Beckham made 33 one-handed catches in a minute, which is pretty impressive even without defenders.
Odell Beckham Jr. made a name for himself his rookie season with his wild one-handed catching ability -- both in games and before them
and now he's **officially** the best in the world at it.
Beckham caught 33 passes with just his right hand in a minute, setting the Guinness World Record for most one-handed catches in a minute. The record didn't exist before Beckham and Brees' attempt, so technically they didn't break a record -- if they hit 10, Guinness was going to give them the inaugural ownership of the record. They hit 33.
This might seem pretty lame considering there were no defenders, but it's not unimpressive. The passes had mustard on them -- the ball had to go 10 yards, and considering they got off one every two seconds with time to reload, those are some zippy passes -- but Brees put them all on the money and Beckham caught all 33. The pair went so fast that they ran out of footballs, and Beckham had to toss a few back one-handed to Brees to complete the task.
This was sponsored by Visa -- you see that ad with Larry Fitzgerald during the year? -- but I guess Beckham showed he deserved to be the contestant rather than Fitzgerald over the course of the year.
Suge Knight reportedly ran over a man and killed him after a heated argument in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, according to TMZ.
The former CEO of Death Row Records was at a shoot also involving Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Game when Knight got into an argument with two crew members. Knight then got back into his car and put the vehicle in reverse, running over a bystander.
The alleged victim, named Terry Carter, was a friend of Knight's and died after the incident. Actor Che "Bone" Sloane, who has appeared in Training Day and End of Watch, was also hit but only suffered non-life threatening injuries.
Where the hell do I begin with Tina Fey? In short: her whole shtick is that she’s a non-Anglo-Nordic, brown-haired, brown-eyed white woman and is SOOOO oppressed because of it.
Things that she’s said off the top of my head:
That she loves the idea of strippers and imitating them as a form of comedy, but women should aim higher in real life.
That for every refined, intelligent woman, there’s a skank with a bad boob job that she has to go up against because the world is full of whores.
I remember in Bossypants, she mentioned that it was hard to get action at UVA unless you were Martha Jefferson or Sally Hemings because the rape of black slaves by their masters is a great topic to center your joke around. Reading that was when I realized that Tina Fey’s biggest personal conflict seems to be that she’s not “white” enough since she’s lacking the blonde, blue-eyed look, but not still not interesting enough to qualify as “exotic” like black, Asian, and Latin women.
Then the quote I referred to in my initial post about my dislike for Tina Fey:
“I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom — Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful.
Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”
This quote is also from Bossypants, and then it popped up again after the whole Kim Kardashian butt photo-shoot fiasco.
This. Fucking. Quote. Though.
Let’s skip over the obvious that she’s reducing two WOC to punchlines in her “joke” about beauty standards.
I can’t speak to Beyonce and the beauty standards within the black community, but since I not only come from the same culture as J.Lo, but also from the same damn neighborhood in The Bronx, I can say that J.Lo’s body was not considered anything spectacular. In fact, there are better examples of rear ends within the Latin community. Rear ends was something we had always considered beautiful within our OWN community. The struggle came when looking OUTSIDE of our community and trying to feel beautiful then when we were constantly told that a body shape that is common among our people is a vulgar trait. Then J.Lo made it big, and for once, we had a representation of ourselves out there in the big wide world of the American mainstream.
But how dare we feel beautiful at the expense of white women?, Tina Fey seems to be asking. Look at how the appearance of non-white body types has affected our mainstream beauty standard for the worse!
The attributes Tina Fey mentions also happens to be attributes that have a history and a continuing reality of being fetishized by white men, and she seems to be blaming WOC through J.Lo and Beyonce for having these fetishized attributes instead of criticizing the fetishization itself of our bodies! It’s almost like she thinks this fetishization benefits WOC over white women and is blaming us for complicating modern American beauty standards!
And then to have white women on Tumblr reblogging this quote (it popped up several times on my dashboard) and applauding her for this—-UGH.
To recap: Tina Fey’s feminism lacks both WOC and imagination. Boo and hiss to her.
Jeff Roorda, Missouri State Representative and head of the STL Police Officers Association, wears “I Am Darren Wilson” bracelet and shoves woman during the #CivilianOversight/Public Safety Committee meeting.
TechCurmudgeon writes According to The Register, "Mozilla has given the Tor network a capacity kick with the launch of 14 relays that will help distribute user traffic. Engineers working under the Foundation's Polaris Project inked in November pulled Mozilla's spare and decommissioned hardware out of the cupboard for dedicated use in the Tor network. It included a pair of Juniper EX4200 switches and three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2*Xeon L5640, 2*1Gbps NIC) servers, along with a dedicated existing IP transit provider (2 X 10Gbps). French Mozilla engineer Arzhel Younsi (@xionoxfr) said its network was designed to fall no lower than half of its network capacity in the event of maintenance or failure. The Polaris initiative was a effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Centre for Democracy and Technology to help build more privacy controls into technology."
While Verizon told the FCC that consumers are satisfied with 4Mbps/1Mbps and that "a higher benchmark would serve no purpose,” they push customers to buy much faster speeds, which cost more, Wheeler pointed out.“In their marketing materials Verizon says, ‘while FiOS provides a lot of speed for bandwidth hungry devices, you’d be surprised how fast it goes. You can think of your household’s Internet connection like a pizza to be shared with your whole family. Some people are hungrier than others and if too many friends show up no one will get enough to be satisfied.’
The Federal Communications Commission today voted 3-2 along party lines to change the definition of broadband to at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream. The vote was no surprise given Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Democratic majority. But Wheeler put on a show just before the vote by contrasting Internet service providers’ marketing claims with their statements to the government.
Internet providers and industry lobbyists argued that the FCC should stick with the previous definition of broadband, a minimum of 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up, or at least not go as high as 25Mbps/3Mbps. But what Internet providers tell the government is in stark contrast to what Internet providers tell their own customers, Wheeler explained in great detail.
“Let’s parse out what they say in their lobbying with us and what they say when they’re talking to consumers,” said Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist himself. While Verizon told the FCC that consumers are satisfied with 4Mbps/1Mbps and that "a higher benchmark would serve no purpose,” they push customers to buy much faster speeds, which cost more, Wheeler pointed out.“In their marketing materials Verizon says, ‘while FiOS provides a lot of speed for bandwidth hungry devices, you’d be surprised how fast it goes. You can think of your household’s Internet connection like a pizza to be shared with your whole family. Some people are hungrier than others and if too many friends show up no one will get enough to be satisfied.’
"On Fox, kind of a quasi-conservative or assumed conservative outlet, and we have all day listening to the tease of Bill O'Reilly's," she said. "All these GOP contenders thinking about running for president, like Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and he names them off. 'Oh what a reality show that would be. Yuk, yuk.' Well, the left doesn't do that. They take this serious, because this is war." Hannity attempted to interrupt his guest, but she clearly wanted to get her point across before moving on.
"Hopefully the media, even the quasi right side of the media, won't be looking at this as some kind of reality show, a joke, because maybe they have theirs, so they're taken care of, so they're fine," she said, insinuating most mainstream journalists will support Clinton.
At one point she even waved her arms in a dismissive fashion when referring to O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, the No. 1 news show of cable TV.
"No, the people of America deserve the best, and competition through a GOP primary — whether Bill O'Reilly or somebody else assumes it's a reality show or not — they deserve that competition to surface the competitor who can take on Hillary, or whomever it will be, and win for this country."
Astronomers have found a planetary ring system with such enormous proportions, it makes Saturn’s rings look puny. The rings have formed around a young, giant exoplanet called J1407b, and they’re the first of their kind to be found outside our Solar System.
The planet is too far away to see the rings directly, so instead, the team analysed data captured by the SuperWASP project - a survey that that detects gas giants that move in front of their parent star and dim their light - so ‘eclipse’ them. The light curve tells astronomers that the diameter of the ring system is nearly 120 million kilometers, more than two hundred times as large as the rings of Saturn. The ring system likely contains roughly an Earth’s worth of mass in light-obscuring dust particles.
A new analysis of the data shows that the ring system consists of over 30 rings, each of them tens of millions of kilometers in diameter. Furthermore, they found gaps in the rings, which indicate that satellites (“exomoons”) may have formed. The result has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
The new commissioner demanded loyalty from staffers and even questioned their value. "He thought everyone was overpaid," a former senior executive told me. "He always told me I was overpaid." Another told me: "He gave me a hard time about my contract. I was like, The fuck you doing? This is peanuts."
Forever 21 has been pirating photoshop, according to a new lawsuit from Adobe, and it's facing serious fines as a result. The suit was filed yesterday in California District Court, alleging that Forever 21 pirated 63 different instances of Adobe software including copies of Photoshop, Acrobat, and Illustrator. Autodesk and Corel also joined Adobe in the suit, based on pirated copies of Autodesk, WinZip and PaintShopPro, among others. According to the complaint, Forever 21 "continued their infringing activities even after being contacted by Adobe regarding the infringement."
It's not yet clear how Adobe traced back the violations, but it has thoroughly documented them, providing registration numbers and dates for each instance. The result, according to Adobe, is "willful, intentional, and malicious copyright infringement," and they're asking the court to issue an injunction and compensate the companies for lost revenue, court costs, and additional damages. Adobe moved towards cloud-based versions of Photoshop and other software in 2013, and many responded to the shift by seeking out pirated versions of the software. In response, Adobe has actively encouraged employees to turn in employers using unauthorized versions of the software.
TechCurmudgeon sends word that LibreOffice 4.4 has been released. "The Document foundation announced availability of the latest version of LibreOffice on Thursday, which it says is the most beautiful version of the open source productivity suite yet. LibreOffice 4.4 also fixes some compatibility issues with files that are saved in Microsoft's OOXML formats. LibreOffice 4.4 has got a lot of UX and design love," Jan "Kendy" Holesovsky, who leads the design team for Libreoffice, said in a statement. LibreOffice 4.4 is currently available for Windows."
“Now, I’m not authorized to evacuate Ahwatukee, but this temperature seems pretty high… Frankly, Wickenburg is a total loss… Surprise is starting to heat up as well at 1300 degrees… Again, I’m not your dad, but I would get out while you still can.”
“I've been a member of this committee for many years, and I have never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration that just took place,” said McCain, R-AZ.
Protesters from the group CodePink swarmed behind Kissinger as he arrived alongside two other former Secretaries of State, Madeleine Albright and George Shultz, for a hearing on U.S. national security strategy.
They held up signs calling Kissinger a criminal and chanted “arrest Henry Kissinger for war crimes” -- citing some of his more controversial decisions during the Nixon and Ford administrations.
“You know, you're going to have to shut up, or I'm going to have you arrested,” McCain said as Capitol Hill Police tried to remove the protesters. “Get out of here you low-life scum.”
During the same press conference, there was some confusion between Blandino and NFL referee Bill Vinovich whether officials should tell the opposing team not to cover an ineligible receiver. Vinovich said he announced “Do not cover 34″ during the Patriots’ divisional-round playoff game against the Ravens, and Blandino said they would not be doing that in the Super Bowl. Vinovich replied, “We won’t?”
An anonymous reader writes The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft plans to be a minority investor in a roughly $70 million round of equity financing for mobile startup Cyanogen Inc.. Neither company is commenting on the plan but last week during a talk in San Francisco, Cyanogen's CEO said the company's goal was to "take Android away from Google." According to Bloomberg: "The talks illustrate how Microsoft is trying to get its applications and services on rival operating systems, which has been a tenet of Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. Microsoft has in the past complained that Google Inc., which manages Android, has blocked its programs from the operating system."
Aphex Twin has cultivated such a history of doing weird things that, when someone does a weird thing that seems Aphex Twin-related, people naturally just assume he’s behind it. More often than not, they’re right. So, when some mysterious Soundcloud user started uploading hours and hours (and hours and hours) of music that sounded suspiciously Aphex Twin-y, Pitchfork put on its most ironic deerstalker hat and deduced that, yeah, it’s probably Aphex Twin. The reasoning gets a bit dense for anyone who isn’t a writer for Pitchfork, but it does seem as though Richard D. James—the boring real name of the guy behind Aphex Twin—is the one uploading the songs. So why is he doing it? What does this all mean? We have no idea, and neither does Pitchfork. All we’re left with is a bunch of electronic music and, in the end ...
The following was originally posted on Dee Hogan’s blog The Josei Next Door and has been republished with permission.
And now for something completely different…
Beforethoughts
Yurikuma has been pretty much a nonstop bear-shock horror movie experience from the word “go,” and while I was starting to settle in to that experience and finding ways to not just analyze it, but also to kind of like it, I do think that after the Mitsuko Madness of last week we were sorely in need of an episode that offered us a reprieve from the harsh angles, saturated colors, and unrelenting intensity of Arashigaoka Academy. Fortunately Ikuhara must have realized that himself, because this week takes us away from the main story almost entirely and delivers a lovely, melancholy, and at times pretty darn funny fairy tale.
Oh, and speaking of—Ikuhara included a fairy tale in an anime, you guys! Everybody do a shot!
Then grab a chaser and gather ‘round, boys and grrls. It’s story time at the Severance Court.
The Recap
After a brief flashback of Lulu pleading her case to the Severance Court so she can cross the wall with Ginko (more on all this later), we cut back to the current time line and get a look at the Severance Court when it ISN’T in session. Turns out that when the CourtBears aren’t working, they’re just like the rest of us: lazing around in their comfy pants and showing people their butts.
For that is the sexy way! (Shaba-da-doo.)
The bears have all taken their animal forms today (“So uncool!” a certain someone laments), which apparently allows them to shatter the fourth wall, greeting the audience and promising to entertain us with a story entitled “The Princess Who Gave Up on Kisses.”
Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a little princess, and she was very sad, for her mother and father had oh wait, nope, no, wrong Ikuhara anime. This story takes place in a bear kingdom, a few years before the Wall of Severance was erected. Although actually, there IS a little princess in this one, too.
We should have known she was royalty by her regal BEARing.
That’s right, folks, our own Lulu was once heir to a throne, loved and adored by all within her kingdom. It’s worth noting, though, that she keeps her servants and subjects at arm’s length, as shown by the bee that keeps chasing people out of her personal bubble.
5-Minute Mark Theory Time! Yes, we’re five minutes in already. Not much to talk about yet, but we can spend a little time on that buzzing bee of Lulu’s. Bees (especially honeybees, which is what Lulu’s seems to, er, be) are known for living in colonies and defending their hives, queens, and honey against outsiders; but because bees die after they sting someone, they generally leave you alone if they don’t perceive you as a threat.
So I think it’s pretty clear that we can read Lulu’s bee as a kind of general metaphor both for the behaviors we use to keep people at a distance, and the moment when we accept another person as someone we both trust and wish to keep safe. As such, we’ll be keeping an eye on when and if that bee’s red streak ever sees fit to circle someone other than Lulu herself.
But trouble comes to the world when the planet Kumalia explodes and douses the sky with shooting stars; and trouble comes to Lulu on the same night, as her mother gives birth to a bouncing baby boy. “Congratulations,” her attendants tell her, “you have a little brother! Oh and P.S. we live in a patriarchal society which makes him the official heir to the throne and you don’t matter anymore so we’re gonna go shower him in all our affection now k thx bai.” Primogeniture SHOCK!
(I seriously cannot stop giggling at this.)
Time passes, Prince Mirun grows into a toddler, and Lulu’s resentment builds with each passing day. Unwanted by the kingdom and forgotten in her room, she watches from her window and thinks of Mirun as something that’s “in her way,” despite the fact that he’s pretty freaking adorable and seems to be the only person in the kingdom who genuinely cares about her.
One night as the two stand on the balcony and watch a shooting star, they talk about an old fairy tale which says that “real love climbs into the sky and becomes stars,” and that when a star falls back to earth, it turns into a “Promise Kiss.” Mirun’s convinced that the shooting star they just saw was his love for his sister, so he vows to track it down and give Lulu the Promise Kiss. D’AWWWW.
Lulu’s bee quietly encircles both her AND her brother, but despite this obvious sign of affection, Lulu decides to use her brother’s love against him. When he tells her he loves her and asks for a kiss, she says him she’ll give him one only after he brings back the Promise Kiss. Then she bundles him up in a box called “love” and promptly kicks him off a cliff.
FUCK THE PATRIARCHY
But against all logic, Prince Mirun returns with a jar of honey, “sparkly and the same color as a star,” which he assumes means it’s a Promise Kiss. It isn’t and it doesn’t, and Lulu chucks it out the window and across the valley.
10-Minute Mark Theory Time! It’s no secret that Yurikuma is very much a story interested in women’s issues, and I think it’s pretty obvious that Lulu’s tale is at least in part an exploration of the kind of frustration and resentment created from living within a patriarchal society, where she is devalued and displaced simply because she’s a girl. But what makes this story so much more layered than just “Girl Vs. Broken System” is that Prince Mirun is a total sweetheart—he initially benefits from the system, yes, but it’s not a system he acknowledges or even seems to support (judging by the way he treats his sister), and in the end it hurts him just as much (if not more) than it does Lulu.
So if we’re going to draw lessons from this fairy tale (as fairy tales generally ask us to do), perhaps we can draw a couple. First, that unequal societies hurt everyone, even those who appear to benefit from them. And second, that we should take care not to confuse structures with individuals, taking our anger out on innocents or friends instead of the systems or authority figures that are causing the real harm.
Lulu keeps trying, but all the Sarlacc Pits and volcanoes in the world won’t stop her brother from getting her that honey. No matter how she “kills” her brother (and I’m putting that in quotes because the murders are played so brightly and in such ridiculous fashion that I get the sense we’re not supposed to take these as serious efforts), Mirun keeps coming home with the same pot of honey, and Lulu keeps chucking it off into the woods again.
Until one day, apparently through no fault of Lulu’s, the prince meets with an “accident” (we’ll later learn that he was stung by a bee while trying to retrieve the honey for his sister) and dies for realz. So Lulu becomes the “favorite” of the kingdom again. H… hooray?
After the eye catch, we flash back to the present for a bit, where Kureha is still dealing with the trauma known as Mitsuko. Ginko and Lulu come in through the window they broke back in Episode 2 (yay continuity!) to check up on Kureha, and Ginko even makes some of her special honey porridge.
“LilyBears’ Fratricide Honey™ – made by only the busiest of brother-killing bees!”
Kureha is understandably annoyed and suspicious, but Lulu assures her they were just worried—they aren’t “invisible” like the others, they want to be Kureha’s friend. When Lulu tries to give her some of the porridge, Kureha remembers when she and Sumika used to share food on the rooftop (psst! the food is a metaphor). “Sumika is my only friend!” she snaps, and knocks the bowl out of Lulu’s hand.
Lulu kinda looks like she’s about to go postal, but before she can, Life Sexy takes us back to our fairy tale, where Princess Lulu is being fawned over by servants, subjects, and suitors alike, as the “princes” Sexy, Cool, and Beauty one-by-one try to court her (pun!) and are one-by-one turned away.
15-Minute Mark Theory Time! I’m not sure if the princes in Lulu’s story are supposed to actually be the CourtBears or if the CourtBears are just playing parts in the story, but either way, mad props to those of you who suggested way back during Episode 1 that the CourtBears represented the three main “types” of boys commonly portrayed in heterosexual shoujo romances. The fun thing about metaphors is that you can map your source onto multiple targets, so I’m not going to close the door on the CourtBears and say that this is the be-all, end-all interpretation of them, but in this particular scene? Oh yeah, Lulu is definitely rejecting a trio of romantic stereotypes.
Point being, Lulu has everything she thought she wanted, but instead of feeling happy, she’s “plagued by an awful feeling of emptiness.” And anyone who’d been watching the bee buzz around Mirun for the last 10 minutes is thoroughly unsurprised.
Lulu dreams of Mirun returning to her, once more bearing (I swear I’m not even trying to make these puns anymore, BUT THEY WON’T STOP) the Promise Kiss. When she wakes up, it’s to the sound of someone tapping at her window. But it isn’t Mirun. No, it’s Cloaked Ginko, who’s traveled from a far-off valley to bring back the honey/Promise Kiss that Lulu kept throwing away. “If you forget what you’ve lost, you really will lose it,” Ginko tells her, removing her hood—and Lulu’s bee immediately encircles the two of them.
The bee ‘ships it, too.
When Lulu touches the honey, she remembers the circumstances behind her brother’s death, and finally realizes: “I hated you from the beginning. And I must have loved you from the beginning, too.” Which again brings us back to the present, where an unusually melancholy Lulu tells Ginko, “Fulfilling your love is my love. I feel like if I do that, I can see him again. Just one more time…”
…Then Yurikuma makes me feel a bunch of emotions and I tell it to stop but it won’t stop, so I pull myself together and press play and keep watching.
We’re taken back to the past, as Ginko tells Lulu she’s going to cross the Wall of Severance so she can return the “love” that she received from a human. Ginko is unusually emotive throughout this scene (which may or may not be good characterization, hard to say just yet), as she explains that she promised to meet “her” again so they could share a “Promise Kiss.” And, true, the humans might kill her, but Ginko’s not worried—she’s a criminal-bear, after all, and won’t back down on love.
So Lulu decides to go with her and help out. But first she has to get permission from the Severance Court, which brings us back to that opening scene, and that all-important question:
20-Minute Mark Theory Time! Not so much theories as just ramblings, but bear (dammit) with me here. It’s pretty clear at this point that food is connected to intimacy and love of all kinds (and not just the sexual sort, unless y’all are reading Lulu and Mirun’s relationship WAY differently than I am), so when Lulu throws away Mirun’s honey, she’s rejecting his affection for her. When she accepts the honey from Ginko, she finally realizes how much she loved her brother. Food is also connected to “Promise Kisses,” as giving someone a Promise Kiss appears to be when you reciprocate their romantic feelings for you (hence why “love” becomes a star and then returns to earth as a Promise Kiss), although I don’t think honey and Promise Kisses should be taken to be the same thing—Mirun just believes they are because he’s too young to understand the difference between the many variations of “love.”
Anyway, mostly I just wanted to lay this interpretation out on the table, so that when Lulu answers Life Sexy’s question with “I won’t give up on love. I’ll give up on kisses,” you’ll understand why I think it may mean Lulu will not stop feeling love, but has no intention of acting on those feelings. For all that she seems to be crushing on Ginko pretty hard, it seems that she’s genuinely doing this as a friend, to help Ginko find her own Promise Kiss before it’s too late.
Life Sexy thinks that Lulu is projecting her unfulfilled wishes onto Ginko and calls this “self-satisfaction” rather than “self-actualization,” and therefore finds her guilty of the crime of “arrogance.” But Lulu is A-OK with that—after all, she’s a criminal-bear now.
“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? YURI APPROVED!” says our judge, and sends her on her way, past the wall and into the human world with Ginko.
In the present, we see the LilyBears regarding their Lovely Items. Lulu has her honey pot, and Ginko has a star pendant—which it just so happens bears (dammit!) a striking resemblance to the one Kureha’s mother is wearing in the music box photo.
Backstory SHOCK!
And also, end of episode!
Afterthoughts
Ikuhara, summarizing both his entire body of work and my childhood in a single sentence.
Man, but I loved this episode. I love character back stories and I love fairy tales, and I especially love Ikuhara’s fairy tales (if he wanted to write a book of them, I’d buy the hell out of it, just sayin’). He understands the curiously enchanting blend of brutality, tragedy, and tenderness that comprises so many of our childhood stories, and he’s very good at taking those components, adding a dash of his own absurdist sense of humor, and bringing it to life with beautiful music and imagery. Online buddy and fellow Utena analyst Vrai tweeted that this episode felt “like someone sat a 12-course meal in front of me after 3 weeks of throwing food at my head at high speeds,” and I think that covers it just about perfectly.
Although that does make this “afterthoughts” section a little difficult, because I’ve found that the more I enjoy something on a purely personal level, the less the analytical part of me wants to work. It tries to parse out references and map images to ideas, but then the rest of my brain goes “Dude, shut up, I’m trying to watch this, GAWD.” So while I was stuffing these posts with theories and analyses in the first three episodes largely because I wasn’t especially enjoying myself and needed to find a way to stay invested in the series, this week I’m perfectly content to just sit back and soak in the experience, mulling over everything that happened rather than trying to force it to all make sense right this very second.
As a result, I don’t have much to add to this one beyond the bits of questions and theories I posted throughout the recap itself. So instead of trying to guess every single ingredient on my own, I think I’ll just savor this 12-course meal for the time being, and let you guys talk flavors in the comments section. Thoughts? Theories? Did this one hit the spot for you the way it did for me? Sound off below!
Credits Due: I take my own screenshots but have neither the time nor the software to create animated gifs, so a big thanks to sailorcinnamonroll for giving the world that gif of Lulu kicking her brother off a cliff.
Dee (@JoseiNextDoor) is a writer, a translator, a book worm, and a basketball fan. She has bachelor’s degrees in English and East Asian studies and a master’s degree in Creative Writing. To pay the bills, she works as a technical writer. To not pay the bills, she writes young adult novels, watches far too much anime, and cheers very loudly for the Kansas Jayhawks. You can find her at The Josei Next Door, a friendly neighborhood anime blog for long-time fans and newbies alike.
In the commercial the characters make reference to two classic scenes from show. The first is when Marcia has her nose broken by a football thrown by her brother before a big date, and the other is when a frustrated Jan famously screams, “Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!”
Snickers also released a video detailing the process that went into creating the commercial, which included rebuilding the famous set and digital mouth replacement.
been my jam throughout the last hour, as I argue in circles with my supervisor (in a skype chat, while he has a broken keyboard) about whether it's a good idea to list what software our hardware supports
If the Seahawks can do it again, why can't I? Truth is, I wasn't going to do it... but then I heard Marshawn's press conference today and realized he'd given me a new mantra. From here on out, these are the words I'm going to live by.
“Issues to Readers” is a film showing ten minutes of a real-time activity feed of the British Library system as patrons borrow, return, and request books. The massive quantity and widespread diversity of the titles processed in and out of the library are a tribute to the importance of libraries in general. The film was made alongside the British Library’s Living Knowledge project, which has a mission to make the library’s “intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment.”
Super Opinionated.
