “Every Day’s The Weekend”

This is the only submission on the list I’d feel comfortable calling a perfect song. Relatable themes, a chorus that’ll tangle you up, f-bombs in all the right places, and every part maximized. She has this way of weaving between cool confidence and youthful insecurity, all in the matter of one verse.

2) Carly Rae Jepsen - “Cut To The Feeling”

When it comes to “Call Me Maybe” and its legacy, I do not fuck around. This song gets really, really, really close. Just watch this dude.

Queen Carly blessed us with another one. The chorus soars, arms go up, and clouds are your closest companions.

1) The Menzingers - “After The Party”

It's the little things my mind commits / To etch behind my eyelids

When this song dropped, my buddy Dave Rokos called it his favorite Menzos song ever. That felt like high praise, but man, he might be dead on. “After The Party” rips me in half with its lyrics of palpable desperation:

Like a kaleidoscope in vibrant hues I navigate around your tattoos Said you got that one on a whim when you were breaking up with him And that Matryoshka Russian doll That lines your shelf from big to small What a way to start anew To shed your skin and find the old you 

If Carly’s chorus flies, this one holds us down like gravity. You feel everything, you feel nothing, you feel full yet voided, but after all of this -- the life, the party, the friends, the bars, the experiences, the nights, the lights, the fights, the city you live in -- it’s still her and you. Or him and you. Or whatever it is you come home to at the end, when it’s finally quiet.

#the menzingers #carly rae jepsen #2017 #music #alex lahey #japandroids #action bronson #the bombpops #the weeknd #rozwaell kid #oso oso #sincere engineer #punk rock #ironia #lucky boys confusion #foxing #the war on drugs #tee grizzley #tigers jaw #lorde #julien baker #vince staples #the penske file #black and white #best e liquid #pkew pkew pkew #kendrick lamar #run the jewels #sorority noise #brian fallon

[republicstandard]

Racial Profiles: Borzoi Boskovic, Host of The Poz Button

In ten words or less, describe your political persuasion.

Racist trade-unionism with nationalist characteristics.

How and when did you become “red pilled”?

Trayvon, etc. It's not really an interesting story. Most "redpill" stories aren't, to be honest.

What (or who) is the single biggest threat to the continued existence of Western civilization?

Liberal and decadent bourgeois whites. There's nothing to save if people don't want to save themselves.

What figure has been the greatest influence on the development of your political/ideological beliefs?

Probably Ted Kaczynski's writings, but it was never something I really took seriously or developed as you don't want to be known as the guy who said he was influenced by the Unabomber Manifesto. I grew up in a committed non-religious family so naturally, my mind became obsessed with death and by extension, it became obsessed with eschatology and the end of all things. Just normal teenage stuff, right? I got really into reading all about post-apocalyptic societies and the different end scenarios for all things, and thus that led to me discovering the grey goo scenario (spoiler: nanomachines go out of control and devour the world). Interest in that led to me reading, in college, the famous Wired article Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. Kaczynski was never anything more than just a whack-a-doodle bomber whose artist's sketch terrified me as a child, someone whom I was told as a teen that my nascent libertarianism at the time would inevitably lead towards, but that article gave me exposure to his ideas for the first time and I became obsessed with the possible futures that Kaczynski outlined. I wish he'd never committed the heinous and horrific crimes he committed, as we lost such a brilliant mind to system but I suppose that was inevitable when your professor is Henry Murray, the OSS's guy who pioneered the techniques for MK-ULTRA.

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Now here I am, actually influenced in my thinking by his writings on technological society and not entirely sure we can avoid the TechnoGay PissEarth future he outlined for us.

I guess they were right to warn me after all.

What are some other influences on you personally but perhaps not politically?

G.K. Chesterton is still a massive influence on me in terms of attitude and spiritual character. Satan fell by the force of his own gravity. It's important to be able to have a sense of humor about yourself and the world and to still have a mirthful character even when you're staring down at the possibility of PissEarth 2025. I'm a dour and melancholic person by nature; Chesterton's works have always managed to give me a counterbalance to that attitude. My thoughts these days are turning toward Houllebecq these days though, so I guess we'll see how long that attitude holds out. With Lauritz on vacation from The Third Rail, someone needs to embody his well-spring of boundless optimism.

What does your perfect America look like?

I don't know. I don't think I even have one. Non-whites who know my politics have quizzed me on this before, concerned about where my politics will lead to for them. I've said before that I would be perfectly content with a stricter Singaporean system. I don't run around talking about ethnostates or the like though because it's basically pointless. Here's some hard to swallow pills for people:

We aren't going back to the way things were, and we couldn't even if we wanted to.

We are never going to be left alone. There will be no country with giant walls that we get to live our lives peacefully isolated inside.

Every possible good future still ends with us fighting the Chinese.

Our fight is ultimately a global one, and not just because our European brothers are fighting for their countries too. If our enemies succeed, what will happen to many of our most talented people is that they will become a diaspora people serving the Asians and their projects. It's already happening, just look into what's going on with shipbuilding in South Korea and China. If we succeed, well, we still have to oppose the Asian sphere who will do everything they can to hobble us while they expand their soft empires.

These are big geopolitical ideas, I understand. For the regular, average Amerikaner, I just want them to have intact and crime-free communities they can raise their children in without the societal wrecking balls that neoliberal policies smash them up with.

Your critiques of literature and especially film are something the Right has been sorely lacking minus a few exceptions like Trevor Lynch. What got you interested in cinema in particular and what impelled you to begin producing The Poz Button?

I only started the show because I was fascinated by Eyes Wide Shut and the depths of it and wanted to do a podcast about movies I liked. If you listen to the first episodes of the show, it's pretty obvious I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing with it, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious it would get to this point due to my obsession with Metal Gear Solid 2 and the ideas it introduced to many new audiences about how to program a human being, meme theory, and the creation of new contexts in which to manipulate a person, the core purpose of mass media.

The reality is that people believe movies to be reality. How many people have you known who base their opinions and understanding of history with "But, bro, have you seen Schindlers List/Glory/Hidden Figures?" and so on and so forth. The key phrase in the opening song is from Videodrome: "Television is reality, but reality is less than television". These were ideas that George W.S. Trow was touching on in his peculiar work Within the Context of No Context, and these ideas were at the core of Marshall McLuhan's body of work, which was the inspiration for the Brian O'Blivion character in Videodrome. These are the ideas that are at the core of Edward Bernays' incisive understanding of propaganda. You are not immune to propaganda. The most incisive meme against the internet right has been mocking them for their obsession with movies like Bladerunner 2049 and Drive. You are just as bad as the people as you mock, and without understanding this aspect of yourself and your relationship to media, you will be just as cowed and controlled as everyone else. The ultimate form of controlled opposition, really.

There's this very incorrect notion floating around that I'm a cinephile, something which I don't do much to dissuade people from believing due to my enjoyment of fruity foreign and art films. I'm really not though. Every conversation about movies I have with Nick Mason, a true cinephile, always goes like this:

Nick: Have you seen X?

Borzoi: No.

If you've listened to my show consistently then you've likely noticed I don't actually talk about the movie in question much and I almost never talk about actual film techniques, get deep into the cinematography, or really anything that they'd teach you in film school about film. That's because I'm more interested in what Trow was warning against in his short work Within the Context of No Context, that media (but television in particular) was creating a landscape where people completely have no context for understanding reality because of the contextless reality that media provides for you. To put it more simply, Sven once brought up how since the age of the internet, everything culturally fracturing more and more and there's no 'culture' in the way there was a 70s culture, an 80s culture, a 90s culture, and so on and so forth. That's living without context, and that leaves you utterly atomized.

My background is in literature. I'm a writer at heart. I find movies and television to be mostly frivolous. Films are a static medium and force you to always be a passive viewer. They don't have the collaborative, dynamic, or spontaneity that come from other art forms or even hobbies. I'm only interested in it because people watch movies more than they read books or watch plays, so in order to understand what's truly going on in the world and the culture at large you have to meet people at their level. Almost no one outside of our niche circles is reading Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, but millions of people are watching Game of Thrones. There's no value except for its own sake to do a podcast on the former instead of one on the latter.

What are some films you would say are “required viewing” and why?

I don't know. Again, I'm not a cinephile. But you can't go wrong with watching Stanley Kubrick's films. He's the most important filmmaker of the 20th century for a reason. If anything though people should watch documentaries and study their manipulative techniques. Fictional movies have actually exhausted themselves quite a bit and are on a downturn. People want reality but they want it in a digestible form that mimics the structure of storytelling. A lot of this is due to, again, living within the context of no context and thus documentaries not only provide that but also give them a seemingly true reality they can point to for their political and societal views since the democratic society requires that everyone be constantly engaged in it and at the ready to justify themselves and their views.

The reason for the rise of television isn't just because they got better at making it, but because they're able to be more niche instead of going for the lowest common denominator, which movies are required to do in order to justify their budgets, is because it gives you that hit you need for consistently rising and falling action and twists and turns. Why is the twist so ubiquitous and why is it so essential to television series nowadays? Because the human brain is so fried from the media it constantly consumes that it needs novelty in order to keep that high going. People are chasing the dragon when it comes to storytelling. It's the same reason why soap operas and professional wrestling are still so massively popular. It's the twists and turns that keep people coming. Television just promises you twists that are seemingly less ridiculous than soap plot twists.

What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any future projects in the works?

My free time is mostly spent working out, shitposting, reading articles, playing tabletop games, socializing with average people, and chatting with friends. Like I said before, I don't really watch television and movies. I'm working on writing and expanding my show, but I work a pretty hectic job so I get done what I can get done for now.

How do you define success, both personally and in terms of your political and social aims/beliefs?

The only success that will matter is if the Right and the average person takes the threat and the power of the Left seriously. Currently, they do not. Their mindset is stuck in the 1980s. Look at the obsession with 80s-style music and 80s aesthetic and nostalgia for how much nicer things were in the 80s. What these people don't seem to remember though was that the 1980s were a large product of the feeling that nuclear war could occur at any moment, at the madness of these two massive superpowers that they couldn't just put the missiles down and talk to each other. That fueled the 80s, and at the core of it was escaping to frivolousness and the good times because of the madness going on outside. And despite all that nostalgia for this time period, the Right and the average cannot and will not acknowledge the Left for the threat they actually are.

I'm a guy who doesn't care about the long-term goals if you can't even get the simplest step done. That's success to me. If we can't even get these people to take the most immediate threat seriously, then how are you going to accomplish anything else?

How do you see this ending? Is the United States doomed?

The United States as an entity is definitely doomed. The best option for racially conscious whites is to simply band together and check out from the system once it becomes demographically impossible to affect change and let everyone else have the system. Don't try to stop it from collapsing, just let them run it into the ground. The only way that can work though is through true consciousness being achieved, otherwise, you'll just have Brazil with bold men like Bolsonaro doing everything they can to make that shell of a nation still work. But the American people, the Amerikaner as I call it, they'll persist. There are millions of us. But they'll have to determine the future they want to forge, if it will be a separatist one that they can rally around and slowly retake land or if they'll find another way forward. The best case for us presently is to buy as much time as possible so that serious people can emerge that can develop a bold vision for the future of our people.

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What about the West in general?

Every institution of the West is either dead or dying. Like I said before, we're not going back to the way things were. We couldn't even if we wanted to. What remains then is to take what worked and prepare it for the new ways, with a bold and dynamic vision for the future to come. To quote Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism: “When this dream has faded, another will emerge.”

The choice the West is staring down, and no amount of fantasy will make this any different, is death-and-rebirth envisioned by our most optimistic thinkers or the maximal total war scenario that Linkola warns about in Can Life Prevail.

I say this so often that it's a cliché, but you need to have a mind for marathon running, and if you don't then it is better to just go and live life as a woke normal person.

I find it very strange sometimes that people ask someone like me for my perspective on things, but the reality is people do so it's important to me that I do not sugarcoat things for people but at the same time outline a workable vision of the future. Circumstances change constantly and you adapt to those circumstances. Once you understand that things will never be the way they once were, it frees you up to make what happens next work and work towards a vision of the future you'd like for your own.

This fight is not over. It never will be.

Follow Borzoi on Twitter.

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[hydtrash-blog]

Meteor Garden 2018 Episode 1 Recap

As promised, here I am, recapping Meteor Garden 2018 (arriving ever so slightly late to the game…by 25 episodes).

Since I’m starting halfway through the drama’s run, I’ll try to churn these late recaps out as quickly as possible, and then peter off if/when we catch up to the current episodes. This is the plan… I’ll try my best to stick to it.

I mentioned before that, in an ideal world, I would have recapped both Hana Yori Dango (Japan, 2005) and Meteor Garden (Taiwan, 2001) first, in order to contextualize the story, particularly the changes that have been made to the premise. However, since the story seems not to deviate too much from the source material once we’re out of the gates, this is probably not necessary. Suffice to say that the story has been updated for a new generation, but is largely untouched once we get into the thick of it.

I’ll be referring to this drama as Meteor Garden 2018 in order to differentiate it from the earlier Taiwanese drama. Please also note that any quotes are being taken from subtitles, as I do not speak Mandarin! If anything is incorrect, please let me know, and I’ll be sure to make it right!

And with all those notes out of the way…onward, to the recap!

Episode 1

A black screen. A narrator asks the audience, “Have you ever wondered what will happen to you in the future?”

Fade in on a freeze frame: a girl, launched fully in the air, legs outstretched, foot making contact with a boy full on in the face. We’re treated to an extended 360 degree shot of the scene, taking in the boy’s horrified face, the bystanders behind the girl, and the floating debris from their bags, including a transparent Joker card.

The narration continues: “At least the 18-year-old me never thought something like this would happen in real life.”

The narrator is Dong Shancai, who introduces herself as an ordinary 18 year old girl. We backtrack a little in order to properly meet Shancai and her family. Mrs. Dong runs her own catering business, making specialty meals at home, while Mr. Dong is a logistics manager at a company. They are a close, loving family who scold and support each other. Awww.

It’s because of her mother’s catering business that Shancai has decided to get into the Nutrition Department at Ming De University, a prestigious school. She works all summer at a tea shop with her high school best friend Xiaoyou, and they adorably check each other’s college entrance exams results, cheering that they both got into their chosen schools and departments. Shancai is indeed off to Ming De, and Xiaoyou goes to another university to study tea culture.

Soon enough it’s Shancai’s first day at school, and we get beautiful shots of the campus, and of Shancai walking around, taking it all in. She’s soon joined by Chen Qing He, another classmate of hers from high school. Qing He expresses his excitement at being able to attend the same university as Shancai, saying it’s better than winning the lottery. Oooh, boy’s got it bad for Shancai, but she remains blissfully unaware, saying she’s happy to be his classmate once more as well.

Someone calls her name, and a girl runs up to the pair. Shancai identifies her as Li Zhen, another one of their high school classmates, although she was in a different classroom from them. They’re all studying nutrition together, and Li Zhen tells Shancai she’s grateful to know someone in her class. The three agree that they’ll all be best friends for the next four years.

It’s all off to a perfect start, and Shancai tells us in voiceover that she’s now ready to start this new chapter in her life. The next shot is of her, running across campus dressed in a formal skirt and blouse to attend a special lecture. She makes it to the classroom just in time, tripping into Qing He. Two girls snark at her to sit down quickly just as the lecture begins. The guest lecturer, a professor from the University of Pennsylvania, takes the stage. Apparently he’s quite well-known, and after the lecture, Shancai shows Li Zhen and Qing He the photos she took of him. Li Zhen requests that Shancai send her one of them so she can make birthday emojis. The other two are quick to wish her a happy birthday, but Li Zhen corrects them: her birthday is two days from now.

As they walk away from the lecture, still looking through Shancai’s photos, cries of admiration can be heard down the hall, and other students rush past them, their own phones withdrawn to snap some pictures. But it’s not the guest lecturer that they’re running to see. Instead, the students flock around a group of four boys, who stride down the halls, bringing their entourage of squealing fangirls with them. As the group collides with Shancai and her friends, her phone flies out of her hand and lands amongst the clamouring admirers. She drops on hand and knee, crawling after her phone as it’s kicked about the mass of students. She pops up, trying to get a better vantage point to see where her phone’s gone, and one of the girls from the lecture grabs her arm, squealing that “It’s F4!” She shoves past Shancai, who dives back down and crawls towards her phone. There’s a break in the swarm of legs, and Shancai spots her chance, reaching her hand out to grab ahold of her phone…

Which is when an expensive green man’s shoe comes stomping down on the poor phone, leaving the screen cracked.

The group passes, and Shancai swipes up her damaged phone, which now won’t turn back on. Outraged, she follows the group down the escalator and out of the building, determined to confront the owner of the green shoes. She finally catches up to the group, shoving her way to the centre. But the arm she grabs is that of the guest lecturer, and she is immediately pulled off of him by his security detail, who twist her arm and pin her to the ground. Realizing her mistake, Shancai glances around, only to see the expensive green shoes standing right behind her.

Cut to: Shancai being dismissed from an office, having been told to go home and think about what she’s done. She goes to gather her things from her locker; around her, students are whispering about how she tried to assault the special lecturer. Li Zhen and Qing He run up, asking if she’s okay and why she attacked the lecturer. Shancai explains that she didn’t mean to attack him, but that she was trying to find the owner of the green shoes, one of those F4 boys. Li Zhen asks, “Who’s F4?”, and Qing He notes that they seemed very popular.

A voice behind them pipes up, “The F4 members are very popular seniors.” Another student, Guo Caijie, a junior journalism student, approaches them, identifying them as new students. Shancai asks her about F4, and Caijie is only too happy to give them the rundown.

F4 is made up of four senior students, all incredibly handsome, talented, and among the best in their respective fields. They are Daoming Si; Huaze Lei; Fang Meizuo; and Yan Ximen. Lei is a music student, and the other three all study business administration. They have been close friends since childhood, and are so close knit that others have a hard time getting close to them, so they are also something of a mystery at Ming De. Basically, all the girls want them, and all the boys want to be them… or prove that they’re better than them. As a result, F4 issues challenges to prove that they are the top dogs ‘round these parts.

Shancai asks what the challenge is, and Caijie answers simply, “Bridge.” As in, the card game.

In fact, F4 are world-renowned bridge players, and founded the Bridge Club on campus…made up entirely of F4 members, and no one else. So far, no one has beat them. Caijie explains that they each have strengths that they use to their advantage.

Meizuo, for example, is artistic and good at design. He has a good sense of humour that he uses to lower the guard of his opponent, so that they take the game less seriously. He also has an incredible memory for which cards have been played.

Ximen is described as “subtle and cautious”, and comes from tea-loving family. His strength is strategy; he’s good at mind games to distract his opponents, and has earned the nickname “Battle God.”

Lei is a musical genius, with perfect pitch and a mastery of several instruments. He is described as being poised and calm, with a fantastic poker face and the ability to see through other’s attempts at trickery.

And finally, Daoming Si, the leader of F4. He’s primary interest is finance, and is said to have made a million yuan by trading on the stock market. He’s an aggressive bridge player, intimidating his opponents into making mistakes.

(He also has the wildest hair of the bunch, twisted and spiky... and maybe culturally appropriative? It’s meant to be an homage to Domyouji’s curly hair, but jeez… it’s kind of a lot.)

The four of them have won many awards for Bridge, and are a source of pride for the school as a result. But Shancai points out that they still ought to apologize for having broken her phone, regardless of how popular and talented they are. Qing He quickly agrees, and says they ought to go challenge them to a game of bridge right here and now, if they won’t apologize. But Caijie cuts in that it’s not as simple as all that to challenge F4; you have to be issued a Joker card first. It’s their official invitation; due to a large volume of challenges they receive, F4 only issues a Joker card to those they deem qualified enough to play against. They also require a wager to be set prior to the game.

Caijie explains that there are many rumours about what is wagered at the card table: having to clean up the school campus for an entire semester; squatting in the school fountain for half a day; spending a night in the biology lab; and, most ridiculous of all, being made to eat a pair of slippers. “So? Do you still want to challenge them?” Caijie asks, coming to a stop in front of F4’s club room. Shancai, Li Zhen, and Qing He all look on in shock at the story they’ve just heard. With that, Caijie leaves them standing outside of the classroom.

Shancai is not cowed for long; she tells the other two that the guy with the green shoes is in the wrong, and that she’s not afraid. So they march up to the door, and Shancai begins calling for F4 to come out and buy her a new phone. Qing He, her loyal hype man, repeats her demands loudly. Li Zhen looks on, slightly horrified.

There’s no answer, and Li Zhen stutters that they’re probably not in. Qing He suggests that they go off to find them; they shouldn’t be that difficult to find, if they’re surrounded by fangirls, right? “That’s right. If we see some long-legged arrogantly handsome boys, that should be them, right?” Shancai says. Qing He cringes as he catches sight of something over Shancai’s shoulder. “Is that them?” he asks. “I think so. I can feel their presence,” Li Zhen whispers. They turn to find F4 striding towards them, in all their arrogantly handsome glory.

Shancai, for one, does not look impressed, and she steps out in front of Daoming Si, who she sees is the owner of the expensive green shoes. “Hey. Green shoe guy.” She holds up her phone. “What’s this?”

“A broken phone,” he says, unfazed. The other F4 members snicker.

“Do you know why it’s broken?” Shancai asks.

Daoming Si replies that it’s none of his business, to which Shancai responds that actually, yeah it is, as he’s the one that broke it. She explains that he stepped on it when he was swarmed by his fangirls after the lecture.

There’s silence for a moment, in which Li Zhen looks embarrassed, Ximen and Meizuo look amused, and Daoming Si looks bored. Then, without a word, he steps forward and brushes past her, shouldering her on the way by. Shancai goes to storm after them, and is barely held back by Qing He.

The three freshmen head to their first lecture, where the professor warns the class that most of them won’t pass, and he won’t go easy on them. He then asks them to form groups of four. Shancai and Li Zhen join up with the two snotty girls from the special lecture earlier, while Qing He gets stuck in a group with three other guys. Poor boy.

At home, Shancai bakes a cake for Li Zhen’s birthday the next day. When she presents it to Li Zhen the next morning, her friend is touched, and suggests that they take a picture with the cake. They determine that the area they’re in is too crowded, so they head up an outdoor stairwell to take the picture in peace. They snap a selfie together, and then Shancai offers to take a picture of Li Zhen holding the cake. Li Zhen goes to stand by the stairs, but steps back to far and almost slips. The cake flies from her hands as Shancai rushes forward to save her friend. And just their luck: the cake explodes spectacularly over the curley, twisty head of none other than Daoming Si.

The two girls turn to see Si glaring at them. He recognizes them immediately, and grits out a furious, “You!”

Li Zhen immediately apologizes, but Si spits back, “If apologies worked, we wouldn’t need the police!” Ahh, that famous line. Li Zhen attempts to wipe some of the cake off of him, but he shoves her away, and she lands on the ground.

Shancai picks her friend up, and then immediately gets in Si’s face, telling him it was an accident, that Li Zhen apologized, so why does he have to be so mean?

She continues:

You’re an arrogant, green-shoe wearing pineapple head. You think you’re popular at school so you can do whatever you want. You didn’t apologize for breaking my phone. You’re just a jerk!

Si reaches out and pulls her in close, eyes blazing. Quietly, he tells her, “You. You’ve got guts.” And just like that, he pushes away from her again and walks away. Meizuo and Ximen follow without a word. Lei, however, bends to pick up the card that Shancai had written for Li Zhen, and silently hands it to her, before he also follows the rest of F4.

Later that day, Shancai opens her locker to find a Joker card, curtesy of F4. Qing He and Li Zhen are both worried, but Shancai quickly recovers, saying that she doesn’t have time to play card games. She slams the locker door shut and storms away, ending up on a rooftop. Once there, she unleashes a cry of frustration, and then immediately launches into a rant about F4.

Those stupid people. All I want to do is study! I didn’t want a Joker card! They broke my phone and embarrassed me in front of everyone! F4. You’re all jerks. I hope that from tomorrow, your phone signals will be blocked by aliens. No calls, no texts, no games, no internet! No phone in your life. You’ll step on your own foot and fall. You’ll dream of zombies that eat your faces. Your nostril hair will grow until it penetrates your head and becomes your hair!

And just as she finishes her rant, a quiet voice pipes up from behind her, “And then?”

She turns to find Huaze Lei sitting on a bench behind her, having heard her entire rant. He comes up to her and repeats the question: what happens to them next? Will she be happy then?

Shancai asks if he’s also trying to bully her, but Lei asks why he would do that. Isn’t he a member of F4? Shancai replies. Lei confirms that he is, but says that he isn’t interested in other people’s business. And with that, he turns and walks away, leaving Shancai staring after him.

On a basketball court, Daoming Si plays with some other boys, dominating the game. Girls cheer from the sidelines. One of the mean girls from Shancai’s class spots her walking across the court and calls her over. Pointing out Si, she confides in Shancai that he’s the boy that she likes, and asks Shancai to film her giving him a drink. Shancai demures, but her classmate insists, so she reluctantly takes the phone and begins filming as the other girl approaches her crush.

Except that Si notices Shancai first, and he walks by the girl, grabbing the drink without sparing her a glance as he walks right up to Shancai. He asks if she’s filming him, and then takes the phone away from her, not caring (or realizing) that it’s her classmate’s phone. Whoops.

We jump to a new day. Shancai is studying at home when her mother asks her to make a food delivery. Loading up her bike, she sets out to the address given. But when she arrives with an armload of food, she encounters one very familiar hairstyle. Daoming Si turns around, surprising Shancai: he orders takeout? He smirks and says that she should be grateful that he’s supporting her family by giving them the business.

Shancai is already sick of his shit, so she tells him to enjoy the food and makes to leave. Unfortunately, Si isn’t having it. He tells her to wait while he checks over the delivery to make sure the order is right. When he opens up one of the takeout boxes, he sniffs disparagingly at the food inside. This is what her family serves to their customers?

But Shancai merely tells him not to eat it then, and snatches the box out of his hands, offering to take it back. He grabs the box back, saying that he’s paid for the order, so he’ll do what he pleases with them. This irks Shancai. She tells him that she knows he’s trying to bully her, but that he shouldn’t be wasting food, and adding that her mother spent a great deal of time preparing the order.

But that’s not Si’s problem, he retorts, and admonishes her for being rude to her customers. Shancai replies that she’s nice to customers who are nice to her; he doesn’t deserve it. She continues that she understands that only elite students get into Ming De, but looking at him, she feels ashamed for him. He doesn’t understand how hard other people work, and finishes by calling him a parasite on society.

That does it for Si. He yells at her to shut up and swings the takeout box at her. It explodes over her, staining her clothes and flying all over the place. Shancai stumbles back a step, and looks up at him with anger and hurt.

For his part, Si has the grace to look ashamed of himself. Unable to meet her eyes, he looks away and tells her that it’s what she deserves for insulting him. Without a word, Shancai turns and runs out of the building; Si turns to watch her go, his expression regretful.

Shancai pushes her bike up to an outdoor tap and begins to try and wash away the food that still clings to her clothes. As she washes herself off, two boys approach her from behind, crowding her and preventing her from fleeing. Shancai is already pretty shaken up, and she tries to push them off, but they latch on, refusing to leave her alone.

Then, a voice offscreen asks, “What are you doing?” All three turn to see Huaze Lei standing there, watching the whole thing. He tells the boys to get lost, and the scram, leaving Shancai shaken and close to tears. She sits for a while and tries to hold back tears while Lei stands nearby, a silent presence. Tearfully, Shancai asks why Si acted the way he did, but Lei has no answer. Instead, he holds out a handkerchief, instructing her gently to use it to clean herself up a bit. And then, without warning, he goes into handstand against a wall. He tells her that when she’s sad, she should do a handstand so that her tears won’t fall down. They stay that way for a while, without speaking again.

That night, Shancai dreams of F4 telling her to eat slippers, and she wakes up gasping. At breakfast, she is quiet and contemplative, thinking over her encounters with F4, and Daoming Si in particular, over the last few days. With every memory, every bite, she becomes more enraged, more focused, more determined. Slamming down her empty bowl, she stands up from the table and announces that she’s going to fight back. She dresses with purpose and strides to campus, passing Qing He without a word, laser focused on only one person: Daoming Si. She calls his name, and he looks up. Their eyes lock.

Tossing her bag over her shoulder, Shancai takes off running right at him at full speed. She leaps into the air, leg outstretched, and her sole connects with his cheek. And with that, we find ourselves back where we started, in a freeze-frame of Shancai kicking Daoming Si right in his perfect face.

We watch the culmination of the scene in slow-motion: Si flies through the air with the force of the kick, past the rest of F4 (who watch the scene unfold with shock) and lands facedown on the ground, out cold. Shancai comes to stand over him. The rest of F4 look back at her, a definite note of fear in their eyes.

Brandishing the Joker card, Shancai says, “Who wants to play cards with you? I, Dong Shancai, won’t be bullied by anyone.” And she tosses the card down beside Si’s prone figure, before turning around and striding away without a single glance backwards.

What a badass.

After Thoughts:

For a 40 minute episode, we managed to fit a lot in, both plot-wise and character-wise. There’s a great sense of energy in this episode: the plot moves along briskly, and though there is a fair bit of exposition, it doesn’t feel like it bogs the story down (maybe because all of the F4 expo is paired with shots of four rather pretty boys showing off card shuffling. I dunno. It kept my attention).

The premise, as mentioned before, is a pretty big departure from the original HYD story. We’ve dropped the red card game in favour of the bridge competitions, which I think is a smart move: it keeps F4 generally inaccessible to the rest of the student body without making them into complete monsters. Daoming Si is still a jerk, obviously, but at least he’s not a psychopathic jerk.

I also like that Shancai and F4 are given more to do school-wise. The Makino character has never been a particularly studious character, and is pretty aimless throughout her education, at least for the first bit. I love that Shancai has a tangible goal that’s connected to her reason for choosing an elite school, instead of just going to the school because it’s an elite one. Similarly, I like that F4, and in particular, Daoming Si, are being set up as hardworking and intelligent students. It’s not to say that other adaptations of F4 have been unintelligent, per se, but rather that their futures are secured by their families, so it never seems like they particularly care about their education. I’m sure that this will still be the case in this version, but I like that school matters to them. The fact that Daoming Si isn’t being portrayed as a complete idiot who mixes up idioms is refreshing as well. They’re all still fundamentally the same characters, but this added layer makes them more interesting to me.

I’d like to end all of my reviews with three final thoughts: who I think was the shining star of the episode (or the episode MVP); who I thought was the absolute worst in this episode (or LVP — least valuable player, natch); and which scene I rewatched over and over. There’s always one.

Episode MVP:

Without a doubt, Shancai. I have a feeling that I’ll probably say Shancai a lot, because I love her. She’s spunky, fearless, and loyal. Her willingness to walk up to F4 and challenge Si to replace her phone, even after she’s heard that she might end up eating slippers, is fantastic. This character is a huge reason for why I continue to be a fan of this story, and can really make or break the adaptation in question. I’m rooting for her to achieve all her dreams and win all the boys’ hearts. You go girl!

Episode LVP:

If you thought I was gonna say Daoming Si, you’d be wrong. He’s a jerk, obviously, but I’ll save him for another day (I’m sure). Out of the gate, it’s hard to pick an LVP, but I’m gonna have to choose Qing He, if only because he’s not terribly interesting to me. His loyalty to Shancai is admirable, but I know that I would personally find his clinginess overbearing if he were my friend. That being said, I’m looking forward to watching him grow up a little and gain a bit of independence. Hopefully.

Most Rewatched Scene:

In an episode of introductions and set-ups, it’s hard to pick a scene that I want to keep watching over and over again. In future episodes, this spot will likely be reserved for super cute moments, but since we’re not there yet, I’ll go for the next best thing: Shancai and Si’s encounter on the stairwell with the cake. I love this moment for so many reasons, but mostly Shancai standing up for her friend and telling Si exactly what she thinks of him. I like that they’ve already had one encounter prior to this (unlike other versions, where the Makino character has watched F4 from afar and seethed, but never spoken to them directly). We also get the first mention of “pineapple head”, which holds a special place in my heart (even though I’m pretty sure that Si’s hairstyle is culturally appropriative…but that’s another gripe for another time).

#meteor garden 2018 #episode recap #cdramas #asian dramas #dong shancai #daoming si #hyd adaptation #hana yori dango adaptation #hydtrash

[radreviews]

2017 SQUAD PICKS

Hello, it’s us. It’s been awhile, but we’re back with our favorite art, moments, and trends from 2017. I usually have a whole preamble to set the stage for our picks, but let’s just get into it:

RADHIKA

In-Theater Experiences Every year I have a few movies that remind me how great the movie theater experience can be. A couple of years ago it was Magic Mike XXL; this year it was Get Out and Spider-Man Homecoming. I saw both films in packed houses, with the audience reacting to every line delivery, cameo and plot twist as it happened. It was exhilarating, and I can’t imagine seeing the films any other way. It reminded me that sometimes film needs to be a collective experience—that peer reactions can be the very thing that makes a good movie great. The same thing can be said of live theater, an inherently shared experience. Humblebrag time… we finally saw Hamilton this year and it exceeded the hype and expectations. I also listened to the soundtrack a million times and memorized all of the words after seeing it so, yep, I’m one of those people now. Also! We saw Mean Girls: The Musical in its previews in DC and holy wow you’re all in for a treat. Lady Bird Forget what I said about collective experiences because I saw this incredible film by myself, crying quietly through the entire third act. There are always films whose stories don’t necessarily overlap with my experiences, but make me feel everything (last year’s was La La Land). This film has universal love from every critic with a beating heart and it’s one thousand percent deserved. Lady Bird was my favorite film of the year — a beautiful portrait of the confusion of adolescence, of familial frustration and of love. It was note-perfect. Despacito CALL ME BASIC but I love this song. I will not apologize for how happy it makes me, for how secretly sexy the lyrics are, for how directly my mood is impacted by those opening chords. Also, I prefer the Justin Bieber version don’t @ me. “Remember Me” from Coco

Let’s not talk about how much I cried during Pixar’s Coco (but if you must know, it was A LOT), let’s talk about the five different versions of its original song “Remember Me” that appear on the official soundtrack. There’s the three versions directly from the film (each BEAUTIFULLY sung by Benjamin Bratt, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Anthony Gonzalez), a Spanish version, and inexplicably a version by Miguel?!!??!? It’s a classic case of I didn’t know I needed it until now, but thank you for this gift.  CTRL - SZA Everything is all caps, and wow, what a debut. “The Weekend” spoke quiet sadness about being the ‘other woman,’ “Supermodel” delved deep into being unloved and retaliating, and everything before and after touched on the intricacies of relationships and heartbreak. It was personal and it was stunning. “Lemons” - blackish Eleven days into the new year, we already had one of the best episodes of the year. In a pointed middle finger to Trump, blackish became a mouthpiece for what all of us were feeling two months after the election—anger, confusion, and helplessness—and instead of harping on the negatives, it made lemonade. Traveling I was 2 steps away from going full “wanderlust”-Instagram-caption mode this year. I’ve always wanted to travel, but 2017 was the first year where I threw caution (and money) to the wind, and just…booked stuff. I went to Cuba, Philly and Nashville for the first time, explored San Francisco and Boston again with friends, and flew back to Michigan, Chicago, and Cleveland for various engagements and weddings. If ever there was a year where a few days of distraction were not just welcomed but needed, it was 2017. There’s only more exploring to be done in 2018. Pod Save America I think it’s safe to say we all feel more politically angry and engaged in this era of backwards politics. Twice a week, I relied on the educated discussion, hilarious banter, and informed opinions of former Obama staffers Jon Lovett, Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor to fill me in on what I should be angry about that day. It’s a podcast that just feels necessary. Also, I now own a ‘Friend of the Pod’ t-shirt and I feel like I’m part of a cult, but it’s the coolest cult ever. Bojack Horseman

It’s common knowledge that I love art that makes me cry, but I never thought I’d cry while watching a cartoon. This show is equal parts acerbic, hilarious, and downright depressing (read: I love this show so much). Harping on the fragility of time, the fourth season of Bojack Horseman continued its upward trajectory and gave me one of my favorite quotes from and about television, probably ever. Bojack is one of the smartest, most thoughtful and well-written shows on this incredibly vast television landscape. We are so lucky to have it. The Emergence of Timothée Chalamet Relatively unheard of before 2017, Chalamet starred in two of the best films I saw this year — Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name. Chalamet inhabited two completely different, complicated characters but made them both vulnerable, empathetic, and mesmerizing. He’s a star and even if the Academy doesn’t recognize him this year (which would be objectively incorrect), I’ll watch anything he’s in from here on out.

PROMA Trailer Hype

I have never experienced a theater crowd cheering for a freaking trailer before – titters of excitement for Harry Potter, at best – but once the Black Panther full trailer dropped there was only one logical response. We cheered for it before  Spider-Man: Homecoming, before Marshall, before Thor: Ragnarok, and I hope to cheer for it again before February 2018, which is finally close. Seeing Things in Theaters Multiple Times Since moving to New York, I’ve never seen a movie twice in theaters - first because of cost and then because of time. Honestly I probably haven’t done it since high school, but I used to love it, and this year I finally returned to that with The Big Sick and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Worth it. A First Time with an Oldie

I’ve loved Titanic since I first saw it in 2000, but of course I was too young to see it in theaters. It was re-released in 3D for a quick stretch in 2012, but I was in India at the time, so this year marked the first time I saw Titanic in theaters, that too in impressive 3D. I will never tire of watching old favorites in packed theaters full of people who love the film as much as I do and hum along with the music or clap for big moments. The Year TV Got Angry In a year when we were all perpetually existential or angry, it was cathartic to see TV mirror that state. I reveled in the female rage of The Handmaid’s Tale, the intersectional activism of Dear White People, She’s Gotta Have It, and the straight-up middle finger that was Difficult People. Having an AppleTV is almost as gratifying as screaming into the void! Facemasks A pack of facemasks literally arrived on my and Radhika’s doorstep at a point in 2016 when we didn’t realize we needed them. Since then, I’ve tried to always have some sheet masks around and let myself splurge on a charcoal mask that I’ve done almost every weekend without fail since September. Put on a mask, start an episode, remove  and rinse. Treat yo self. Mean Girls: The Musical Seconding Rads on this. I was lucky enough to catch Mean Girls in the workshop stage before it left New York for a summer hiatus and then previews – even in that early stage it was fantastic. It’s exciting to have been with a piece of art through all these iterations (not even including the movie and its decade of cult-status), and I can’t wait to see it blow up next year. Existential Twitter Twitter was always at its most funny and weird during ungodly night-time hours; The night is darkest before the dawn and now it’s like Night Twitter 24/7. From politics to entertainment, we are at least winning at hilarity on social media. But seriously, delete his account. The Return of MoviePass This squad has been preaching the gospel of MoviePass since like, 2014, and I’ll admit I faltered in the middle there when it hit $50/month (I took the 3/$30 plan instead). But now it’s $9.99/month and people have heard of it and don’t make that blank face when I talk about it and wow guys we are saving so much on movies I feel so alive!!! People still regularly ask me if it’s legit/worth it/a scam, but I am happy to answer them and spread this joy. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Listen, some shows are just pure joy and this is the second Amazon show to give me this jarringly unfamiliar sunny feeling in my heart when I watch (shootout to you, Mozart in the Jungle). This show is like eating ice cream covered in candy (but with some sweet wine) and the best part it gets me inspired to create. Oh, Hello Dittoing Rads again because our first theatre experience of the year was one of the best of my whole life. I laughed so fucking hard at Oh, Hello — I’ve never seen a piece of comedy so meticulously crafted, down to every word of every joke, and you could hear the payoff in the laughs, which hardly ever stopped.

ARJUN

“I’m not a body/the body is but a shell.” Like so many of us, I spent a scary amount of time this year being resentful and confused about a million different things happening in my hometown, state, and country – things outside of my own body, bigger than myself.  It is then maybe my (our?) subconscious trying to tell me something else in the shared themes of the music I was coming back to the most.  While I would say I was consumed by questions of the foundation our entire world rests on, my iTunes would counter that my existential questions this year were actually pointed inward, contemplating over what constitutes a relationship in 2017. “Is it warm enough for you inside me?” With the full acknowledgement that there was a LOT of great music from other artists, when I look back on what set music in 2017 apart from other years, I think I’ll most remember albums like SZA’s ctrl, Moses Sumney’s Aromanticism, and Charli XCX’s Pop 2.  These three have some pretty big differences (namely, how they literally sound), but I would argue that they are all contributors to the same internal dialogue that a single 20-something year old living in New York was having, if not always aware he was having it.  They ask questions about all forms of love and affection, including (but not limited to): What does it mean to love? What does that even look like in 2017? Is it co-dependent? Is it more than an initial attraction? Does it give us our worth? Is it harmful to tie our worth to it? How stupid are we for putting ourselves through it? If the stupidity makes us happy, is it actually stupid? How do we handle heartbreak? Do we take on an arrogant braggadocio? Do we show the utter lack of confidence hiding under that? And hey, what role does sex play in all this? “I’m not tryina go to bed with you/I just wanna make out in your car.” Admittedly, some of these aren’t the most original questions of all time.  It’s the way these artists answered (or tried to answer) them that felt special to this point in time.  When SZA says, “Lately you’ve been feeling so good/I forget my future/never pull out,” there isn’t even a question if they’re having sex, and no narrative build-up of her career; they are conditional to even be at the point in time being confronted.  For the narrator, the to-pull-out-or-not debate is less a sign of carelessness and more one of carnal satisfaction (though she points out it's pretty careless too).  In a borderline companion piece, Charli XCX adds on, “I just wanna spend the night/Fucking in your bed tonight/Watch a little TV/I love it when you need me.”  Sex and what comes after are given equal weight in all of the toiling, tossing, and turning. “Ooh no she didn’t/Ooh yes, I did.”

No doubt, these songs have selfishness and over-dramatization at work.  But elsewhere, there’s a clearly embedded sense of self-awareness, too.  On “Indulge Me,” Moses Sumney’s verse starts and ends with a bit of a call and response when he sings, “All of my old lovers have found others…All of my old others have found lovers.”  There’s meant to be some sadness here, but the wordplay suggests a certain irony; he’s far from shocked.  Similarly, on “Out of My Head,” Charli XCX, Tove Lo, and ALMA begin singing, “You got me doing all this stupid shit/you fuck me up like this,” before finishing with, “Secretly I’m kinda into it, though.”  It’s as if the narrator is fully aware that she’s enveloping you in her own problems and she’s totally cool with that – she’s even giving you a wink while doing it.  The listener is simultaneously watching a card trick and listening to the magician explain exactly what he/she is doing each step of the way. “I blame it on your love/every time I fuck it up.” All of that is to say nothing of the music.  Throughout, we are sent on a journey of eclectic sounds & compositions, ranging from no-fucks-given aggression to dancefloor escapism to soothing near-lullabies.  The fully-formed picture is ultimately what made these works feel alive in the present.  They’re messy, they’re self-important, they’re dramatic, they’re self-deprecating.  They’re 2017.

ADITYA

Master of None, season 2 It’s exciting to watch talented people swing for the fences. Master of None, Aziz’s love letter to New York, millennial aimlessness, Italian cinema, food, and about 45 other things, is a start-to-finish shot at greatness. It’s filled with terrific performances, and breathtaking shots. It also radiates intelligence in its observations; Dev might be aimless but Aziz has a point of view.

In a toxic 2017, the show’s generous nature stands out. In ‘New York, I Love You,’ Dev is completely absent; the exhilarating episode instead elevates viewpoints that are often reduce to stock clichés – the doorman, the driver, etc. In ‘Thanksgiving,’ Dev plays a clear supporting role as Lena Waithe’s Denise accepts her sexuality and hopes for her family to do the same. In episode after episode, Master of None pursues interesting stories, whether they’re with Dev or Arnold or Denise or Francesca or a taxi driver. The show insists that it’s worth caring about other people, and the spirit of empathy and curiosity is refreshing.  The show is unabashedly cinematic in its aesthetic. The first episode is a surprisingly detailed (if low stakes) homage to Bicycle Thieves, presented in black & white with dialogue entirely in Italian. Later references include L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita. Despite these influences, Master of None makes excellent use of the episodic nature of TV, with installments devoted to big issues, like the theme episodes of old. ‘First Date’ uses an inventive structure to highlight the bleak fun of app-driven dating. ‘Religion’ tackles..religion. ‘Door #3′ is a portrait of career indecision. Sprinkled throughout are observations of fame and celebrity, and Aziz’s (and Dev’s) status as a minority provides a unique observational lens. Let me point out that the season is also fun. It doesn’t matter how many hours of Fellini Aziz has watched; the moment he sings about eating food, it’s clear that Tom Haverford is irrepressible. The show is consistently funny, both sharp and silly (I’ll laugh at any framing of the tiny Dev next to his immense buddy Arnold). Dev’s relationship with Francesca is, for me, the best rom-com of the past few years. It’s bracing to watch funny, charming people fall in love, and there’s a thrilling prolonged scene in ‘Dinner Party’ - where Dev is sitting in an Uber processing the fact that he is desperately in love – that ranks among the best of the year.  Mask Off + I’m the One + Red Bone I’ve been told that I’m bad at “good” music. Because of the pretentious circles within which I reside, I’m often faking musical expertise. ‘You know who’s great?’  I’ll say. ‘Ess Zee Ayy. Yeah, no, SZA, that’s what I meant. They’re good.’ But when no one was looking over my shoulder, it was these three songs all day all year. That’s a liability! Get Out & Lady Bird Two brilliant debuts. Get Out is a biting satire/comedy/polemic built on a horror movie chassis. From the creepiness of the “No, no, no, no…” scene to the “haha…wait a minute” guilty recognition of the liberal family to the shoulder-slumping devastation of the keys scene, the film takes no false steps. Lady Bird is great all the way through, led by Saoirse’s fiery performance and a sparkling, hilarious script. Greta Gerwig’s love and understanding for the characters on screen shines through.  NYT’s “Trump’s Daily Life” Pieces The NYTimes has grown essential in the Trump era. Sure, sometimes they Disney-ify Nazis, or allow David Brooks to moan about the difficulties of getting a sandwich with a poor person. But have you seen the WSJ editorials, or the ever-multiplying panels of “experts” on CNN? I’ll take the Gray Lady. While there’s plenty to appreciate, I want to call out the Sunday night articles, usually by Maggie Haberman and 300 unnamed sources, that offer hilarious insight into Trump’s daily life. I can’t get enough of these. 8-12 Diet Cokes? 14 hours of TV? Tries to impress John Kelly by doing a push-up? Sexts himself from Melania’s phone? Tell me more. We laugh so as not to cry.  I Am Not Your Negro

The startlingly powerful documentary relies exclusively on Baldwin’s own words, culled from various letters and writings, and read by Samuel L. Jackson. Even if you’ve read Baldwin, to sit in the theater and drown in his unparalleled eloquence is a shattering experience. The director, Raoul Peck, works with Baldwin to underline the film’s relevance to present day. Images of police brutality in the 1960s fade into images from Ferguson; Baldwin’s words close the gap in time. Another standout section involving a clip of Baldwin explaining his “fixation” on racial issues onThe Dick Cavett Show- a Tonight Show forerunner - is a sharp rebuke to the anti-intellectualism that is currently pervasive.  I was hanging on to Baldwin’s words, amazed at their relevance in the world I would walk into when the credits rolled. I can’t recommend this highly enough.  Revisiting the Godfather A back-to-back screening of The Godfather Parts I & II was a lovely experience. I was particularly moved by the father and son seated behind me. Most of us learn to appreciate the Corleones through our fathers, forcing ourselves to stay awake the first time we watch it because our infallible dads insisted it was brilliant. The pair behind me was all too familiar. The father patiently entertained his son’s incessant questioning (who’s that again? Wait, why did they kill Luca? Can we get more popcorn?), leapt to cover his son’s eyes during the topless scene, and nudged his son excitedly during the Baptism. The kid is now mixed-up in the family business for life. Twitter I love Twitter. I love retweeting things I agree with and I also love retweeting things I disagree with with a “get a load of this guy”-type comment. I love jumping into the fray and tweeting something like “call your senator!” and then patting myself on the back. I love seeing what other people I follow like, and seeing that they like things that are very similar to what I like, further affirming the idea that everyone is on my side. I love political twitter. I love sports twitter. I love movie twitter. I love reading the first sentence of an article and immediately knowing that I want to tweet it out. I love twitter. Protests For when Twitter isn’t enough. I was dreading Trump’s inauguration day, fully anticipating tears when the Obamas finally helicoptered away to a much deserved peace. When the moment came, and Trump was sworn in, it was…bearable. I knew that in less than 24 hours, I would get to witness thousands of women marching in defiant response. The Women’s March had an incredible energy that I assumed was rare. But it was replicated repeatedly - at the airports after the attempted Muslim ban, outside the courthouse where the ACLU challenged the administration, throughout the city after the DACA decision, etc., etc.  I’m a longtime petition signer, but I’m a novice protestor. I’m not great at chanting and I’m bad at estimating how big to make letters. A lot of my signs looked like I’M WITH her. But with the Trump administration determined to reduce the idea of America, protests were catharsis. They were a messy, vital declaration to the administration that they would be met with a response. They’ve recharged and inspired and reassured, and they’re what I’ll remember most about 2017.

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