SXSW Opening Day: Films

SXSW four-square Friday was opening day for SXSW Film and Interactive. Thousands of pasty geeks carrying over-stuffed canvas tote bags swarmed downtown Austin. One guy told me he plans to outdo his previous record of 31 movies in 10 days. Endless street marketers were out earning an hourly wage hawking diet energy bars and life-changing mobile apps. In the late afternoon, a four-square match got started between the convention center and the sponsored free drink tents across the street. Filmmaker Jason Reitman When I asked writer-director Jason Reitman if a lot of people ask him if he's Jason Reitman, he laughed. His third film "Up in the Air" was nominated for half a dozen Academy Awards this year. Before I had a chance to ask him to help me win the Alamo Drafthouse "Don't Talk During the Movie" celebrity challenge, his face sent the message he wasn't in the mood. My camera was still in black-and-white mode from experimentation at the Shapes Have Fangs show. SXSW fire drill So right when I was about to walk into a panel on Pay TV and The Internet with Mark Cuban, the cable television and NBA basketball impresario, there was a fire alarm at the convention center. Apparently most panels were uninterrupted despite a couple thousand of us filing obediently outside. Since there are way too many interactive panels to cover, check out Twitter for the SXSW interactive hashtag #SXSW. Michael Barnes and Gavin Dahl After we were allowed back inside I ran into Michael Barnes, a lifestyle columnist at the local daily paper. Years ago when he was the head theater critic, he called a one-act play of mine, "aimless and meandering," so I thought it would be fun to tease him about it. Looks like I made an impression. He blogged yesterday about "...a playwright, Gavin Dahl, I somehow dissed back in the 1990s. He’s in community radio now. Doesn’t hold a grudge." Chris Garcia doesn't like being photographed Outside of Alamo Ritz on 6th Street I caught up with another long-time writer for the Austin American-Statesman, film critic Chris Garcia. We sat in the back row of the screening of Trash Humpers the latest from provocateur Harmony Korine, taking advantage of Alamo table service for a large popcorn with butter. SXSW film programmer Jarod Neece read a note the director sent since he couldn't make it to introduce the movie, his fourth feature. Neece just forwarded me a copy. hello everyone sorry i cant be there with you tonight. im in bermuda now taking a conference on the art of lucid dreaming. the instructors name is nigel and he is the cousin of winston churchill. he spends 8-10 hours a day dreaming. this conference only happens once every nine years in nigels basement. his wife loretta also teaches a course on lucid dreaming, she was in prison for several decades and became an expert during her stint in solitary confinement. in a few days from now i will be certified. i hope to be able to travel the world without ever leaving my living room. i always wanted to be certified something and this is my only chance. i hope you understand. this movie you are about to see is maybe not a real movie, it might be something else, its meant to be more like a found object, like a vhs tape found in the garbage or in an old ladies panty drawer or in an attic somewhere under some bricks or buried in a pile of asbestos or floating down a river in a zip lock sandwich bag. when i was a kid there was a group of elderly peeping toms who lived by my house, they would always hang out in the alley ways and under bridges and they would drink behind the strip mall, i could tell they were fornicating all over the place and doing a lot of humping. this film is an ode to them, an ode to the shadows and the shit, an ode to vandalism maybe, i hope you understand what im talking about, i hope you all enjoy it and i will see you on the flip side, maybe in a dream somewhere. bye bye hk As a teen, I was riveted by Kids, Korine's first script. Then Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy earned him a reputation as one of the edgiest directors at the end of the '90s. I haven't seen anything else he's done in 10 years. As the lights went down, with Garcia and his editor Charles Ealy on either side of me, I was ready to be blown away by his newest "ode to the shadows and the shit." I hated every second of it. Mangled video footage of impossibly wrinkled freak-show performers humping trash cans and simulating fellatio on branches caused eight walkouts in the first 30 minutes. By the time the popcorn arrived, we had been subjected to dialog about the benefits of people one day having no heads, fragments of racist and homophobic jokes, shrieks of "you gonna eat these pancakes with this soap" and other look-at-us-we're-disgusting nonsense. Korine showed the first of two brutal, pointless murders as the 20th and 21st people walked out. If Trash Humpers had been on YouTube, I would have clicked away from the page. But at the Alamo, you have to wait for your check to drop. The one interesting line from the otherwise pointless movie came from a cross-dressing poet, who said of America that we have "depraved it, paved it, trashed it and bashed it." But once film-goers got their credit cards back, having witnessed the murder of the poet and then the smearing of his blood onto his killer's face, many more were out the door. When I finally decided I too had all I could take of the repulsive and depressing non-narrative, I became the 35th attendee to walk out. Before I left, I asked Garcia for a quote about what amounted to Korine giving civilization the finger. He deadpanned, "Tediously weird." Movie coverage continues tomorrow, when I explain why I missed the new White Stripes documentary in favor of checking out Austin's most successful movie-trashing comedian, John Erler. [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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but he's so nice

3/9/10 Yesterday's comments were, as always, truly insightful and awesome. As I suspected, people were actually quite sanguine about "settling" for their day job, even if that meant settling for something you'd experience more often than your family. That kind of compartmentalization is truly a skill - one that I don't possess at all - and probably makes you able to deal with a lot of things that would flummox others. I asked about the relationship "settling" because that subject has been on high rotation in the NY/LA literati echo chamber of late. Lori Gottlieb, a prolific 42-year-old New York writer who chose to raise a child without a partner/husband, wrote a book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough - largely borne out of the experience of solo parenting. The book set off a predictable firestorm of invective, especially from other women writers. Here's Jessica Grose writing in Slate: Gottlieb's argument is that college-educated women in their late 30s and early 40s who are still single are without husbands because they were too picky when they were younger and more marketable... She is not benignly trying to share her experiences, she's trying to scare women. Perhaps the best takedown of Gottlieb - or really, the best ass-kicking I've read on the Web in months - comes courtesy of Liesl Schillinger, an old friend of mine and Tessa's who writes with vitriolic flair: The way [Gottlieb] sees it, a generation of women... were tricked by the women's movement into "ego-tripping themselves out of romantic connection." That's right girls: If you're unwillingly unwed, blame it on mom and Title IX for duping you into educating, respecting and supporting yourselves... ...[F]or anyone who dares order millions of people she doesn't know to sell out their dreams, regret their accomplishments, fear their futures and "Marry him," whoever he is, I have two words: You first. Now let's get something straight right off the bat: Lori Gottlieb did not write this book because she actually wants to set back the women's movement or frighten 29-year-olds, she wrote it because she got a book deal. This is the way the non-fiction world works. If you have an idea that is compelling, salacious, vaguely relatable and able to piss off half of the Conde Nast building, you have a check waiting for you at your literary agent's office. But it's not so easy to turn away from the book's content, because the fact remains: there are a lot of successful, awesome, physically attractive, smart, funny women in their early 40s who are wondering why the fuck they aren't married and why they now have to get sperm donation to have a kid. Lori Gottlieb wants you to blame them, which is not entirely inaccurate, but you know who gets off scott-free in this exchange yet again? That's right: dudes. Nowhere is there a book called "Stop Picking Your Butt: How Guys Need to Cease Being Such Emotionally-Stunted Babies" and there isn't likely to be one. When women choose to spend their thirties drinking apple martinis and taking the Jitney to the Hamptons with no plans to settle down, it becomes the Tragedy of a Lost Era; when guys do it, it's called "2003 through 2010". But here's the rub... no matter what they tell you, a woman's fertility starts being an issue after 36. Sure, you can often use cutting-edge (and expensive) science to give you a shot into your early forties, but that window eventually becomes an arrow slit. So if you want to get married and have kids, you really do have to hope this intersection occurs: To me, the worst thing about a book like Gottlieb's is that her advice is impossible to take. Nobody in their right mind is going to marry someone they don't love if there's a .001% chance of meeting your soulmate in the next few years. The stakes of personal self-actualization are far too large (at least in self-oriented cultures like ours), and the promise of actual true love is far too inspiring to marry the guy you happen to be kinda dating. A word about "settling". I realize it's a very charged verb, one that chafes against every movie you've ever seen, every novel, every dream you had for yourself in your teenage bedroom. And let's be honest: for an 18-year-old guy, anything south of getting a blow job on the roof of a Suburban going 75 mph through South Beach while shotgunning a vat of Cuervo is "settling". So our definition changes wildly as our wants. But it doesn't mean that "settling" isn't very real. Here's the sad truth... finding the love of your life (or even "a" love of your life) is akin to Dean Smith's quote about winning national championships: you have to be very good, and very lucky. You have to be "good" enough to truly know yourself, get healed, salve your childhood wounds and mature into somebody who understands the glorious panorama and limitations of love. And you have to be "lucky" enough to find somebody else who has done the same, and find them in your time. The rest is fashion.

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Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - If This World Were Mine - naluwhite

Tirée du Lp Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - What Love Has Joined Together - 1970 Voir les derniers fichiers de naluwhite Partager sur : Facebook | Twitter | MySpace | Overblog | Skyrock

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10 Short Interviews With The World's Best Game Makers (And Three Other Guys) [Gdc]

Gabe Newell. John Carmack. The creators of Uncharted 2, Scribblenauts, Farmville. Even Penny Arcade. I interviewed a parade of award-winners backstage at the Game Developers Choice Awards. And I wanted to make sure these post-awards interviews were not dull. We talked about everything from PlayStation Move and Farmville: The Movie to a major sequel that needs a name and Half-Life 2: Episode 3. And, with each developer (or Penny Arcade person), we talked some Pokemon. Yes, I was consulting with some of gaming's top minds to prepare myself for a Pokemon challenge that I accepted from a peer of mine at MTV News. Check out the short video interviews with each of these creators at the links below: Monaco Award-Winner Celebrates, Warns Of Potential Nut-Kicking Victorious Torchlight Creators Like The Idea Of Torchlight 2 Exultant Farmville Developer Is Only Joking About A Farmville Movie, Right? Scribblenauts Inventor Needs A Name For The Sequel Honored Penny Arcade Creators Offer Me Some Advice Valve's Gabe Newell Predicts Gaming's Future, Not Talking About "Episode Three" Proud Batman: Arkham Asylum Art Director Working Hard On Next Game John Carmack Has Three Lifetime Achievement Awards, No Early iPad Uncharted 2 Creators Tip Hats To Killzone 2, Celebrate Lots Of Wins Flower Creators: No New Games This Year, Intrigued By PlayStation Move Congratulations to all of the people I interviewed for their Game Developers Choice and Independent Games Festival Awards. And, thank you. I couldn't have done these backstage interviews without you. Or, if I did, they would have been even more occasionally awkward and definitely less fun and (slightly) newsy. Videos shot by Adam Barenblat for Kotaku.

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Latest Fable III screenshots show characters, cogs and carts, game to include Twitter, Project Natal, John Cleese

Fable III got a new showing at the Game Developers Conference this year, and with it, a new set of screenshots were released by Microsoft and developers Lionhead to reveal one of the sections from the game – what looks to be an abandoned mine haunted by ghostly soldiers. Isn’t that always the way? Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux, as usual, spilled a few more beans about the project, including the reveal that non other than British comedian and actor John Cleese will play the role of your in-game butler, in addition to the news that, in some form or another, Fable III will include support for the social messaging system, Twitter, as Molyneux says: “I Twitter now and, you know, I’ve got followers on Twitter. That’s an interesting mechanic, and we integrate that into the Fable experience.” Molyneux did stop short at saying exactly how Twitter will be integrated, though. Additionally, Molyneux dropped the tasty morsel that Fable III will need to sell five million copies in order to improve upon Fable I and II’s market performance, which sold three million and three and a half million units respectively. This isn’t a financial goal set by Microsoft (although I’m sure the publisher would enjoy that very much), but rather an ambition set by Molyneux himself, as he’s determined to create a game that’s more accessible and more successful that any game he’s worked on before, as well as demonstrate the fact that the tweaks and changes he and the team are making to the Fable world are working. One last piece of news on Fable III is that the game is confirmed to include support for Microsoft’s motion detection technology, Project Natal, which Molyneux describes as “wonderfully additive”: “Natal is wonderfully additive to this experience. I can’t give you specifics, but it’s been a real joy to put some Natal stuff in there.” What a tease. See the rest of the new screenshots for Fable III below: Fable III is due for release this Holiday. While you wait around with nothing better to do, be sure to have a look through El33tonline’s previous coverage of Fable III for more screenshots, some videos, and more information.

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Re: Mapping caves off world

I used to work at an engineering office for an underground coal mine. While I was there, these guys came to talk to us about some tech they were trying to get money to develop. They essentially put a LIDAR system on an autonomous rover of sorts to make 3D maps of the tunnels. http://www.ri.cmu.edu/pub_files/pub4/hu ... 2003_1.pdf

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I Loved This Novel. Still Do. More Than Before.

(Author: John Piper) Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead—if you can call it that—continues to move me, months after I read it. I have waited to comment on it since I knew it would be around for decades (centuries?). I wanted to let it ripen in my memory. Rev. John Ames is dying. The book is a kind of last testament he would like his young son to read when he is twenty-five, long after his father is dead. His voice is still with me. So I went back to gather a few treasures. Gilead is not a "must read." There are no "must reads" but the Bible. None. So how do you choose what to read before you die and give an account to Jesus? I do it largely by what is awakened in me when I read samples. I hope these help. Some of the treasures. He'd walk fifteen miles across open country in the dead of winter to settle a point of interpretation. We'd have to thaw him out before he could tell us what it was he had on his mind. (p. 16) Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. (p. 53) You two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water. (p. 63) In my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. (p. 66) Each morning I'm like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes—old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam altogether, and still it is just remarkable. What of me will I still have? Well, this old body has been a pretty good companion. Like Balaam's ass, it's seen the angel I haven't seen yet, and it's lying down in the path. (pp. 66-67) I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge," because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts. (p. 117) Presumably the world exists for God's enjoyment, not in any simple sense, of course, but as you enjoy the being of a child even when he is every way a thorn in your heart. (pp. 124-125) At my time of life, I refuse to be angry. It was kindly meant. And it had to be done sooner or later. It's true that if I have to spend my twilight stranded with somebody or other, I'd prefer Karl Barth to Jack Benny. (p. 128) Boughton says he has more ideas about heaven every day. He said, "Mainly I just think about the splendors of the world and multiply by two. I'd multiply by ten or twelve if I had the energy. But two is much more than sufficient for my purposes." So he is just sitting there multiplying the feel of the wind by two, multiplying the smell of the grass by two. (p. 147) Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. (p. 166) But the fact is, I have never found another way to be as honest with myself as I can be by consulting with these miseries of mine, these accusers and rebukers, God bless them all. So long as they do not kill me outright. I do hope to die with a quiet heart. I know that may not be realistic. (p. 179) And she kissed me on the top of the head, which, for her, was downright flamboyant. (p. 186) We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep. (p. 190) He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me. (p. 190) It is true that we all do live in the ruins of the lives of other generations. (p. 198) My heart was very heavy. There was Boughton sitting in his Morris chair staring at nothing. Glory told me the only words he had said all day were "Jesus never had to be old!" (p. 236) It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health. (p. 238) It was truly a dreadful thing he was doing, leaving his father to die without him. It was the kind of thing only his father would forgive him for. (p. 240) There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient. (p. 243) "He will wipe the tears from all faces." It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required. (p. 246) This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love—I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence. (pp. 246-247)

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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: ‘Looped’ – Dub! Dub! My Darling! (Playbill) – NIMBRUNG.NET

Meet the first-nighters of the new Broadway comedy Looped, starring Valerie Harper . Gangway, Daahlings! Tallulah's back in town, arriving three sheets to the wind March 14 in rickety high heels at the Lyceum, Broadway's oldest theatre and only a few months younger than what La Bankhead would have been (108, if you please). She arrived in Looped , in all senses of that word, in the form of TV's former Rhoda Morgenstern , Valerie Harper , dropping the F-bomb the second she hit the stage as if to eradicate any image you might have of her. The only constant is the kind of classic comic timing you can set a Swiss watch by. Not for nothing was her mother on " The Mary Tyler Moore Show " and "Rhoda" played by Nancy Walker . This timing gets a rat-a-tat-tat workout in the vehicle Matthew Lombardo has scripted and Rob Ruggiero has directed. It catches Tallulah on what would be her last day of film work, at a Los Angeles recording studio trying to approximate an impossibly contorted line of expositional dialogue for a 1965 penny-dreadful British horror flick titled, Tallulah-like, " Die! Die! My Darling !" Naturally, she reported to work thoroughly sloshed and tardy, much to the teeth-grinding consternation of the sound engineer on duty ( Michael Mulheren ) and the poor flunky assigned to squeeze that single line of dialogue out of her ( Brian Hutchison ). After many failed felled swoops at the assignment, she stalked off the soundstage, returning after intermission contrite and coked-up ("There was the longest line in the ladies' room," she explained, dusting her nose a bit). And the beat goes on, one long Ta-loop-de-loop till relative recording success is met. After the play, first-nighters retired to Tallulah's favorite saloon, Sardi's, where the after-party was splashed over three floors and remembered Tallulah lines bounced off the walls at every level. Press was poised in the cubbyhole bar by the entrance. Much of the post-show chit-chat centered on how precise and persuasive the impersonation was, and how much humanity Harper was able to slip in between wisecracks. Of course, a case could be made that the Bankhead persona fit her like - well, like the silk charmeuse she traipses around in, loose-legged and seductive, causing you to seriously wonder whether she is fettered by any undergarments. William Ivey Long , who designed the inviting frock, kept its mystery. "That's the magic of the theatre," he twinkled mischievously. "It's a very mobile thin satin. I thought I knew something about it, being from the South, and, when I started researching it, I realized that I didn't so I've learned even more doing that dress." It wears well with legend-becoming mink, too. Bette Davis worked the fur a lot in " All About Eve " to suggest Tallulah. "That's very much the Margo Channing neckline," Long pointed out. "They all wore it in that period. This is a real mink, from a vintage collection. That's the real cut. Those animals died about 50 years ago." Harper made her star entrance at Sardi's fashionably last-to-arrive, peppy as all get-out (once a Michael Kidd dancer, always a Michael Kidd dancer). She dove right into the interviews, betraying nary a hint of the hard work she had just put in on stage. She knew exactly what she wanted audiences to take away from her show. "Hurting ribs," she said, "from splitting their sides laughing. It's always like that, too. Even quiet matinee days where the ladies are not so fond of the F-bomb, they get with it and go, 'Oh, yes, that's the way Tallulah used to talk,' and they kinda come along. "It was a great script that was sent to us. Tony Cacciotti , my darling husband, said, 'I can produce this, and I'd like to take it to Broadway.' This is our fourth venue: Pasadena, South Florida, Washington, DC's Arena Stage and now here. "The show has grown at every stop. There have been rewrites all the way along but, more than anything, there was finessing the directing. Rob Ruggiero has worked very hard on all the characters. I had two new actors for Broadway. This was three weeks of rehearsals, then three weeks of previews - very helpful to be really ready." [PAGE] Her writer and her director were both making their Broadway debuts with Looped , and at the curtain call, she brought them out to take their bows. Unsurprisingly, both had valentines for Valerie Harper . "We've been friends for years," Ruggiero relayed. "As lovely as you think she is, she is even better. She's a brilliant comedienne, a wonderful collaborator and a dear friend. I grew up as a kid wanting my best friend to be Rhoda. It's better having Valerie as my best friend." Harper, he said, was adamant about making her Tallulah more than a caricature. "This has nothing to do with a send-up. She really does Tallulah with great integrity and conviction. She loves Tallulah and wants to do right by her, and I think she did." There's a pretty steady explosion of laughs all evening, although you couldn't prove it by Lombardo: "Sometimes, I don't even hear a lot of them because this whole Broadway-debut thing is so surreal. I'm just riding the wave." Acting icons in crisis is becoming a specialty for Lombardo, who served Tea at Five for Kate Mulgrew . A one-woman show, it looked in on Katharine Hepburn in September 1938 when her film career was in shambles and a hurricane was bearing down on the old Hepburn homestead in Old Saybrook, CT. Similarly, Looped finds Tallulah in desperate disarray. "It gives us an opportunity to really explore Tallulah's life. She had some wonderful successes, but her behavior caused her to have a lot of failures, personally and professionally." Lombardo was prompted to write this play when he heard an abbreviated tape of that actual session. "It was about 45 minutes," he said. "What was just going to be a one-hour event turned into something like seven or eight hours. She was very belligerent, very frustrated, but I also heard the alcoholism and the drug addiction really have an effect on her career. I was touched, and I wanted to write it." Next for Lombardo and Ruggiero is another-a literal - High . That's the title of a play specifically written for Kathleen Turner , who, like Tovah Feldshuh and Helen Gallagher , has had her share of Tallulah tours. "It's about a recovering-alcoholic nun, who is sent a 19-year-old heroin addict," Lombardo explained. "She has to help him find God and get clean. It's really about the belief in miracles that ultimately changes. It premieres in Hartford July 9-Aug. 22, then we go to Cincinnati and St. Louis, and then we come into New York ." Mulheren and Hutchison, both of whom have been around the Broadway block a few times, were equally effusive about the star to whom they lent their support. "Valerie is one of the most generous people I've ever worked with," declared Hutchison. "She just constantly wants to make things better and deeper. I just think the world of her. She has been fantastic from the get-go, and she has never changed." This, mind you, from the guy who spends most of the play fencing and fuming with her. "There are a lot of awkward moments for me, just getting the ball kinda thrown back in my face, but I get to do a whole lot of different stuff. It goes from broad comedy at times and reacting to her antics to sort of a tender emotional diva journey." Mulheren's role of the guy in the sound booth has grown getting to Broadway. "When they did it out of town, the guy was in total darkness, but Matthew took a shine to me early and gave me more dialogue, and of course everything expanded. I got more light from [lighting designer] Ken Billington …" Paul Haggis , director and author of the Oscar-winning "Crash," was the evening's farthest out-of-left-field first-nighter - but, on closer inspection, not so: "I'm a long-time fan of Valerie Harper . I almost ended her career many years ago with a [TV] show called 'City,' which we did together. It only lasted 13 episodes, but I became a huge fan of hers during that time, and I've been a fan ever since." She and Joe Sirola go back as well - plus. "I knew Tallulah. As a matter of fact, in her book she said her favorite actor was Joe Sirola. Why? Because from 3 to 3:30, I had a soap opera called ' The Brighter Day ,' and she used to watch it every day and contacted me. So when Valerie read the book, she called me up and said, 'Joe, you gotta tell me about Tallulah.' She's wonderful in the role. Right on the button." Cabaret 's Tony- and Oscar-winning Joel Grey was flashing his Kander -&-Ebb button for all to see. "I loved The Scottsboro Boys - wild about it," he volunteered. "What is the matter with That Man [meaning The New York Times naysayer, Ben Brantley ]? That was really wrong! I'm hoping they will still bring it to Broadway, because I think in a small theatre it will really play. It will have a great, great black audience - and a white audience as well." Not only has Bryan Batt gone Hollywood on us (via "Mad Men"), he's gone literary on us as well. His new comedic tome, "She Ain't Heavy - She's My Mother," has a May 4 pub date. "People have told me they've laughed and they've cried," he said, "and there's a lot of Broadway stuff in there. I started writing the stories while I was in Beauty and the Beast . I let some friends read it, and they said, 'You have to continue it.' So I kept on doing it, and I got a book deal. During the entire season of ' Mad Men ,' while we were filming last year, I finished it in my trailer." Matthew Modine arrived with good news from The Miracle Worker : "There are so many families coming to the show. You don't see kids in the audience much - and see them so engaged in the story, learning about Helen Keller and how important it is to persevere and that 'tough love' is often the most necessary option." Handily winning the most glamorous of the gray-fox couples in attendance were Louise Hirschfeld and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne . She's just back from the West Coast : "I saw Carol Channing in Palm Springs, and I told her I was going to see Looped ,about Tallulah. She said, 'We were playing theatres that were close to each other, and often after the show she'd come out with just her mink coat on - but I fooled her: I never looked below her throat." Never one who is informationally challenged, Osborne amplified the topic. "She must have picked that up because I had a friend of mine who worked with Carol Channing a lot, and she used to walk around nude in her dressing room when people were there. Charlton Heston , when he did theatre in L.A., did that, too - a lot." Comedian and first-nighter Mario Cantone will play Caroline's April 22-24 and then Castro's in San Francisco. Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, it's his first Frisco gig. "My first time. I've never done it before. I don't like to go out of town too much. I'm a Fraidy Cat ." But he will make the sacrifice for " Sex and the City 2 ," he said. "I'm preparing for the premiere coming up. After April, I'll go to Rome and London for the premieres." Other first-nighters included Eddie Izzard ; Yank hunk Ivan Hernandez with wife; Steve Hayes (fresh from a Don't Tell Mama gig, "I'm doing YouTube-'Steve Hayes, Tired Old Queen of the Movies'"); Tony winner Ron Rifkin ; director-actor Jerry Dixon ; character actress Lynn Cohen ; and Soap Opera Digest 's Carolyn Hinsey . Related posts: PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: ‘A Behanding in Spokane’ — Watch Where You’re Walken (Playbill) – NIMBRUNG.NET Meet the first-nighters of Broadway's A Behanding in Spokane... Comic talent wasted in Tallulah Bankhead play (Reuters) – NIMBRUNG.NET NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Considering her scant film... ‘Top Secret’ Moves From Courtroom to Classroom to Off-Broadway (Playbill) – NIMBRUNG.NET The fact-based drama Top Secret: The Battle for the...

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Melodies of Life: Second Symphony [OOC & Sign up]

May 8, ---- I've done many things I'm not proud of. I've been consumed by rage and jealousy; I've hurt my friends in the worst ways imaginable; I've given into the Darkness. I've done many more things; some bad, some good. All have shaped who I am today. But if I could just take back some of the worst accusations.... May 20, ---- It's been two years since I've seen my friends; Mina still stands by my side, but there's so many people I can't help but think about. Hikari, what's she doing now? Phoenix, my Nobody; what's happened to her? And Hotaru... does she hate me for turning my back on her? And there were so many others I had met only briefly: Daisuke and Zane, Takuya. They could have become friends too. And what about my Dad? We've always been there for each other since Mom died; since I've abandoned him, he's been by himself. Is he okay? Are the rest of our parents okay? And Matt.... what's happened to you? July 2, ---- I knew it was coming, this change. It started about a month after I went through the portal with Isixs. I had always thought my eyes were okay in a bluish ocean tone; but I'd also thought the color looked better in my father's eyes. And I remember, faintly... Mom's eyes were a mix of sapphire and violet; when I looked hard enough, I thought I could see some of her eye color in my own. I wish I had my old eyes back; even the silvery-green color they had been for a long time would be better than the blood red I see every day now. When I looked in the mirror, and see those crimson irises staring back at me, I just can't see me; all I can see is her. I couldn't stand looking at those eyes anymore; instead, all I see now is the soft blackness of this cotton blindfold I wear. If there's one blessing to be had, it's that bits and pieces of my memories, which were stolen so many months ago, are finally coming back to me. But maybe this event isn't much to celebrate, 'cause it just shows how much of a bitch I've been. July 9, ---- Mina says my hair is changing, that it's a dark grey color now. She keeps joking that I'm going prematurely grey, but she knows as well as I what's happening. We know it won't stay this grey for long; soon, it'll be as black as sin, black as the Darkness. I just hope my skin doesn't change; I'm pale enough already, I don't want to look like a living, breathing skeleton. These changes are because of her; it means that she's still alive. I'm told the same thing happened to my Dad, Riku. It means that my battle, Hotaru's battle; my friends' battles, they're not over yet. The real question is: How far will the desolation spread before this war is finally over? And another question: Even if we defeat her, will the war ever end? September 1, ---- Isixs is pretty nice, for a Nobody; but she keeps me and Mina so busy, we're practically the Living Dead by the time we collapse into bed at night. I'm not going to complain; the missions she sends us on are important ones; but they sometimes take weeks; the last one was eight days short of being two months. When I get a little down time, like now, I do the one thing I can: I write. Mina said I should keep a diary; she says it helps to calm you down if you can put your thoughts and troubles down on paper, says that you can forget about them then. And while I don't think I could ever forget, it does have that calming effect she promised. But I think this is going to be the last 'Me Time' I'm going to get for a long time; I found something that is going to change the face of this fight with the Corrupt Darkness. I found this scrap of paper; it looked like it had been torn from some ancient book. The text on the page read like this: "The Eternal Light will weep, for the Darkness will splinter, and become Evil. The Angels shall fall, and slumber for 1,000 years. At the stroke of the millennial mark, the Angels shall mark their Heirs, as will the Evil mark theirs. Light, Darkness, Dawn and Twilight shall face off the Evil one final time; only by uniting, and creating the True Light with their Essence, will they be able to banish the Evil, and restore the Eternal Light." I don't know what this means, but I can feel it: This war with her is drawing to a close. If you find and read this dairy, you are now part of this fight. Are you on the side of this, 'Eternal Light,' that was spoken of? Or are you on the side of the 'Evil'? It's time to decide. After the final mark dried, several copies of this diary were made, and scattered through all the worlds. This is your mission: Find a copy and read it. Then, you must chose: the Eternal Light or the Evil. It's up to you. Melodies of Life: Second Symphony This is a co-collab between Skitty Cat and myself. You can get acceptance to join from either her or me. Alright, do to a severe case of lost inspiration and writer's block, this RP died the first time I put it up. Considering it's the last in the Melodies trilogy, I'm putting it up again in the hopes that, this time, we'll be able to bring it to an epic conclusion. (There's a fight near the end that's panning out in my head; I really want to get this done.) Okay, rules! 1. No godmodding 2. No power playing, unless you have the okay 3. Romance and language is okay, but keep it PG-13, and no where near a bed or any of that kinda talk! 4. If you can't take constructive criticism, you're out. 5. Have fun! 6. I don't care if you are a veteran or just starting out, if it's painful to read your stuff YOU'RE GONE! 7. Please post at least one paragraph, two would be great! 8. For newbies please post "Follow your command" above your template, for the veterns of this RP (you and me know who you are) please post "I'll fight and stand" above your template. 9. I don't care how many characters you have, just don't make so many you can't keep up with them all and tie up other people. Okay, time to give some info on the enemies they will be facing! Heartless: Creature born from the darkness of people's hearts, they crave more hearts but are most attracted to those with pure hearts. What are their goals? What do they want besides hearts? Nobodies: A being created when someone loses their heart to the Darkness, they are nothing but mere empty shells incapable of feeling "true" emotions...or are they? Wicked: Creatures and entities that are born through human emotions. If the nobody was the shell and the heartless was the core, then the wicked is the inner most core. They dwell among the deepest reaches of a tainted heart, and feeds on darkness to gain their power. Soulless: Strange, mysterious beings, not much is known about them; other then they are the incarnation of the darkness in a keybearer's heart, since the keybearers are the only ones that can make them. But keyblade masters, or the chosen ones, will make the stronger soulless that have control over the lower ranking soulless. They can think and plan, but it seems that they can only feel the harder emotions; the softer ones like love have been tossed out the window. A Soulless is created from the Darkness in a Keybearers heart when they have suffered an extremely traumatic experience. Sometimes it will part company instantly. But if the Wielder has a pure heart, even if it is tainted with Darkness, the Soulless could remain dormant for years, until events trigger it's awakening. The Unclean: The true essence of darkness with all its taintedness and pure evil; these foul entities are the most powerful form of darkness. They are the ones who fought against the four angels back at the ancient times that almost brought their downfall. These creatures of evil are not to be trifled with, because they do not amass their power through numbers alone. They are all built cunning and brutally clever in catching their prey. And they do not take other people's hearts, they kill. They hold the power that lies in the deepest reaches of Kingdom hearts. What could be behind Its doors that attract the corrupted forces of Darkness? The Nobodies of the New Order The 'Old Order' has fallen apart, and many Nobodies have become renegades. However, there seems to be a new system rising, with a core of Higer Nobodies at the center. I. ???? - Eternal Dream The Renegades Nobodies that don't belong to any Order, they seem to have their own intentions and goals. Melody Tagihi, The Lone Wolf (Neko and Dancer Nobodies) - Skitty Cat The Soulless Shadou (Ninja Soulless) - Skitty Cat The Wicked Unclean The Pack There have been reports of increased wolf sightings in the woods surrounding Twilight Town. While most of the sighting are of very old or young wolves, there will ocasionally be a comment made about a small, black female flanked by two white and steel grey wolves, both male. They do not seem to be dangerous, but caution should be taken when these creatures are sited. Alpha female and pack leader - Melody Tagihi - Skitty Cat Beta and second in command - Atemx - Eternal Dream Third in command - Razor - Skitty Cat Luna - Skitty Cat Howl - Skitty Cat Kihaku - Skitty Cat Rhys - Eternal Dream Kuroi - Eternal Dream Shiroi - Eternal Dream Keybearers Thanks to the Keyblade Academy, there seems to be a bunch of these guys running around..... saint .L - thechaserkeyblade Keyblade Masters But only four can be called Masters Light: Mina - Eternal Dream Dawn: Hotaru Mclair - Skitty Cat Darkness: Daisuke Shizuka - Aphex Twilight: Leyla Terra- Eternal Dream Angels Mysterious beings, they seem to hold the ability to wield the elements of the Light in their truest forms Angel of Light: Mina - Eternal Dream Angel of Dawn: Hotaru Mclair - Skitty Cat Angel of Darkness: Daisuke Shizuka - Aphex Angel of Twilight: Leyla Terra- Eternal Dream Other Warriors and others that don't seem to fit in any specific category, they're still just as important! Template: Name: Age: Gender: Heart: (light, dark, twilight, non-existent) Race: (Human, Nobody, Heartless, Soulless, etc) Lower Ranking Soulless/Nobody: (what type of lesser Soulless/Nobody do they control? Soulless and Nobodies ONLY) Rank: (Nobodies ONLY) Code Name: (Nobodies ONLY) Power/Element: (Nobodies ONLY) Weapon: Appearance: (Pics are fine, but a few words as well.) Home World: (Where are they from? Is it a world that was in Kingdom Hearts or another world?) Personality: (More then just a few words please) Bio: Theme Song: Battle Song: Quote: (If you were in the last one, try to find a quote from there. If not, just put whatever you want!) Possible Worlds: Halloween Town (begins humming tune, sorry. They are going there) Twilight Town Gaia Spira Ivalice Midgar (Final Fantasy kick, much?) Hallow Bastion Soul Society (Bleach!) Destiny Islands (<- The last world...yes they go back) Traverse Town (yesh!) Soulless Castle Kingdom Hearts (The final world before Destiny Islands, let's rumble!) Also any other you would like to go to ~- Current Members -~ Eternal Dream Skitty Cat Aphex ~- On Trial -~ thechaserkeyblade ~----------------~ So you know, there is going to be a sub plot woven into the main. It takes place 1,000 years before the main story line, and it centers around the original Angels of the Light. Skitty and I will be the ones writing it; there are several crucial details that will be revealed in it, and they'll be happening every five posts or so. (every five of mine or Skitty's The story so far: Melodies of Life: Daisuke, Sairu and Zane made their way to the Destiny Islands and met with Hotaru, Hikari and Leyla; residences of the isles. Sairu kept his distance watching the group as they fended off Heartless and made their way to a portal that had been summoned; they were all able to get off the Islands before it collapsed in on itself. Hotaru, Sairu, Zane, Daisuke and Hikari arrived at Disney Castle while Leyla was Hollow Bastion. The group at Disney Castle met Donald, Goofy (who have mysteriously disappeared and not shown up since) and Mickey's and Minnie's daughter Mina who also ended up traveling with them, much to Daisy's disapproval. Meanwhile in Hollow Bastion, Leyla was convinced by Maleficent to follow her after a girl started to rewrite Leyla's memories so she could be used just like her father. This girl was later revealed to be Hotaru's nobody Firefly, but Leyla knowing something was wrong sent her Nobody Phoenix to keep an eye on Hotaru. The group that landed at Disney Castle (not including Sairu because he was off somewhere) left the world in order to find Leyla; ending up in Travese Town, after defeating the boss there (I can't remember its name, but it wasn't Guard Armor), they went to another world and it continued on with that until they went to Atlantica were they met Matt, a boy who looked a lot like Demyx, the reason behind this is that he is Demyx's nephew. Matt traveled with them to Midgar, where Sairu joined the party shortly followed by Kari, a skilled young warrior that Sairu has had a crush on ever since they were in rolled at the Keyblade Academy together with their friend Kiro. The group rested there for the night, having met Kadaji early that morning and defeating the "supposed" boss. Unable to sleep, Hotaru over heard Phoenix and left the party to go to Neverland, where she was forced to fight Leyla only to discover that it was Masquerade, her best friend's Soulless that was created when her mom was murdered, nine years prior to the RP. What Leyla, Riku nor anyone else knew was that Hotaru had seen Maleficent kill both Ollette and Lilly, they were teachers at the Keyblade Academy; which lead to Hotaru's Soulless, Yami's, birth. After learning of Masquerade‘s existence, Hotaru headed to Hollow Bastion alone, again, to try to stop Masquerade from gaining complete control only to fail miserably. Her knees also suffering from the lose do to Masquerade’s cat-o-nine wrapping around them and removing some flesh, muscle and bone; as another side effect to the fail attempt to destroy Masquerade right then: Leyla lost her body and turned invisible to the group, until Matt had hugged her turning her visible again. The Destiny Islands being restored after Maleficent’s defeat, the relaxing moment didn’t last long as a swarm of Neo-shadows appeared and attacked the group. They were all able to get through it expect for Matt, Daisuke, Hotaru and Leyla; it was a chain reaction of sort. Matt lost his heart causing Leyla to go into a deep depression and sink into the darkness; Hotaru not wanting to believe that she had lost her best friend again ran out of the room (the castle chapel) and headed toward the entrance only to finish losing her heart. Daisuke sacrificed his heart so Hotaru could hers back, they had become very close during the whole thing. After those events unwrapped themselves, the group separated and headed onto their next adventure, which Hotaru didn't know would all her to meet up with Daisuke and Matt's Nobody, Atemx. Melodies of Life: Hall of Memories: A few weeks after the first Melodies, the group, even though it was in separate parts, found themselves at the Hall of Lost Souls. Zane, Phoenix and Hikari were on the top floor, Hotaru in the basement while Leyla was out in the garden. Meanwhile the Organization that was interfering with the group consisted of the rebel group: Uryu (desceased), Takuya, Illyx, Atemx, Firefly and Zexion (deceased; he met his end at Illyx and Kitsune's claws). The groups respectively made it through their floors, meeting servel new faces and reuniting with old ones too. The group increased in size, Sairu, Kari, Saiyuri and Kiro (who they had picked up in Hollow Bastion in the previous) joined with Hotaru, Daisuke and Phoenix who had ditched Zane and Hikari do to Melody's cold attitude. Leyla and Mina had be reunited with Atemx and joined by Takuya, who eventually left the group to help the ones in the castle. None were able to complete get to the top floor with the castle collapsing around them. They were all able to get out in time, be it from sticking together or going separate ways. Melody was able to call her cousins to meet her in a strange, new world shortly after Zane left and she was able to convince herself not to go running after him. It ended with the groups going their separate ways for the time being. Note: Melodies took place twenty years after KH1, and Hall of Memories was a few weeks after Melodies.

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When scientist audience is from another field it is still "outreach"

A recent paper from I. Kouper entitled "Science blogs and public engagement with science: practices, challenges, and opportunities" has been receiving a fair bit of bloggy attention. Of the negative sort. Mostly because the paper purports to report on the state of all science blogging but then cherry picks a few blogs to generate data- which is not actually presented for the most part. Furthermore the paper ends up with a subjective review of blog tone, level and commentary that makes one wonder if the author actually reads blogs at all. It is just that detached from the experience of many of us. Bora was particularly annoyed and held forth at some length. Additional thoughts were advanced at Cosmic Variance, Panda's Thumb andPharyngula. Since this blog was included in the alleged dataset, narcissistically, I felt I had better point out some more flaws in this paper. Let's get the hilarious one out of the way first. Kouper includes the following comment example from this very blog (awww...): Insults, such as "Don't be an idiot.. rtfa" or "Could you possibly sound any more stupid with this comment?" were more common for some blogs than the others. Thus, Wired Science and Panda's Thumb were filled with insulting commentary. Offensive remarks regarding somebody's personality or intellectual abilities most often targeted other commenters and the characters of posts, but sometimes they were directed at blog authors as well, such as the following comment in DrugMonkey blog: "You are correct, I never read a post in which you claim not to be pompous and arrogant". Now, of course, IMNSHO, that is pretty tepid stuff if it is supposed to be an example of rampant incivility. Which seemed to be the author's intent given the context within which the quote was placed. Nevertheless, the absolute context tone-deafness of the author is staggering. This was a comment from S. Rivlin! The comment, of course, was directed at Comrade PhysioProf who in that very thread gave all the evidence Kouper needed as to why a reader might direct rudeness toward the blog author. Now admittedly it would take a little more digging to figure out that S. Rivlin and Comrade PhysioProf maintain this cartoonish antagonism on the blog for reasons that are clear only to themselves (and possibly their therapists, if any). This exchange is by no means representative of anything. Not representative of comment exchanges on this blog and certainly not representative of the less....er, freely commented blogs. In fact, looking at the list of blogs and blog aggregations/collectives listed in the Table 1, it is not clear why we were picked out for focus in the first place. This brings me to my main complaint about Kouper's take on "science blogs". One central thrust of the paper is that science blogs are directed at an audience of scientists, are not reaching non-scientists at all and therefore are doin it rongz. As the author concludes: To become a tool for non-scientist participation, science blogs need to stabilize as a genre or as a set of subgenres where smaller conversations may facilitate more meaningful participation from members of the public So if the goal was to review science blogs that were designed primarily to engage the nonscientist public, what in blazes is she doing selecting DrugMonkey, a blog which focuses in very large part on inside-science-baseball topics? When we're talking about how to succeed at the NIH grant game around here, we are most certainly not talking to nonscientists! Now admittedly, I do post something on a more general interest topic now and again. Of course, if Kouper had focused her reviews on those posts, it would have been obvious that I reach greater number of nonscientists when talking about drugs. Let us back up and review the author's source of information on the demographics of blog readers: Readers of science blogs also had some relationship with science, i.e., they were not exactly non-scientists or lay persons. One author posted a message titled "Who are you?" and asked his readers for information about themselves and their background. The answers to this post as well as the overall analysis of readers' comments demonstrate that those readers who engage in commenting are almost always associated with science one way or another. I'm not positive but I suspect, given the data were collected in "Summer of 2008" it was this post of mine, given my title. Unlikely that it was the related one at NERS that the author should have reviewed given that I linked it as my motivation! Or the similar threads from ScienceWoman, Coturnix and drdrA that I linked. Also see Janet Stemwedel's post. If the author had read with a close eye she would have seen that while scientists dominate the readership, they are by no means the only demographic. There are detectable numbers of non-scientist commenters. Kouper makes the further mistake of not understanding that comments are not equal to readers. In fact, many bloggers bandy around numbers that suggest reader comment numbers are only about 5% or less of the number of unique visits to a post. Perhaps the scientist/nonscientist ratio is similar between lurker and commenters but perhaps it is not. We simply do not know. What we do know is that nonscientists are being reached, even if they are not the majority demographic. So the concluding tone in the article is a bit overdrawn. There is one final, and critical, point that seems to have escaped the author's notice entirely. Scientists ARE the uninformed public. In my case, for example, I know very little about paleontology. So when I read Laelaps or Tetrapod Zoology, I learn a tremendous amount. Similarly, I go to the earth science folks to give me a little context for the latest earthquakes causing disasters around the world. Now whether I inform them or not, it is indubitably the case that I have a lot of scientist readers that know very little about drug abuse. Beyond the typical user-level of knowledge that is. They are not working in substance abuse or related fields. Maybe, at best, we have an appreciable number of neuroscientists. And a lot of folks who work on biological systems in some way. We also have nonbiologists in the audience. When it comes to the topic domain of substance abuse, they are all more or less equivalently non-expert. So just as I am in the "outreach" target demographic for the bone jockeys, my readers are most emphatically in the target demographic for any scientific education and outreach that might motivate my blogging. Kouper seems to have missed this.

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