Black Cats for October

A few years ago I did a post on black cats for Friday the 13th, which looked at kitties from art and literature. With their traditional connection to bad luck and the fact that they're not as "flashy" as other kittens, it's always a little more nerve-racking than usual giving a black foster kitten back to the shelter for adoption. Since it's the month of black cats appearing in decorations (often with witches), here are some more stellar examples of that much maligned, Halloweeny animal.

Bear

Won't someone give him a cuddle and listen to his poems?

18-year-old Bear is the subject of owner Tom Cox's many books about being a crazy cat man, but he's become so widely known because of cat's best friend: the internet. Photos of the melancholic Bear and the reasons for his sorrow are paired on his hit Why My Cat Is Sad twitter account, which currently has 172k followers. His persistently heartbroken little face just demands you pick him up for a hug and kiss. Fortunately, despite having a rough history, Bear is adored by his family. And understandably, Cox is a black cat advocate.

My cat is sad because life has given him many, many lemons & he cannot use them to make lemonade because he is a cat. pic.twitter.com/PhAVk905EI
— WHY MY CAT IS SAD (@MYSADCAT) September 17, 2014

Isis

Not THAT Isis.

Batman sometimes-villain, sometimes-hero Catwoman is the undisputed queen of the felines. Fans of the classic, stylish Batman: the Animated Series might remember Isis, a sleek black cat who matched Catwoman's sleek black cat costume. Selina Kyle has been portrayed as having different "main" cats over the years (Hecate, for example, in the 1966 Batman movie, aka the best movie of all time), but Isis from the various animated shows is the definitive one for me.

Forget the diamonds, Isis has canned food!

Shorty

Shorty is appalled or stoned.

Half of popular YouTube cat duo Sho Ko, fluffy, cuddly, energetic kitty Shorty is also an advocate for black cats everywhere. (Except when sidelined by her addiction to catnip bananas.)

Cole

Good, 'cause I always need hair ties.

Like Shorty, Cole is the older half of a YouTube kitty pair (Cole & Marmalade). And like Shorty's owner, Cole's owner has a soft spot for black cats. Good news for this formerly tiny rescue!

Salem

...

Like Isis, here's another black cat the intersection of comics and television - and a witch's black cat at that. Salem, the cat of Archie Comics' teenage witch Sabrina, was once a sorcerer who tried to take over the world. His punishment? Being turned into a cat. And then sharing a bed with a teenage girl. Salem reached top popularity on the 90s sitcom, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, where he was voiced by Nick Bakay and portrayed by both real cats and a terrifying robot cat. Since then he's starred in Sabrina, the Animated Series, made an appearance in gritty smash hit Afterlife with Archie, and has even gotten his own origin comic about his adventures before living the Humbert Humbert dream.



Image Sources:
Vintage cat: The Graphics Fairy
Bear: Bear's twitter
Isis: DC Animated Universe wiki
Isis again: DC Animated Universe wiki
Shorty: Shorty and Kodi's Facebook
Cole: Cole and Marmalade's Facebook
Salem: from Afterlife With Archie #1, illustrated by Francesco Francavilla

Oddly Precious Melancholy: Music and Writing

Nikolai Roerich's backdrop for Rite of Spring.

I don't usually listen to music while writing. Some writers have huge, hugely specific playlists for when they're working. Sometimes they're obvious; sometimes they're counter-intuitive. Bubblegum pop for horror? Metal for young adult angst? I've tried, but I find it distracting. It's fine in the background if I'm in a cafe or other public place, but if I'm writing at home...it just doesn't work for me. I end up making up music videos for the songs in my head. But I say "usually" because music became necessary for a particular project.

In my short story "Oddly Precious Melancholy," out in The Rag #6, the title refers to, among other things, a flavor of contemporary alternative/pop music I've defined loosely and inexpertly. Music that's weird and sweet and introspective. Music that doesn't always seem sure if it's being ironic or earnest with its DIY aesthetic and offbeatness, and yet is delicate and beautiful. The cutesy ennui of a sincere hipster or someone mistaken for one. Music that defined and was listened to by my characters, a group of flippant millennials in timely timeless peril.

I started making a playlist. The first songs were added when I started writing, somewhere around 3-4 years ago (this included Gotye...before it was universally and unambiguously decided that we didn't want to hear "Somebody that I Used to Know" again for at least a decade or so). Other songs got added much later, during the drawn-out editing, submitting, editing, and waiting portion, when I tried to be brave and tell myself that my protagonist, Kimber, would take care of shit. The songs below aren't a complete list, and the order has nothing to with when the songs were added, but it is a kind of thematic soundtrack for my story. This might not be interesting to anyone else, but I thought at the very least I'd share and give credit to the music that got me through this story, from scribbled notes to publication.

Screenshot from The Lumineers' "Ho Hey" video.

Opening

Ho Hey - The Lumineers: anguished and low-energy and plaintive but charming. So, a perfect introduction.

A Change of Days - Smith's Cloud: I know this song because I heard it on a cat video have an encyclopedic knowledge of cool indie music.

Internet Killed the Video Star - The Limousines

Screenshot from Alpine's "Villages" video.

Middle

The Cigarette Duet - Princess Chelsea

Just a Boy - Pikachunes

Villages - Alpine: early on in writing this story I went on a YouTube binge, trying to establish its "sound." It was on this binge that I found Alpine, Pikachunes, and Princess Chelsea.

New Slang - The Shins

Dashboard - Modest Mouse

We Are Young - Fun

Shake it Out - Florence + The Machine

Born to Die - Lana Del Rey

The Gulag Orkestar - Beirut

All These Things That I Have Done - The Killers

Screenshot from Grouplove's "Tongue Tied" video.

Ending

The Rite of Spring, Sacrificial Dance - Stravinsky: breaking from twee alt-rock/pop, here's the finale to Igor Stravinsky's 1913 composition about human sacrifice in ancient Russia. I was properly introduced to this piece in spring 2013 when San Francisco Ballet performed it (despite watching Fantasia a billion times as a kid, it never struck me then - sorry, battling dinosaurs). By the time I saw the ballet, I had finished the story, but this episode kept me inspired through the work that followed. Besides relating thematically, it also has the horrible, breathtaking tension I wanted to emulate.

Tongue Tied - Grouplove

Young Blood - The Naked and Famous





Image sources:
Roerich's Rite of Spring backdrop
All screenshots taken by me from linked videos.

Gale Boetticher's Sing-Along Fun Time

Confession: I can't watch this without tearing up.

Wow. So. Well. Are you vomiting and shaking right now? I have leftover cheesecake and I don't even know if I can eat it. I thought things were tense during last week's shoot-out, but holy shit, that was some laser tag compared to tonight. I don't even...how are we supposed to cope until next week? How are we supposed to process two more episodes?

Deep breaths. Let's relax.

So...how 'bout some comic relief and a reminder of the fun that can co-exist with this show? Sometimes? When things are not horrific? Four of these are even Gale-approved music-and-dance...oh, God, I don't even know if this will make it better or worse.

Breaking Swift

It turns out the turbulent relationship between Walt and Jesse is a perfect fit for the perpetual break-up songs of Taylor Swift, even if Tay-Tay has never (yet) watched a romantic rival choke to death on vomit or SPOILER sent an ex off to be tortured by goddamn neo-nazis. Geezus, I'm never recovering from that. Anyways, taking on the moving setpieces concept of Declan Whitebloom's video for Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," Teddie Films chronicles the drama surrounding Walt and Jesse's (then) latest falling-out. Major props to Eddie King for nailing Jesse's stoner voice and to the guy playing Hector for managing to look so darn deadpan throughout.

Breaking Bad: The Middle School Musical

How freakin' charming is this mini-musical by YouTube greats Rhett & Link? With its faux DIY aesthetic and super-talented kids, it looks like Breaking Bad as directed by Wes Anderson. See if you can manage to not start laughing manically during mini Gus Fring's musical number. Oddly, both these first two videos change one small plot point by having Walt not spare Jesse the horror of putting Drew Sharp (aka dirt bike boy) in the acid barrel. I guess when these videos were made, Meth Damon wasn't enough of a breakout to bother parodying. 

Breaking Bad Thanksgiving

Jesse and Walt have a cooking show (apparently shot in a Google kitchen), but instead of Blue Sky, they're making pumpkin pie and turducken. Mark Douglas of Barely Political does the angry "Jesse!" hiss, and of course there's a montage with unexpected music choices and POV shots. And even Fake Jesse gets all the best lines.

Honest Trailer: Breaking Bad

We joke because we love, right? This entry in Screen Junkies' Honest Trailer series is heavy on the honesty, particularly with fans' obsessive behavior (cough) and the show's sometimes uncomfortable racial politics (this was before this half of the season's white power prison gang plot). But seriously, have you seen this show? How about we just watch the pilot? I promise you'll like it.

Joking Bad

And here is Jimmy Fallon's Breaking Bad love letter, a 12+ minute parody set in the cutthroat stand-up world. With painstakingly reproduced shots and Breaking Bad's trademark callbacks ("no end"), this long skit was clearly a labor of love.

Walter White and the Amazing Blue Crystal Meth

But really, who stops at under 13 minutes for a Breaking Bad parody? And doesn't even include musical numbers? A rat, that's who. Low budget and joyous, this hour-long musical by Jackie Johnson and Nadia Osman is a fan magnum opus. And there's a Gale song! There are also interpretive dance murders, a pretty hot Jesse, and terrible bald caps. It's at least 96% pure fun!

Weird Al's Albuquerque

Weird Al Yankovic and Breaking Bad go together. Ok, not really. But Aaron Paul did portray Weird Al in Funny or Die's Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. And then Slacktory went and used Breaking Bad clips to meticulously craft a music video for Weird Al's appropriately weird lengthy ode to Albuquerque. Lydia is the girl of everyone's dreams (especially Todd's).



There. Wasn't that fun? Don't you feel totally better now? Jesse? Jesse?

Jesse, we're paging Captain America and Magneto right now. Then we'll do go-karts.

Wasting Time on Youtube 3

Youtube is the worst. It's the ultimate time suck. You get stuck in a loop of "one more video" and then it's 3am and somehow via "suggested videos" you've transitioned from a link your friend posted on Facebook to the midst of the turtles-humping-pigeons subgenre you didn't know existed. That's why it's so great when you find a new favorite prolific channel - hours and hours of videos to catch up on and no ventures into that "weird part" of Youtube. 


Wasting Time on Youtube 1: Smosh, Mr. Arturo Trejo & Amigos, Kids React, Epic Rap Battles of History
Wasting Time on Youtube 2: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Cute Win Fail, California On/AsKassem, Mythicbells Persians

NigaHiga

Ryan Higa is one of the superstars of Youtube, and with his good looks, expressive face, and joyous enthusiasm, it's easy to see why. He became well known for his faux infomericals (infauxmercials?), which give him the opportunity to showcase his ShamWow-ready speed talking. He's also made some very popular music videos with Chester See, my favorite of which is this tale of bromance, which includes guest appearances and frolicking through LACMA's Urban Light.

Gatonovela

This is stupid. It's so stupid. But I can't stop watching it. Flix uses the internet's surplus of cat videos to craft short, totally unrelated scenes of a telenovela featuring cats. The drama includes the forbidden love of Ramon the lizard and Felipe the cat and the danger of the ruthless cat cartel played by Shiro and friends. Which brings us to...

Shironeko

The feline performance art troupe Shironeko & Co. They sit in things and on things and balance objects on their heads and paws. That's pretty much it. They are internet famous, especially Shiro. There's even a stuffed animal of him!

Journeyman Pictures

Okay, so you've watched Ryan Higa bouncing around and hours of cat footage, and now you'd like something serious and educational. The documentaries and documentary trailers cataloged by Journeyman Pictures are rarely fun (frequent topics include genocide, misogynistic violence, and human trafficking), but they are enlightening and compelling. And with nearly 4.5k videos posted so far, you have a lot to choose to explore.

Wasting Time on Youtube 2

Youtube is the worst. It's the ultimate time suck. You get stuck in a loop of "one more video" and then it's 3am and somehow via "suggested videos" you've transitioned from a link your friend posted on Facebook to the midst of the turtles-humping-pigeons subgenre you didn't know existed. That's why it's so great when you find a new favorite prolific channel - hours and hours of videos to catch up on and no ventures into that "weird part" of Youtube. 

Last time, Smosh, Mr. Arturo Trejo & Amigos, Kids React, and Epic Rap Battles of History were featured.

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

Actress Issa Rae captures all those painful, relatable awkward moments - from desperately rummaging to avoid someone to blurting out small talk about colon cleansers - in this popular webseries. J, our singing-in-the-car protagonist, navigates dating, friendship, the workplace, and life in general...awkwardly.








Cute Win FailThat VOICE. Toby Turner is known for his vlogs, but you can spend way more time than you intended catching up on Cute Win Fail, the show where your votes are converted to list form on an unknown blog counted to decide which was the "most epic" of that episode's three clips: one cute, one a win, one a fail. This show is the potato chips of Youtube, but potato chips are yummy.

California On/AsKassem

Oh, Kassem, you gorgeous-playing-ugly comedian you. You don't need to try and impress the Ray William Johnsons of the world. You're better (maybe?) than that. The premise of California On is that skinny-jeaned and personable Kassem Gharaibeh interviews the stoned, spacey denizens of Venice Beach about anything ranging from aliens to the revolution in Egypt. On his second channel, Kassem and his crew have way too much fun with a green screen while answering fans' questions questionably. Both make for hilarious, compulsive viewing.

Mythicbells Persians 

Kittens. Kittens and kittens and kittens and kittens. This channel belongs to a Persian cat breeder and features thousands(!) of videos of some of the most adorable Persian cats and kittens you will ever see. If you're in a mood that can only be ameliorated with fluffy baby cats, this is your place. I know cat and dog breeding is controversial, but this lady seems to be one of the good ones who loves her animals and makes sure they get good homes.

Wasting Time on Youtube

Youtube is the worst. It's the ultimate time suck. You get stuck in a loop of "one more video" and then it's 3am and somehow via "suggested videos" you've transitioned from a link your friend posted on Facebook to the midst of the turtles-humping-pigeons subgenre you didn't know existed. That's why it's so great when you find a new favorite prolific channel - hours and hours of videos to catch up on and no ventures into that "weird part" of Youtube. This is by no means a definitive list, but here are some (okay, four...if I list all of my favorites at once this blog will be dissertation-length) reliable channels with pages and pages of videos for your perusal.




Smosh
The Gilbert & George of Youtube, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla have been making videos together since 2005. They got lucky as far as timing goes with their early college-kids-lipsynching-to-90s-cartoon-theme-songs shtick, but had the charisma and talent to channel that easy-won viral fame into an enduring brand, which also includes the Cracked-lite Smosh website, second channel Ian Is Bored (where they amusingly eat lunch and open mail from the legion of Tumblr fangirls that will someday kidnap and ritualistically consume them), and a forthcoming channel in Spanish. Their current skits can err on the side of overproduced slickness and can lack the off-beat charm of such DIY gems as Boxman's Girlfriend, but they're still making good - and often great - stuff.







 Mr. Arturo Trejo & Amigos
It's a funny guy, his funny wife, and their cherubic toddler. That might sound yuppie-obnoxious, but it's not. "Arturo Trejo" does a great job with editing, and the family is sweet and down-to-earth. I'm a single girl who knows she has no resources for a kid right now and is also terrified that childbirth would rip her pelvis in half, but nothing makes my ovaries go into "must procure baby!" mode like this channel. If you don't have the patience to sit through the lengthy family videos of Youtube legend ShayCarl, but still enjoy hilarious family antics, the Trejos are for you.

Kids React 

The simple premise of this show by real-life brothers the Fine Bros: a bunch of kids are shown some piece of viral/pop culture ephemera, and then are asked questions about it. It might sound like Kids Say the Darndest Things 2.0, but Kids React shows a fuller range of childhood: from "from the mouths of babes" wisdom to childish ignorance, from heartwarming displays of openness to the judgmental instincts of which playground bullying is born. Their on-the-fly "very special episode" on the death of Osama bin Laden (seen here) was one of the best commentaries on that event.

 Epic Rap Battles of History
What started as a John Lennon versus Bill O'Reilly skit between Nice Peter and Lloyd Alquist has turned into one of Youtube's most popular series - and one of its cleverest. The episodes can be found on Nice Peter's channel, although a new channel was recently created just for new installments. With pairings from logical (Stephen Hawking vs. Einstein) to completely nonsensical (Genghis Khan vs. the Easter Bunny), each episode is nicely produced by powerhouse Maker Studios, even though lines this biting hardly need visuals. I have lots of favorites, but the depth and craftsmanship of Dr. Seuss vs. Shakespeare is sound and fury signifying sublimity.