Tag Archives: Hollywood

Fabulous Nicholas Brothers

November 3, 2016 Andrea Gibbons 1 Comment

Last night at Bristol’s Watershed we went to see The Fabulous Nicholas Brothers:

Bruce Goldstein, Director of Repertory Programming at Film Forum in New York, presents a unique compilation tribute to the greatest dancers of the 20th century the Nicholas Brothers, featuring a collage of rarely seen home movies, photographs and film clips.

It was — the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers were — amazing. I perhaps use that adjective too much, my enthusiasms lace my writing with ‘I loved’ and ‘brilliant’ and other such encomiums so that perhaps they lose some meaning. But little I have ever experienced compares to the feeling of pure joy that dance can grant, particularly as embodied by Fayard and Harold Lloyd Nicholas. Before Bruce Goldstein began, they started with this clip, ‘Lucky Number’ (1936):

Throughout their career, in addition to the jaw-dropping virtuosity of their movements, there is a joy in dance and in dancing with each other that is a gift to watch. It fills you up as you watch it, together with awe that such things might be done.

I will also note that this format, of talk interspersed with clips, from someone as knowledgeable and personable as Bruce Goldstein who knew the brothers personally, was awesome. He had loads of footage from the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers’ own home videos including some of their unique film of the Cotton Club performances, which rendered it incredible. You are sorry you missed it.

Anyway. You take all of this, the very best and the most beautiful of talent, and you set it in Jim Crow America. This ensures the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers are billed most of their lives as a ‘specialty act’ (though usually at the top of the bill). I think for all I have read, watched, wrestled with, this exposed an entirely new view of how damaging Jim Crow was. How crazy it was.

Absolutely batshit crazy.

There’s Pie Pie Blackbird. Crazy. Immense talent to be found singing and dancing about the master’s ‘blackbird pie’.

As a reference to master sleeping with his slaves, it hardly seems veiled at all. And so it is that here, the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers in their 1932 debut get called little pickinninies.

Wonderful without reservations is their appearance in the 1935 All Coloured Vaudeville Movie — and look at that city background, this is really an urban art after all, not one tied to the plantation south, but to Harlem, to Chicago, to the places that beckoned towards freedom and equality (though still have yet to grant it). Fayard is performing in his characteristic three piece suit — he wore it at almost all times (there’s home footage of him wearing it at the tennis courts, on the beach), a fashion statement against the indignities and disrespect of Jim Crow, and I love him for it:

Yet so many of these clips make me feel Jim Crow viscerally. After a rather saccharine display of white doo-wop and the (rather good don’t you know) Glen Miller band, there is the joy and virtuosity of the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers and the equally fabulous Dorothy Dandridge (who married Harold, how did I not know?). Carefully orchestrated so the whole section is separate from the white musicians, able to be cut entirely for Southern audiences — a prime reason the Nicholas Brothers would always perform self-contained ‘numbers’ rather than roles.

I found this separateness physically painful to watch, which sat strangely beside the absolute joy of the performance itself. But more bewildering were these two clips, the first the 1934 ‘Minstrel Man’ from Kid Millions

Apart from it being cool that Lucille Ball is in this, I sat wondering in what insane ideological space the whole of America was in to make such a musical number possible, such plunging necklines and singing about loving a minstrel man when Black men were being lynched in the South for even looking the wrong way at a white woman.

Their number from Tin Pan Alley (1940) is even crazier:

I couldn’t stop thinking about Emmet Till through the whole of this damn number. What the actual fuck. Never in a million years could I have imagined such a thing in 1940. In struggling to make sense of it, I think a partial answer is that the category of youth allowed Harold Nicholas to be non-threatening enough for ‘Minstrel Man’, and the category of ‘performing slave’ to be non-threatening enough for Tin Pan Alley (and the absence of sexual innuendo or physical contact). And yet. It doesn’t really explain it to my satisfaction.

Nothing does. Think of Billie Holiday singing ‘Strange Fruit’ in 1939: Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees. The two performances together somehow make white power and violence even more terrifying in ways I am unable to understand. Perhaps it is the impossibility of reconciling these two things that is the most terrifying, how do you fight what is impossible to understand?

World War II would start to move change along again, Fayard would be drafted into the Jim Crow Army’s laundry brigade.

The Pirate (1948), with Gene Kelley, was the first film where Black and white dancers interacted together, as something like equals (where Gene Kelley, who is a superb dancer, is struggling to keep up in fact).

Still the brothers’ speaking roles were cut from the final film, they remained listed as a specialty act.

Bruce Goldstein writes of all those they influenced:

The dancer’s dancers, their fans have included Gene Kelly, who teamed up with them in The Pirate; Bob Fosse and Gregory Hines, whose first acts were modelled on them; ballet legends George Balanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov; Michael Jackson, who once had Fayard as a dance coach; and Fred Astaire, who named their Stormy Weather ‘staircase’ number the greatest of all musical sequences.

Yet watching this talk I was struck by how much better all of those dancers and all of their performances could have been in a world without racism, where the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers could have found a rightful respect and a rightful place in musicals and movies. The leading roles they deserved. The space to further develop their art. Instead they moved to Paris. After four years Fayard moved home, because home is home, you know? No one should have to leave home to feel like a human being. No one should have to choose between performing with his brother or being treated like a human being. Harold had to, chose the second for a time. Remained in Paris. Ended up coming home to be with his brother.

Here they are reunited at the Hollywood Palace in 1965. Fayard is 51.

How wonderful they are. How angry I remain at this larger context and history.

Finally to end, and to end on the wonderful just as the talk did, the most wonderful routine of all (of all!) from Stormy Weather, which we are lucky enough to have tickets to see on the big screen on Sunday!

I am going to learn to tap dance. I will not be good, but perhaps I might come to express some of my joy with my feet in such a way…

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Films, Photo Essay

Apacheland

January 22, 2015 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

`My last set of pictures and post from Arizona…just a few days wandering yields so much. After reading Orientalism I know when writing about an old movie set I should do something more thoughtful about Westerns and representation and how I sit in relationship to the myths of the West and its occupants. But this won’t really be it, just a quick beginning.

In my youth I refused to watch most Westerns at all, especially after the first time I realised a white dude had actually painted himself brown and was pretending to be an Indian. That was a moment of pure WTF. I sided with the Indians and Mexicans and I knew in advance they always lost. I hated that male violence was always so stupidly extreme and defined everything, as women fluttered around them like anachronistically clean and well-fed butterflies. We did, I confess, watch a lot of Bonanza, but I thought John Wayne was an asshole and wanted no part of anything that made him look like a hero.

I still think John Wayne is an asshole. That’s why I now like The Searchers so much.

Now that I have left the desert, I yearn to catch site of it in the multitude of films shot in the very same hills to the SW of Tucson where I grew up. Along familiar trails even. But there are more reasons than that to like James Stewart in Winchester ’73.

Tucson never appears at all in the TV show Maverick, but James Garner cheers me up just to look at him. Nichols may be even better, I’m just sad that the Rockford Files aren’t filmed in Tucson too. L.A. is overrepresented.

I’ll stop listing the Westerns worth watching because I will leave things out (like Lee Marvin! Cat Ballou!) But what is fascinating is the way that the the manufacturing of the Western myth in movies left a trail all across the South West in the form of movie sets and theme parks that sit oddly with the detritus of mining and cattle ranching that actually marks the passing of the old west.

The name itself is after the Apache trail, or Apache Junction perhaps. All of them together just serve as another expression of how white people have no shame at all at appropriating the names and cultures of those they have massacred and forced to leave the area entirely. And then made money making moving pictures about a rewritten version of that history.

This makes the use of the word ‘innocent’ in its own description a bit dubious:

Apacheland 1956-1959

From its innocent inception of a theme park and western movie studio in 1956 to its founding in 1959 as “The Western Movie Capital of the World,” this is the first chapter in a 55 year history of Apacheland Movie Ranch that covers Richard Boone, Ronald Reagan, Elvis Presley, John Wayne and Henry Fonda to name a few. Apacheland Days at its finest.

This was always meant to be a tourist destination, a show:

Sadly most of it burned down, so its relics have been picked up and moved to the Superstion Mountain Musuem:

Despite all of this, I get a little thrill knowing that these buildings have been the backdrop for the work of some of my favourite people:

I will include Elvis in that, here is the chapel from Charro!:

It is, of course, dedicated to Elvis. Vegas, eat your heart out.

It also contains some pictures of what Apacheland once looked like:

And then because this is indeed a mixture of the real and the unreal, they of course have my favourite exhibit in all western museums — the obligatory board of barbed wire:

Outside, and again outside of Hollywood all together, is this wonderful collection of old mining machinery, like the Cossack Stamp Mill, dragged here with love from Bland, NM and now being restored to working condition.

An old water drill:

And amazing bits of machinery rusting:

Perhaps the most memorable exhibit is inside:

But to return to Hollywood, here is the monument to the wonderful Tom Mix, who died here in a car accident — much further down the highway, but it seemed to fit here:

And a monument to the leisure activities of many a good resident of Arizona. I miss it.

Apacheland Filmography

1956 Gunfight at the OK Corral – Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas

1960 Apache Trail Documentary – Documentary of Superstition Wilderness

1960 Have Gun, Will Travel – Richard Boone

1961 Bonanza – Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker

1961 Stagecoach West – Wayne Rogers, Robert Bray

1961 The Purple Hills – Gene Nelson, Kent Taylor

1961 The Broken Land – Jack Nicholson, Kent Taylor

1962 Showdown at Redrock – Frank Wilcox, Leland Wainscott

1964 Blood on the Arrow – Dale Robertson, Martha Hyer

1964 Arizona Raiders – Audie Murphy, Michael Dante

1965 Death Valley Days – Ronald Reagan

1965 General Motors – Lorne Greene

1966 Death Valley Days – Robert Taylor

1967 Ice Capades in the Desert – Carolyn O’Kelly, John Labrecque

1967 Pepsi’s ‘Girl on the Go’ – Corinne Calvet

1967 Dundee and the Culhane – Warren Oates, John Drew Barrymore

1967 Death Valley Days – Robert Taylor

1968 Hang Fire – Jerry Vance, Lindsay Crosby

1968 Charro! – Elvis Presley, Ina Balin

1968 Will Rogers Institute – John Wayne

1968 Death Valley Days – Robert Taylor

1969 Ballad of Cable Hogue – Jason Robards, Stella Stevens

1969 A Time for Dying – Audie Murphy, Richard Lapp

1971 Second Chance – Brian Keith, Rosie Grier

1972 Guns of a Stranger – Marty Robbins, Chill Wills

1976 The Haunted – Aldo Ray, Virginia Mayo

1977 Sweet Savage – Aldo Ray, Charles Samples

1977 Jacob and Jacob – Alan Hale, Jake Jacobs

1978 Blue Jay Summer – Ken McConnell, Teresa Jones

1983 The Gambler: The Adventure Continues – Kenny Rogers, Linda Evans

1994 Blind Justice – Armande Assante, Jack Black

1994 Playboy Goes West – Royce O’Donnell, Ed Birmingham, Hank Sheffer

1995 Ford Motor Company – Waylon Jennings

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City Unseen

Muay Thai and the Museum of Death

April 6, 2009 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

Thai festival today! There was absolutely no parking at all anywhere, but it was worth it when we got to Thai town. The day was sunny, the skies were blue, the crowds were hopping, and the food…oh the food was magical. We ate in the little square, in the least-full looking restaurant though we still had to wait for seating. I kind of wanted to throw over vegetarianism, even more than I already have I mean, and order the chicken volcano (it’s an entire chicken, steamed veggies, and the whole thing seems to be on fire…I don’t think you can ask more from an entree.) But I didn’t. And I wasn’t sorry taste wise.

We actually only saw dancers, none of the dancing, though we did wander the booths. Because the main attraction and the real reason we were there?

Not him specifically, though I wouldn’t have minded, especially as he is a new champion. We were there for Muay Thai, or Thai boxing. Remember Ong Bak? Oh yeah. Unlike Western boxing, you don’t just use your fists. It is known as the “Art of the Eight Limbs” as there are 8 points of contact, the two hands, shins, elbows, and knees.

And while it has no long tradition of women fighters (tradition holds that a Muay Thai ring will be cursed if women fight in it…not surprising of course), there is a new popularity and some kick ass women fighters were there.

And we stood watching it for several hours, there were 18 matches in all, and I think we stayed for perhaps 11 of them…we left after the first heavyweight match as it wasn’t as exciting or lively I’m afraid. A very drunk thai man in a wool hat enlivened the afternoon; he really wanted to bet. He kept shouting out bets that I couldn’t understand, 200 of something or other, and cheerfully embraced everyone from the fighters to security. And there were a few guys behind us who drank the whole time, smoked three bowls of weed and had the most revolting conversation I have ever heard. I pray that they die single and never reproduce, but any women priveleged to hear their comments would have to be dead before allowing any of them to touch her.

The above was the best shot (and the tats by far the best as well), the light was none too good, even after we’d worked our way to the front. And like western boxing, there are a lot of clinches…where the photographs essentially look like two guys holding each other tenderly. I did get a good one of spittle flying out of a guys mouth, and some good expressions…I might put those up later.

Jose and I had lost Bev by that point, she wasn’t so into the fighting, or the standing in the sun for hours. I was too into the fighting to notice really, until I started getting tired, and then we moved and my legs were hating me. They still do. They might hate me for some time. Because we walked down Hollywood…passing some amazing graf

There was more, but I tire…we were headed exploring, and to the Frolic Room, and we passed the Museum of Death. I have been wanting to go there for some time, with such a name how could you not go?

The best thing about the Museum of Death, apart from the name, is that the owner has a siamese turtle.

It’s a bit blurry, but it is extraordinary…and will be as long lived as a regular turtle, as there are two hearts. He had an albino turtle as well, who was lovely.

You’re not allowed to take pictures inside, and it is pretty…gruesome in there. Very gruesome. Very graphic. I’m glad I went, I recommend it to everyone with a strong stomach and a taste for the macabre. I shan’t be going again however! You start out in the warm-up room, full of the embalming arts, a horrifying training video, pictures of dead babies laid out in funeral splendour, the implements of the trade, matchbooks from funeral parlours…you move into a corridor full of photographs of car accidents, a couple having an affair who killed the husband, stripped, dismemebered him while naked, had much traditional fun with the body parts, and took pictures of it all. They were caught while developing them (this is pre-digital days obviously), and lads, the woman was released after only 6 years, so she’s out there and possibly dating.

There’s a room on suicide cults. A room on L.A.’s biggest crimes…the Black Dahlia (those photos will keep you from sleeping for a week), the Manson murders (likewise), OJ Simpson (seems like a sweetheart next to the rest…) There’s lots on serial killers, little write ups, surveys they’ve filled out, letters, pop up books, drawing, pictures…Richard Ramirez showing what Jeffrey Dammer’s fridge probably looked like, a cheerful letter from the Son of Sam. It’s a nice intimate look at the mind of killers.

Ooh, and there’s Jane Mansfeld’s stuffed chihuahua. And a video room. And a section on hollywood stars who have croaked in extraordinary or violent ways…I’d say more but I’m winding down. So go. And don’t forget that the Frolic Room is only a few blocks away, you will almost certainly want a drink. I admit to “needing” one after the Museum of Death. And who could ask for more from their dive bar?

Jim Belushi was here. He fit in with the mood.

And so two beers later, my legs hating me much more after a museum tour, we walked to the train station. Which was crawling with cops. And waited for the train. And waited. And waited. Union Station was closed due to a “police incident,” and I couldn’t find anything yet on the news this evening, but hopefully tomorrow. Finally the train came, and it was packed full of course, and there was a break-up in full swing right next to us. And both the girl and the guy were annoying. I almost wanted them to stay together so no one else would be tempted to date either of them. And my legs were hating me. And I was starving. And freezing.

So back home to Echo Park, chilaquiles at Rodeo Grill, and back home. To play some with my pictures. And to write. And to sleep, but I shall hope for no dreams!

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City Unseen, Everyday, Photo Essay

The OTHER Hollywood, all around the Oscars

February 23, 2009 Andrea Gibbons Leave a comment

It is the Hollywood I love…The Oscars? All fake glam and glitter, and while I have a severe weakness for beautiful dresses, I hate the posing and I really hate false smiles. But the scene surrounding the Oscars was truly phenomenal, partly in its everyday madness and cheap sexual thrills, and partly in the crowds that thronged the sidewalks, the cops, the snipers.

Absolutely. Snipers.

I’m fairly certain…There was also the rather frightening suv with the protected hole in the window that I originally assumed was for drive-bys, can’t take the ghetto out of the girl I guess, but it is much more likely to be a paparazzi vehicle.

It really is an extraordinary scene really, from on the ground, and from the outside.

Hollywood…I still remember the first time I went there years ago, and how shockingly cheap and tawdry it was. I love it of course, the way I love dive bars and eccentrics, but it has nothing to do with the image projected out into the wide world, though the city has been trying to push all the poor, the junkies, the sexy out into the far-flung regions, preferably LA County. But here you can still fulfill all of your stripper and fantasy needs, and for pure entertainment value very little can beat it

There was also the official celebration of twenty five years of all-American pornography

And of course, strippers don’t just come here to shop… though it appears The Cave with its Girls Girls Girls is soon going out of business, and everything is on sale

Yeah, the above just makes it all quite sad really, and clearly crosses the line for me between capitalist exploitation of sex and women, and an enjoyable eroticism. But Hollywood crosses all kinds of lines.

Here’s Sponge Bob crossing another line

Pretty priceless shot if I do say so myself! This sort of thing inspires a whole cadre of folks who believe the world desperately needs saving, they are as entertaining as anything else really

And my favourite…and least judgment oriented

I’m a bit gutted that this turned out so blurry…But was very happy to see the son of god present and accounted for. And tolerant. Because it’s the people really, that make Hollywood shine

V, fighting a righteous cause. The Scientologists were out in force, as this is their heartland.

While the above was taken on the fly and therefore free, the below did cost me a dollar. Well, turned out I didn’t have any change so it cost Jose a dollar…he’s a good sport

But the best shots are free

Twin goth girls, a pimp with sky blue shoes, Cat Woman AND Barney, though you can’t really see him. Who could ask for more than this? Live music? We had that too:

with crazy style too…there is almost more style here then you can handle

and you go from absurdity to absurdity, I really could not ask for more from a day then this.

King George? Who? The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are all dead, so I’m in a bit of a puzzle to know exactly what he’s talking about…and who exactly will be entering the face-off with Snoop Dog, Tori Spelling, Adam Sandler, and David Hasslehoff. But the mental images that evokes are quite delightful really, I think we should have them face-off each other. And then have Sarah Ferguson take on the winner.

It was an amazing Sunday. Not least because we mingled, wandered into the Cat and the Fiddle, mingled, spent some time in the Frolic Room (where I lost all respect for Hugh Jackman as he pranced around singing silly songs, that was a bit tragic), headed back to the reminders of LA’s even darker side and what lies behind all the wealth and glitz of the Oscars

And then back home in downtown

The most phenomenal basket collection I have ever seen in my entire life. And its owner in purple velour robe and slippers. And from here to the whiskey bar at 7th and Grand, though we didn’t drink whiskey. We did play pool. I am phenomenally bad. But I won the last game after two perfect shots, and the high from that was pretty astounding. And then we walked to Tacos Mexico, found the Broadway Bar closed, so then we went home. And I laughed too loudly and the man with the crazy bugged-out eyes who had been weaving around the bus and swatting at people as they passed him stood up, walked over to us, and asked Jose (being a gentleman I spose) “what the fuck are you laughing at mother fucker, you laughing at me?” But luckily that was our stop, the bus driver was calming the guy down, Jose didn’t back down nor did he provoke, and so he didn’t get whipped around the head with the guys heavy “gold” chain that was missing a link and he’d been trying to…er…fix, the whole ride. Ah, the excitement of the 4 after 11 pm. Or any time.

Much as I hate L.A., I love it. I love the pulsing vibrant non-cosmetic beauty and life and heartbreak of it. I always wonder why you would chose the other.

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personal

music

November 7, 2006 Leave a comment

Moving is a bitch. I’m going through all of my things, and I have far too many things…This weekend I’ve started going through my books which is heartbreaking enough, but the big news? The boxes of old tapes I’ve dug out of the closet…all those mixes I made back in the day (I was a huge mix maker cause music just happens to be one of those things I most love in life), mixes friends made for me, stuff I taped off the radio. I’m listening to them all, downloading all the songs I don’t currently have on my i-pod, and…and…and…throwing them away. I must say, it’s bringing a tear to my eye, and an avalanche of memories. And an embarassed chuckle or two, I found the electric slide AND la Macarena, what was I thinking?

Anyways, had a good day today aside from the trip down memory lane…who knew that John Waite’s Missing You could still make me cry? It’s going to take me all week, this playing tapes and throwing away and remembering things (Christ, just found some Ton Loc! Carlos from homeroom in Jr. High used to sing this fucking song all the time, thought he was a playa…and he was. Took steroids in the drinking fountain and was a dad before graduation…) So, anyways, I went on down to the farmers market in Hollywood on the train…just wanted to show an example of LA’s finest public art as seen in the Civic Center metro station

They have any number of these guys suspended over you, they all have numbers on their chests, and I find them a bit frightening.

I did overmaster my fear, however, in my quest for fresh vegetables. After the vegetables i went over to Amoeba music, the best music store in LA and I believe the world. I know I’m supposed to be getting rid of all my music but it’s depressing and what cheers me up more than looking at music I don’t have yet? Anyway, I wanted to buy The Doors Morrison Hotel on vinyl so they can all sign it for me on Wednesday Night. Didn’t find it, but thought I’d get some R.L. Burnside and found what might be possibly the best album cover ever:

A Ass Pocket of Whiskey? Why is there no n? How did they get that bottle of whiskey down their shorts and what will happen if they sit down? What is he going to do with his belt? It’s a good album and so I’m giving it to Dan for Christmas, he’s in law school and has no time be reading his sister’s blogs I hope…he doesn’t respond to my emails at any rate, so serves him right.

Anyways, to continue with the music theme, here’s a lovely view of capitol records and some typical Hollywood frontage:

The cave, nice! They even have a cash machine inside.

I also got a hair cut.

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ARG and MEO hit Hollywood

August 15, 2006 Leave a comment

Arg and Meo took a little bike trip down to Hollywood today, sadly it is being cleaned up and turned into a giant mall…but enough is left of the grit and madness and classic movie star murals to make it worth a visit from time to time, though I shudder to think what tourists make of it! Now that I think about it though, they must love it, who doesn’t love sex shops and playmates lingerie and stripper shoe stores? Whenever my lime green shiny leather boots with their five inch platform heels wear out (happens far too often I can tell you) I sleep soundly knowing they are easily replaced! It’s very educational for the whole family, I know I certainly learn something new about human anatomy and what you can do with it everytime I head down there!

Still, the old movies are magical…Some of my favorites are by the gentleman who said “a lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.” I don’t know what kind of cake that would be honestly, but who can resist it?

He also said “Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.” I don’t know why I think that is funny. But I do.

Another favorite…I have to interject and say that I had no idea these folks were painted on the roll downs because I’ve only ever seen them up and the seedy stores behind open for business, but they’re great…another favourite is

The master himself, who said “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” (I’m looking these up by the way, I really loves quotes and can never remember them unless I’ve seen a movie 50 times so…), he also said “Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.” And lastly, particularly relevant for today, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

One last femme fatale to balance things out, a mosaic:

Always wanted Bette Davis eyes, someone yelled big eyes at me from a car the other day but I don’t think that counts, nor do I have any idea if they were being insulting or complimentary. I took it as the second. My favourite quote? “I’d love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.”

I’d have liked to have run into Humphrey Bogart, or Lauren Bacall, or Katherine Hepburn, they’re all over but didn’t see them today. We did see the enigmatical king of flying mammals screaming at some people in a car…he was very very angry indeed…

Off he goes, striding away in the sulks.

The afternoon was spent at the Tofu festival in Little Tokyo, which was supremely unphotogenic. Very yummy though.

Apacheland 1956-1959

Just communities. Just cities. Just connections between country and city. Also, the weird and wonderful.