#watching those tv show polls i made on and off throughout the day and

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Polls are a spectator sport

#watching those tv show polls i made on and off throughout the day and #it's f u n #last night white collar had a solid lead on its poll #but this morning totally spies had overtaken it by a l o t #now they're almost tied #also x files and fringe were tied for a good chunk of the day #but now x files has a firm lead again #still a couple of my rewatch shows with no votes #and timeless has mostly managed to hold onto the lead in its poll #just. fun times #i speak

[nautiscarader]

2020 in animation - recap

So, 2020. 

Yeah, I have to say I’m not entirely satisfied. Would not recommend, 1 star. 

But I would be willing to bump it to 1.5, if only because of one factor: the animation. 

Because I have to say, this was the best animated end of the world so far! And if there was something that kept our spirits up, it was the cartoon industry!

Just like last year, I should preface this by saying that this is highly subjective selection. Even when one is confined to their Hobbit holes for better part of the year because of *waves hands* everything around, 

day still only has 24 hours, so I have missed a few shows. (I should also apologise for omitting a few major ones last year, like Milo Murphy’s Law S2, Ducktales, or She-Ra. This is why I started keeping a track this year). I’m sure I will catch up with those I missed this year some time in the future, but for now, let’s see what this year has gifted us with.

And right from the start, January opens the race with very interesting propositions. We were still riding on an incredibly high wave from last year, with Infinity Train season 2.

This one focused on Tulip’s mirror, and pushed the season towards a much darker and complex story, diving deep into one’s personal journey and identity. There were tears, math, deer, and cops being murdered. Brutally. 

t was followed by two newcomers: The Owl House and first season of Kipo and The Age of the Wonderbeast. Both of them would dominate first half of the year, with The Owl House’s traditional, week-to-week airings, and Kipo's seasons appearing in  June and October.

The Owl House, a strong contender in "What will be the Next Gravity Falls?" contest, invited us to a world full of magic, mystery, elongated owl demons and some dark secrets. It has also created a milestone for Disney, introducing an LGBT couple with characters of bisexual Luz Noceda and lesbian Amity Blight. Their Grom dance has risen to the top of my animates scenes, polling very closely to the unforgettable Kataango.

On the other hand, Kipo has taken us to the post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant animals, revealing that despite the end of the world, our old vices and animosities have survived in underground burrows, and we have infected the overworld of giant doggos and suit-wearing frogs with them. 

Kipo did not pull any punches regarding commentary about our society, at the same time giving us hope in the form of the main protagonist, who was able to spread friendship and understanding amongst the mutes, as well as the humans that had to survive. And in the world that we have found ourselves in, it was a pretty darn good lesson.

February would bring end to two seasons of airing cartoons, Big Hero Six season 2 and Miraculous season 3, as well as another newcomer that won the hearts of fans: Glitch Techs, with its "second" season arriving in August. And while in my opinion he show wasn't as good as the other two new titles, I am clearly in minority, as the show about Ghostbuters-like team of game console technicians gained huge popularity... though not enough to keep the show afloat. As of writing this, it is currently in limbo, which is a shame, as the second set of 10 episodes finally added some much needed ongoing story.  

in March, another show from last year ended - Steven Universe Future. As we have expected, it tackled slightly more mature themes, showing how much Steven needed that therapy we have wished him, telling an important tale of finding one's worth and one's self. its ending might not have been as explosive as those of the original show, or the movie, but it left Steven’s story as open as an open road, and deep in our hearts, we all knew it would look like this.   

March was also the time when majority of western world caught the coronavirus, and that caused quite a turmoil with the movie and animation industry. One of the first victim of changed schedule was Disney's Onward, which was released on-line on Disney+ quickly after its theatrical release.

I have mixed feelings towards “Onward”. For such interesting promise, I think it made a few questionable and down right boring turns, though the unorthodox message at the end of it was its strongest point, and it was one I haven’t seen in a while, so it was worth watching just for that.  

April was relatively quiet (aside from more end of the world stuff); brought us third season of Ducktales that spread throughout the year, while May gave us final, fifth season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. 

To my eternal shame, I missed on this show when it premiered, and due to the lockdown, I binge-watched the previous four right in time for powerful and explosive season 5. And even though Catra and Adora finally gave us exactly what we needed, some fans felt slightly unsatisfied, calling for a movie, like the Steven Universe one to be made. And I’d be all for it, the rest of universe needs saving from the Horde! Also, cats in space - hilarious. 

May also revealed a new player on the streaming field: HBO Max, who surprised us with new Looney Tunes Cartoons, much more in the spirit of the legendary originals than the often-criticised Looney Tunes Show from 2011-2014. And in my opinion, it did; one could feel the same fluidity in animation, dedication to slapstick, and synchronisation with music than in the very first cartoons with Bugs and Daffy.

HBO Max would, however, return in June with first of series of Adventure Time original movies called "Distant Lands". The first centred around BMO, with second one - Obsidian giving us a glimpse into Bonnibel and Marceline's lives.

Distant Lands allowed people to revisit the odd, odd world of Ooo and learn about its colourful inhabitants, taking turns to seeing their past and the future, an, as usual, showing us that post-apocalyptic world can teach us valuable and meaningful lessons.   

Just in time for full lockdown in our burrows, aforementioned Kipo season 2 premiered in June, together with another cartoon movie, this time featuring We Bare Bears. While their movie wasn't anything to write songs about, it was exactly like the show, providing some wholesome content right when we needed it.

And just in case you needed more wholesome adventures, Craig of the Creek's second season ended, and its third season began, reminding us of HOW COOL LIFE WAS WHEN OUTERNET WASN’T SCARY AND WE COULD STILL WALK OUTSIDE FOR FUN AND NOT TO HUNT TOILET PAPER.

Just like last year, July was not dogs' days, but frogs'. Amphibia season 2 started raining on our heads, but unlike last year, its schedule wasn't a daily one, spreading the episodes throughout the Summer and early Autumn, with its second part arriving in February of 2021. There were more roadtrips, more mysteries and MORE MARCY.

August was equally strong: aforementioned Glitch Techs "season 2" premiered, offering better and more plot-heavy episodes than the first ten episodes. Unfortunately, the show's future is unclear; the uneven divide of plot between the seasons probably contributed to the show not being renewed. 10 new episodes apparently are written, but await in sleep mode, until Nickelodeon remembers about it.

HBO MAX picked up Infinity Train for its third season, after being derailed by Cartoon Network. And if you thought that killing a mirror cop was shocking... then this season has pushed the limit of what can be shown in modern children's cartoon to a frightening degree. The schedule was once again, weirder, with first five episodes airing on the day of the premiere, ending with a cliffhanger (literally) that only contributed to the shock factor and made us wait anxiously for its conclusion. It was bold, it was dark, it was memorable. 

And just like Glitch Techs, Infinity Train waits on a side track, unsure if it will be picked up, or will it be abandoned and left as a canvas for graffiti artists.

However, to end the Summer, a truly amazing TV movie has arrived on Disney Plus, where we came back to good, old Danville and could witness Candace against the universe. The new Phineas and Ferb movie brought back the glorious memories of this fantastic show, with the same humour, writing, abundance of catchy songs and a surprisingly deep moral.

In September we have seen the start of Big Hero 6 season 3 and a odd change of format. Instead of standalone 22-minute episodes, the show now consists of two 11-minute segments. In opinion of many, this weakened the stories, forcing them to be more comedy-oriented, and shortening the potential emotional drama. Still, it gave us funny, short stories, but they did clash with the two previous season, not to mention the movie.

However, if that wasn't up to your taste, Ducktales season 3 also started airing, and continued its first part up until December with more action- and plot-driven episodes, including the Darkwing Duck crossover, serving as a pilot of the spin-off. 

Later in December fans have learned that Season 3 will be its last, which broke the hearts of many duck fans; however, it seems that the season has been written as the last one in mind, and the news of the ending was known to the creators, which gives us hope for a kick-ass finale somewhere in 2021.

Miraculous New York, telling arguably one of the most mature storylines, opened the "Heroez" world to some new characters and new opportunities, with two more specials, taking place in Shanghai and Brazil, meant to air somewhere next year. AND I DO HOPE WE WILL SEE MORE LOCAL FOOD VENDOR SUPERHEROES LIKE HOT DOG DAN. 

October was the month of two season 3's: Carmen Sandiego and Kipo. In case of Carmen, as it is usual with Netflix, the "season" was only a half-one, with just a handful standalone episodes, and just a dash of more ongoing plot. 

For Kipo, however, season 3 was the end, and what a glorious one it was. Fans were saddened to learn of it, but Kipo was always imagined as a 3-part story, and it showed. The finale proved more than satisfying ending to the plot, elevating Kipo to one of the smartest cartoon characters we should all try to aspire to.

In November, Distant Lands: Obsidian aired, focusing on everyone’s favourite candy/vampire couple, and the long and complicated love between Bonnibel and Marceline. And as usual, it showed us that relationships are not always as straightforward as we would like them to be, but with enough music and teamwork, no enemy is big enough. 

For the next new show, I’ve waited with the most amount of excitement and anxiety. Because while I was completely fine with other reboots and re-imaginings to take creative takes, new Animaniacs, (airing on Hulu) had to be perfect and had to be the lightning that struck twice. 

And sadly... it wasn’t. It was still good, but some people criticised (incorrectly imho) the amount of political topics, while I mourned almost total cast-ration of additional characters, aside from Pinky and the Brain. This truly weakened the possibilities it could have had. It was still very good, but you can feel that some of the original charm was lost, due to these odd, odd limitations. 

December brought us a new original Apple TV movie, Wolfwalkers. A beautifully animated folk tale of friendship and social divides, and how short-sight can cause the collapse of both arguing sides, reminding me very much of the intelligence and heart of original “How to Train Your Dragon”.  

We’ve had to wait two years for the return of arguably one of the most wholesome shows out there: Hilda. Second season dived into deeper mysteries that permeate the rich and colourful troll-ridden land, we saw the return of some familiar characters, and introduced a whole new storyline, that ended with a surprising cliffhanger. Still as wholesome, but now with a tiny bit of Police incompetence. Also Twig, lots of Twig.   

Just like Onward, Pixar’s highly anticipated Soul aired on Disney+, telling a very mature story about finding one’s purpose in life, what that purpose actually means, and whether it exists at all. Beautifully animated, with fantastic soundtrack, it was a stunning tribute to creativity, and it never dumbed down its profound, open message about following your dream.   

And just if you thought that Soul was going to be 2020′s last note (pun very much intended), right before the year ended, DC Super Hero Girls concluded its first season on a rather anti-climactic two-parter. That being said, the season, running from March of last year, was packed with short, bite-sized, funny stories, taking interesting spins on existing comic book characters. For a comic book noob like me, it was perfectly fine, and I can’t wait for the second season next year. 

And so, we have reached the series finale of humanity. 

2020 ends in just under a day. What will 2021 bring us? I do not know, and if the animated shows of this year have taught me anything, is that the future is an always open book, full of worries and challenges, but also opportunities and possibilities. 

...

And in reality I was too lazy to check any news sites about upcoming projects.

#infinity train #glitch techs #amphibia #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #animaniacs #carmen sandiego #hilda #DuckTales #big hero 6 #distant lands #dc super hero girls #Miraculous Ladybug #spop #The Owl House

[purplesurveys]

1278

Social Media Survey

[joybucket]

What is your favorite social media site?  Either Twitter or YouTube, though I never use YouTube as a social media site per se so I guess this round goes to Twitter.

Do you use...

facebook? myspace? twitter? snapchat? instagram? youtube? pinterest? bzoink? another site with message boards? tumblr? deviantart? xanga?

Facebook

Do you get on Facebook every day?  Yeah pretty much all throughout the day. I used to never use it, like never ever; but back in college all announcements were coursed through Facebook so I was technically required to be on it regularly, and it was from there that I began to see memes and start to be more active. I’m a shitposter more than anything though and I rarely ever post stuff of my own. How many FB friends do you have?  I have 679 at the moment but I want to get rid of like 500 of them; it’s just such a long list to go through so I never get to proceed with my unfriending spree lol.

Have you ever been on a deleting spree?  HAHA I just mentioned that. I’ve always wanted to, but like I said 679 is already such an exhaustive list for me, and that’s considering I only started touching my Facebook in like 2019. I can’t imagine people who started Facebook in like 2009 and have 4000 friends aka most people I know.

Have you blocked a lot of haters?  I don’t have haters; at least I’m not aware of any that I have. Not that it’s something I care about at this point.

Do you get bullied online a lot?  No, but that’s also because I don’t really open the channels for people to send in hate. I don’t have Q&A handles like Curious Cat and I never pick out that option in Instagram where people can send in questions.

What's your favorite Facebook app?  Oh I never use Facebook for their apps. Are those still even a thing...? Anyway, I mainly go there to be on the hunt for stupid memes I can reshare or to watch videos that are either funny or informative.

Are you a fan of selfies?  I don’t mind if other people do it, but I think I’m honestly bad at selfies so I almost never take them. I’ve never figured out my angles or what filters look ok on me.

Has anyone ever called the police on you because they didn't like your status?  No but I have had my posts reported because they were deemed ‘offensive.’ Which is weird because my posts that have been taken down are those that speak out against disgusting men, which says a lot about Facebook runs their shit more than anything else.

Are you in any facebook groups?  I’m in nearly a hundred groups, both private i.e. for school purposes, and public.

Are you the admin of any groups?  Nah. Too much time and effort needed out of me.

Do you report abuse to group admins whenever you see it?  Yes. I report the post then leave the group.

What could make Facebook better?  They could put more effort into detecting and banning troll farms.

What year did you start using Facebook?  I made an account in 2012 because of a high school class that required us to upload this specific video-format homework onto Facebook (which in hindsight is such an insensitive homework considering that was nearly a decade ago when the Philippines was still severely behind in internet connection speeds?? Ugh). But I didn’t start actively using my account until around two years ago.

What is your current profile picture of?  Myself, posing in front of the sunflowers in school during the recent graduation season.

Did you like the old Myspace better than Facebook?  I was never a regular user of Myspace, so...

Pinterest

What are some of your favorite boards?  I’ve never had a clue what the purpose of Pinterest was. I mean I have an account...but I’ve also never gotten the hang of it?? so I never touch it hahaha.

Have you ever done a craft you saw on Pinterest?  Well no, because I’m terrible at arts and crafts anyway.

Do you have a Dream Wedding board? If so, what's on it?  No.

If you have a Dream House board, what does your dream house look like?  Ok fine this one I did start hahahah but I don’t even remember what I added on there anymore. I’m sure it was filled with modern-style houses with minimalist interior design.

Do you wish they'd bring the "like" button back?  I’m not even aware of this option.

Do you have a Bucket List board?  Not aware of this either.

Which do you like better: Just Girly Things or And That's Who I Am? The second one sounds less childish. < Same, and it sounds like it covers more.

Do you have a board for tattoos you like? If so, what are some of your faves?  No. The only one I ever made was the house one, then Pinterest quickly became boring from there when I realized there wasn’t much else I could do besides making mood boards.

Do you have a "Random" or "Miscellaneous" board?  No.

Have you ever reached the maximum number of boards?  No.

Do you have any secret boards?  No.

Have you ever had a Pin deleted because of copyright laws?  No.

Do you have a Color board? No.

Do you have an About Me board? If so, what's on it? No.

YouTube

Do you have a YouTube channel? If so, what is it?  Technically I do but I only have it so I can tailor video suggestions to my interests and so that I can like videos and subscribe to channels I like.

What kind of things do you post on YouTube?  I’ve never posted any video on there, not even private ones. I’m also not the type to comment.

What do you like to watch on YouTube?  These days YouTube serves as a stress reliever for me, which is to say I would typically go for humorous BTS-related compilations because there are sooooo many hilarious channels that make these great videos haha. Occasionally I’d go back to channels or series that I used to frequent, like Good Mythical Morning, Buzzfeed’s Worth It and Unsolved, Try Guys, Watcher, etc. 

Are you subscribed to any channels?  To so many.

Do you watch any vlogs? If so, what ones are your favorite?  Hm probably Jiwoo’s, though her channel is called Mejiwoo. I find her content calming and conversational and basically fun to binge-watch when I’m not looking for anything super super particular to watch.

If you have a channel, how many subscribers do you have?  0. I’m just a lurker.

Will you subscribe to my channel? (msg me if you want a link!)  Only if it’s really fit to my interests, I guess.

Do you watch music videos?  Rarely; not a fan of MVs in particular. I only really ever put an exception for BTS.

Have you ever watched a TV show on youtube?  Well no since their copyright team works hard and works fast lol. I do watch entire video game walkthroughs from time to time.

Have you ever worked out to exercise videos on youtube?  No, I can’t care less about working out tbh.

Have you watched Amanda Todd's famous video?  No. I’m scared that it might be too upsetting or triggering for me.

Have you ever looked up how to do something on YouTube?  Not really, I prefer looking up articles that can teach me step by step in words.

Do you get a lot of hate comments on youtube?  No, I’ve never posted anything on there.

How long have you been a youtuber?  Never been.

Instagram

Do you post on Instagram a lot?  I do 1-3 Instagram stories in a week, I would say. As for posts, I only have 4 in total and I don’t really feel the pressure to add more. I just post when I feel the want to.

Have you ever posted a poll on instagram?  Nah, I’m not too sure if anyone would participate so I’ve never tried. If you don't have an iPhone, do you wish you could use Instagram?  I’m pretty sure other operating systems can also use Instagram...

Do you have any followers?  Around 50, I think.

Do you like Instagram filters? I’ll use them sometimes to make my stories appear prettier.

Twitter

Do you think twitter is stupid? Hehe show me at least one person who doesn’t think so. < Coming from someone who regularly uses Twitter, agree. It is crazy stupid but stupid is what I’m there for. Which is honestly not always such a bad thing to me - I like that people are more themselves, more stripped-down, vulnerable on Twitter. People always seem to want to show off their best selves on Facebook and Instagram, so I’m actually kind of grateful that there is at least one social media out there where people can just be their clumsy, goofy selves.

How often do you tweet?  Probably a maximum of five a day. Nowadays I’m on there mostly to just scroll through my timelines.

Do you get on twitter every day?  Yes, both on my personal and fan account.

Bzoink

Do you make a lot of surveys?  I never make them but I try to take them as often as I can.

Do you take a lot of surveys?  Haha sorry, was one step ahead of you. Yeah, I do.

Do you post in the message boards?  Nah. I dunno if I’m even permitted to check the message boards on Bzoink considering I don’t have an account.

What types of surveys are your favorite?  Categorized surveys like this one or countdown ones can be fun, but at the end of the day I like sticking to the classic random survey.

Do you have friends on here?  Not on Bzoink, but here on Tumblr yes! There’s a number of people here I like keeping up with :)

Do you post all your secrets on here?  Again, not on Bzoink; but yep I share pretty much everything here.

What type of survey do you think I should make next?  Anything but basic/about me-themed ones that will ask for my name and eye color and weight.

Do you read peoples' answers to your surveys?  I’ve never made a survey.

Do you think you are good at making surveys? 

Do you try to make unique surveys?

What type of surveys do you want to see more of?

Random

This or That

Scattergories

Have You Ever

Are you like me?

About You

Personal, Deep Questions

Girly

Music shuffle

Would You Rather

Do you have this in your bedroom?

Long

Short

All About Your Crush

Fashion

Make-up

School

Music

Your health

Your friends

Confessions

Girl Confessions - how different is this from just confessions? Hahaha

R-Rated

Controversial topics

Myspace

Did you have a myspace when you were in high school?  I started an account in like 4th grade when Myspace was ~big, but I didn’t find it fun and everyone my age was on Friendster anyway, so I was largely inactive.

Do you use myspace now?  No. Is it still even around? I have no clue.

Do you miss bulletins? I didn’t get to join in on the fun so there’s nothing to miss.

Did you like customizing your profile with the old myspace?  Not attributed to Myspace but I did have a lot of fun customizing my Multiply and Tumblr accounts back in the day. That was a period where I really got to learn and play around with HTML :)

Did you have music on your profile?  Not on Myspace again but I did on Multiply! I had a cute little playlist that played the songs immediately as soon as you landed on my page hahaha.

Did you learn HTML when you used Myspace?  Tumblr, yeah. I believe the skills are still there but I’ll definitely be a bit rusty.

Did you have a customized cursor?  Oh, no. Wasn’t a fan of those as I found them a bit tacky.

Did you use glitter graphics?  Also found those tacky haha no, I never used those.

Do you remember posting glitter graphics on friends' pages?  Nope.

Did you make "dolls"?  I don’t recall ever making those.

Did you use photo captions?  Not sure what this is referring to so let’s just say no.

Did you have a photo slideshow on your profile?  Hmmm nope, I don’t think so.

Xanga

Did you have a Xanga account back in the day?  No. It wasn’t big here so I had never heard of it until I started taking surveys on here and heard people mentioning Xanga, actually.

Do you have a xanga account now?  No.

Did you post photos and quotes on your xanga page?  I never had any.

Snapchat

Do you use snapchat?  I did; I was superrrrr active on there for a time. It kind of just got old at one point, though, and my feed got more and more dead until I too just left my account dormant altogether.

What is your favorite filter?  There were a lot of cute ones on there that helped me be more confident with taking selfies but my favorites have to be the dog and flower crown ones.

Tumblr

Do you understand Tumblr?  I had a better handle of it when I ran a fan account that required me to be more active; but now that I really just go on here to take surveys I just use the basic functions and nothing more. But yeah, I understand just enough to get by.

Do you use Tumblr?  Yeah. Even on the days I don’t post surveys, I regularly go on here to keep up with friends I like keeping up with like Elisabeth, Lane, Steph, Lina, Julie :)

Other

What forum sites did you use to love that aren't around anymore?  There was one message board I frequented for this girly/tween magazine I used to collect, but I won’t share the name.

Are there any other great social media sites that you recommend?  I think this survey was able to cover all the main ones I use.

Do you use a photo editing site? If so, what?  I use apps instead of sites to edit my photos.

Do you ever use BeFunky.com?  Nope.

Do you use a video editing site? If so, what?  Nah, I rarely have to edit videos in a super intricate, detailed way. Apple’s video editing features suffice for me.

Have you ever downloaded fonts?  Very occasionally since it’s never necessary.

Have you ever used photobucket to upload an image?  No but I remember going on there back in the day to look for images. I never uploaded any, though.

Do you use iTunes?  Not anymore. I have an account on Spotify now.

Do you listen to music on Pandora?  No, never used it.

#surveys #survey

[beneaththetangles]

10 Year Retrospective, Month #5: Throwback to May 2014

As we celebrate our tenth anniversary on Beneath the Tangles, we want to take some time each month to look into the past, not only to commemorate our ten years, but also to see where we were and how far we’ve come as a site and collectively as anime fans. For most months this year, we’ll do that by looking back at a particular year and at the month corresponding to that year. For instance, we started this off by looking at January 2010. Today we throw back to May 2014.

TOP OF THE CHARTS: MAY 21, 2014

We’ll dive into anime a bit, but I want to us to look at what else was happening at this time in 2014. Here are the most popular songs, movies, and series on this day or during this week six years ago.

Top Selling Album: Frozen, Soundtrack Number One Song: “All of Me,” John Legend Top Movie: Godzilla ($93.2 mil) Most Watched TV Show: The Big Bang Theory

CURRENT EVENTS: MAY 2014

Here’s what was happening in the world eight years ago this month…

Demonstrations are held across the world for the recovery of 280 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

More than 2,000 are killed in a mudslide in Afghanistan.

Fighting escalates and a presidential election is held in Ukraine.

Narendra Modi becomes the 15th prime minister of India.

“Gangnam Style” reaches 2 billion views on YouTube.

POPULAR ANIME in 2014

Six years. It seems that this might be the line of demarcation, the divide between “old anime” and “anime the younger generation still watches and appreciates.” At least that’s the sense I get from endless hours posting and looking through social media. Series that should have slid further into oblivion remain in vogue, like Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, Ao Haru Ride, Noragami, Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions, No Game No Life, and Parasyte. As I get older, it’s hard to really keep track of the differences between years, but I feel like it’s practically twice as likely that someone in their teens to early twenties will have seen one of these series than a random one from a year or two before.

The year also provided some of biggest hits of recent years, like Free (the last series that was an Internet sensation before it aired?), Seven Deadly Sins, Your Lie in April (recently covered by the TangleCast), Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Haikyuu!! (which by the way narrowly defeated Violet Evergarden in our Caitin Glass Review and Watch poll). Some of the most well-reviewed (or at least well-covered) shows of the year also included Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Yona of the Dawn, Terror in Resonance, and Shirobako (the next series our podcast is covering—a little info drop for those who are reading!). These series stand out so well to me because I was knee deep in Tumblr at the time, the so many fans were clamoring about them. It really made these series stand out, whether or not they truly deserved the attention.

WHAT WE WERE BLOGGING

At the end of our last article in this series, I hinted at how I would leave the blog. But although burnout was coming, I wasn’t there yet, and most probably because 2014 was a really good year for Beneath the Tangles, especially the first half. During that time, leading into the summer, Beneath the Tangles was exactly how I hoped it would be. I slowed down my output because our writers were doing so much. It really felt like a partnership, a group of about eight of us who were writing regularly, including Lynna who started to do some episodic posting; Kaze, whose pieces were always far different from anyone else’s; Goldy, who was so skilled with her words and knee deep in convention and Christian otaku life; Hansha, who covered a variety of series but espoused the grace that could be found especially in shoujo shows; Zeroe4, who became a Swiss army knife of sorts for the blog until he departed for greener pastures; Emma, who came on as our webmaster but also helped out with social media and writing, too; and Japes, whose Anime Today column was as a strong any we’ve ever had on the blog. Speaking of Japes, it was in 2015 that he started The Tangles podcast, which he would later retool as the TangleCast—unfortunately, those early recordings have become lost.

It’s strange for me to see what I wrote during that year. I’ve written so many posts now that I’ve forgotten, maybe, what a majority of them were about. It’s weird to see my spending so much time writing about series that I was meh about, like Golden Time or Nisekoi or Blue Spring Ride, the last of which I mused for almost every episode during season one. Looking back, doing episodic looks was a bad idea, one that helped speed along my burn out. In fact, browsing through those posts is like taking a mile high view at my blogging life. Ah…I see what was happening there! It’s too bad that I couldn’t or refused to take that kind of look at the time. Writing about each episode of Terror in Resonance was fun, but it was also challenging and, again, not the best idea.

Taking this viewpoint also helps me see how I was trying to spread my wings. An article I sold to Christianity Today was posted on our site that year. I haven’t revealed that name before, but I worked closely with one of their editors at the time who encouraged me greatly with an article that would be almost an introduction to anime for that site’s audiences. It was accepted, I was paid, and then I waited. When it wasn’t published, I checked back and found that my editor had left; the new one wasn’t as interested in anime and rejected the article. I proposed another one about Miyazaki, also rejected, and also later posted on this site. The weird timing on the first one was especially painful to me, as I thought that would help launch Beneath the Tangles to a higher plane among Christian readers. It was hard to absorb having gotten my work where I wanted it, and then seeing it fall away.

A lot of times, life can be see as these series of “what might have beens.” In retrospect, I wouldn’t have been ready for the attention that posting on Christianity Today might have brought, nor was I strong enough of a writer to continue to put out work equivalent to that I prepared for the magazine. God, after all, does seem to know best.

I hope enjoyed this look into the recent past, both on a bigger, societal level and at Beneath the Tangles. We’ll keep up this throughout 2020. Read the other posts in this yearlong series.

#Anime #20 20 in 2020 #10 Year Retrospective #2014 #Beneath the Tangles #Flashback Friday #Articles #Author: TWWK

[ironforgedrp]

Hi! I'm a (hopefully) first time admin and I've got everything ready to go and set up but I'm really nervous that it won't get off the ground, and you guys have been open for so long do you have any tips for me how to make my RP be as successful as yours? It looks like such a good place, I hope it's not weird to ask this

        hi there friend,  thank-you so much for your compliments, and don’t stress… i’m happy to offer some advice, i’m no expert whatsoever but i’ve run a few roleplays over the past decade or so.    the key note firstly is to think of your RP as your kind of group ersatz family, as the admin you’re the head of that family.   you keep everyone on course, you’re the gatekeeper and it’s your standards that set the tone for what happens in your family’s house.  and i first want to tell you honestly that it is a little bit of a responsibility; you have to be willing to sort out problems, make decisions, mediate, diffuse and sometimes be on the receiving end of anon hate or the occasional jaded RPer, you have to be motivated and encouraging and dedicated -  but if you are, the people who you write and create with will give it back to you tenfold & it will never become a drag.    i hope this helps you a bit!

decide if you want a co-admin or you think you can handle it yourself - i personally have done solo-adminning, lead admin with moderators & co-adminned with up to four people. though i’ve found that, if you want to work with a team of mods/admins, having an odd number can be really helpful as you’re never tied.  also, if you decide to bring in a co-admin or moderator, have a clear idea of how you want to operate as a roleplay and what you expect of them as admins, and whether or not they have an equal say as you, the creator of the roleplay.  if they do, make that clear and if they don’t, make it clear what things you need to have a look over and what things they are able to handle alone (i.e. asks, applications, major plot changes).   honestly, the worst thing that can happen is if you’re not on the same page because it confuses you, them and your muns.

don’t jump the gun, patience is key.  if you’re hoping to have a long running roleplay then i would expect at least a month of work to be put into it before it’s trotted out, but it sounds like you’re already ready to go. make sure, before you open for activity, you have enough muns & characters to get the roleplay off to a healthy start and have the dash reasonably active.

set rules that are clear, but don’t be a dictator - make sure you have expressed clearly what your rules of conduct are (such as dash conduct, mun age restrictions [if any], activity standards, god-modding, banned/acceptable faceclaims, etc.)

set up an ads blog, and queue ads to post semi-regularly with varied but relevant tags and an eye-catching graphic &/or summary of your roleplay

set up a discord server or another way for your muns to communicate and plot OOC, it really helps muse and communication and also can be a fantastic way to build plots with existing characters and muns.  and, lets be honest, it’s nice to be able to chat with the folks you’re writing with.

check in with everyone! make sure your muns are comfortable and happy and no one is falling by the wayside or being left out. also, it’s nice to make sure that your muns are alright personally - by no means pry, but be an open ear if someone needs to talk. you’d be surprised how many in the RPC are often too shy or anxious to admit to an admin that they need time for their mental health, work, study, etc. but if you make it clear from the beginning that you actually do care and are willing to help work with people it makes all the difference.

the most important to me: build rapport!!!   the best thing for your roleplay, as an admin, is to do your absolute best to be approachable and have a relationship with your muns. you obviously don’t have to be best friends with everyone and talk every day, but believe me, what makes a roleplay last is the community you build behind it. i love having made such talented and varied friends in ironforged - we have voice chats and some of us facetime and/or text, we watch tv shows together and even help each other out with anything from personal problems to university assignments.  our community is  what helps us withstand all the trials and tribulations, and it’s what has given our roleplay such fantastic plot drops and progressions.  the main point is, from the get-go, make sure your muns know that your DMs are always open if they have questions, queries, rants, concerns, ideas… all of the above.

trigger warnings, which obviously depends on the genre you’re in but, i personally would suggest to offer your muns the ability to tell you what their triggers are privately and list them somewhere on the main blog for the other members to see.

embrace being an admin, and don’t get walked over. don’t forget that this is your roleplay, you created it and put the work in and no one (anon or not) can tell you how to run it. don’t be scared to call out people for breaking the rules, don’t be scared to issue warnings, don’t be scared to reject people if they haven’t read the rules or aren’t the right fit for your roleplay or make you uncomfortable, don’t be scared to say no.  it’s okay!

have open eyes, ears and mind; listen to feedback and concerns, hear out grievances and be willing to be polite even if people are being rude but don’t entertain pointless anon hate. speaking of anon hate… don’t turn off the anon ask option unless you honestly feel like it is the right route for you - it shuts off the ability for people to contact you whilst maintaining some anonymity and privacy, which can be discouraging.

crucial to any roleplay is the world-building, have a page with some key locations that are applicable to your roleplay (such as cafes, taverns, gyms, shops, housing locations), also i’ve honestly found that it helps setting the scene. consider where your roleplay is located (real place/fictional place) and make those details clear. paint the picture, immersion is a fantastic thing and it’s something both you and your muns can work on and collaborate on in the future. we have an inspo blog, pinterest boards, spotify playlists, youtube playlist, ambiance playlists, regional locations and business…. and a very colourful NPC list that has been collaborated and expanded upon throughout the life of ironforged.

have clear direction and at minimum a loose idea of where you want to go with your roleplay.  even if you don’t want to have a very plot driven roleplay (like ours is with plot drops, random events, character/mun interwoven plots - which requires a long-form type of roleplaying) and would rather have it open world (you set the scene, and everyone just goes with the flow - which can be both long or short form types of writing) - it is so important to have some tricks and surprises in your bag. the best and easiest is having a few muse-boosting tasks lined up, perhaps a group event to bring people together (a party, a fight, a ball, a wedding, etc.) otherwise, 8.5 times out of 10, you’ll find muse flatlining.  ask your muns! ask other rps! make a poll! hit up the RPC tags and roleplay helper blogs!

the finer details; pick a timezone to mark the roleplay with (eg; here i post in AEST on the roleplay because i am australian and it’s easy for me to queue and schedule things) but it’s crucial to ensure you include the timezone equivalent for other people in other timezones to be able to quickly understand (eg; AEST = GMT+10). you can always link an external timezone converter page if you’re unsure!

and, of course, be organised. make sure you have your pages set up and linked properly. the main that come to my mind to start off with are; navigation, plot, taken FCs, IC & OOC rules, a masterlist, blogroll/follow list, application/application page, application counts, ask & submit are open and an ooc page.

         and LASTLY,  this is my personal advice from one admin to another; if you really want a roleplay to work and you really want it to last for (hopefully) years, then you have to put some heart into it.  our roleplay, as a group, has seen some bad times and good times galore. we’ve had people become seriously ill, we’ve had engagements and weddings, graduations, a fair few birthdays, hospital trips/emergencies, international internships, personal problems, personal triumphs…  our communication as a roleplay isn’t always perfect, but we continue to do our best - and working on our communication is what allows us to keep going on through everything.

         also, as an admin, do your best to make sure you are not the most powerful character and not center of all the roleplays controversy, drama and plot drops (if applicable), it’s become a kiss of death cliche, and also can alienate potential muns because they feel like background players to your show.    but seriously, involve everyone and give a shout out for peoples interest, and the ideas that come flowing back from your muns will amaze you, trust me!

       best of luck!    admin tee.

#rpc #rph #rpa #rpcha #admin help #;; geajhdsb pEOple wanna know my opINON???? im touched but im trash water u doin here folks #Anonymous

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

One More Day 10 years later

I know some people might be bummed by the realization that we’ve been living with the burning garbage pile that is post-One More Day Spider-Man for a full decade now.

So I’d like to make this post for people to look on the bright side of this sorry situation.

To begin with, we have Renew Your Vows.

This isn’t just a big deal because it goes some way to filling that big married/family orientated Spider-Man shaped hole we’ve had since December 2007.

There mere existence of this title and its success at the time of this writing is genuinely important contributors to the hopeful reversal of One More Day. In a day and age where some Marvel titles struggle to make it a full year Renew Your Vows has passed that milestone and so far shows no signs of stopping.

Now I preach caution. This is an out of universe title that just shook up it’s status quo, lost big name and popular writer/artist team in exchange for ones of comparatively lesser status, has a new status quo too similar to other more well known/popular characters and represents something Marvel have been shown to be institutionally opposed to.

So as much as we don’t want it to happen, enjoy the ride while it lasts and be prepared for the series to get cancelled sooner or later, probably within the forthcoming year.

But always remember RYV volume 2 and the original 5 issues have when you really grade them fairly been clear cut successes, both financially, critically and creatively.

All three of those things sing in defiance of Marvel’s basic contentions that:

 a)      An older/married/family man Peter Parker wouldn’t sell well

b)      That an older/married/family man Peter Parker limits storytelling opportunities.

 These sentiments are also to a lesser extent echoed in the ASM newspaper strip that has continued to depict a married Spider-Man throughout the post-OMD period, which carried additional weight to it since that has more direct involvement of Stan Lee himself, effectively demonstrating that Spider-Man’s co-creator opposed OMD.

 But that ain’t all. However you feel about how they use her, Marvel have clearly demonstrated an at least basic acknowledgement that Mary Jane is a popular character in her own right which greatly helps the cause of reversing OMD. Just 2 years ago her brief appearances in Invincible Iron Man sent TWO issues of that title into multiple printings.

 Furthermore let’s remember that ever since Amazing #600 at the earliest and Power Play most recently Marvel have teased the possible reversal of OMD or at least reunion of Peter and Mary Jane as a way to spike sales. And it’s usually worked. Equally they know that pouring salt in that wound gets the fanbase riled up, which in their deluded minds is a good thing.

 Marvel KNOW there is a very large and very vocal group of Spider-Man fans out there who WANT the marriage back and they KNOW they can make money off of that. In fact they know that group constitutes the majority, hence why we never got a Peter Parker married to Gwen Stacy or Black Cat Secret Wars mini-series or continuation. And literally every poll ever conducted since 2007 (regardless of their legitimacy) has shown clear cut preference for OMD to be reversed/for Spider-Man to be married to Mary Jane.

 That’s only a good thing for the cause.

  We can even see some glimmer of hope in unlikely places. As controversial as Michelle was in Spider-Man: Homecoming if she is indeed (as many interpret her to be) a take on Mary Jane Marvel Studios is on some level feeding a mass pop culture incentive for people to know, like and indeed EXPECT Mary Jane in their Spidey media.

  The 5 year long Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, despite it’s poor quality, did much the same thing. Even if these also push a teenage Spider-Man they also push a Spider-Man for whom Mary Jane is clearly a part of his life. This goes even moreso for the much anticipated Spider-Man Playstation 4 video game where (to my understanding) Mary Jane is even a playable character!

 Want some more good news? It seems two of the biggest and most influential detractors of the Spider Marriage are leaving positions of power. Dan Slott will end a 10 year run on Amazing Spider-Man and hopefully forever leave Spider-Man work behind him. His work was in fact the very first to mean spiritedly rub salt in the wound of Spider Marriage lovers and he has been strongly outspoken against the marriage’s existence and in favour of the need for One More Day. Losing his can only be a good thing for anyone who wants OMD reversed. We are also losing Axel Alonso who is also an opponent of the marriage and has been since his days editing the Spider books. Replacing his as EIC of Marvel is Cebulski who, based upon his work, is at least not actively opposed to the marriage.

 Finally some food for thought.

 Consider that sales of Amazing Spider-Man whilst better than the rest of Marvel are still lower than they were during Straczynski’s run when the market place technically was worse off, when there were not as many gimmicks and events artificially inflating sales and the Spider Marriage was both in place and promoted heavily/positively.

 Consider that it is inevitable that the powers that be at Marvel comics will someday be replaced by those who are from a generation when the marriage existed and was promoted positively. It is also highly likely that these new people in power will be Spider-Man fans (and therefore likely proponents of the marriage) due to Spider-Man’s perennial popularity which (thanks to films, TV shows, video games, merchandise and a guy named Venom) reached new heights during the years he was married. During this period merchandise and wider media also promoted Mary Jane as Spidey’s key love interest (and even depicted her married to him).

 As the current regime has so aptly demonstrated, there is a tendency for better or for worse (usually for worse) for a creative team to try and on some level recreate their childhoods with whatever characters they are working on. This more than anything was the most powerful motivator for OMD, not the nonsense about ‘creative limitations’. Joe Quesada and others within Marvel grew up on an unmarried Spider-Man and never liked the fact that that changed, and so resolved to change it back.

 They felt this way in response to, at worst, a C grade Spider-Man story that (to them) upended the Spider-Man they knew and loved. Putting aside how mass Spider-Man fandom at that time felt very differently and were supportive of the marriage, it stands to reason that future generations who grew up with the marriage will feel the same way about what One More Day did to Spider-Man.

 Only tenfold because One More Day not only retconned their childhoods, changed the status quo they knew and loved but also led to stories that actively took a piss on what they knew and loved. Oh and isn’t merely a C grade story but widely recognized as one of the absolute WORST Marvel stories of all time and unquestionably THE worst Spider-Man story across his 55 year history.

 One way or another, sooner or later, that WILL be erased I promise you.

 Want some proof?

 Well for starters way back in 2008 former Spider-Man editor Stephen Wacker outright SAID that in 20 years time (the same time period the marriage lasted) One More Day will probably be undone.

 But if you want something more substantial than that look at DC Comics’ history.

 Acclaimed comics writer Goeff Johns and former DC EIC Dan Didio have made practically made their careers from taking DC’s characters in directions that reconstruct the status quos of their own childhoods.

 But even more significantly than that DC have demonstrated multiple times an ability to course correct their characters even YEARS after they have been taken in controversial directions.

 Hal Jordan became a mass murdering villain in the infamous Emerald Twilight storyline of the 1990s before around 10 years later Johns redeemed the character, brought him back to life and manoeuvred him into the role of the main Green Lantern in an acclaimed storyline.

 In 2016 DC started to course correct their entire universe after rebooting it in 2011.

 After making Wonder Woman unrecognizable DC hired her former writer Greg Rucka to return to the title and reinstate much of the continuity and philosophy that defined her character.

 Johns worked his old tricks to have Barry Allan redeemed for causing the reboot in the first place.

 But no example should give Spider Marriage fans more hope than Superman’s situation.

 In 2011 DC took Superman from a married man in his 30s who staunchly regarded himself as human in spite of his alien heritage and made him a man in his 20s, who’d never been married and felt himself an isolated alien God amongst men. Lois Lane, his iconic lover, was demonized and pushed aside in favour of him dating fellow heroine Wonder Woman thus fulfilling the fanfiction shipper desires of many within DC editorial.

 But in 2015 DC RE-introduced the old married Superman and even made him a father. Then they went a step further and had him live in the shadows within the main DC universe, watching his younger counterpart. Then in 2016 they took the bold move of killing off their new 2011 reboot Superman and replacing him with the old Superman. The Superman who now was approaching his 40s, who’d been married for years, had a young pre-teen son and came with a history that had (give or take) lasted between 1986 to 2011.

 THAT was who DC made their main Superman, complete with old and beloved Superman scribe Dan Jurgens at the helm.

 And it WORKED.

 Sales and critical acclaim greatly increased on the Superman titles.

 Then DC went one step further in a 2017 storyline where they outright ERASED the 2011 rebooted version of Superman and essentially within their newly rebooted universe reinstated most of Superman’s history dating back to 1986, effectively RE-canonizing it.

 And again...sales and critical acclaim were in a healthier place than before. In fact many Superman fans have declared the past 2 years or so a true renaissance for the character.

 DC’s decisions with Superman and it’s success bode incredibly well for the hopes and ambitions most Spider-Man fans have for the eventual reversal of One More Day and the restoration of the Spider-Marriage.

 As bad as the past 10 years have been try to bear some of this stuff in mind going into the future.

#One More Day #OMD #Spider-Man #peter parker #mary jane watson #Mary Jane Watson Parker #MJ Watson #mjwatsonedit #Annie May Parker #spinneret #spiderling #Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #renew your vows #Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #spider-man renew your vows #DC #DC Comics #Marvel #Marvel Comics #Ultimate spider-man #Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon #Venom #Superman #Lois Lane #Clark Kent #Green Lantern #hal jordan #kal el #the flash #flash

[aion-rsa]

MST3K Turkey Day: The Long History of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Thanksgiving

https://ift.tt/3l4KHUl

Sometimes a long-running TV show finds itself linked to a certain holiday. Community had Christmas. The Simpsons has Halloween. Brooklyn 99 had Halloween, then changed it to Cinco de Mayo for scheduling reasons. Saturday Night Live has…Election Day, I guess? I probably should have thought this through a bit more.

While Mystery Science Theater 3000 has done a handful of Christmas-themed episodes (one major one per host, at least), the series has a much deeper relationship with Thanksgiving. Turkey Day is essentially its legacy. It started on Thanksgiving and it always comes back to that one Thursday in late November, whether the show is on the air or not.

Back in 1988, Joel Hodgson created a new show idea inspired by a random image from the liner notes of an Elton John album, wherein a couple of silhouettes sit in front of a movie screen. He and some robot puppets would watch bad movies and crack jokes. While the 15-minute proof of concept footage of him watching The Green Slime never made it to air, the world would be introduced to Mystery Science Theater 3000 on November 24 as he and Crow (here voiced by J. Elvis Weinstein) sat through Invaders from the Deep.

Well, only a very small piece of the world would be introduced. The show aired on KTMA-TV in Minnesota. Regardless, the first time MST3K hit the airwaves, it was Thanksgiving night.

The episode – and really the entire KTMA-TV season – wasn’t great. The idea was there, but they hadn’t come close to hitting its potential. It still found an audience and about a year later, it was airing on the Comedy Channel. That first season, which had Joel Hodgson as Joel Robinson, Weinstein as Tom Servo, and Trace Beaulieu as Crow T. Robot, was also pretty rough. It wasn’t until the second and third seasons (where Kevin Murphy had taken over the Servo role) that MST3K really started to find its footing.

On November 28, 1991, to celebrate MST3K’s third anniversary, Comedy Central put together the very first Turkey Day marathon. Starting at midnight and ending at 6 AM on the following day (!), they would air fifteen episodes in a row, accompanied by various Thanksgiving-based bumpers and sketches.

Keep in mind, this was long before the days of The Daily Show and South Park, so Comedy Central’s pool of popular shows wasn’t the deepest. This was back when you’d turn on the channel in the middle of the day and see episodes of Soap or some ’80s movie about a mime joining a ninja academy. No really, that was a thing. They played it all the time.

In 1992, they kicked up Turkey Day a notch. While still a 15-episode marathon, it started on Wednesday, November 25 at 6 PM with the debut showing of The Beatniks. By the time they reached the home stretch at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night, they played the episode premiere for Fire Maidens of Outer Space. At midnight, to finish things off, a half-hour special called This is MST3K was aired.

They kept many of the bumpers from the first Turkey Day, added some more, and each episode was introduced with a segment where Dr. Forrester would force-feed TV’s Frank some kind of turkey dish themed to the featured movie.

1993 went even bigger by adding one more episode to the marathon, making the whole thing 32 hours long. This time, the framing bumpers took the form of clips from a party that an MST3K fan won via contest. Initially, Comedy Central wanted the guys from the show to put together some segments with a tiny budget, but it was probably for the better that they didn’t. By the time Turkey Day ’93 aired, Mike Nelson had taken over for Joel as the show’s host and that major transition was still less than a month old.

This time the marathon went from 6pm on November 24 to 2am on November 26. At 10pm on Thanksgiving night, they premiered the episode featuring Beginning of the End.

The next year’s special episode premieres were Kitten with a Whip (starting the marathon) and Zombie Nightmare (ending it). Using Zombie Nightmare worked out perfectly because that movie’s antagonist was played by none other than Adam West and who better to host the Turkey Day segments? Though in retrospect, Adam West was pretty much everywhere in the mid-90s, so it wasn’t the biggest deal ever.

Still, it was nice and even featured appearances from other MST3K targets like Robert Vaughn, Beverly Garland, and Mamie Van Doren. The main focus was Adam West cooking turkeys themed to each episode and delighting us with his smooth, tryptophan-laced voice.

The 1995 edition (officially called “MST3K Anthology” despite still airing on Thanksgiving) existed to debut the seventh season of the show, known for its meager six episodes. As Comedy Central was losing interest in the series, the marathon was shortened to fifteen hours. It also featured a rare inclusion of a Season 1 episode, The Crawling Hand.

What made MST3K Anthology so memorable was not that it was the last hurrah for Comedy Central’s annual marathons or the shortened string of episodes. It was for the premiere of Episode 701, Night of the Blood Beast and the interesting way that episode was handled. Throughout the marathon, episodes would be introduced via Dr. Forrester being forced to host an impromptu Thanksgiving party with guests including preexisting characters Jack Perkins (Mike Nelson), Mr. B Natural (Bridget Nelson), Pitch (Paul Chaplin), Kitten with a Whip (Kevin Murphy), and Michael Feinstein (also Mike Nelson). This led to the airing of Night of the Blood Beast, where not only were the host segments based on celebrating Thanksgiving, but it was shown that Forrester’s Thanksgiving party was still going on.

In later airings of that episode, the host segments were completely different and had zero connection to Thanksgiving. Everything inside the theater remained the same. They just took a holiday-themed episode and made it run-of-the-mill for the sake of easier reruns. The host segments from the MST3K Anthology version of Night of the Blood Beast are available as extras on various DVD releases.

MST3K would spend three seasons on the Sci-Fi Channel, but would only get one Thanksgiving marathon, taking place in 1997. Even then, it was a bit half-assed. The marathon aired from 7:30am on November 27 to 4am on November 28, but with a six-hour break in the middle to play a couple of Star Wars movies. It also lacked any special flavor to it, foregoing any special bumpers or segments. No episode premieres. Just a handful of Sci-Fi era episodes and a lengthy Star Wars break.

Then it was sixteen years of silence. MST3K was cancelled after its tenth season in 1999. Those involved in the show mostly split into two teams. Some followed Joel as he started his new venture Cinematic Titanic. Others followed Mike, whose failed series The Film Crew was followed by the much more successful RiffTrax. That left MST3K rights owner Jim Mallon, who tried to move forward with an animated web series starring the robots and…the less said about it the better.

Joel was seeing enough money coming to him from DVD sales to realize that despite being cancelled a long time ago, there were still people wanting MST3K. With a 25-year anniversary DVD set coming out, Joel decided to promote it with the return of Turkey Day. Turkey Day ’13 featured Joel introducing the six most popular episodes of the show, which he’d also give hints about ahead of time. Streamed online, the special ended with him at the dinner table with Servo and Crow, causing speculation amongst the fans.

Read more

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The Best Thanksgiving TV Episodes

By Alec Bojalad

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Best Thanksgiving Movies to Watch This Holiday Season

By David Crow and 3 others

There was more speculation a year later when Turkey Day ’14 had the two bots regularly appear during the host segments, voiced once again by J. Elvis Weinstein and Trace Beaulieu. There would also be segments of Joel, Trace, and Frank Conniff sitting back and reminiscing about the history of this MST3K/Thanksgiving connection.

While riding the wave of the previous year’s success, this installment of Turkey Day was also promoting a DVD set Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Turkey Day Collection. The set mainly featured four random episodes (Jungle Goddess, Painted Hills, Screaming Skull, and Squirm), but with Servo and Crow hosting intro segments to give it the illusion of a Turkey Day marathon.

By early November of 2015, shit had hit the fan. Joel had bought the rights to MST3K from Mallon and started up a Kickstarter to raise money for new episodes. Wouldn’t you know it, Turkey Day ’15 happened right during said Kickstarter. The theme of the marathon was mostly Joel hanging out with different Kickstarter employees, but it also had newly-announced Season 11 host Jonah Ray Skype his way into the broadcast to introduce one of the episodes.

The following year was pretty chill, all things considered. The new season hadn’t started yet, but it was very much on the way. Just not far along enough to show us any clips or give us any juicy news. Joel and Jonah casually hosted the six most popular episodes as polled by the fans. Nothing too crazy.

The chillness continued in 2017. This time, things were hosted by Joel, Jonah, and Felicia Day. Things seemed pedestrian with another six episodes being streamed online, but there were two important things about this marathon.

First off, everyone realized that Joel’s arms are beefier than expected, netting him the nickname Swole Hodgson.

Second, after it seemed like they were off the air, it bounced back with a special announcement that – yes, Virginia – MST3K was coming back for a twelfth season on Netflix! It’s a Turkey Day miracle! Happy Thanksgiving, you ol’ savings and loan!

Turkey Day ’18 was a bit complicated. Rather than air on Thanksgiving, the marathon streamed on the Sunday prior, once again hosted by Joel and Jonah. What made it special was that Netflix had allowed them to include the Season 11 instant classic Cry Wilderness. As for why they didn’t air the Turkey Day marathon on actual Turkey Day?

Well, Thanksgiving was when MST3K’s twelfth season debuted all at once on Netflix. Also known as MST3K: The Gauntlet, the six-episode season was based around the idea of binging the whole thing in one day. Kind of like what MST3K fans have been using Thanksgiving for for many years. While it wasn’t on the exact date as the first KTMA-TV episode in 1988, both that debut and this debut happened on the same holiday and that’s good enough as a way to celebrate the show’s 30-year anniversary.

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Unfortunately, much like the Comedy Central days, having a season of only six episodes was a bad omen. Merely a day before Thanksgiving 2019, it was announced that Netflix had canceled the show. The jerks. Any hope that Turkey Day ’19 was going to include some kind of announcement about a thirteenth season was immediately crushed and murdered like it was one of the Brute Man’s victims.

That said, the marathon that year did feature segments filmed behind-the-scenes at the third MST3K live tour. In a pre-COVID time, this was how Joel and the rest intended to keep MST3K in the minds of the public until the Netflix contract runs out and they can search out new outlets.

Up next is Turkey Day ’20. Right now, details are a little scarce, but they are figuring out the six movies via fan votes. A tournament of 24 episodes has been set up on MST3K.org, though I’m not quite sure how a tournament leads to six winners instead of just the one.

The post MST3K Turkey Day: The Long History of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Thanksgiving appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2JbZxLE

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[nightmare-afton-cosplay]

‘I Want a Sleep Divorce’: Why Separate Bedrooms Could Save Your Relationship

Rawpixel/iStock

“I want my own room.” Normally, you’d expect this statement to come from a privacy-seeking teen who’s tired of sharing a room with a younger sibling. But in this case, the one saying it is me: a 48-year-old, married mom of three.

Why would I want to forsake my spouse of almost 19 years for a room of my own? Let me count the reasons.

First, his snoring is so loud, it could rival excavation equipment. On some spring nights when the windows are open, I even worry that he’s keeping our neighbors awake. Second, there’s the blanket stealing. Third, I’m tired, literally, of being accidentally elbowed in the head.

For many years, I’ve felt guilty about wanting to grab my pillow and make a run for it—until recently when a friend said she’s counting the days until her daughter goes to college.

“I’m moving into her room and I can’t wait to get a decent night’s sleep,” she told me.

And that’s when I knew I wasn’t alone.

Why separate bedrooms makes sense

In popular historic TV shows like “The Crown” and “Downton Abbey,” upper-crust English couples retire to their own separate spaces. And this happens with modern-day couples, with reports saying that President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have separate bedrooms, too.

Of course, these people live in castles (or the White House) and have plenty of space to bed down. But even for those who live in more cramped quarters, having separate bedrooms is surprisingly common. According to a recent National Sleep Foundation survey, as many as 25% of married couples sleep in separate beds, while 10% admit that they have full-on separate bedrooms.

This trend has given rise to the term “sleep divorce,” with one poll of 2,000 Americans from bedding company Slumber Cloud finding that nearly half of the respondents would prefer to sleep alone rather than with their significant other. And for good reason: About 1 in 5 said their partner was the biggest impediment to snagging enough shut-eye.

But does ditching your partner to sleep elsewhere suggest that your relationship is on the rocks, or could be soon?

Not necessarily, says Corrin Voeller, couples counselor and owner of Prosper Therapy in Minnesota, who notes she’s seeing more couples choosing to have separate bedrooms for reasons ranging from snoring to different work schedules, even varying preferences for bedroom temperature, light, and noise.

“Couples often feel pressured to be in the same bedroom because that is what our culture deems as healthy for a good relationship,” she says. “But when they let go of those expectations and embrace that this is what they’re doing in order to have a healthy relationship, separate bedrooms can be the perfect solution.”

‘Separate bedrooms is a win-win’

Florida resident Miriam Amselem says she and her husband of 32 years slept in separate bedrooms on and off throughout their marriage, but made the move permanent four years ago. She calls the arrangement a “win-win.”

“We both love it,” she says. “We have different sleeping habits. He likes to watch TV or is on his iPad very late into the night, like 2 a.m., and I need my sleep because I wake up early in the morning. He is also a mild insomniac, tossing and turning through the night so I would usually just leave the room and sleep in a separate bedroom.”

So four years ago, “we decided to just sleep in separate rooms, since it was a nightly habit of one of us leaving the room anyway,” Amselem continues. “The way we see it is that sleep is extremely important for health reason and also for having a good relationship. When neither one of us slept well, there was impatience and frustration. But now, since we are both sleeping, those issues are pretty much gone.”

Manhattan-based real estate agent Martin Eiden of the Sports and Entertainment Division at Compass says he’s also sensing a trend as clients are looking for homes with two master bedrooms, aka dual master suites.

“More and more, couples are sleeping in separate rooms in order to get a decent rest,” he notes.

But what about intimacy?

A way to maintain intimacy while sleeping in  separate bedrooms is to spend time together in one bedroom before one or both partners go to sleep, Voeller suggests.

Pablo Solomon and his wife of 44 years, Beverly, of Austin, TX, do just that—and it works for them.

“When you are young, sleeping together is synonymous with having sex,” Solomon says. “And frankly when you are younger, sex trumps sleep. But as you age, sex is still fun but actually works better when well-planned and well-timed. And getting a good night’s sleep is more important. We also are confident enough in our relationship to be ourselves.”

While I haven’t decided when, if, or how I’ll make the move, at least I know there’s nothing wrong with choosing shut-eye over your significant other.

The post ‘I Want a Sleep Divorce’: Why Separate Bedrooms Could Save Your Relationship appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/sleep-divorce-separate-bedrooms-could-save-your-relationship/

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 12: Invasion of Imperial Territory

August 796/487. Yang, Sitolet, and Cazellnu get stuck in traffic. They run into Lebello and give him a lift in their handy military zip-helicopter. At the High Council meeting, Royal Sanford and Cornelia Windsor convince all council members except for Lebello, Huang, and Trunicht to vote in favor of the military’s proposed invasion of Imperial territory. With the operation approved by the government, Sitolet convenes a meeting at which he appoints Lobos to command the mission of eight fleets totaling 30,227,400 soldiers, with Greenhill his second in command. Andrew Fork, who crafted the invasion plan, accuses Yang of aiding the enemy. Meanwhile Rubinsky and von Remscheid go on a....date? No, okay, they’re probably just talking politics. Probably.

...Okay, got all that? We’ve been focused on laying the groundwork of the main themes and relationships that we’ll be following throughout the series, which means that many of the little plot details and secondary characters that have flitted by so far haven’t figured heavily in our posts. Since this episode is less like an iceberg and more like an ice floe that’s mostly above the water, I’m gonna take this opportunity to formally introduce us to some of these (many, many, many) characters. 

Alex Cazellnu

Pictured here with his characteristic “I’m not quite sure what’s happening around me” expression, Cazellnu is Yang’s friend and former upperclassman from the military academy. Many mysteries surround this man, as we’ll talk much more about later. For example, how did he land such a smoking hot and kickass wife? (We’ll see her soon, don’t worry.) What made him think Yang was fit to be anyone’s legal guardian? (Yes, that was his brilliant idea.) And what the fuck kind of name is Cazellnu? (Actually my guess is that it’s based on the word caserne meaning military barracks, which is a bit on the nose honestly since his job has to do with supplies and housing…)

More seriously, Cazellnu plays an interesting and important role in the show: He personifies the heteronormative societal structures and assumptions both of the in-universe world and the world of the audience. Like so much in LoGH this has a dual purpose. For the characters around him, the normative crap he says applies concrete pressure on them to meet the expectations of their society. For the audience, he explicitly articulates some of the (incorrect) "surface readings" that help the show pass as way straighter than it is. We will of course be keeping an eye out for these moments as we get to know him better.

Another Cazellnu mystery: Why didn’t he bother to give his younger daughter a name? Did he use up all the female names he could think of on Charlotte Phyllis??

Sidney Sitolet

We’ve seen Fleet Admiral Sitolet (or Sithole, as it’s sometimes spelled, but come on, have some respect…) before, most recently when he was laying a major guilt trip on Yang about trying to resign from the military. In this episode he intensifies that guilt trip even further, telling Yang that he’s the literal only hope for preventing the whole military from falling into the hands of over-ambitious zealots eager to get everyone gloriously killed. Sheesh. I know that Sitolet is clearly demarcated as one of the Good Guys here—an older, more powerful, slightly sterner version of Yang who is also extremely practical about using his resources to try to minimize the damage caused by the continuing war. And Yang is one of those resources. I get it, but...this scene at the end of this episode just makes me want to write AU fanfic where Yang tells him to go to hell and moves to a nice mountain villa where he writes history books all day while Julian goes shopping at the local market for the best deals on high quality tea.

...What, a girl can dream, can’t she? (From episode 3.)

Anyway, platitudes about patriotism and duty to crush the Evil Empire etc. won’t keep Yang in the military, but Sitolet is the one who knows exactly the kind of logic Yang finds inescapable. As much as it obviously frustrates and saddens him, Yang feels the burden of Sitolet’s expectations. 

João Lebello

Or Joanne, sure, why not.

This is the first time we’re seeing Lebello, the current secretary of the treasury serving on the Alliance High Council. He’s a childhood friend of Sitolet’s, and their banter reminds me a bit of Yang and Cazellnu’s friendship. 

In the council’s deliberations, he’s the loudest voice speaking up against the invasion, on the grounds that their economy is already being stretched thin by the ongoing warfare and further military spending could lead to collapse. Unfortunately the counter of “eh we’ll just print more money” is persuasive to most of the council, who vote in favor of the invasion in hopes that a victory will improve their polling numbers. Let’s hear it for democracy! 

Huang Louis

Like Yang, his family name is first; his given name is ルイ in Japanese, and I’ve seen it rendered as Rui, Lewi, or Louis.

The only other council member to speak against the invasion plan. Huang is quietly awesome; I don’t have a ton to say about him yet other than that, and the fact that I totally ship him and Lebello. 

Huang/Lebello is pretty high up there on the LoGH Ships expanding brain meme.

Cornelia Windsor

The token woman on the council, Windsor does a great job smashing the sexist stereotype that women are less likely than men to warmonger and advocate the deaths of millions of citizens. And she does so while reminding me so strongly of Dolores Umbridge that I’ve been trying to convince myself that J.K. Rowling must have watched at least the first twelve episodes of this show somehow. 

I mean, just look at that giggle.

There are three philosophies put forward in the council discussion: Lebello and Huang making practical arguments about the toll the war is taking on the Alliance economically and socially; Sanford, the head of the council, arguing that inaction is less likely to get them re-elected than a potential victory; and Windsor making the ideological case that war against the Empire is so righteous that no cost is too great to pay.

I’ll go out on a limb and say this show hasn’t been very subtle from the beginning about its distaste for people making arguments in favor of war and destruction on purely ideological or dogma-driven grounds. This stance seems mostly uncomplicated for now—pragmatism: good; blind idealism: bad—but so far the stars have aligned so that the characters spewing the dogmatic rhetoric are using it to push for increased death. It’s easy to roll our eyes at ideals of honor and glory in war; what about ideals like “try not to kill people if you don’t have to”? What if those go against the pragmatic arguments? We’ve already seen this tension a bit between Yang and Jessica, with his willingness to work within the military clashing with her ideals of pacifism, even though their ultimate goals align. In those cases there’s much less of a clear cut answer.  

...But for now at least, we can all agree this Umbridge-wannabe person sucks.

Job Trunicht

(From episode 6.)

We’ve already heard plenty about Trunicht and we’ll hear plenty more, so I won’t dwell on him here. But a quick Fun Fact*: Yang, being generally a luddite, refused to even get a remote control for his TV (er sorry, SolidVision) for a long time, until Trunicht started appearing regularly on the news. Yang hated seeing Trunicht’s face for even a split second so much that he would bound up off the couch to turn it off as soon as Trunicht showed up. Of course Yang is incredibly lazy, and he finally realized that with a remote control he could remain on the couch and have to see Trunicht’s face for even less time, so he caved and bought one; and now he sits eagerly watching the news with the remote clutched in one hand, hoping he’ll have the chance to turn it off in disgust.

...Relatable.

*Source: Julian’s Iserlohn Diary, one of the side stories written by Tanaka. Yes yes our canon here is the anime not the books; but we get to pick and choose adorable details that we like, and I hereby make this one Official Icebergs Canon.

Andrew Fork

Speaking of characters spewing pompous platitudes about war, meet Andrew Fork, who I really really wish I could say was a hyperbolic caricature who could never exist or gain actual power in real life but………..*looks around* here we are I guess. Fork must be a historian who wrote his thesis on early 21st century Earth internet message boards, since he employs tactics like accusing anyone who questions the practical implementation of his ideas of Aiding the Other Side. I again can’t resist sharing a passage from the novel of another character describing Fork:

*thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* I dunno it sounds familiar but I can’t place it...

Alexander Bucock

As you can tell by him giving Fork shit, Bucock is one of the more level-headed of the admirals. We’ll get to know him better in the future, so for now I’ll just mention that he’s awesome and him telling Fork that he’s impolite makes me happy. And that you shouldn’t get him mixed up with Lobos just because they both have white/gray hair and a mustache, as I may have done through pretty much the whole first season...

Quick Aside: Names

Cazellnu/Caserne/Caselnes? João/Joanne Rebelo/Lebello? Sitolet/Sithole/Shithole? Rui/Lewi/Louis? Fork/Falk? Bucock/Bewcock? Mittermeyer/Mittermeier, Reuental/Reuenthal, Mintz/Minci, Lap/Lapp/Shithole…??? It might have come to your attention by now that there is complete consensus about the spelling of essentially zero LoGH names.

You’d think “Jessica Edwards” would at least be free from controversy, but….. (From episode 2.)

Given that there doesn’t seem to be one clearly “official” source, and that it’s 1600 years in the future, we’re not especially hung up on trying to be super authentic and picky with our spellings. Maybe Cazellnu’s distant ancestors who also managed military barracks were named Caserne, but the spelling got modified as humanity emigrated to the stars; it happens. Generally our policy is to spell things however we happen to feel like it, based on some combination of aesthetics and just what we’re used to, and to be as consistent as we can once we pick a spelling; but we’re not really in the business of trying to arbitrate which spellings are “correct.” There’s too much about LoGH that’s worth caring passionately about to spend that much energy on the names. 

...Except Minci is still wrong, sorry animation notes that came with the laserdiscs.

Okay now, where were we…

Lazzll Lobos

...What, really? Lazzll, that’s what the subbers went with? Is that even a name? *quick Google search* No, no it’s not. Well, apparently it’s more commonly spelled Lassalle, but y’know what, I’m sticking with Lazzll god dammit. I make the rules here.

I don’t have anything to say about him beyond his name and that he is different from Bucock apparently.

And last but not...well okay maybe also least?

Adrian Rubinsky

When we last mentioned Rubinsky he was musing about how to use Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship to his advantage somehow; here we find him informing the Imperial High Commissioner to Phezzan about the Alliance’s impending invasion, which he learned about...somehow. His air is constantly that of one attempting to play puppet-master and sculpt the situation to his own advantage, although ostensibly he is only doing his duty here as an Imperial subject, Phezzan being officially a territory of the Empire. It’s on his information that the Imperial nobles set Reinhard’s fleet in motion to meet the Alliance invasion force, as Yang was afraid they would do.

We also very very briefly meet Dominique Saint-Pierré, a mistress of Rubinsky's, seen here pouring wine while both men leer at her; she has more power than this glimpse suggests, though, and the power struggles between her and Rubinsky are definitely the most interesting aspect of Rubinsky’s role in the story.

Phew! And with this we conclude the entry that will probably mention the highest number of canonically straight characters by name of any Icebergs post. I hope you got all that; yes this will be on the exam. 

Stray Tidbits

I love the four-hour traffic jam caused by some intern feeding a corrupt string into a computer. I’ve mentioned how realistic the self-driving car system on Heinessen feels, and having it break down only adds to the realism.

So much for Yang’s optimism that capturing Iserlohn would lead to peace negotiations rather than an escalation of the war. Cracks are starting to show in Yang’s admiration of this whole “let the people control the government” thing, and I don’t blame him; especially since the Alliance “democracy” seems to involve decisions made by simple majority vote by an eleven-person High Council?? Umm? 

The subs tried to make sense of this line by drawing a distinction that I don't think is there in the Japanese: Yang uses the same verb, "akusei o shite iru," for both governments, where akusei (悪政) is literally bad+government. My interpretation is that Yang is expressing frustration at the irony of people choosing to elect a government that nevertheless governs against their interest...but I guess I might be projecting.

I love this random shot of a Phezzani street. Most Obscure LoGH Love Triangle Award goes to the three teenagers on the right; I wonder which of them is the vertex?? This is the fanfiction the world demands. 

#Legend of Galactic Heroes #Legend of the Galactic Heroes #author: Rebecca #Alliance #Cazellnu #Hortence #Sitolet #Shithole #Lebello #Huang #Cornelia Windsor #Umbridge #Trunicht #Andrew Fork #Bucock #Lazzll #Rubinsky #Dominique #names #okay it's Mittermeyer not Mittermeier though #also Reuental #Elizabeth yelled at me for not clarifying those in the post oops #Huang/Lebello4eva

[bulldogedition]

Hold the cue cards! The Eagle has landed!

As America quietly--and we mean quietly--marked the 50th anniversary of the moon landing this week, TIME magazine decided to use nostalgia for its cover story on the topic.. Back when the moon was the hot location to get to, when John Kennedy's promise of landing a man  on the moon during the 60s ended with Richard Nixon's Administration celebrating it, and back when they were relevant as a weekly, they featured a 'race to the moon!' article a few months prior to the famed event..

This year on the 50th, they are placed a "next space race" re-do with SPACE X as the main racer.. Business taking over!!

Things have changed since then, obviously.. The ole-timers who lived through this event tell me that the world stopped in its tracks to watch coverage on TV of the moon landing.. The wiser elders of today inform me of the emotions of that time, the amazement and bewilderment so many had as they watched history being made in real time.. on TV sets--a new medium for so many in that era..

Even the  Brits did it their way across the pond.

BBC mounted programming to celebrate the great event. One of the shows featured a live jam by Pink Floyd. The program was a one-hour BBC1 TV Omnibus special with the whimsical title of So What If It’s Just Green Cheese?. It was broadcast on July 20, 1969, at 10 p.m.. The Floyd session eventually came to be called “Moonhead.”

TV GUIDE issued a cover story at the time cementing history: As major a worldwide television event as you can get.. Broadcast live not from our planet but from a satellite of it, the moon..

Children across America watched one small step for man became the giant leap for mankind, and turned to space .. they wanted to be astronauts when they grew up. Neil Armstrong became an American hero--looked up to by countless around the planet..

It was America's moment, the shining example of how WE could make it.. how WE could strive for more.. how WE could get to the moon and maybe one day beyond.

MALAISE DAYS

That brief but albeit amazing American moment of being the first to plant an earthly flag on a desolate space dwelling wore off quickly.

About 50,000+ deaths in Vietnam, Watergate, the Manson murders in Cali, high gas prices, inflation, and other world wide events suddenly forced people into a corner where pride and patriotism was not as evident.. Where we lost our focus on leaving this planet.

Instead, we decided to stay, and fight.. and argue.. Burn bras and protest war!

There was economic turmoil and other vastly amazing and historic moments of political upheaval.. whether it was Richard Nixon resigning before impeachment, or a sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter telling the nation to conserve its energy, it all led to the Reagan Revolution.

He indeed paid for that microphone and he intended on using it..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd_KaF3-Bcw&w=935&h=701]

 PATRIOTISM UP IN SMOKE

President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on January 28, 1986, hours after classrooms and media across the nation watched the Challenger explode on LIVE TV..

He called it a national loss.. He said during that broadcast, "I want to say something to the school children of America... I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted. It belongs to the brave."

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7icmqgsow&w=935&h=701]

There seemingly something about this moment that killed the dreams of space.. The malaise 70s turned into roaring decade of greed in the 80s, and somehow we trashed the notion that space mattered.

By the 1990s, a decade when miraculous and amazing discoveries were being found on Mars and other moons of Saturn, we continued just finding ourselves finding space to be the frontier not worth mentioning..

George W. Bush had a similar moment when he addressed the nation in 2003 when the Columbia exploded after mission control lost contact.. Debris fell from the skies above Texas as the Columbia was lost without survivors..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT5ecjjXdqw&w=1218&h=685]

And now, 50 years after the moon landing moment, even the business SpaceX cannot get attention unless one of its rockets blows up on the way to the Van Allen Belt.

TAPES AND LEGACIES DESTROYED

I mentioned before the ole' timers.. those who lived through the decade of revolution.. As an 80s child, I only can contemplate the death of space exploration. .When I was just 5, I may or may not have known of the Challenger horror.. when I was growing up in the 90s, my love of space was not because of NASA exploration but instead because of my healthy diet nightly of staying awake late to listen to Art Bell expose and expand on potential alien life and UFO sightings around the world..  But my interviews of those who lived through the live stream -- the true live stream during the 60s of the event -- produce another interesting side effect of the moon landing: I am told the youth of that day were glued to TV sets, but the older Americans had disbelief in what they were seeing..

Hogwash! Man on the moon!? No way!

Perhaps this is where conspiracy theories were formed.. This could be the beginning times when people just could not believe their eyes..  It was all too perfect a story. Kennedy promised men on the moon before the end of the decade. And suddenly at the end of the decade we were going to the moon, safely on LIVE TV for the world to watch, land then leaving the moon without incident, arriving back at home.. all without injury. All without a situation. Without a disaster...

Also destroyed.. a legacy? This was reported last year:

US astronaut Buzz Aldrin is suing two of his children and his former business manager alleging they stole money from him and are slandering his legacy.

The lawsuit, which also claims they are stopping him from getting married, was filed after his children petitioned to take control of his finances.

They asked a judge to name them as his legal guardians because he is suffering from memory loss and confusion.

 HOAX OR NO

There is still a large amount of people (and actually growing if you see popular opinion polls and compare throughout time) that do not think we actually were on the moon. Some real events may not have helped the NASA defenders over the years..

Back in 2009, media reports told us that Nasa taped over its only high-resolution images of the first moon walk with electronic data from a satellite or a later manned space mission, officials said today  So the most historic event in the agency ever, and someone they managed to record something else over it to save money.. huh!?

Stories like that don't help...

Rumors like this don't help either: Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' was released 11 years after the first landing on the moon. In that movie, Danny Torrance - played by child actor Danny Lloyd - is seen wearing a knitted jumper with an Apollo 11 rocket on its front. In the scene where Danny first encounters Room 237, he is seen playing on carpet that it is said to resemble an aerial photograph of the launchpad of Apollo 11.. When Danny picks up the tennis ball, which is supposed to represent the hoax itself, he then enters Room 237 and comes out of it attacked and bruised. Later, in the climax of the movie, Jack Torrance - played by Jack Nicholson - screams and raves about the responsibility that's been placed on him, and that he has signed a contract to maintain the hotel and that he is responsible for holding its secrets.

The interpretation asserts that 'The Shining' was, in part, Kubrick trying to confess his role in the moon landing, from the carpets up to Jack Nicholson's crazed rants acting as Kubrick's vented frustrations.

Stanley Kubrick's daughter was forced to push back against this in 2016..

Also this.. There was a viral video that was released on the internet where Buzz Aldrin was attending the National Book Fest in Washington DC and was being interviewed by an eight-year-old girl named Zoey.

Zoey asked the astronaut: “Why has nobody been to the Moon in such a long time?”

Aldrin’s eyes grow wide in the video and he says to the little girl:

“We didn’t go there, and that’s the way it happened. And if it didn’t happen, it would be nice to know why it didn’t happen.”

Some have even claimed to see NASA being sloppy and forgetting to censor buildings appearing in moon footage..

And just on Friday night, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis featured this as the topic for the program.. and also included a strange clip of the astronauts joking to mission control about cue cards and stage hands!!

Mission Control to Neil Armstrong: Is Buzz Holding the cue cards for you… over?

Neil Armstrong: Cue cards have a no. We have no intention of competing with the professionals believe me.

Unidentified voice: yea Ron’s getting to be known as the silent CAPCOM. (unintelligible) OK.

Buzz Aldrin: The only problem Charlie, these TV stagehands don’t know where they stand.

Mission Control: Well he doesn’t really have a union card there we really can’t complain too much I guess.

Neil Armstrong: Hey the restraints here are doing a great job of pulling my pants down.

x x x

NAZI CONNECTION

There are tons of questions that people will constantly ask about whether the moon landing REALLY happened in space or in front of TV cameraman somewhere on some elaborate set directed by Stanley Kubrick..

If you side with the conspiracy theory that the landing was a hoax, suspend your disbelief for a moment and believe.. because there is a whole other conspiracy theory/fact for your enjoyment..

Filmmaker  Aron Ranen got a grant for $65,000.. He got this grant in order to travel across the USA to interview former astronauts, mission controllers, scientists and others, in an attempt to prove that NASA actually sent men to the moon in 1969.

But instead of proving it was real, he was left with countless questions over whether it really happened.. His movie, MOONHOAX, is available for free download on YouTube and other platforms..

Along with the questions that persist whether it was real or not, Ranen asked some other question. If it was real, the set of facts that presents itself may be much more discomforting..

In the documentary, one of the Apollo mission’s few black employees reveals that the Ku Klux Klan operated openly at the Kennedy Space Center during the ’60s.

And more: A retired tracking engineer said that Nazi scientists helped the U.S. test hydrogen bombs in the South Pacific during the ’50s. This was a claim substantiated by recently declassified documents.

A former slave laborer recalls esteemed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun overseeing huge forced-labor camps in Germany during World War II (true).

And, finally, it turns out that all the basic data taped during the Apollo 11 mission has been misplaced--something confirmed in 2009 by NASA itself as we talked about earlier.

For your discernment, all the uploaded segments of MOONHOAX featuring some of the hard to stomach facts that Nazis helped the United States get to the moon, with one allegation that Neil Armstrong was the first to walk on the moon because he was a German, and Nazis assisting the US get there wanted it that way..

PUNCH DRUNK

50 years on... 50 years later. We have not really been back since....

We have been stalled here on this planet. A planet filled with war and mayhem. Instead of reaching for the stars we are just forced to continue grasping at straws that something will change..

If the moon landing really even happened to begin with.

And on that note, we will end with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. When he was approached about the factual matters of the moon landing several years ago, he had an interesting response..

Back in 2002, Buzz was approached by a moon landing denier.. Aldrin decided to take action..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_YM9cCtwz4&w=1218&h=685]

It would have been the punch heard around the world.. but after decades since 1969, everyone stopped listening.

#nasa #moon landing #moon landing hoax #pop culture

[theuniversitychallengereview]

Episode 8 - Sheffield Hallam vs Newcastle

I’m going to start this week’s blog by pitching you a TV show, after which I will try and tenuously link it to The Challenge.

Okay, so you know how after elections have been held, there is coverage through the night on just about every channel apart from the porn ones (or maybe even the porn ones, I’ve never checked) and Dave (which is showing reruns of the last election) with a wide variety of guys called David and Jeremy offering up cutting analysis and maybe a few jokes here and there until Laura Kuenssberg blows her whistle and Big Ben Bongs (RIP) to bring about the end of proceedings. The problem with this is that the results are announced before the game even begins, with the ominous sounding of the exit poll toll.

They all sit around debating whether or not the exit poll is right when there’s a very big chance that it’ll be right and an even bigger chance that any inaccuracies won’t be big enough to swing the results in any meaningful way. It takes all of the sporting thrill out of the event, so I am proposing exactly the same show, but without the exit poll.

I mean, I stay up all night to watch anyway, because there are a bunch of fantastic charts, but if there was no inevitability about it all then you could really live in the moment of each constituency announcement. (If anyone from the television is reading this please get in touch) Likewise with Brexit, that would have been an absolutely exhilarating ride for the full ten hours.

Sheffield Hallam, as well reaching the quarter finals of University Challengein 2001, is also a parliamentary constituency. Specifically it was the old seat of Nicholas William Peter Clegg, who lost it in May and then proceeded to make an interminably long speech which, despite feverish flicking through the myriad channels of dirge, I never could escape from. 

Like post exit-poll election night TV, University Challenge could also be said to be rather predictable. The last four finals have been all Oxbridge affairs, and half of all series champions have come from those two Universities. This is due in part to the fact that both have dedicated quizzing societies and a great number of exceptional quizzers. But they also get to enter five teams each a year.

When University Challenge went on hiatus in 1987, the Oxford University Quiz Society limped on for a few years and disappeared all together in the early 90s. It was given the kiss of life when Magdalen won consecutive titles just before the turn of the millennium. In those early years of the Paxman era, the triumphs of the Oxbridge colleges, helped by the fact they had multiple entries, spurred them onto the creation of the quizzing dynasty that still exists. Success breeds success.

The University of Manchester is also an example of this, and other institutions with growing quiz societies like Edinburgh and Warwick are steadily improving as they look to challenge the ancient duopoly. If more spaces were open to non-Oxbridge entrants then perhaps we would see a surge in enthusiasm for quizzing spread across more Universities.

Naturally, given the high concentrations of talent, the Oxford and Cambridge “superteams” would be even harder to beat at first, but not unbeatable, given the element of chance in the knockout format. And after a few years, with the appearances divvied up more widely throughout the country, I think there would be a proliferation of interest in quizzing much as there was in Oxford post-revival, and that the gap would even itself out a bit. 

I’m not sure why I’ve decided to give this spiel today when the match features no Collegiate teams, but I started my bit about the banning of exit polls without any idea of how I was going to segue and I think I kinda found a throughline (deliciously tenuous, as promised) so I can’t afford to waste it.

Hallam’s quarter final came on their only appearance, whereas Newcastle have made the last eight five times, putting them sixth for the Paxman era, though they've never made it any further, putting them joint forty-ninth for semi-final appearances. At least one of them would have the chance to have the chance of reaching the round robin again by making it to the second round.

Not that either side seemed particularly bothered in taking that chance over the first few questions, with a couple of starters sailing off into the ether, bothered only by a neg from Newcastle’s Reynard. His teammate Nielsen dug them out of the minuses with the first of five ten pointers - the highest of the show.

Brexit made its first appearance of the series (and its second of this blog post) with the picture starter on Googling data. I was then tricked by the bonuses on similar graphs for the searching of three politicians into thinking that the colour of each line represented the party affiliations of the relevant persons. So I was initially very confused by how the blue line could be Nick Clegg (although...), and then vindicated with my guess of Nicola Sturgeon for the yellow line. I’d realised by the time of the red line that I’d been wrong, and Hallam missed the obvious gimme of Dave C for what would have been the only bonus points they picked up all day.

Newcastle like to play quickly when they know their bonuses, though on one occasion this backfires and they interrupt Paxman with an incorrect answer. Fortunately it was the correct answer to the next question - maybe they’d just been trying to take the Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch to futuristic territory.

And talking of predicting answers, pretty much the exact question on the Big Dipper that Brian Jackson got caught for cheating on in Starter For Ten came up, though sadly no one buzzed in before it had been asked. It was one of several Astronomy questions on the episode, some of which were quite delightful, but some of which were tedious ‘which one of the planets’ type things. There are only eight planets in the solar system and you tend to be able to eliminate at least five even if you have no idea what the question is on about so I don’t know why there are always so many of them.

I watched the 2000 Grand Final between Oriel and Durham today, and one of the bonuses essentially amounted to ‘which planet comes after Uranus’. I know Pluto was still alive and kicking back then, so they could maybe have gone for that, but its definitely a sign that the questions weren’t all “much harder back in the day” as is often said.

Regardless of the question difficulty, tonights match was the lowest scoring of the past ten years (and possibly twenty five, I haven’t finished the stats) with the combined total of 210 points being lower than Bristol, Southampton and Warwick achieved on their own already this series. 

Final Score: Sheffield Hallam 40 - 170 Newcastle 

Hallam certainly won’t be here for the highest scoring loser play-off (they’d be shoe ins if it was lowest scoring losers) and Newcastle will need to up their game if they’re going to have any hopes of making the quarter finals for a sixth time, or the semis for the first.

#university challenge #newcastle #sheffield hallam #bbc2 #jeremy paxman

[wrestlingisfake]

G1 Special in USA Day 1 preview

This is airing live Saturday night on AXS TV and the Fight Network at 8pm EDT.  It’ll also be streaming on NJPWworld.com, but the stream is region-locked for the US, to get Americans to watch it on TV.  I’ve heard you can get a free trial of Sling TV and watch the AXS broadcast that way, but I need to look into it.  The show will be available on demand  at NJPWworld for everybody the next day.

Kazuchika Okada vs. Cody Rhodes - Okada holds the IWGP heavyweight championship, the premiere title in New Japan Pro Wrestling.  Rhodes recently captured the ROH world champion, making him the top titleholder in Ring of Honor.  Only Okada’s title is on the line in this match, so Cody has a chance to become a dual champion.  It’s probably not as big a deal as when the NWA champion would wrestle the AWA or WWF champions, but the spirit is there.

If you’re new to New Japan Pro Wrestling, Okada is the top guy in the promotion, having held the top championship for most of the last five years.  He’s tall, young, and a little bland, with no obvious personality beyond being cocky and rich.  If JBL were on the New Japan announce team, he’d trot out that line about “building a WWE superstar from the ground up” for Okada.  Like Roman Reigns, Okada catches some heat from fans who think he’s not the best guy in the company and is overpushed because of his perceived marketability.  Unlike Reigns, Okada has racked up an impressive series of match of the year candidates (especially in the past year alone) that have largely silenced the naysayers.

Cody probably needs no introduction since he’s wrestled for WWE, New Japan,  TNA/Impact/Global Force, Ring of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerilla, EVOLVE, and WhatCulture just in the past year.  Cody’s story--a lackluster push in WWE, the death of his legendary father Dusty Rhodes, and his dramatic decision to become a free agent--has set the tone for his act as an underrated blue-chipper on the cusp of greatness.  After working freelance for a while, Cody has settled into NJPW and ROH as a heel in Bullet Club, an NWO-style faction founded by Finn Balor and once led by AJ Styles.

This is a match that could have major ramifications on New Japan and ROH booking through the end of the year.  If Cody wins the IWGP title, it will upset the balance of power in Bullet Club, where he nominally takes a back seat to Okada’s top rival, Kenny Omega.  It would also play into Cody’s ROH storyline, where he’s supposedly a free agent that could walk away at any time with their world title.  The angle will clearly be to find someone who can beat Rhodes, and that’ll sound like a taller order if he’s the champion of two promotions.  Something else to consider is that Cody is not scheduled to participate in the G1 Climax this summer, which the IWGP champion traditionally does.  Basically, if Cody wins, it’ll be big news.

That could be trouble for New Japan, in that an Okada win would preserve the status quo and might be disappointing for a lot of fans, especially fans attending this event.  An American promotion would probably sense that and hot-shot a title change, but I don’t get the feeling New Japan is so capricious.  If they didn’t plan for Rhodes to win six weeks ago, they probably won’t change those plans now.

Ordinarily I’d be skeptical that Cody has a prayer of winning the title.  But the underlying angle for Okada all year is that he’s survived some brutal wars, and it’s starting to wear him down.  It would be deliciously tragic for him to fight his greatest opponent to a stalemate, and then have nothing left in the tank to stop his greatest opponent’s flunky from stealing the win.  That alone gives Cody a chance.  Now that he’s ROH champion, I’d say he’s got a bigger chance.  But I’m not ready to count out Okada just yet.

Kenny Omega vs. Michael Elgin - This is part of the first round in the tournament to introduce the new IWGP United States championship.  The winner will face either Jay Lethal or Hangman Page in the semifinals on Day 2.

Omega is the rising star of New Japan, and definitely the man who benefited the most from the departure of AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura last year.  He took over Bullet Club from Styles, elevating the meta-heel style that he’s cultivated alongside guys like the Young Bucks, Adam Cole, and Kevin Owens.  Kenny and the Bucks are “The Elite,” a stable-within-a-stable that frankly may be getting too big for Bullet Club.  A schism could be coming, based on what we’re seeing with Cody Rhodes lately.

Elgin has the look and background of a journeyman wrestler, but he’s only 30 and has made impressive gains in the past few years, winning the ROH world title and getting a pretty good push in New Japan.  In WWE his size and strength probably wouldn’t get a second look, but in NJPW it’s enough to get some big reactions from the Japanese audience, which loves power spots.

We’ve seen these two fight throughout 2016, most notably in New Japan’s first-and-only ladder match.  Either would be a strong choice to hold the US championship, even though both are Canadian.  Omega is more pivotal to the company’s plans, but we don’t yet know how exactly.  If he’s going to win the world title to be a non-Japanese face for the entire brand, he can lose here to set up Elgin as a future contender.  If he’s just going to be the face of the non-Japanese arm of the brand, then it makes perfect sense for him to steamroll through this tournament.  I’m just not sure which is more likely, so I’ll pick Omega to advance and save the intrigue about his future for the semifinals.

Tetusya Naito vs. Tomohiro Ishii - Another first round match in the US title tournament.  On Day 2 the winner of this match will go on to face the winner of Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Juice Robinson.

Naito is most easily explained as the anti-Roman Reigns of pro wrestling.  Imagine, if you will, Roman being pushed hard and made to look strong, winning the Royal Rumble and being set up as the inevitable challenger for the world title at Wrestlemania, getting a tepid response the whole way.  Now imagine WWE actually runs a poll asking if the intercontinental title match should headline Wrestlemania instead, and then actually doing it.  Now imagine Roman actually getting angry about this, forming the coolest heel faction in the company, and becoming a hundred times more over than he ever was as a babyface.  This is pretty much what Naito went through from 2013 to 2015.

Ishii is a rugged fireplug of a man, hard as fuck and dour as hell.  He will have no time for any of Naito’s bullshit.  It’s tough to think of anybody to compare to Ishii, but I guess you could say he’s sort of like Tazz or Samoa Joe, at least in terms of persona.

On paper Naito is a top act and Ishii’s role is to put guys like that over.  But New Japan likes its upset tournament wins, and Ishii would make sense advancing in the tournament as a threat to the eventual winner.  Naito is coming off a big loss to Hiroshi Tanahashi last month, so another loss here would be pretty significant.  On the other hand, if he wins I don’t see any particularly interesting tournament opponents for him, except perhaps Kenny Omega, and I doubt they’re giving that one away again for  a while yet.

Bottom line, Naito doesn’t need to win here unless he’s getting the US championship, and there isn’t much point in that since it would be a retread of his recent run as intercontinental champion.  And if anyone’s going to knock him out early, it’s bound to be Ishii.

Tama Tonga & Tanga Roa vs. Raymond Rowe & Hanson - The Guerillas of Destiny used chairs to beat Rowe and Hanson for the IWGP heavyweight tag team title at Dominion, so this is the rematch.

Hanson and Rowe have been wrestling as War Machine for a few years now, and they’ve got a good thing going as two big dudes doing flashy moves.  They’d be a great fit in WWE, and I’d be very surprised if WWE isn’t keeping an eye on them.  Tanga Roa is best known to American fans as Camacho from WWE a few years back, and for being the biological son of Haku.  Tama Tonga, one of Haku’s adopted sons, is best known as the bad guy from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, as well as your darkest sexy fears.

These are two good teams but I’m not sold on the idea of seeing them wrestle again so soon.  It might be that New Japan moved the title onto GOD for the sole purpose of putting it back on War Machine in their native country.  I’d like to think that, since War Machine has a good thing going and there’s no reason to interrupt their momentum.

Hiroshi Tanahashi & KUSHIDA & David Finlay & Jay White vs. Billy Gunn & YOSHITATSU & Yohei Komatsu & Sho Tanaka - Tanahashi is the IWGP intercontinental champion and, no bones about it, NJPW’s equivalent to John Cena--the franchise player who carried the company for years, now reducing his workload as he enters his forties.  Kushida is the IWGP junior heavyweight champion (and ROH television champion), and plays a similar role of a white-meat babyface in the New Japan lightweight division.  Finlay and White were both rookies until recently, working opening matches in their generic black trunks, but White was sent to Ring of Honor to develop a gimmick while Finlay managed to break out of the pack without leaving Japan.

Gunn, a noted ass man who loves to pick ‘em and kick ‘em, needs no introduction.  In New Japan, he’s been an occasional ally to Yoshitatsu, who had a forgettable 2007-2014 run with WWE.  Tanaka and Komatsu have been on excursion in Mexico wrestling as Raijin and Fujin, the Tempura Boyz, for CMLL.

This looks to be a filler match to get Tanahashi, Kushida, and Gunn on the show without actually having them work very hard.  We know Gunn is challenging Tana for the IC title on Day 2, and I gather Kushida will defend the junior title as well, so they’ll be saving the best stuff for then.  (I realize Gunn is 53 and doesn’t have that much “best stuff” to save, but you get the idea.)  If it was up to me I’d book Billy to score the fall to build to the title match, maybe on Finlay.

Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Juice Robinson - One of the first round matches in the US title tournament.  Whoever wins gets Naito or Ishii in the semifinals on Day 2.  Sabre is the current RPW British heavyweight champion, but that title is not at stake.

Sabre may be best known to most American fans for his run in last year’s WWE Crusierweight Classic, where he was a heavy favorite to win assuming he signed with WWE, but he didn’t.  He’s held the Rev Pro title twice, beating AJ Styles and Katsuyori Shibata--I didn’t see those matches but that sounds pretty fucking impressive.  I’ve been particularly intrigued by his style of wrestling his way out of holds instead of powering out.  Of all the guys who have never held an IWGP singles championship in this tournament, I think he’s the strongest choice to go all the way.

Juice is familiar to WWE fans as CJ Parker, the guy Kevin Owens beat in his first NXT match.  He’s had a good run in New Japan working his way up the ladder, and if you’ve been watching this guy for a few years you start to feel a little pride when gets little pushes here and there.  Juice has a score to settle with Sabre from the Dominion show, where Taguchi Japan eliminated Suzuki-gun in a trios gauntlet match, but then Sabre jumped back in the ring and twisted Juice like a pretzel, leaving him easy pickings for Los Ingobernables de Japon.

The only thing going against Sabre here is that I don’t see him being matched with Naito in the semifinals or Omega in the finals.  (New Japan seems to limit interaction between their big three heel factions.)  If those two get eliminated early on, the tournament is Zack’s to lose, but that’s a tall order.  Juice makes more sense if you need somebody expendable to do a job later in the tournament, against literally anyone in the field.  It’s tough to call, so I’m going with Sabre for now.

Jay Lethal vs. Hangman Page - Yet another first round US championship tournament match.  The winner of Omega/Elgin will meet the winner of this match on Day 2 in the semifinals.

Lethal’s big claims to fame are his run in TNA as “the guy who does the Macho Man impression” and his run in ROH as “the guy who demands to be taken more seriously.”  Lethal was laid out in an angle at the ROH Best in the World show last week, and ROH has already taped a month of TV where he’s supposedly MIA, so it’s very possible that he will be either scratched from the tournament or show up with bandaged ribs and get obliterated.

Adam Page is a midcarder in ROH and a prelim guy in New Japan.  He’s in Bullet Club and carries a noose around to hang his opponents, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him win a match.  I consider him the least likely to win this tournament, and that’s knowing his first round opponent may not even make it to the show.

Assuming Lethal is swapped out for a last-minute replacement, Page is the perfect guy to get blindsided and squashed by a big surprise.  I really don’t see any outcome where he advances to the next round unless they want to do Omega vs. Page to set up some Bullet Club shenanigans.

Hiromu Takahashi & EVIL & BUSHI & SANADA vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Dragon Lee & Volador, Jr. & Titan - Takahashi and his teammates are members of Naito’s faction Los Ingobernables de Japon, the Japanese spinoff of CMLL’s Los Ingobernables stable in Mexico.  Evil, Bushi, and Sanada are the current NEVER six-man tag team champions, but this is an eight-man tag so the title won’t be at stake here.

Jushin Liger is a 30+-year veteran and a legend among light heavyweights, who’s wrestled at the first WCW Monday Nitro and the first NXT Takeover: Brooklyn.  Dragon Lee, Volador, and Titan are all CMLL guys, and Lee in particular has a long-running rivalry with Takahashi.

I’m guessing this is going to be a throwaway match to get all these guys on the card for Day 1, and then maybe on Day 2 the LIJ guys will be doing more important stuff.  New Japan and ROH love to show off their partnerships with promotions around the world, but in practice the CMLL guys tend to just be treated like interchangeable nobodies in the undercard.  So I’m pretty sure LIJ will win, and I just hope the finish involves Bushi using the poison mist.

Nick Jackson & Matt Jackson & Marty Scurrl & Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi vs. Rocky Romero & Trent Beretta & Will Ospreay & Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe - This is another multi-man match with little purpose except to set up the IWGP junior heavyweight tag title match on Day 2, with the Young Bucks (Nick & Matt) defending against Roppongi Vice (Romero & Beretta).

The Bucks are the 500-lb gorillas of the non-WWE wrestling world, and they can basically do whatever they want, wherever they want.  Marty Scurrl is the guy who dresses like a plague doctor and carries umbrellas around like he’s auditioning to be the next Batman villain.  Fale is big and fat and wears sunglasses.  Yujiro thinks he’s a pimp and is friends with this nice lady, but I don’t know if she’s coming to this show.  This is pretty much everybody else from Bullet Club that isn’t higher on the card (except Chase Owens, but I’m not even sure Bullet Club remembers Chase Owens is in Bullet Club).

Beretta and Romero are a part of Okada’s stable Chaos, as is Ospreay, but I guess there weren’t enough Chaos guys left to team with so they got the Briscoes.  Rocky is a cool dude who knows the best places to party in Japan.  Trent used to be a WWE jobber and is friends with Rocky.  Ospreay is one of the hottest names in light heavyweight/flippy-floppy style wrestling, and seems to make Old Man Wrestling Twitter blow up at least once a year.  The Briscoes are toothless hillbillies from rural Delaware.

This is probably gonna be a clusterfuck of a ten-man tag, and I think that favors the Bullet Club.  The Bucks always seem to win unless there’s a good reason not to, and I don’t see a good reason here.

#njpw #g1 special in usa #kazuchika okada #cody rhodes

[ladystylestores]

Death and Testing – The New York Times

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up.

Good morning. The son of a federal judge has been killed. Canada says no to Major League Baseball. And Trump tells multiple virus falsehoods in a T.V. interview.

President Trump gave a confrontational interview to Chris Wallace of Fox News yesterday that included numerous untruths about the coronavirus. Trump claimed that the United States had the lowest death rate in the world; that new cases were surging here mostly because of the large number of tests; and that his virus response had saved “millions of lives.”

So I thought it was worth offering a quick overview of the actual situation with the virus, with help from a couple of charts:

The virus has still been deadlier in several European countries than in the U.S., after adjusting for population. But the total death rate in the U.S. is among the worst for any country in the world:

And the U.S. may continue to climb this ranking. Most high-income countries now have a relatively small number of new cases and deaths each day, while the U.S. does not:

The U.S. is conducting a large number of tests — but that isn’t why the virus statistics look so much worse here. According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has now conducted more tests per capita than any other country.

That high test rate obviously leads to a greater number of official cases. If some other countries with major outbreaks, like Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria, were conducting more tests, they would likely be reporting many more cases. Some would probably show worse per capita outbreaks than the U.S.

But the U.S. is still an outlier, especially among rich countries. A higher percentage of its tests are coming back positive than in many other countries, and the death toll continues to mount, which are both signs that the main issue in the U.S. is a failure to control the virus.

Related: One sign of Trump’s unsuccessful strategy is that other top Republican officials are increasingly willing to defy him about the virus.

In Europe: A new Times story examines Europe’s early failure to control the virus. And Ruchir Sharma, an investor and contributing Opinion writer, argues that Germany’s success in controlling the virus has made it “the large economy most likely to thrive in the post-pandemic world.”

FOUR MORE BIG STORIES

1. The virus rips through Texas

In the Rio Grande Valley, on Texas’ southern border, more than a third of families live in poverty. Nearly half of the residents have no health insurance, and obesity and heart disease are widespread.

Now coronavirus cases there are surging, threatening to overwhelm hospitals and create a public-health disaster. “Our curve is a straight up trajectory right now,” one hospital official said. “There’s no relief.” A photo essay accompanies our story from the region.

In other virus developments:

As companies across China rush to produce personal protective equipment, some are using Uighur labor that puts members of the ethnic minority to work against their will.

More than six million people in the U.S. enrolled in food stamps in the first three months of the pandemic, an unprecedented rise.

The Canadian government will not allow the Toronto Blue Jays to stage home games when the baseball season starts this week, saying cross-border travel poses a health risk. The team is likely to play at a minor-league stadium in Buffalo instead.

2. How Roberts has shaped voting rights

John Roberts solidified his reputation during this past Supreme Court term as an idiosyncratic justice willing to vote with his liberal colleagues on some major issues. But one subject on which he has remained a stalwart conservative is also one that’s likely to matter a great deal in 2020: voting rights.

In its recent term, the Supreme Court issued four rulings to restrict voting rights. All of the rulings were decided quickly, in response to emergency applications asking the justices to take action in pending cases, as The Times’s Adam Liptak explains. Those rulings indicate that the court may choose not to act this fall to make sure people can vote during a pandemic.

3. Federal forces roil Portland

Protests against racism and police brutality have endured in Portland, Ore., with peaceful marches during the day and more confrontational, and occasionally violent, demonstrations at night. And the recent deployment of federal officers to quash the protests seems to have had the opposite effect.

Demonstrations over the weekend drew the largest crowds in weeks, uniting a diverse group of activists in outrage. “I wasn’t even paying attention to the protests at all until the feds came in,” said Christopher David, a former Navy civil engineering corps officer.

4. Pain for businesses big and small

They survived the Great Depression, a world war and the 2008 financial crisis — but not the pandemic. Small businesses that have stood for a century are shutting down, ending generations of family ownership.

And at big businesses: C.E.O.s of some major companies say they are increasingly worried about a prolonged economic disruption. “I’m less optimistic today than I was 30 days ago,” the chief executive of Marriott International said.

Here’s what else is happening

A gunman shot and killed the 20-year-old son of a federal judge as he answered the door of the family home in New Jersey yesterday and wounded the judge’s husband. The judge, Esther Salas, was home but was not injured.

Roger Stone, the Trump ally whose prison sentence the president commuted, denied he uttered a racial slur during an interview with a Black radio host. The audio suggests otherwise.

Trader Joe’s said it would rebrand international food items with names like Trader Ming’s, Trader José and Trader Giotto’s. An online petition had asked the company to remove packaging that reflects “a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes.”

Lives Lived: Nakotah LaRance’s skill as a hoop dancer — a tradition in some Native American cultures — carried him to world titles, late-night TV, the Brooklyn Ballet and Cirque du Soleil. LaRance died last week at 30.

Subscribers help make Times journalism possible. To support our efforts, please consider subscribing today.

IDEA OF THE DAY: Should Biden go big?

Joe Biden’s polling lead has grown large enough that some Democrats are debating whether he should spend resources in traditionally Republican states in an effort to win a landslide victory. Here are the cases that each side is making:

No, don’t you remember 2016? Four years ago, Hillary Clinton campaigned in North Carolina, Texas and other states she didn’t need to win, while paying relatively little attention to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which she did need. Biden must avoid that same trap, some people argue.

“Lock down the states you MUST have by making sure your operations and ads are funded there for duration. THEN you expand to more ambitious targets,” tweeted David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former strategist. For now, the Biden campaign is largely taking this path.

Yes, 2020 is a chance for realignment. Trump doesn’t just trail by almost 10 percentage points. He is also facing the prospect of a summer and a fall with a raging pandemic and a deep recession. Given all this, some people are urging Biden to flip states that Democrats have long dreamed of winning — and to help flip the Senate.

Unless the Democrats also win the Senate, they have little chance of passing major legislation. To win the Senate, they will need to win seats in some Republican-leaning states, like North Carolina, Montana, Georgia and Texas.

“When reliable polling has you tied or winning in Texas, you expand the map well beyond the six ‘battleground’ states,” the Democratic strategist Christy Setzer has said. Added Stacey Abrams, the Georgia politician: “The Sun Belt expansion is what will drive the next 30 years of elections.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, BINGE

A fresh summer salad

Our original recipe for chickpea salad with fresh herbs and scallions says the dish “deserves a spot at your next picnic.” While festive picnics may be hard to come by this summer, don’t let that stop you from making this lighter take on a potato salad. Odds are, it tastes just as good from the couch.

Making orchestras more inclusive

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions: Of the 106 full-time players in the New York Philharmonic, only one is Black.

Anthony Tommasini, The Times’s classical music critic, argues that the so-called blind audition — in which musicians try out for an orchestra behind a screen — is impeding progress. How? There is little difference in skill among the top-tier players competing for these jobs, Tommasini argues. Without blind auditions, ensembles would be able to seek out elite musicians of color.

A TV show like no other

My colleague Sanam Yar recommends tuning into the drama “I May Destroy You”:

Fans of Michaela Coel’s award-winning sitcom “Chewing Gum” — which she wrote and starred in at the age of 28 — already knew she was a singular talent. But her new series, which is airing on HBO in the U.S., cements that status. There are no other shows like “I May Destroy You,” in part because it’s such a specific, personal story, inspired by Coel’s life and her experience with sexual assault.

The series follows a London-based writer and her circle of friends in the aftermath of her assault, and its characters feel exceptionally real. As the show’s writer, co-director and star, Coel displays genius throughout. Some lines of dialogue will catch you off guard and rattle around in your brain for days. And the show’s clever soundtrack feels like its own character.

“I May Destroy You” is a heavy watch, but it also has spots of brightness and beauty. The show gives no easy answers. That’s kind of the point.

Diversions

You can catch Comet NEOWISE — one of the brightest comets in a generation — without a telescope. Here’s how.

Artists like Edwin Birdsong and Ballin’ Jack aren’t household names, but their music is instantly recognizable as the samples behind hit pop songs. Listen to these 15 tracks.

Games

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: One of two planets in the solar system that lacks a moon (five letters).

You can find all of our puzzles here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The words “rematador,” “cortador,” “apeleador” and “planchador” — all titles for artisan makers of Panama hats — appeared in The Times for the first time today, as noted by the Twitter bot @NYT_first_said.

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[beneaththetangles]

10 Year Retrospective, Month #7: Throwback to July 2016

As we celebrate our tenth anniversary on Beneath the Tangles, we want to take some time each month to look into the past, not only to commemorate our ten years, but also to see where we were and how far we’ve come as a site and collectively as anime fans. For most months this year, we’ll do that by looking back at a particular year and at the month corresponding to that year. For instance, we started this off by looking at January 2010. Today we throw back to July 2016.

TOP OF THE CHARTS: July 16, 2016

We’ll dive into anime a bit, but I want to us to look at what else was happening at this time in 2016. Here are the most popular songs, movies, and series on this day or during this week four years ago.

Top Selling Album: Views, Drake

Number One Song: “One Dance” - Drake feat. WizKid and Kyla

Top Movie: The Secret Life of Pets ($50.8 mil)

Most Watched TV Show: America’s Got Talent

CURRENT EVENTS: July 2016

Here’s what was happening in the world four years ago this month…

Incidents of mass violence include a knife attack leading to 19 deaths in Japan and a truck attack which kills more than 80 in Nice, France.

A priest is also killed in France during an ISIS terrorist situation.

Theresa May is named Great Britain’s new Prime Minister.

Hillary Clinton is nominated as the Democratic candidate for U.S. President.

Oscar Pistorius is sentenced to six years in prison for murdering his wife.

Pokemon Go becomes a worldwide phenomenon.

POPULAR ANIME IN 2016

A number of highly regarded anime premiered in 2016, some of which may be destined to be considered classics, including Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K., and March Comes in Like a Lion. A couple of other shows that weren’t quite that highly acclaimed, but which we still enjoyed, were Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and ReLIFE, while Mob Psycho 100 and ERASED achieved both popular and critical praise. KonoSuba and Yuri on Ice were also very popular series and continue to pump out movies and other sequel-type pieces.

CURRENT EVENTS: July 2016

art by anonamos | reprinted w/permission

If those were the main attractions in 2016, it would have been a fine year for anime, but a few others took it from “good” to perhaps great. On Facebook last week, we did conducted one in a summer-long series of polls in which we asked our readers to decide between two movies that came out in a given year, and 2016 came up with Your Name vs. A Silent Voice. There’s an argument to be made that these are the two most beloved anime movies of the entire decade, and they both came out the same year. Shinkai was finally able to break through with a story that was as fun as it was meaningful and emotional, and A Silent Voice was a successful adaptation of a critically acclaimed manga. If it was just for these two movies, 2016 would have been a banner year—but there were other reasons, as well.

Two of the decade’s most popular series had their premieres in 2016. Re:Zero, which is finally airing a second season, pushed isekai to new heights in popularity. The biggest series of all, though, was My Hero Academia, which has since become the successor to Naruto and other huge shounen series of the past. MHA has also been a wonderful link for those who might not traditionally watch anime, and has been praised for its storytelling even by those not normally enamored by long shounen action shows.

WHAT WE WERE BLOGGING

I had a lot of fun looking through our old blog posts for this year. Why? Because they were mostly brand new to me.

Last month, I mentioned how I left Beneath the Tangles on New Year’s Eve, 2015. 2016 was a year entirely without me. And as burned out as I was, I checked out completely. I have an aggregator I use through which I saw the titles of each of the posts that came up that year, but I rarely read them, as worn out as I was. Of course, it helped that I wasn’t worried about the site’s direction—with Japes, and later also with Kaze and Lex, it was in great hands. Writers like Emma, and Lynna posted frequently, with the latter sometimes doing the dreaded episodic posts (which stardf29 wrote as well); meanwhile, old-timers like R86 and Goldy continued to put out work. We also filled our months with excellent columns, including Annalyn’s Corner, Between the Panels, Examining Old School Anime, The Secret Stars of Anime, and Gaming with God. None of those remain now, but one column from 2016 is still going strong: Newman’s Nook, with MDRMN officially joining the staff about a week after I departed (filling the position of “older guy with kids”). JoshW also joined our staff, bringing a more diverse voice to the team.

With Japes and Kaze taking the lead, visual novels became more emphasized, and our recommendations pages started going up; Kaze also led our seasonal review posts. Two other fixtures began, with MDMRN starting the Anime March Madness tournament and the TangleCast officially launching, running weekly (HOW??) after replacing our original podcast. Staff also started a public Discord channel; we’ve since opened a different but still active server.

Looking back at all that happened, I’m a bit envious—I wish I had been a part! But I know that had I stayed, all these wonderful things would not have happened. God had a plan for the site and it required that I leave to make way for others to use their talent, energy, and skill to make Beneath the Tangles better.

But this story has another twist! I would be coming back the next year. We’ll finish off this series next month by revisiting that and all other things 2017.

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I hope enjoyed this look into the recent past, both on a bigger, societal level and at Beneath the Tangles. We’ll keep up this throughout 2020. Read the other posts in this yearlong series. Featured illustration by 白丝少年(´・ω・`) (reprinted w/permission).

#Anime #10 Year Retrospective #20 20 in 2020 #Flashback Friday #Throwback Thursday #2016 #Author: TWWK #Articles

[rayj-drash]

Every Time I Sing, I Cry

Shaina Joy Machlus

shainajoy.com

twitter and instagram are @punimpie

CW: State and police violence, rape, sexual assault

The first time I actually sang, I cried. It was only a few nervous tears, enough to dampen my shirt cuff but not enough to demand the attention of my teacher. Perhaps due to my anxiety, this first class was completed outside of my own body. I watched myself leave my shoes at the heavy door, put on bright pink house slippers, shuffle through the hall and the sparse living room into a sun-soaked balcony enclosed in glass. I saw myself sit down in the wobbly, folding chair, look out onto the gardens and balconies of the other neighbors—my audience. I could hear the tap of a finger on the plastic electronic keyboard; what sounded like Morse code: SOS. There, in Barcelona, swept up in the struggle for Catalan independence, I found my singing voice.

Tap, tap, tap. It was my call to begin, to repeat. When I did not respond, my teacher Romi repeated the same note. Romi was my first and only singing instructor. I probably chose her because I did not know any other singing instructors. Also because her name was Romi and I loved the way she spoke in her thick Argentinian accent about her nontraditional singing method of accessing your inner child: “gritando como una niña.” Classes were 30 minutes twice a week. I always arrived promptly, ready to take my shoes off and begin.

Tap, tap, tap. Now more of a command. I watched myself open my mouth and push out silent air. I remember the thought: “How does one begin when they have no idea where to start?”

Most people have no memory of their initiation into singing. It was something that happened in toddlerhood; in passing. Their odd notes casually floating away with laughter, claps, a chorus of people joining in. That is not to say my childhood was not filled with music. Still, I had the strong feeling I had never personally experienced this milestone. I carried only one true memory of singing. I was driving in an old Volvo station wagon through a particularly lush part of New York State. I rolled down the passenger window beside my then lover who had just confessed to being unfaithful, opened my mouth wide as it could go, filled my lungs with summer air, and tried to let song escape me. The sound I made was so far from my intended aria, I kept quiet ever since. With the acception of the intake of alcohol, which never ceased to persuade me otherwise. Like the time I sang “Single Ladies” and the karaoke bar pretended to be closing in order to keep me from singing again. Or when my microphone was taken away mid-“Say My Name.” (Yes, I do have a Beyonce tattoo, thank you for asking.)

The December before I turned 30, something shifted. While at a very ordinary concert, I decided I could not spend the rest of my ordinary life not knowing what it felt like to sing. To live a life afraid of your own voice is no way to live. The next morning, without thinking, I picked up the phone, unwrapped a crumpled piece of paper with the word “Romi” scribbled on top and dialed the numbers below.

It took me two whole sessions to make any noise at all. Our classes were always the same; Romi would progressively tap a higher and higher note on the keyboard in quick threes: tap, tap, tap. I would repeat the note as best as I could, yelling in short bursts a sound that was halfway between an “ah!” and an “oh!”. To my surprise, creating those noises thawed a space inside of me. A space that was the opposite of where my tears came from—although the two seemed to function in parallel. It was a strange, but not altogether disagreeable feeling to pry myself open and closed simultaneously.

On the morning of October 2, 2017, I pressed the number four apartment button and rode the beautiful but creaky elevator up to Romi’s place. I took my seat beside her and her keyboard. Unlike our first class, I felt glued inside my heavy body. The density I was hauling on this particular morning had less to do with the one hour of sleep I had managed and more with what had come to pass during the previous day that I spent on the streets of Barcelona, from 4 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. 

Maybe it is worth mentioning that I had spent the previous four years moving my life in the USA to Barcelona. Like many other Jews, my family had been murdered and chased out of their Eastern European shtetls onto a variety of strange lands, one of which being the occupied territory of the so-called “United States”. Yampol, the thriving shtetl of my family, was burned so extensively to the ground, there is almost zero evidence of it ever having existed. The family history that we could piece together is a scrappy patchwork of survivals and profound attempts to survive. One of my most treasured appliques was that of my great-grandmother, whose name I am endowed with, who died in a plane crash in Malaga, Spain. In a somewhat cinematic turn of events, an audio-visual specialist from Pace University, named Carlton Maloney, happened to be on the same plane as said great-grandmother. Maloney was adding to his series of take-off and landing recordings and as a result there is an audio recording of the entire plane crash. Even before the world-wide-web granted me the possibility of experiencing the crackling booms, screams and ultimate silence of the crash audio, I felt the need to complete the little loop of immigration my family had made. Moving into a tiny room in Barcelona, steeping myself in the streets, the language, the culture felt something like tying a neat bow in my familiar tapestry.  

Four years in Barcelona granted me the ability to live and learn through a series of far-reaching events. Without a doubt the most extraordinary of which took place on that October 1 in 2017, when there was a referendum to determine whether the northeast region of Spain, Catalunya, would succeed and become its own independent country again. Catalunya, once a flourishing autonomous, anarchist country, had been owned by Spain since 1714. The Spanish government in Madrid deemed this new election unconstitutional. Both the President and King of Spain appeared poised and confident on TV, adjusting the knot on their ties while promising to keep all of Spain under the crown by any means necessary. The very next scene on the news showed armored vehicles being deployed by the hundreds from the capitol, they dotted every road leading to Barcelona. From above they looked like armored beetles, topped with Spanish flags and the buzzing of the National police hanging out the windows chanting promises of violence toward the Catalan people into news cameras and other onlookers. 

Back in Catalunya, no one could have imagined the violence that was unleashed by the government against its peacefully gathered citizens waiting to vote. Over 1,000 people were hospitalized because of brutal police beatings. Videos from cell phones surfaced, recording only a fraction of the police violence; a rubber bullet taking out one person’s eye, elderly people being dragged by their arms and feet away from voting polls, a woman having her fingers broken one by one and who was later sexually assaulted, blood stained hallways of the elementary schools that had been used as voting stations. We were forced to elect between watching or experiencing the horror. We gasped, searching for oxygen, unable to exhale. Hardly able to scream in protest.

State-endorsed violence is nothing new, far from it. And although it is entwined in the DNA of both the country my family immigrated from and immigrated to, it felt anew to me. During the day of the referendum time became wildly inefficient; the hours dragged by in a deep-sea manner. We trugged from voting center to voting center, locking arms to form human chains in an effort to protect the tiny white pieces of paper where people had checked “si” or “no” and the idea of revolution they represented. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I squeezed the arms of the strangers on either side of me. We hung on to each second, waiting to see who would be thrown into the prison wagons next. There was an enduring silence throughout every street. People seemed to be holding their collective breath, awaiting the inevitable moment when the armored trucks full of police turned the corner. I had no idea at the time, but I had been waiting to break the silence of that day ever since.

When friends ask me about my singing lessons, most find it amusing that after more than a year, a single word has never passed in song between my two lips. And I get that they do not understand. How could anyone, including myself, know just how far back this silence stretched? In my elementary school, I was the only student who was not invited to be part of the choir. My music teacher, feigning generosity, gave me the silent task of moving the stage curtains back and forth and told me I will be one of those girls who is seen rather than heard. Singing, something that formerly left me feeling deserted, had now become an unexpected oasis. 

The day after the referendum was sunny, I remember exactly what the sky looked like from the window of Romi’s balcony. The clouds hung lightly in cotton ball form against a neon-blue sky. Seagulls, farther from the sea than I had ever before seen, looked gigantic flying next to the bevy of ubiquitous pigeons. That was the day I cried. My tears were massive, heavy enough to form a cavern within my chest. Romi did not pause for a moment except to pass me tissues. Something miraculous happened in that little room. The more I cried, the louder my voice became, the deeper the space inside me opened up. I was like a balloon being inflated. I did not judge the noises that came from my mouth because I knew they told a story that was impossible to tell otherwise. I heard perfect notes and I felt grateful to finally understand the expansiveness of song.

We live between the notes of everyday life; some are beautiful like the popping of potatoes and onions being fried to make tortilla, others intensely painful like rubber bullets whizzing by into a crowd of people, and many are barely audible unless listened to very carefully, like the moment the wind shifts to carry salty sea air from the Mediterranean. I hear them all as song now. And I sing in response.

6 months later, on April 26, 2018, five men, including a police officer, who brutally gang-raped an 18 year-old girl in Pamplona, Spain, were tried and sentenced. The men took videos and photos of themselves penetrating the woman orally, vaginally, and anally, then stole her phone and left her half naked on the stairs. The court used the videos and photos to determine that lying still with one’s eyes closed and remaining silent constitutes as consent. None of the men were charged with rape, instead the Spanish court system convicted them of minor crimes that barely warrant jail time. Although I did not have one scheduled, I asked if I could come by for an impromptu singing class. From the folding chair, I watched an older woman hang her laundry, a cat balance across a fence, marvelled at the spectacular garden that was always empty. Romi tapped on a key and I screamed the note, letting it exit from the top of my head and make an arc downwards, landing right in front of where my two watery eyes meet, so I could watch it bloom.