May 11, 2019
"A day of sentiment, not profit"
Years after she founded Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis was dining at the Tea Room at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia. She saw they were offering a "Mother’s Day Salad." She ordered the salad and when it was served, she stood up, dumped it on the floor, left the money to pay for it, and walked out in a huff. Jarvis had lost control of the holiday she helped create, and she was crushed by her belief that commercialism was destroying Mother’s Day. [more inside]
A True Story, A Part Of Noise, and Phil Collins: The Final Chapter!
After the success of Phil Collins' songs in 1984 with Against All Odds and in 1985 with White Nights, plus his 1986 Miami Vice appearance as Phil The Shill [DailyMotion link, 50m, presented in mirror vision], the next logical step was the 1988 film Buster. Featuring Collins as the star of the movie and also writing retro-style songs (for both himself and The Four Tops) plus a selection of oldies, and also featuring a score by Anne Dudley of Art Of Noise fame. The song Two Hearts won Collins multiple awards. The movie didn't. Side A: Two Hearts [not the music video, music video] [Phil Collins], Gardening By The Book (Incidental Music), Just One Look [The Hollies], ...And I Love Her (Incidental Music), Big Noise [Phil Collins], The Robbery [Anne Dudley], I Got You Babe [Sonny + Cher] [more inside]
“...everything that can be modded now at some point has Thomas in it.”
Why are people modding Thomas the Tank Engine into video games? [The Face] “One of the video game modding community’s odder recent crazes is replacing characters in game worlds with Thomas the Tank Engine – the ”Really Useful” children's TV character now owned by toy company Mattel. The first of these highly unofficial mods arrived for Bethesda’s fantasy epic The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2013, morphing its roaming dragons into airborne, fire-breathing locomotives. Other victims of the trend include Rockstar’s top-selling Grand Theft Auto V, FromSoftware’s gloomy ninja adventure Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Capcom’s flashy remake of zombie horror classic Resident Evil 2.”
I EAT ASS Through the Prism of Supreme Court Precedent
"She wasn't always Princess Wolf. She was born Fleurda Blossom."
Princess Wolf and her Life of Darkness contains plant monsters, strange statues, and an excellent technique for dealing with unwanted suitors. “For the past few years, my daughter Bee has been telling me tales about a wild character named Princess Wolf…I decided to collaborate with her to get this epic saga turned into a comic. Every few days—for three-and-a-half months—I’d sit her down, bribe her with a pastry, take frantic notes while she told me chunks of the story, and then draw a couple panels after she’d gone to bed.” By Kristen Haas Curtis, an American cartoonist living in Switzerland, and her daughter Bee. [more inside]
Let People Dislike Things
There are unlimited problems with the “Let People Enjoy Things” (henceforth abbreviated to LPET) approach to art and culture, first and foremost among them the fact that franchises in question (GoT and Marvel Comics) are multi-billion-dollar corporate entities engineered to entertain in the same way Doritos are made so that you can’t eat just one. These are some of the most profitable media empires in history, and they will plainly not be harmed by a Twitter user posting about why they personally don’t like them.Kate Wagner (of McMansion Hell fame) fires a salvo in the ongoing Twitter argument: Let people enjoy things, Y/N? [more inside]
The Throne of Prince George has been claimed at last
In February 2013, the Prince George Citizen (local paper of Prince George, British Columbia) was running a special offer on classified ads: pay a one-time fee, and your "for sale" ad would run indefinitely until your wares sold. Prince George resident Larry Johnson decided to sell off a hand-carved wooden throne he'd purchased at an antique fair years earlier. With an initial asking price of "$5000 firm" (later reduced to $1000), the ad stayed in the paper for more than six years, beloved by some of the paper's readers and derided by others. Now, the throne has finally been sold to Prince George's BX Pub. Naturally, the Prince George Citizen has the story. The CBC has more, including an audio interview with former Steward of the Throne Larry Johnson.
Breaking cadence: modern conscientious objectors
You probably think you would never join the military. Think again. Every year thousands of young Americans surprise family and friends, signing long, legally-binding contracts with an organization they know very little about. Many of them join to pay for college. But what happens when pride and optimism turn into regret and refusal to play a role in war? The Breaking Cadence podcast includes stories of conscientious objectors, a veteran who doesn't like to hear "thank you for your service," a look inside the work of the G.I. Rights Hotline, experiences from a lawyer who represented two conscientious objectors in the Iraq War, and the ethics of war and peace. [more inside]
Two teens game out how to dial a rotary phone.
Plotters vs Pantsers
Why does Game Of Thrones feel different in this last season? Daniel Silvermint on Twitter explains what probably happened: George R. R. Martin's plan-it-as-you-go approach, where he cultivated a garden of plot seeds with only a vague idea of where each would lead, ran up against the showrunners' need to end everything in 13 episodes.
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