text:
How to Drake It in America
When he was just 23, the rapper Drake set a goal for himself: He'd make $25 million by the time he was 25 years old by rapping about money, cars, girls, and—here's the bizarre part—his rawest feelings and emotions. He achieved it. Easily. Now 26 and readying his most inspired album yet, the Canadian sensation has set a new goal for himself. The approach is the same, but the endgame is exponentially more ambitious
It begins at three in the afternoon—the pool party—about an hour after Drake wakes in his manse in the San Fernando Valley. Another brightly scrubbed California day, and Drake's crew—the guys from Toronto who live with him here—are downright joyous. It's been a stretch of hard work, and everyone's eager to blow it up a little. Suddenly, bikinied women seem to materialize from thin air, as if competing in a rap beauty pageant. Some are super chatty, some aloof; some are full-bodied, some as wispy as a tamarack. A number swan about as if in a museum or a music video, firing their iPhone cameras, while others take dramatic, slow-motion strolls by the pool, as if this all will soon be theirs.
Drake's home is its own fantasia, a single-level ranch that sprawls in various wings over 7,500 square feet, from the game room to the gym to Drake's master bedroom with Jacuzzi. The pool is like a scene out of Waterworld, with a bar inside a grotto, waterfalls, and a slide that drops thirty feet through the rock. Someone leaps from the top of the waterfall into the pool while another holds on to the cliff and does pull-ups. Hung everywhere, the indoor-outdoor flat-screen TVs shine like mirrors. On the property are stables, a mechanical bull, and a movie theater. There's an air-conditioned doghouse and a wine cellar. Drake bought the place for $7.7 million from a restaurant-chain mogul who threw in all the furniture, too. When the front gate opens to allow passage, a woman's voice coos, "Access granted." Drake's boys call it Disneyland.
When not on the road, Drake splits time between here and Toronto—where he grew up and his mother still resides—surrounded by his boys, a rotating collection of about a dozen. At the kitchen island right now, a coterie of flirty women chat with Chubbs and Spoon, CJ and 40 (Drake's musical collaborator, Noah "40" Shebib, who makes the beats and mis all the songs). Drake finds me taking in the scene. "This ain't every day," he says. "I really don't live some crazy rapper life."
I kind of believe him. Beneath the banter and joviality—beneath Drake's thousand-watt smile—one almost immediately senses a moodier seriousness, a grown-up intention, though he admits, "Today I want my boys to have their fun." Still, with the weeks counting down to a (supposed) August release for his new album, Nothing Was the Same, and a tour scheduled to follow, the pressure has ratcheted up another notch, the crew have cinched a little tighter around their leader, and Drake is trying to shield himself from all the distractions, in order to prove himself once again.
This time—three albums in, at the age of 26—the stakes seem highest of all, because Drake wants the crown. Album sales, critical acclaim, street cred. If unintentional, his timing is uncanny, because both Kanye West and Jay-Z have new albums coming out just before his, which means this summer will say a lot about the current state of rap. There's Kanye, the trailblazer, who's churned out some of the genre's most radio-ready hits this past decade. But on his new album, Yeezus, he's gone dark and aggressive and chosen not to release an official radio single. Then there's Jay-Z, who morphs a certain street hustler's cool and indifference into CEO extravagance. But for all his prominence, Jay-Z hasn't written a lot of crossover hits. Which leaves Drake, who's staked out an interior space all his own, willing to rap and sing (he gets a lot of attention for doing both) about love and desire, loneliness and isolation. At the moment, Drake is also, unquestionably, the most radio-friendly—his voice has been a constant presence on the airwaves in recent years, on his own hits and those he's gifted to other artists. It's wildly competitive; they each want to be number one. And—here's the crazy part—Drake is the favorite.
This is Drake's constant quest, to search out that emotional connection, even in a crowd of 18,000. That's both his power and, according to his Internet parodists and haters, his Achilles' heel: his willingness to show emotion, to write revealing, autobiographical lyrics, and on occasion, between the rapper tropes of bravado and materialism, to demonstrate a flash of moral conscience in a game of misogynistic excess. And for his trouble, he's been called a "counterfeit rapper" (Ludacris), "a fuckin' piece of shit" (DMX), and "a straight pussy" (Lil' Kim), and cajoled to "come out the closet" (Chris Brown). Common rapped: You so black and white, trying to live a nigga's life... / You ain't wet nobody, nigga, you Canada dry. And that's coming from Common.
"You notice they don't criticize the music itself, though," says Drake about his detractors. "I'm okay with that."
Right now, Drake says, he feels like a bor in training before the main event. "You know the way fighters don't fuck before the fight?" he says. "Sometimes I feel like I'm so focused on training my body and getting my mind right to create this album that sex isn't one of my main priorities. If someone is around that I know and trust, I'm down. But I'm not going to end up with some stranger at this party."
Even as the house fills with half-naked ladies, Drake remains off to the side, observing—in the TV room or up in the studio, what he calls the Safari Room, for its painting of a lion on the wall—puffing on his hookah, worrying with 40 over every little mix and mumble and what its final effect will be. He's putting music "in the box," he says, in his computer here in the Safari Room, where the tracks remain a secret as yet. Sometimes he'll pull out his BlackBerry and start thumb-typing, not a text but some new lyric he's heard in his head. He collects the fragments by day and stitches them together at night.
Outside, the pool party is thumping as the sky darkens, Future and Kendrick Lamar on the stereo, several stacks of pizza bos, drinks galore. Drake hangs around the edges of his own party but eventually moves through the crowd like Gatsby, saying his hellos, chilling, laughing, like anyone his age.
A little while later, though, he's huddled with 40 on the steps outside the Safari Room, both of them nodding their heads, going over something intensely. The party is climbing to that point where all responsibility will soon be abdicated. The music blares. Some dude puffs his chest and dives again from the top of the waterfall. Without announcing it, Drake disappears back to the studio. He's felt something and wants to get it down, in hopes you'll feel it, too.
We're driving now in Drake's white Bentley, with Spoon, his head of security, following in an Escalade, headed toward a nearby Mexican joint. Ever since Drake got robbed four years ago while on a date—and because the game is a daily Kabuki of these rapper threats and counterthreats—every little movement requires security. Spoon is a mountain of a man, with an easy smile. Earlier, he laid out a scenario to illustrate what it's like each time Drake steps out, especially at night.
"Imagine you and I are in the club," Spoon said, "and we meet some ladies. I spend $1,000 on a bottle of Ace of Spades champagne, and then you buy the next one. We're 2,000 into it, been having great conversation for an hour, and it's, like, Hey, ladies, would you like to go back to the SLS and take it from there? And then Drake walks in. These girls are like over the rope—all over him, man—and here we are, sitting there with our dicks hard. Drake didn't do nothing. He just walked in, but now you and I have a beef with him, and he just wants a drink. And we're not the only ones. There are a dozen, two dozen just like us. And that's every night when we go to the club. You have no idea where it's going to come from."
Drake's most infamous night out occurred last June, at W.i.P. nightclub in New York City. Various versions of the story have emerged, with bottles being sent between Chris Brown's and Drake's respective tables, or sent back, or sent back with a note from Drake to Chris Brown that read "I'm fucking the love of your life," or no bottles and no note—who knows?—but just a lot of tension about Drake and Rihanna getting cozy after Brown assaulted her. What clearly transpired at the club was a melee, flying bottles and fists. The place was trashed. Brown's bodyguard showed up on TMZ with a nasty forehead gash, Brown tweeted out his own chin job, and hoopster Tony Parker, who happened to be at the club, sustained a scratched retina.
At the Mexican place, we sit at a table on the outdoor patio, listening to a man with an acoustic guitar really beat up some easy-listening tunes. It's not Drake's first time here. In fact our waitress acts a bit chilly at first, taking Drake's order for a strawberry margarita, and when she leaves, he says, "Oh man, I kinda dated her cousin, and I think she might be mad at me." Other tables steal the occasional glance, and someone from the staff comes by and says, "I don't want to interrupt, man, but you are badass!"
"Thank you," says Drake politely, and when the guy disappears back to the kitchen, he says, "I hope he means that the good way."
Then, drink in hand, he addresses his feud with Chris Brown. "I hear he has everything he could want now," Drake says, alluding to the fact that Brown and Rihanna were, for the moment, back together. "I don't want my name to be synonymous with that guy's name. I really don't. I wish we could sit down, just like you and me are right now, and talk it out man-to-man. But that's not going to happen. I'm not confrontational, but if someone challenges, I'm not going to back down."
Still, none of it sits too well with Drake. "It's embarrassing, the amount of media coverage," he says. "Two rappers fighting over the woman. He's not even a rapper, but still, it's the last way you want your name out there. It distracts from the music. But he's made me the enemy, and that's the way it's gonna stay, I guess."
When I say he seems somewhat Zen about it now—after all the back-and-forth between them this past year, trading barbs on radio shows or blasting them out in song lyrics—he says, "If I think about it too much, I feel it wrapping around my foot, like I get a feeling it could end really badly."
I can't tell if he's worried for Rihanna's safety, whom he won't mention by name. Or about the lengths to which he thinks Brown might go to perpetuate the feud.
When I ask what he means exactly, he says, "Like, it gets really dark."
Then, in rare silence, he won't say more.
The pleasure of hanging with Drake is that there isn't a question he won't try to answer, openly and honestly, shifting easily and unselfconsciously between talk of the rap game, money, family, and love.
"I had lunch the other day with someone I extremely look up to," he continues. "Okay—I had lunch with Will Smith, and listening to him talk, it made me think I don't know what love is. He said something profound. He said love is when you become one and you need that person. It's not about wanting anymore, you need that person. Hearing that, I don't know if I've ever felt that way. I've held women in very high regard almost to the point where I felt like I needed them for a very long time, but I don't know if I comprehend it yet, and I'm okay with that.
"I've made a lot of music about love being the only thing I'm missing. I think this is the first album I've made saying, I'm okay. I'm enjoying it right now. Maybe this is my time to grind it out, make a run for it and add some memories with my boys.
"But listen," he continues. "If I wasn't doing this, man, and I was back home in Toronto, and I had my job that kept me in the city, my girl would be my life. I have a lot of friends back there, and their relationships have become the focal point, the high point of their lives. And that's cool. I just have new goals, new places to go, new people to meet. I live off a different high point every day."
For a rapper as well-known as Drake, there remains an essential element of mystery about him. For one so open, there's a distance, and he prefers it that way. But then there's something beneath the exterior that reveals itself with urgency in conversation: Drake's raw ambition.
In the video for "Started from the Bottom," a song from the new album he posted on his blog over Super Bowl weekend, Drake is shown—among the requisite amount of rapper posturing, thick smoke, and bikinied ass-shaking—dancing with gold bars. The song has become almost more anthemic as the months have passed, not just because of its contagious riff but also because the lyrics capture something both aspirational and relatable while shining a light on the storyteller, Drake, who, sheared of his old curls, shines with a harder edge now. (Boys tell stories 'bout the man, runs one lyric. Say I never struggled, wasn't hungry, yeah, I doubt it, nigga.)
"By no means will I take a water break," he tells me. "I feel guilty on vacation. I feel guilty right now, talking to you, guilty that I'm not working."
He muses aloud about money. Yes, he wants it—for what it can buy, for what it signifies. He vowed he'd bank $25 million by the time he was 25—and he did—and now he's wondering what it would take to run his life, with a wad of perpetual pocket money, at the level he wants. With the private jets and cribs, the vacations and hotel suites for the crew. He's talking about Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire and owner of the Chelsea Football Club, whose yacht Drake believed cost $550 million.
"Do you know that even if I had $250 million in the bank, I couldn't buy half of that?" he says. (Turns out the yacht actually cost $1.5 billion.) "Rappers aren't the really rich ones. We all have nice houses with studios and cars, but you need a piece of someone's business to be super wealthy."
Like Diddy, Jay, or Dre. And Drake says he has advisers looking into that now, investments and the like, because $250 million is the stated goal by the time he's 29.
"I feel this great responsibility to see how far can we take it," he says, "how out of reach can I set that bar for whoever comes after. While I'm here, I'm gonna keep pushing that bar higher and higher up and make you really work for it."
When "Started from the Bottom" went viral, some of the inevitable snickering centered around the question: What "bottom" was Drake talking about exactly? After all, unlike Jay-Z, he hadn't sold crack growing up—or, like his mentor, Lil Wayne, done jail time. He grew up in a nice neighborhood in Toronto, the only son of a single mother. As a child actor playing a paraplegic on Degrassi: The Next Generation, he made $40,000 a year. A YouTube parody of the song, with 5 million hits of its own, includes the lines Started middle class in a wheelchair / On a crappy sitcom making good cash every year.
When asked about it, he nods. "I think a lot of people wish their favorite rapper wrote it—as if a song like that should be gangster—but I was the one who wrote it, and everyone has their bottom," he says. "The three biggest misconceptions about me are that I'm a cocky asshole because I'm a famous male rapper, that any part of me wants to be gangster or hood, and that I grew up rich."
Drake's life wasn't without its travails: His mother and father split when Drake was a young child. His father, a musician from Memphis, spent time in jail and drifted in and out of his son's life ("He's slick. He could sell water to a well"), while his mother, a teacher ("She's the godlike person in my life"), contended with growing health issues, including osteoporosis and debilitating joint pain, that eventually left her restricted to her room, where, Drake remembers, she "smoked cigarettes and took her pain meds, deteriorating every day, essentially dying." Though he grew up in the affluent Forest Hill section of Toronto, Drake says he and his mom rented the first floor and basement of a house. "We were more or less broke, but my mom didn't want us to live in an area that could create trouble for her son," he says. Meanwhile, as Drake grew older and eventually landed the Degrassi role, he became enamored of the good life.
"I needed a car and clothes. I wanted to go to the club, at least buy some drinks. And I wanted studio time." (He dropped out of high school, acted all day and rapped all night, sneaking into his Degrassi dressing room at dawn each day and sleeping there until the 10 a.m. call.) "I did ask my mother and uncle for a lot," he says, "but watching my mom go through her illness, and not being able to help, was very tough. And when I finally did make some real money, my mother got an operation on her spine that changed her life."
Meanwhile, there was a fractured relationship with his father, one that both father and son have recently tried to mend. "It's an emotional process," Drake says. "My father is an incredible man—charming, talented, and stylish—and I'm sort of living the dream he had for himself. But his actions served as that reverse role model for me. There are a lot of things that I don't ever want to do. I don't want to miss years of my child's life. I don't want to put a woman on a roller-coaster ride."
In one song off the new album, Drake delves into the pain of his parents' split, but as always for Drake, it's raw material—powerful, personal, and cautionary—reshaped as art. And it's what makes Drake Drake: his willingness to go there and say it out loud, and in that way possess it. If it's an impulse not wholly recognizable in rap, it suggests that perhaps Drake belongs on a slightly different continuum, one belonging, at least in spirit, to confessional poets or expressionist painters or indie bands like the xx, a band he loves. But, he says, his lodestar for the new work has been Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear, the 1978 double-album confessional chronicling the collapse of Gaye's first marriage, described by one critic as "the sound of divorce...exposed in all its tender-nerve glory."
"It's so honest," says Drake, who's also been recording in Gaye's old studio, Marvin's Room. "He just puts it all out there.
"As for my whole story," he says, "I wouldn't change a thing. I've told bits and pieces of it—and I'll tell more. Maybe because I had friends who grew up in the hood, I could have acted like I had, too, and perpetrated a different lifestyle, and it would be eating away at me because it wouldn't be the truth. I'm actually here in front of you living the truth. I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It's not heavy. I don't have skeletons in the closet on their way out. This is my real age, my real name, my real past, and I'm good with that."
As he speaks, he gesticulates as if onstage, then adds:
"No—I'm grateful for that."
Drake leads me out through the living room, past the grand piano and bar, and up a few stairs to the Safari Room, where 40 joins us. There's a stuffed tiger, thick curtains that remain drawn against the sunlight, Oriental rugs on the floor, and a big hookah to blow on. The studio is some padded foam on the wall, a long table with big speakers, a few computers, a small soundboard, a leather couch and chair, and that's about it. No instruments in sight, no room for groupies. "We're four songs into the new album," says Drake.
Drake handles the words and melodies; 40 cooks the beats. "At this point, I can't have anybody but 40," Drake says. "Sometimes you'll hear me screaming halfway across the house—'40! 40!' It's the euphoric feeling of having completed something. I'm ready to do it now."
40 is nodding, with a wry smile. "I get called out of bed sometimes," he says. "We can do fifteen takes, and I swear, we almost always go back to the first one. That's the one in which the emotion and flow and original thought is captured."
Drake makes no apology for the fact that what he and 40 are trying to do is make hits—consumable, genre-bending tunes that will get played on the radio, pushed into the clubs, and thump at parties. Songs that will carry the tour, making for golden moments live. "You constantly ask yourself: Will I ever be able to excite people the way I did when the Internet was going crazy, back when you first felt like you had a piece of Drake that no one else had, and you wanted to share it with your friends? Is there an album or song we can make now that's good enough to get people that excited again?
"I ain't gonna lie: I want to be the one you listen to this summer," he says.
If in the past Drake had any reservations about playing bigger venues—about being able to energetically fill those venues while yearning for the days of mixtape intimacy—those doubts have been dashed now. "I fully accept I'm an arena-touring act," says Drake. "When I'm writing, I'm thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don't translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you. That's why on this album I've been trying to condense my thoughts to sixteen-bar verses. There's something to be said for spacing out the lines, to infiltrate people's minds."
It sounds like another rap: Spacing out the lines / to infiltrate people's minds. But it goes beyond infiltration: It's intimacy that Drake really craves: "I want you to leave with the feeling that I was talking to you the whole time. If I pointed to you, you're probably right, I did point to you. I probably was talking about your friend, you know?"
Drake and 40 swivel at the same time and start tapping the keys of their laptops, cuing up the first track off of Nothing Was the Same, a song called "Tuscan Leather"—a title, Drake tells me, named for a Tom Ford fragrance that some say smells like a brick of cocaine.
The truth is I have no idea what to expect. The paradox of Drake is that he's so multiple, he might write a love song sung by an Idol contestant ("Find Your Love") or something so raunchy you can't play it for kids ("Practice"). He could be rhyming about the kingdom of his material world, and then crooning about his spiritual state. He's a mama's boy who'll cut you up, though his tough-guy posturing seems occasionally halfhearted because, after all, he seems so kind of...decent.
Now comes the music, in a sudden blast, like green light through fog, the first notes strange and dissonant, in a lurching 3/4 beat. The intro hurtles and whiplashes, and a woman's voice, as if on helium, floats through the chaos, in the highest register, sorta funny and ghostly and beautiful. (It turns out to be a Whitney Houston sample.) The sound is an evocation of something that feels nostalgic and new, exuberant and menacing, at once. Which is when Drake's voice breaks through, rapping, pumped up, spitting nails. Both inside and outside the song itself, he keeps repeating, How much time's this nigga spending on the intro? How much time's this nigga spending on the intro? It feels like bedlam.
All the while, the real Drake sits with his eyes closed across the room, moving his lips, rapping to himself rapping. There's a verse, and then an as-yet-empty spot for a guest rap, and then Drake comes back under Whitney's helium voice. This time the words shift, as does the beat, becoming more sinuous and personal. Rising underneath the music, too, is a gentler keyboard riff, and by the time the third verse ends, the song rivers into a soft, ambient landscape that includes crowd noise and then, eventually, a voice—Curtis Mayfield's, at the end of a 1987 concert in Montreux—saying, "Having the same fears, shedding similar tears, and of course dying in so many years, it don't mean that we can't have a good life."
Then it outros on that beautiful repeating keyboard riff, and the Drake in the room, eyes still closed, scrunches his face, feeling every note. When it's over, he awakes from the spell. 40 remains hunched at the computer for a moment, letting the music settle into the silence. And then they both swivel in my direction again.
I've been dreading this moment, the ritualistic playing of the new album for the magazine writer. What if I don't like it? I'm not going to fake it. Both Drake and 40 are looking at me now, curious. I hold up my arm, and thankfully my arm doesn't lie: goose bumps. Drake's face breaks into a smile, and he says, "Ah, man, I didn't expect that—but for you to hear the emotion in it is amazing to me. This is my fucking moment to say if I wanted to rap all the time, really rap, I would, but I also love to make music. I'll do this for you right now. But it's for me, too. It's my story."
That's what the moment before the Moment is about, then, for Drake. "I'm thinking about this body of work—and asking myself: Where am I at in my life, how can I sum it up, and how can I make it relatable?"
They play three more songs, remarkable for the changing beats and moods within each, for the spare, moody spaces left open for the always surprising force of Drake's introspection. When the songs end, Drake opens his eyes again, returns from some place in his mind.
"I'm trying to get back to that kid in the basement," he says. "To say what he has to say. And I'm trying to make it last."
Michael Paterniti is a GQ correspondent and the author of The Telling Room, on sale July 30.


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Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama has tapped the general who oversaw the final troop withdrawal in Iraq to direct the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan.
Gen. Lloyd Austin III, currently vice chief of staff of the Army, would become the next top U.S. commander for the Middle East if the Senate confirms his nomination. Austin would be the first African-American general to lead U.S. Central Command.
An experienced combat leader, Austin headed the 3rd Infantry Division that marched into Baghdad in March 2003. He returned to Iraq in February 2008 for a year, and then deployed there again in late 2010 as the top commander, directing the final troop withdrawal and the end of the war.
"Lloyd would bring an important combination of strategic thinking, regional knowledge and proven judgment to one of the most critical posts in the department," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday.
Austin also served in Afghanistan from 2003 through 2005, leading the 10th Mountain Division.
Nearly all international combat troops are to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Jim Jones Discusses The Incident About Ne-Yo At The Louis Vuitton Store! "I Aint Do Nothing To Ne-Yo. That Would Be Wrong"
Jim Jones on Big Boy's Neighborhood discussing the incident with Ne-Yo at the Louis Vuitton store.
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|2012-12-10, 09:29
|Link #61
lost ronin
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: in the recesses of my convoluted mind...
|2013-01-01, 13:45
|Link #63
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
I have no preconceptions about the actors because I don't watch Japanese cinema or TV. With that view, the casting was surprising apt. I wouldn't mind if Kenshin had a kinder look on his face sometimes but he had the two sides of Kenshin. Perhaps I'm used to Kyoto Arc and onwards Kaoru but I felt she was good except the movie also had to put emphasis on Megumi (alas poor Megumi, I was never much of your fan). Sanosuke was more comic relief than I had hoped for but his straight-forwardness remained. Yahiko will need a second movie =(.
If there's anything to complain about the movie for me, it would be that 2:15 is a really small amount of time. Hence while they couldn't remove Kenshin vs Sanosuke, they ended up removing _why_ Sanosuke fought Kenshin with a simple placeholder reason instead which then makes his reason to stay with the group more flimsier.
Actually a very small thing so I can see why they'd do things like that all over since the things I know about the characters can't be packed into the movie.
It's also good that it was directed more like a regular movie as opposed to a "comic book adaptation". I admit that I was taken back a bit at first because my Kenshin fan heart had wanted him to be absolutely crushing his opponents in the exaggerated manner of the manga but it's much better this way since Rurouni Kenshin also had a nice serious story that can stand without heavy visual gimmicks.
For me, Rurouni Kenshin (2012) was a good start and I'm truly anticipating the subsequent movies.
|2013-01-01, 14:19
|Link #64
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Forgot I saw this on the plane to Japan and really enjoyed it. Thought the casting of Saitou, Megumi, Kaoru, and especially Kenshin was spot on.
I wasn't as keen on how they introduced Sano & Yahiko. Obviously they are important characters but I don't think anyone new to the franchise would realize this.
And although I was sorry to lose Aoshi, I think they tied the first arc into a cohesive narrative pretty well.
That being said while I enjoyed the movie as a fan, I made my friend (unfamiliar with Kenshin) watch the movie and he said the only thing he got out of it was "killing is bad". I thought that was simplifying it but then my friend said I just thought this because I am familiar with the series. So that made me think maybe it's not good for someone new to the series. Of course this is just one non-fan perspective.
But as someone who is a long time Kenshin fan I really enjoyed it.
|2013-01-01, 14:25
|Link #65
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Well the first bit of Kenshin still didn't hammer home as hard the themes as Kyoto and Jinchuu did.
I agree that the killing nature Kenshin is fighting against wasn't brought to the forefront strongly enough even against Jineh and part of that is because of the Kanryuu A-plot of the movie. Still, I believe it's something that can be picked up on with a subsequent viewing (lots of movies are good in this way).
|2013-01-05, 01:01
|Link #67
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: NYC
The movie has Saito but no Aoshi? That makes me sad. I mean don't get me wrong I'm very happy to see Saito, but story wise it doesn't make sense considering the movie seems to cover mostly Tokyo arc stories.
|2013-01-12, 05:06
|Link #68
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2007
Just finished watching the movie. The scriptwriter is a genius to be able to take pretty much all the arcs up to the Megumi arc and combine it into a movie without it feeling overloaded. The shuffling of events is genius, especially how the Jinie arc got moved and combined. It's also good that they kept the special moves. The movie versions are REALLY cool and still look mostly realistic while keeping their flavor from the manga.
Sanosuke's and Yahiko's backstories got cut though, but I guess Yahiko's is not particularly important and Sanosuke's could be written into the sequel. The main problem is Aoshi got completely cut. I guess they could still work him into the sequel but it'd be much harder since most of his motivations for wanting to kill Kenshin wouldn't be there anymore.
|2013-01-12, 06:53
|Link #69
This is my title.
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Philippines
Anyway, after the movie I went to the restroom to empty my bladder. A bunch of girls were in there fixing their make-up and all. One of them commented, "I really don't get my boyfriend..." to which another replied, "Yeah! My boyfriend's joy and excitement is so shallow!" Lol.
I bet these were the same comments their boyfriends made when they were forced to watch Breaking Dawn with them.
It was just amusing.
|2013-01-12, 07:53
|Link #70
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Age: 42
|2013-01-12, 09:19
|Link #71
This is my title.
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Philippines
|2013-01-12, 15:34
|Link #74
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
I recall that Kenshin was in fact popular across the different demographics despite being shounen.
There was this blurb from the author apologizing for Hiko Seijurou's super muscled build betraying the female fans' expectations (from Hiko's pretty face haha) too!
|2013-01-12, 15:54
|Link #76
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Thing is, the first bit of Kenshin really isn't _that_ interesting regardless of who you are. Especially to an audience over a decade later who have been inundated with media (as in movies and books, not the news).
The Kyoto Arc is the where the themes really crystallize and Jinchuu (it's a shame it never got animated) is the closure for our hero.
|2013-01-12, 16:03
|Link #77
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Well I like the first arc of Kenshin but you are right in terms of storytelling it's the weakest of the 3 arcs. It's mainly made up of a bunch of mini stories.
There are certain stories I really like in the first arc. I love both Yahiko and especially Sano's introduction (and I am sorry the film didn't reflect this better).
I also like how Kenshin finds initial acceptance with Kaoru (this is something the film does reflect well).
But my favorite part of the Meiji arc is the concept of Aoshi not wanting to leave behind the Oniwabanshu who could not find a place in the new era (the film kind of covers this in other ways, but it mentions the plight of the samurai only in passing).
Another thing I think the film did well was show the connection between Megumi & Kenshin (although the film never explicitly states that Megumi wants to become a doctor to atone).
Thinking about it I guess it would be hard for new people to get what Kenshin was about from the first film as perhaps it didn't present what the story was about very well. I still felt it did a great job of creating one narrative out of many smaller stories in the first arc and re-creating the characters in a realistic way. So overall as a fan I still feel the first film was a success.
The Kyoto arc is more interesting narratively speaking but I wonder how the film will pull off Shisio and especially characters like Soujiro. And will they leave Aoshi out again? That would be a shame.
|2013-03-04, 09:03
|Link #78
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Philippines
Age: 42
DVD (and possibly BR) to be released soon in my country -- through a local record chain called Odyssey.
|2013-06-02, 02:35
|Link #79
Join Date: Jul 2012
I think they wasted a good opportunity to show the otakus in the west how a good Japanese movie really looks like. I'm pretty sure many of them think that the Japanese doesn't really know how to make a movie and can't act just because of their shitty live-action adaptations.
When you have films like Twilight Samurai, Seppuku, Sword Of Doom, Seven Samurai and Ran in your fucking cinema history something like Rurouni Kenshin is inexcusable. I think Samurai X has the potential for a really good film, something really awesome and the OVA showed that.
I love twilight Samurai a lot and this was the perfect tone for Rurouni Kenshin.
In Twilight Samurai the characters feel real and that's the reason why you care about Seibei Iguchi when he is in a fight, it had good acting. Even an action movie like Miike's 13 Assassins had better acting in it than Rurouni Kenshin, Kôji Yakusho is a brilliant actor and he was the lead in that movie.
Last edited by ElCachicamo; 2013-06-02 at 03:04.
|2013-06-02, 04:44
|Link #80
( ಠ_ಠ)
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Somewhere, between the sacred silence and sleep
You're sour because it didn't feel like a classic samurai movie.
Nope, instead, it felt like an adaptation of a comic book.
Maybe because, oh I dunno, it is.
And a good adaptation.
Rurouni Kenshin was never even supposed to be a Kurosawa film, nor should it be.
And this is coming from an old-timer who owns Kurosawa films on Laser discs, and love it.
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text:
Cloudbrain necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 203 diseños de 78 diseñadores freelance.
We need a logo for our new website, CloudChasing.com which will be used by Marketing Professionals and Small Businesses to keep track of blogs and social media sites talking about them.
We have a draft of our website ready, so the logo will need to have similar colors and styles and complement this page:
We picked the name "CloudChasing" because we wanted to capture the fun of marketing a small business ("chasing") and show that we know tracking the internet is hard (the "cloud").
We want a fun and simple logo for our "CloudChasing" website. It will need to complement our existing website design:
Our customers are small businesses and marketing and PR professionals, so we don't want something that is silly, but we do want to say that we understand that marketing a small business is both fun and hard.
We'd like something simple - a simple shape or graphic or drawing - nothing too complex. I am open to both visual representations of clouds as well logos that don't contain clouds at all (maybe something representing "chasing"). Please be creative.
We are looking for a stand-alone image for the logo, seperate from the word "Cloudchasing". Please style "cloudchasing" as you want and include it in your submission, but there should be a logo that can stand alone without the word (i.e. your submission should not be a styled version of "cloudchasing". Please leave that word relatively simple (but choose fonts, capitalization, shadows etc. as needed).
Thanks! Feel free to leave questions.
- Fun
- Simple
- Clouds or Not Clouds. You decide.
- Must look good in greyscale as well as original colors
- Colors should complement existing website design.
- A stand-alone graphic image.
- Silly (our customers are business owners)
- Complicated. Simple shapes.
- 3D. That's too complicated, flat images only please.
- A logo that can't exist apart from the word "cloudchasing"
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


text:
Advanced Search
Policy | News
Researchers from Syracuse University's School of Information Studies (iSchool) have released a proposal to eliminate the United States government's special relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN "coordinates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Internet's underlying address book, the Domain Name System (DNS)," according to information on the organization's site. ICANN fulfills that role as part of the IANA Functions contract with the U.S. government.
"While the contracts are an understandable legacy of the Internet's origins in the U.S. Defense Department and National Science Foundation contracts, the U.S. has maintained control of ICANN long after it promised to let go," according to a Syracuse news release. "This has invited other governments, including authoritarian ones, to demand equal oversight authority over the DNS."
The iSchool proposal would take root zone management functions from ICANN and hand them to a newly created, independent consortium from the private sector by September 2015, when the current IANA Functions contract expires.
"Unless we take a consistent and principled approach to non-governmental Internet governance," said Milton Mueller, iSchool professor and co-author of the proposal, in a prepared statement, "it is only a matter of time before other governments succeed in bringing the coordination and management of the Internet under the control of intergovernmental treaty organizations."
In addition, according to a Syracuse news release, the plan would:
"It's important/essential not to conflate policy with the operation of the root zone," said Brenden Kuerbis, co-author of the proposal and postdoctoral researcher at the iSchool, in a prepared statement. "It makes sense to put operational authority in the hands of an entity comprised of the registries and root server operators, as they are directly impacted by operation of the root, and have strong incentives to ensure its stability and security."
"We think this plan provides the roadmap for making ICANN into a truly global and multistakeholder institution," added Mueller.
The plan "will be presented at the Singapore ICANN meeting March 21, and then formally submitted to the 'NET Mundial' Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to be held April 23 and 24," according to information released by the university.
About the Author
Joshua Bolkan is contributing editor for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.
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Tom Cleaveland
Class of 1961
Major/Minor: Psychology
Greetings from Minnesota Class of 1961!
We've had a heck of winter here, 79 inches of snow and counting. No big deal to us here in the Twin Cities, but I sure do miss the Maryland version of winter. In 1998 I retired after 30+ years as Salesman for Minnesota Mutual, where I specialized in selling deferred compensation accounts to public employees in Minnesota. I love retirement and the opportunities to enjoy my 7 grandchildren (all girls..so far). My wife Marlys and I enjoy spending as much time as we can at our lake cabin in northern Minnesota, which has provided numerous memories for our family (3 daughters and 2 sons). The fishing is great with bass, walleye and sunfish being plentiful.


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As the lumber cut from Massachusetts and the upper Connecticut Valley began to drop, the annual log run began to fall off. The decline was perceptible from its height in 1907. Floating logs downriver was inherently wasteful, with many logs lost due to being waterlogged. By the 1930s trucks moved most of Massachusetts' much reduced timber harvest and the riverman's way of life had entirely disappeared.
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text:
I've long wanted to write an Android app so now seems a fairly good time to give that a shot. I want to port over some Perl stuff I've done, not directly necessarily, probably in Java, which I've done some work in before but long ago. I really liked Java, though: a proper object oriented environment rather than the layered kludge-fest which is C++, or for that matter "object-oriented Perl", neither of which I've ever liked. I end up with hybrid object oriented - sequential code. Better to have the environment optimized for the object oriented paradigm and stick with that.
Step one didn't go too well... upgrade my Ubuntu to the 11.10, but then my CD drive on my old Thinkpad isn't working well. I tried to clean it but now it's working worse...
Anyway, I got a book on the subject ( Android Applications for Dummies ), but am not waiting for that to arrive. There's plenty of on-line reference material and tutorials. Book form is just more convenient for my train commute, and there's something to be said for the coherence of printed books. When Cara and I were in New Zealand we had an old Lonely Planet printed, a new one on Kindle, and after one attempt at the Kindle version we were back to the old printed copy the rest of the time. Kindles are fine for linear access, or in principle for text-based searching, but for random access of pages with a good index and table of contents printed still wins.
First thing on any programming project is to clearly define what you want to do, so that's where I'll start. I find once you have that down, the actual coding becomes nearly trivial, the details of the language barely relevant.
I want to use the Strava API for this project. Cosmo's done some nice stuff with it. For example, his TCX exporter is my method of choice for getting data off Strava, better than the native GPX exporter Strava eventually added.
Cosmo's stuff is web-based, which is another option. That's another option: it would also give me a chance to expand my web skills, which would help for the Low-Key Hillclimbs. It would be fun to write something to browse historical data. But that's a second priority, and time is so limited as it is.
Goal for this project to be functional is 29 Feb.


text:
He's a scruffy Canadian stoner who's not yet 27. His movies have already grossed almost $400 million—and he hasn't made a bad one yet. In Pineapple Express, Seth Rogen's still smokin'—but now he's got a machine gun, too
Seth Rogen feels he's done "way too many movies" in the year or so since he became the kind of actor who is offered way too many movies to do, and while he knows this is a good problem to have, he sometimes worries a little. "I hate looking at my face," he says, "so I can't imagine what other people think. 'Guess what? There's 5 million fucking Seth Rogen movies coming out in the next three months!' "
But with a possible actors' strike on the horizon, Rogen's got a limited amount of time to finish the films he's committed to, so here he is—in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the basement of a cold, dark, and drab municipal building that was once a county courthouse—making another one, Observe and Report. He plays a mall security guard with delusions of crimefighting grandeur who stumbles upon some actual crime, and if the face full of fake cuts and bruises he's sporting in the scene he's shooting today is any indication, things do not go well.
Rogen's been working more or less nonstop since the summer of 2007, thanks to Knocked Up and Superbad (based on a script Rogen wrote with his buddy Evan Goldberg at the seasoned age of 13). Knocked Up proved Rogen could carry a hit movie; Superbad proved he and Goldberg could write one. People had started referring to Rogen and his peers—a familial, benignly cliquish collective of young actors, writers, and behindthecamera talent, many discovered and/or mentored by Knocked Up director Judd Apatow—as a "comedy mafia," but in the wake of those two movies, which made almost $300 million that summer, the mafia had a face, and it was Rogen's.
Here, suddenly, was a fully formed comedic hyphenate of multifarious gifts: a guy who at 25—he's 26 now—possessed a little of Belushi's frank, sloppy selfacceptance; a little of his comedy idol Adam Sandler's volatile vulnerability; a whole lot of the counterintuitive charm that allowed Bill Murray to turn the audience into a coconspirator with every joke; and a hip, adroit, grenadelobbing delivery, a voice, that felt entirely new. And maybe because his breakout performance happened in a movie like Knocked Up—a romantic comedy, albeit an almost caustically honest one—Rogen has demonstrated that an actor who's sheepish, shempy, and Jewfroed can ply his trade in the same jokester/leadingman gray area as more traditionally handsome funny guys like Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, and Vince Vaughn.
But despite the presence of a bona fide movie star, the set of Observe and Report is loose, casual, studentfilmish. Director Jody Hill, who's 29 but looks about 18, shuffles around in a black fleece jacket, chomping cinnamon gum. A bigtime producer, Donald De Line—ebullient and bald—is on hand, but so are Evan Goldberg, who doesn't actually have a job on the movie, and Sandy and Mark Rogen, Seth's parents. Mark's dressed as a cop; he's playing the guard who lets Rogen out of a holding cell. This is his second appearance in one of Rogen's movies—he played "Father with Bat" in Superbad, chasing Jonah Hill and McLovin off his lawn.
Jody Hill calls "cut," and father and son confer in the hall. Mark's not sure how to deliver his one line, which is "Okay—let's go."
"I don't know if they want it harder," Mark says, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, "or more kind."
"Give 'em options, dude," Rogen says, and laughs. He has a great laugh—convulsive, gurgling, utterly unselfconscious. It's like a HannaBarbera sound effect, and if you hang out with him for a day or so you'll hear it maybe 600 times.
The enduring cliché about comedy is that it comes from an angry place—that its most gifted practitioners are men (and part of the cliché is that it's virtually always men) who've learned to vent rage and pain and childhood trauma through humor, poking the cruel world in the eye, nyuk, nyuk. Good comics have to be fearless, iconoclastic, and the conventional wisdom is that their distrust of institutions usually begins in an unhappy home. And yet here's Rogen, goofing around with his mom, instructing his dad in the finer points of spontaneous moviemaking. In a way, Rogen's whole career undercuts the notion that dysfunction breeds comedy; his success is proof that you can be welladjusted and still be funny, that you can surround yourself with family, or with a surrogate family of likeminded collaborators, and be just as real and rude and ruthless when it's time to make the jokes.
In Knocked Up, the banter between Rogen and his stoner buddies felt authentic and livedin because those actors—Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Martin Starr, and Jason Segel—were Rogen's actual buddies. One day Apatow overheard them bullshitting about how Eric Bana's performance as a badass superJew in Munich could make guys like them more attractive to women; when the cameras rolled, Apatow told them to have the discussion again, in place of what was in the script, a lessinspired rap about how looking like Jack Black could help Rogen's character score.
Director Harold Ramis observed this process up close when he played Rogen's character's dad in Knocked Up. He calls from Chicago, on a break from postproduction on his next movie, the Apatowproduced Year One, and suggests that Judd's way just makes more sense: "Shooting a movie isn't about making final decisions," he says. "It's about creating choices for yourself that you later exploit in the editing room. Comedies in particular are cobbled together in editing—the timing is adjusted, and many takes are put together in order to make a performance.
"A lot of bad stuff gets shot when people are improvising freely," Ramis says, "and that's kind of encouraging. You learn you don't die of embarrassment, or one bad take doesn't kill you."
Rogen's been working this way since his first acting job, on Apatow's Freaks and Geeks. In one episode, his character, Ken Miller—the first of many deadpan, weedloving malcontents he'd play—is dating a toughtalking tuba player from the school band. One night she reveals that she was born with both male and female genitalia—packing, as Ken memorably puts it, "both a gun and the holster." It's the kind of awkward and indescribably tender moment Freaks and Geeks did better than almost any other show about high school kids, ever. But when the episode was in production, the writers were having trouble with the scene, so Apatow brought Rogen and the actress playing Tuba Girl into his office, turned on a video camera, and asked them to improvise it.
"He said, 'Have the conversation. You, pretend that you're a hermaphrodite. You, pretend you're being told for the first time. Go'—which is basically the way we shoot stuff now," Rogen says. "I was like, 'Fuck, this is way easier than memorizing lines.' You just talk, y'know? Somebody's telling you they're a hermaphrodite. What the fuck? Really? I was like, 'This is how we should be doing everything.' At the time, I didn't realize it, but improvising is a lot like writing. According to Judd, that was the first time he thought maybe I was a good writer."
You just talk, y'know? You show up, hang out, stay in the moment, keep it conversational, and the camera discovers a TV show—or a movie that makes $100 million. It barely sounds like work.
One thing Rogen has figured out is that if you can make a movie for under $30 million, movie studios will not only give you $30 million but allow you to do pretty much whatever you want with it.
A few years ago, Rogen and his friends flipped out over a microbudgeted, largely improvised comedy called The Foot Fist Way, in which Danny McBride plays an abrasive, deluded Tae Kwon Do instructor. They invited McBride and Foot Fist director Jody Hill to watch them shoot Knocked Up, and they got to talking about Hill and McBride's filmschool buddy David Gordon Green and all the funny stuff he'd shot with them in college before going off to make somber, Terrence Malicky films like All the Real Girls—which was how Green ended up directing Pineapple Express, an action comedy, written by Rogen and Goldberg, about a process server who witnesses a murder and goes on the run, accompanied by the guy he buys his weed from (Freaks alum James Franco).
Green's not exactly the first guy you'd think of to direct your carchase movie, but Rogen and his friends thought his stuff was cool, and they liked him, and that was all that mattered. The comedy mafia's m.o. involves concentrating power in the hands of the talent by presenting studios with fully packaged projects—this is the script, these are the stars, this is the director, take it or leave it. All they had to do was convince Green that he'd be shielded from saucespoiling studio interference.
"To a guy who makes George Washington," Rogen says, "$25 million is, y'know, a billion dollars. But to Sony, that's like fucking one minute of SpiderMan. So they just don't give a shit. They don't even visit our sets. On Pineapple, I'd say 70 percent of the time, me and Evan were the most senior people onset. It has a lunaticsrunningtheasylum feel, in the most gratifying way."
It hasn't always been this easy.
Rogen was 16 when he got the part in Freaks and Geeks. "I thought, Well, there's a type of guy you never see on TV," Apatow says. "Back then his voice was really froggy and deep, with a thick Canadian accent, and he was so young and so angry, we thought, He's gotta be on the show."
In the beginning, his character was written as an antagonist for the female lead, aspiring burnout Lindsay Weir, played by Linda Cardellini. "It was the 'funny strange friend' part," Apatow says. "But we started to get to know Seth better, and we started writing to his actual personality.
"I remember watching Seth's scenes with [regular_ Freaks_ director] Jake Kasdan," Apatow says, "and realizing, 'He's a leading man.' He's this lovable Everyman guy, and he's viciously funny, with a big heart. It became clear that he could carry the whole thing."
Rogen had moved to Los Angeles from Vancouver, Canada, to do the show, which garnered critical acclaim and Proactivinfomerciallevel ratings and was canceled after eighteen episodes. Apatow then hired Rogen as both cast member and staff writer on his next project, a college show called Undeclared. "I thought, This is the perfect situation—I have this show about college, and I can hire this hilarious 17yearold to write, and he can tell me if anything is bullshit," Apatow says. "What I didn't realize at the time was that Seth had never been to college, because I gave him a job on a TV show. But he wrote some amazing episodes. It became embarrassing, because you had this punk kid writing episodes that were as good or better than anyone else's on the staff. And he wasn't sitting in his room suffering and sweatin' blood over every comma. He was bangin' 'em out quick and strong."
Undeclared premiered in 2001—two weeks after September 11, when TV programs about smartass undergrads playing beer pong weren't high on the nation's todo list—and was canceled after seventeen episodes. After that, Rogen spent a few years marinating in frustration at his L.A. apartment with people like Baruchel and Segel and Starr, fellow members of the Apatow troupe who were similarly hard up for work.
He got a small part in Donnie Darko, a movie he claims to have never understood, and a smaller one in an episode of Dawson's Creek, a show he claims to have never watched. But what he really wanted to do was make his own movies. He and Goldberg had refined Superbad—their Kevin Smith–inspired script about two sexually frustrated teenagers named Seth and Evan—into something they thought they could sell. They took some meetings, and everyone said they liked it but could never see making it. Or they suggested that Goldberg and Rogen rewrite it as a PG13 movie, so that kids could go see it. Rogen and Goldberg insisted that kids would see it anyway, that they'd be more inclined to see it if it were rated R, and that they wanted to make a high school movie that adults might also want to see, and the ecutives would smile and nod and ask if he and Goldberg were interested in developing one of the studio's ideas instead. They did some rewrites on projects like a teen comedy set in ancient Rome, which never got made; the stuff they turned down was worse.
"There was one," Rogen says, "where the pitch was 'teens at the beach.' I remember being like, 'What do you mean, "teens at the beach"?' And they were like, 'We just have this image. Of teenagers. At the beach.' And we were thinking, like, 'We've written a whole movie about teenagers' "—but it didn't matter.
They did get to write for Da Ali G Show, which paid, Rogen says, "almost nothing," but sounded great in a meeting—pre_Borat_, the whole Sacha Baron Cohen thing and how it worked was a mystery, and being the guys who wrote for him was like being friends with a magician. They still couldn't sell anything—not The Long D, a college movie about longdistance relationships, not the HBO pilot Rogen wrote with Jason Segel and a pre–The School of Rock Jack Black. Mostly Rogen and his friends would sit around getting stoned and kvetching about their careers. It was a lot like the living situation later depicted in Knocked Up, Rogen says—with a lot of the same people involved—but the thwarted ambitions in play were more serious.
"We all used to smoke weed all day instead of working, and we'd just play video games for months on end," Rogen says. "But we all really wanted to work and make movies."
"I just remember feeling really bitter," he says. "We thought the stuff we were writing was funny—and it's pretty much the exact same stuff that we're doing now—and it just seemed crazy that no one else liked it. You start to question your own sanity. Like, 'Our HBO pilot isn't funny, but Entourage is?' "
Apatow would slip Rogen some work when he could, delegating punchup work on movies like Bad Boys II and Kicking and Screaming to his protégé, slipping him a grand or two. Rogen worked four days on Will Ferrell's Anchorman, which Apatow coproduced, and made $300.
"Judd felt responsible for me and [Freaks and Geeks actor] Martin Starr because we left high school to do the show. He could be the guy that made, like, Todd Bridges go fucking crazy. Like, 'Oh, I took Seth from high school and made him think that he could do something, and I failed. And if he robs me in ten years, it's my fault.' "
One thing that did happen—and one suspects it happened both despite and because of all the weed—is that Goldberg and Rogen finished another screenplay, for Pineapple Express, which turned out to be about as soughtafter a property as Superbad was back then.
There were conversations in which ecutives actually asked if Rogen and Goldberg were married to the whole pot thing. In which it was suggested that Pineapple might stand a chance of getting made as a movie about two idiots—hungry, forgetful, cottonmouthed idiots—on the run.
"I didn't realize this, but weed is considered a genre," Rogen says. "A weed movie's like a horror movie or a scifi movie. To [studios] it's a genre that only some people like. Which we just never thought of. When we were growing up, we watched movies like Friday and The Big Lebowski—to us, those are the greatest movies ever. And before you're steeped in the fuckedup ways that the actual business runs itself, you just assume, like, 'Friday's a rad movie! Why wouldn't they want another movie like that?' "
Finally, something turned. Apatow cast Rogen as one of Steve Carell's coworkers in The 40YearOld Virgin. His extemporaneous riffage ("You know how I know you're gay?") got huge laughs and contributed to the film's gleefully outrageous spirit.
"When we were making Virgin, Seth was a giant influence," Apatow says. "His tone, and his belief in a brutally frank, funny, dirty type of comedy. I've certainly written some Rrated comedy, but Seth took it to a different level. He kept saying, 'The dirtier I am with Carell, the funnier it is. He's so uncomfortable when I do this stuff, and I think it's a riot.' Carell thought maybe we were going too far."
After seeing Virgin, Kevin Smith wrote Zack and Miri Make a Porno with Rogen—"his rhythms, his patois, his inflection"—in mind. "The dude leapt off the screen," Smith says. "I was like, 'That is the fucking future. That dude is amazing.' "
There's a scene in Virgin—which ended up making more than $100 million—where Carell, enjoying his first night of partying after four decades on earth, smokes pot out of an apple. At the first test screening, Rogen says, "the audience erupted in wild applause at the sight of a guy smoking weed out of an apple. And I remember Judd and I looked at each other and said, 'We can make Pineapple Express.' If potsmoking works in a romantic comedy, people will buy it."
"That's the debate that Seth and I have been having for the last six years," says Apatow, who does not dispute Rogen's characterization of him as an "antipot person." "He thinks we're making a pot movie, and I think we're making an antipot movie. In my head, [Pineapple] is clearly a story of how pot leads to Asian gangs trying to murder you."
The really surprising thing about Pineapple isn't its whateverdude treatment of illegal drugs—between Harold, Kumar, and MaryLouise Parker as a single mom turned drug runner on Showtime's Weeds, pop culture looks more like Amsterdam every day. It's the way it mis the trademark banter of Rogen's earlier films with elaborate and surprisingly violent action. It owes less to Cheech & Chong and more to Beverly Hills Cop, Running Scared, and especially the Charles Grodin–Robert De Niro classic Midnight Run—action comedies in which the action was no joke. The most cynical way of looking at this is that movies in which buildings explode and cop cars take flight tend to pay pretty well, and that playing Dale Denton—who puts down the bionic superdope to pick up an AK47—is Rogen's lowkey way of auditioning for that type of work. But that's not the way the movie plays; it's funny and weird, and when people aren't shooting each other it meanders rewardingly. Rogen says they always saw the film as being about the awkward and tentative bond that forms between Dale and his dealer.
"To us," he says, "it was a movie about business associates who are trying to figure out whether or not they're friends apart from the business."
In other words, Seth Rogen's big action movie is really a relationship movie, concerned—like Superbad, like Knocked Up, like Virgin—with platonic love and what happens when circumstances conspire to test that love. Whether anybody will buy Rogen as an action hero, even an ironic one, remains to be seen, but Pineapple should cement his status as Hollywood's preeminent bromantic lead.
Rogen lumbers up the steps of his trailer. Evan Goldberg and Matt Bass, Rogen's assistant and "wingman," are watching Se7en on the trailer's bigscreen TV. This is how Rogen spends most of his downtime—halfwatching forty or so minutes of whatever movie they can find on cable, waiting for a P.A. to knock on the door and tell him it's time to go back to work. "It's almost like being on an airplane," Rogen says. "A movie that you'd never watch in a million years, it's like, 'Ooh—Norbit's on. I can finally watch that.' "
Rogen grew up in Vancouver. He went to school with rich kids, the sons and daughters of lawyers and doctors, but his parents—who met on a kibbutz in Israel—were lefty social workers, which compared to everybody else's parents basically made them bombthrowing anarchists. Rogen remembers his dad getting detained at more than one protest; sometimes he'd heckle a politician's speech and the Rogens would show up on the news.
It wasn't a typical upbringing, but it wasn't traumatic, and over the years it's paid off. Rogen got the sex talk from his mom earlier than anyone else he knew, which explains a lot. And he wouldn't have started doing standup comedy at 13 if not for his parents' "fucktheMan, followyourdreams kind of attitude." He performed at a lot of openmike nights in local comedy clubs, and although he was chaperoned at all times by his mom, he was still in an environment typically offlimits to 13yearolds, listening to other comics working as blue as blue got, and this, too, explains much about the type of man he became.
Sometimes, when his mom wasn't looking, he'd smoke a joint with the other comics backstage—"Nothing I wouldn't have been doing if I was out at a high school party," he says—and sometimes he'd sit with them after he finished his set, watch them have a drink, and they'd tell him he'd killed it. He still thinks these guys were some of the funniest people he'd ever met, still talks to some of them. ("Most of them," he says, "got busted with mushrooms fifteen years ago and can never get into America now.")
I mention that Judd Apatow has similar stories of formative comedynerddom: As a kid, he'd go around with a tape recorder, interviewing his heroes about their craft, sitting at the feet of guys like Jerry Seinfeld.
"Yeah—he's played me a lot of those tapes," Rogen says. "But Judd seemed to be a lot more miserable when he was a kid than I was. It's clear that [comedy] was like a coping mechanism for him—his parents would argue, so he'd turn on Saturday Night Live. It seemed a lot more rooted in depression rather than just fascination.
"Judd always looks at me and goes, 'I don't get why you're funny,' " Rogen says. " 'Nothing really bad has ever happened to you.' But then again, if you talk to Bill Hader, Steve Carell—those guys had great childhoods."
"I had a lot of weird financial worries when I was a kid," he says after a second. "We weren't poor, but all my friends were really rich, and we were just kind of middleclass. So I think if there was any kind of dark, driving force behind it, for me, it might have been [a need] to get some sense of financial security."
And you thought you'd attain that by doing standup comedy…
"…which is retarded," Rogen says. "It shows how little I actually knew. I'll be a rich standup comic!"
Rogen's looking at his own face again, in a makeuptrailer mirror. The makeup artists have scrubbed the fake blood off his hands, removed his prosthetic bruises with an oily salve. Rogen has wondered aloud how Eddie Murphy does it—all those Klumps movies, all those hours in the chair. Now a female makeup person is taming Rogen's stubble, the fiveo'clock shadow that made him the only kid in his high school class who could buy beer and cigarettes. It's an involved process—creams, powders, two different razors.
"I once read a thing with Woody Allen," Rogen says, "where they asked him, 'Which do you like better—acting or directing?' And he said, 'Directing, because I don't have to shave.' That's how I feel about writing sometimes."
Besides Rogen's parents, the other special guest onset today is Jody Hill's girlfriend's dog, Little Bear—Hill's watching him while his girlfriend's out of town. Little Bear is 50 percent Shih Tzu, 25 percent poodle, and 25 percent bichon, a little Ewok Peter Frampton, still a puppy, not yet fid.
"My girlfriend wants a dog more than anything in the universe," Rogen says. (Her name's Lauren; she's a TV writer; they met before he was famous; they live together.) He's managed to hold her off, for now, by saying they can get one if she lets him get a motorcycle, something he doesn't even really want: "It had to be something," he reasons, "that she really doesn't want me to have."
"No," says Sandy Rogen firmly.
We talk about the pet thing, how it's always a rehearsal for the havingkids thing. You think it'll postpone the conversation, but—
"Yeah," Rogen says. "It kind of evolves the conversation, right? Leslie Mann"—his Knocked Up costar, and Judd Apatow's wife—"told me that. She said, 'Don't get her a dog, or you'll have to give her a baby."
He ambles off to go shoot a scene in which Ronnie talks to a stern police sergeant about becoming a cop. It's a minor moment in the film, a plot mover—the joke is that Ronnie's playing it cool, like joining the force is something he's merely considering, when in reality this is his fifth attempt to apply.
Rogen plays the scene a little differently each time, modifying the questions he asks the interviewer. Under "Experience," he wonders, should he include, "like, blackops kind of shit?" The actor playing the policeman rolls with it. "You can just leave that blank," he deadpans. Hill calls "cut," Rogen comes back behind the monitors, watches the playback. It's the only time I've seen him look uncomfortable—as he watches himself act, he purses his lips, flares his nostrils, makes a sort of tequilashot face. Then he laughs and the tension is released. I ask him where the "Experience" thing came from; he says he just read it off the jobapplication sheet they gave him to hold in the scene. "I draw from life," he says. "I read the props that are put in front of me. We'll take ideas from anywhere. I'll take ideas from the camera guys. I don't give a shit. Between everyone, usually someone'll have an idea that works."
It goes on like this—Rogen shoots some stuff, makes the crew laugh, watches a little playback, sits in a director's chair and taps out messages on his iPhone. It feels like the most lowimpact moviemaking process imaginable, and it seems like Rogen could go on working this way forever. Creative freedom! The flow of ideas among trusted collaborators! _Hey, let's try that line the key grip suggested! _What's not to like?
But the latitude he's got right now is due entirely to the streak he's on. There's always the possibility that it won't last—that at some point in the future, audiences will decide that after 5 million fucking Seth Rogen movies, they're tired of looking at his face.
"That's the existential question," Ramis says. "How does your career change as you age? Seth is already a man, but what kind of man will he be at 35? What will his life concerns be, and how will that manifest on the screen? Who will Adam Sandler be at 60? It happens to all of us, you know. I'm 63 years old myself, and I'm not Egon Spengler anymore. But as a director, I don't have to worry about my image, in that sense. Actors do have to worry about it."
In the best of all possible futures, maybe Rogen will be the Woody Allen of Generation ox when he's 35—acting, writing, unlikelysexsymboling, creating his own material, making his own lane. Maybe Knocked Up was his Play It Again, Sam and Pineapple Express is his Bananas, which would put him about five years away from making his Annie Hall (and about twentyfive years away from making his The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, but let's not go crazy with the parallel).
But maybe, somewhere down the road, Rogen will be offered the kind of money you can't say "no" to for some broad, bloated, intheformoffunny blockbuster—one of those seemingly can'tlose propositions like The Cat in the Hat—and he'll take it, and it'll destroy his scruffystoner cred before he has time to leverage it into a long career. Rogen's aware that this can happen; he's a student of comedy, and he's watched more than a few comic actors make that wrong turn that leads to greenscreen familyfilm hell.
For now, you at least get the sense from talking to Rogen that he's enough of a comedy nerd—and has seen enough of Norbit—to have learned from the mistakes of those who've preceded him into greenscreen hell.
"For serious actors," Rogen says, "I think it goes the opposite way—you get sucked into doing really shitty independent movies, and the next thing you know you're in some humiliating movie that you took no money for. The comedyactor version is, yeah, I'm the Grinch. Or I'm playing the KoolAid Man in a movie or something like that."
There is not, for the moment, a KoolAid Man film in development. But Rogen says he did pass, just the other day, on "some gigantic specialeffectsdriven epic movie." He's been advising his friends to do the same. Jonah Hill, Rogen says, just turned down a part in the sequel to The Transformers. "I can see if Steven Spielberg's calling you, asking you to do something, how that's hard to turn down," Rogen says. "But what I said to Jonah was, 'You want to make a movie about fightin' robots? Make your own movie about fightin' robots. You can do that. That's on the table now.' "
That's the mindset behind The Green Hornet, due out in 2010. Rogen's going to play the titular crimefighter, a debonair protoBatman brought to life by Van Williams in a '60s television series best known for introducing the Englishspeaking world to a pre–Fists of Fury Bruce Lee. Yes, it's a comicbook movie (although the TV show was actually based on a radio drama), and yes, it's going to cost something like $70 million to make, and a healthy piece of that will undoubtedly go to Rogen, and there will probably be action figures and lunchbos available, and Rogen's even going to pack on some muscle for it, with help from trainertothestars Harley Pasternak, whose list of celebrity clients includes Jessica Simpson, Robert Downey Jr., and, confusingly, Michael Chiklis—but none of that is the point. "I would never do something just because of the money," Rogen says, "or because my 'team' thought it was a good career strategy."
He wants to make a superhero movie not because Hollywood's got superheromovie fever at the moment, not because_ Iron Man _made a billion dollars, but because he's a comicbook freak—that was what he and Evan Goldberg bonded over, long before movies entered the picture—and because Sony let him and Goldberg write the screenplay. They're working on the second draft right now—last night a bunch of the Observe and Report folks went bowling, but Rogen stayed home, working on the script with Goldberg until eleven thirty. They don't split up the work—usually Goldberg types, because he types faster, but they talk out every scene together. It's a process Rogen says he still enjoys more than "all the [other] strange things I get paid to do."
Rogen likes the idea of making a superhero film based on a relatively obscure property. "There are very few people who have a preconceived notion of what the movie should be," he says. "The infrastructure for rabid fandom is not there."
Still, the nerds carp; when Rogen was announced as the star of the film, online Hornetheads protested almost immediately, and Rogen had to convince Sony "that these thirteen dudes on Aintitcool.com don't represent 13 million people."
"People are having the same reaction I did when I heard they might do a Green Lantern movie with Jack Black," Evan Goldberg says. "I was like, 'Really? That's a pretty cool idea—too cool to be made into a comedy.' But what we're doing—it's got a fun attitude to it, but we're trying to make it superreal, like the Bourne movies. We want the action to be really intense."
It's late in the afternoon now, and Lauren's here. She's got enviable bone structure, a lot of brown curly hair. She finds Little Bear right away, sits in the hallway with Mark and Sandy with the dog on her lap.
"You're so good," she says. "You haven't even tried to bite me once."
Rogen sees this happening. He walks over, looking like a man who's just realized he's probably getting a dog soon, whether or not he wants one.
"Does it feel that different?" he says to Lauren, indicating the dog. "This is what it would be like."
"No," she says. "But I'm already touching you less."
"I know," Rogen says. "I'm already a third banana."
He moves in closer; she pats his belly, reaches out to take his hand, but keeps an arm around the dog.
"It triangulates your relationship," Sandy Rogen says. And for a moment, with the sun warming the courthouse's terrazzo floors, there they are, Seth and Lauren and Little Bear, triangulated. Jody Hill walks by, sees Rogen and Lauren smiling at each other.
"That's a goodlooking family," he says.
Rogen looks at Lauren. Is he thinking about his future? About this triangle as a home from which comedy could spring? Then he looks down at Little Bear and says, "This dog doesn't even know he's about to get his testicles chopped off."
**Alex Pappademas ** _is a _GQ staff writer.


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Miller Christmas in Lehr, North Dakota
Electronic mail message from Kenneth Flemmer, Washington, D.C.
I have the fondest of fond memories of Christmas.
In the 50's and early 60's we often celebrated Christmas at Great Grandma (Rose) Miller's house in Lehr, ND. Her 4 children lived in the area. Her house was so small but we all jammed in. It was one of the few times in the year the "Front" room was opened. We numbered around 22. The evening stated with a feast, huge turkey the centerpiece. Various tables were used to accommodate all the food and family. This was often not on Christmas day or even eve but an evening when all could make it, not conflicting with some other obligation. This was great if it was a day early, say the 23rd, but a few times it was a day or so late. As a kid this was super bad news, the worst of the worst.
Each family brought gifts. These were placed in the bath tub, just about the only place in the house not occupied! After the meal the table needed to be cleared and the dishes put away. By this time us kids were bouncing off the walls. Finally one of the aunties would announce that we could bring out the gifts. What a mad rush. By now we were bouncing off the ceiling. They were piled high on the table with everyone around and then divided out.
Gifts were opened, youngest to oldest with Great Grandma last. Getting older, with more cousins born was a real problem as the wait was extended to intolerable lengths. When most of the younger cousins had opened their gifts they were sent to play with the toys in the next room (often this was the large bathroom!!). We thought it was for our pleasure but looking back I am sure it was for the adults' sanity!
One Christmas stands out. It must have been the mid 60s. The appointed day for the family Christmas gathering also hosted a blizzard. I am sure we were intolerable but mom and dad decided that no one in their right mind would drive down to Lehr from the Streeter Flat. Being mad and disappointed we were getting ready for bed when the phone rang (must have been around 9) chiding us for not braving the 5 mile drive to Lehr as the rest had braved the storm. I can assure you we flew out of bed and into clothes. The gifts were whisked to the car and the festivities began after a slow drive to town.
Ken Flemmer


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Hero Tower Defense: Scheduling
Now onto business. Sam and I put on our business hats and decided that the best thing for us would be to let Sam focus on getting PTD2 going and put the programming for the new HTD graphics setup on hold. The reason is a pretty clear one, more people want to see PTD2 than HTD and we're all about giving you guys what you want. However, don't mistake this to mean HTD progress is stopping. That's not true at all, all that's on hold for now is the programming part, the graphics are still being worked on. If you've been following Kevin's blow you probably already know this (linke at the bottom of this post). In fact, once Sam gets a playable version of PTD2 out he will be dedicating some extra time to HTD in order to get everything moving again. Another thing to keep in mind is that since the graphics are still being worked on in the meantime that the next release of HTD will contain even more reworked content than we originally planned for.
For those of you that have been looking forward to the next HTD release (like me) and have been patiently waiting, I apologize for the temporary delay but it's ultimately a better route for the company to take. It shouldn't be too much of a delay though really. And for those of you who want to point out Ninja-ja I'll assure you this is a different case because there is more than just one person (me) working on HTD. Plus, a new version of Ninja-ja WILL come out eventually. I just need to find time for it which is scarce these days.
Thanks for all the continued support guys!
In the Works:
- Commander/Player Skills (25%)
- Stat Progression (5%)
- Pet System (50%)
- Unit: Human Male - Animations (90%)
- Unit: Race #2 - Concepts (20%)
- Unit: Race #3 - Concepts (10%)
- Unit: Fire Gecko - Concepts (80%)
- Unit: Creature #3 - Concepts (20%)
- Unit: Creature #4 - Concepts (10%)
- Weapons: Batch #2 - Assets (20%)
- Armor: Batch #1 - Assets (10%)
- Interface: Setup (75%)
- Unit: Setup (10%)
Check out Kevin's blog, KXN @ HTD for HTD art-related concepts, WIPs, polls, and more!
Be sure to leave any ideas, suggestions, or other feedback you might have in the comments! Thanks!


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SAN DIEGO — There have been rumors down here that the Chargers might be interested in UCLA's Jim Mora as a replacement for Coach Norv Turner.
If the Holiday Bowl was an audition, Mora could not have done more to prove himself the ideal choice to be the next Chargers' head coach.
Like the Chargers do so often, the Bruins played flat and let their fans down, losing 49-26.
TIMELINE: College football 2012-13 bowl schedule
And in doing so, Mora also found a way to further irritate the faithful with the kind of play-calling that often leaves Turner looking so befuddled on the sideline.
Mora called for a field goal, his team down 35-7 and parked at the Baylor 13-yard line shortly before the half. It's the sort of thing an NFL coach would do, and to heck with disgruntled fans.


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For product availability, please select your "Ship to" state above.Got it, I'll ship to California
Saint Clair Estate Wines is owned by Neal and Judy Ibbotson, pioneers of viticulture in Marlborough since 1978. Grapes were originally supplied to local wine companies; however, a desire to extend the quality achieved in the vineyard through to the finished wine led to the establishment of Saint Clair Estate Wines.
Saint Clair Estate Wine's success is founded on the 27 years of extensive pioneering viticulture, ongoing as a critical part of the highest quality winemaking practices. Neal and Judy's passion for their Marlborough vineyards and award-winning range of wines is continuing to build their growing reputation in New Zealand and in the 35 markets around the world to which they export.
The company's mission is to create world-class wines that exceed their customers' every expectation. To achieve this, Neal Ibbotson's viticultural expertise and Marlborough's unique climate and soils are combined with the proven experience of one of New Zealand's leading winemaking teams, led by Saint Clair's chief winemaker, Matt Thomson.
Saint Clair Family Estate Origin Series Sauvignon Blanc 2017Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand


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Yet, while is still extremely early, and making long-term prognostications is early December is a foolhardy endeavor, the Knicks success seems sustainable because it is built principally upon solid defense and taking care of the basketball. If a team defends, plays with intensity, and limits turnovers – it gives itself a chance to win every night.There was certainly an awful lot of second-guessing of pretty much every move Glen Grunwald made this offseason, and through the first month or so of the season, he has to feel awfully pleased with his handy work. He may not be taking bows, but perhaps is enjoying just walking around the office to the knowing glances of, "Yeah, you're pretty much killing it right now, dude."
NBA veterans understand this. As do coaches and GM's that have been around the game for a long time. And it just so happens that the Knicks organization is chockfull such personnel.
The architect of this roster deserves immense credit for the having the foresight for putting all these puzzle pieces together. As a result, the Knicks also have a bunch of "W's" in the win column and sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference.
New York was a league-wide laughingstock for the better part of the last decade, and Glen Grunwald and Mike Woodson were forced to fend off 'old age' jokes the entire summer and all of October; but they hope to laugh last and the hardest come springtime…
It feels almost disorienting, but the Knicks may finally be run by a competent overseer who calmly assesses the costs and benefits involved in the acquisition of talent and makes decisions in the best interest of the long-term future of the team. Is that a thing that's really possible?


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Amar'e Carsares Stoudemire (pronunciation: /əˈmɑreɪ ˈstɒdəmaɪər/; born November 16, 1982) is an American professional basketball center and power forward for the New York Knicks. Taken in the first round with the ninth overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, he spent the first eight years of his career with the Phoenix Suns. He is listed by NBA.com as 6 feet 10 inches (208 cm) and 240 pounds (110 kg).
Stoudemire won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2003, made six appearances in the NBA All-Star Game, made first-team All-NBA in 2007, and won a Bronze Medal with the United States men's national basketball team at the 2004 Olympic Games.
Stoudemire's first name had previously been listed in the Phoenix Suns media guide as Amaré or Amare, but it was changed to Amar'e in October 2008. Stoudemire told NBA.com that his name had always been spelled Amar'e, but the media had been spelling it incorrectly since he joined the NBA.


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AN ACT to amend the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, by adding thereto a new section, designated §15-2-24b; and to amend and reenact §15-2A-2, §15-2A-3, §15-2A-4, §15-2A-5, §15-2A-6, §15-2A-6a, §15-2A-6c, §15-2A-6d, §15-2A-7, §15-2A-8, §15-2A-9, §15-2A-10, §15-2A-11, §15-2A-11a, §15-2A-11b, §15-2A-12, §15-2A-13, §15-2A-14, §15-2A-15, §15-2A-17 and §15-2A-19 of said code, all relating to the West Virginia State Police Retirement Fund; requiring the State Police to collect a fee for certain fingerprinting services and deposit the fees into the retirement system; adding, deleting and modifying definitions; specifying the title of West Virginia State Police Retirement System; clarifying the usage of the terms "employee", "member" and "retirant or retiree" as defined; clarifying the usage of the terms "fund", "plan", "system" or "retirement system" as defined; clarifying the usage of the term "base salary" as defined; clarifying the usage of the term "agency" as defined; authorizing the board to increase or decrease the employee's contribution rate under specified circumstances; reducing the normal retirement age for members; eliminating minimum required eligible direct rollover distributions paid directly to an eligible retirement plan; allowing distributions totaling less than two hundred dollars within the definition of "eligible rollover distribution"; clarifying the usage of the term "surviving spouse" as defined; clarifying surviving spouse payments when calculating the pro rata share of annuity adjustments; specifying the time frame that a retirant may receive deferred annuity payments; clarifying the age requirement for a retirant receiving a duty disability annuity; requiring the base salary of a member receiving a duty disability annuity to be annualized until the member has worked twelve months; specifying the title of the West Virginia Insurance Commission; clarifying the time frame for which a duty disability retirant receives a retirement benefit; specifying that disability petitions certify the job description of an employee applying for a disability retirement; specifying the time frame for receipt of awards and benefits to dependents of deceased employees; clarifying that death awards and benefits be calculated for the last full twelve-month employment period; requiring that death awards and benefits be paid to a named beneficiary or to the estate of the deceased member if there is no surviving spouse or dependents; eliminating duplicate language referring to a single receipt of state retirement benefits; and adding provisions specifying the time frame for receipt of beneficiary payments.
§15-2-24b. Fees for certain fingerprinting services; dedication of fees.
§15-2A-3. Continuation and administration of West Virginia State Police Retirement System; leased employees; federal qualification requirements.
Participation in system; continuation of fund.
§15-2A-5. Employee contributions; employer contributions; forfeitures.
§15-2A-6d. Rollovers and transfers to purchase service credit or repay withdrawn contributions.
§15-2A-8. Refunds to certain members upon discharge of resignation; deferred retirement.
§15-2A-9. Awards and benefits for disability -- Incurred in performance of duty.
§15-2A-11a. Physical examinations of prospective members; application for disability benefit; determinations.
§15-2A-11b. Annual report on each employer's disability retirement experience.
§15-2A-12. Awards and benefits to dependents of employees or retirants - When employee dies in performance of duty, etc.; dependent child scholarship and amount.
§15-2A-13. Same -- When member dies from nonservice-connected causes before serving twenty years.
§15-2A-14. Awards and benefits to dependents of member -- When member dies after retirement or after serving twenty years.
§15-2A-15. Exemption from taxation, garnishment and other process; exception for certain qualified domestic relations orders.
§15-2A-17. Awards and benefits to dependents of member -- Termination.
§15-2A-19. Credit toward retirement for member's prior military service; credit toward retirement when member has joined armed forces in time of armed conflict; qualified military service.


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Before beginning the Jazz BFA, each student is issued a booklet that describes the minimum skills that must be developed on his or her instrument to demonstrate basic instrumental proficiency. Upon entry, all students are evaluated based on these guidelines. Students placing "in proficiency" (IP) are required to take private lessons with an assigned teacher deemed appropriate to the individual's needs. Proficiency requirements and instrumental faculty are subject to change. Meeting proficiency standards is a graduation requirement.
Before the start of their first semester, students are also evaluated by selected faculty members in theory, ear training, rhythmic analysis, piano (for non-piano majors), sight-reading, theory and performance, and arranging. The test results are used to determine placement in required core studio courses. The tests also enable the faculty and administration to develop an overall evaluation of each student. Once students are placed in appropriate courses, they must complete the curriculum requirements in order to graduate. Requirements are as follows:
All BFA students must take 15 credits in liberal arts (five 3-credit courses), of which at least two must be English composition or literature courses, two must be drawn from The New School's University Lecture (ULEC) curriculum, and the remaining course must be a liberal arts elective. Jazz students are expected to fulfill their liberal arts requirements by selected courses from Eugene Lang College and the liberal arts curriculum at the Schools of Public Engagement. Courses taken at other institutions will be treated as transfer credits. The remaining 2 credits must be a required Senior Seminar course at the School of Jazz at The New School. Liberal arts courses are defined as academic courses as opposed to "applied" or professional training.
All students must take five music history courses, for a total of 15 credits.
The sophomore jury is generally held at the end of the student's second year, or for transfer students, at the end of the student's first year. It is meant to evaluate each student's competence as a jazz performer, check on his or her overall progress toward graduation, and help assess his or her direction and development.
Jury Guidelines: The student prepares ten (20 for vocalists) tunes of contrasting styles from a standard repertoire list. The jury committee selects three of the tunes, and the student performs them with a professional rhythm section. Each jury session lasts 20 minutes. The committee consists of three faculty members.
All songs must be memorized, but students must bring charts already transposed for accompanying musicians. Students are evaluated on the basis of their punctuality, presentation of material, instrumental or vocal command and improvisational skill, rhythmic sophistication, band leadership, and communication with both the band and the audience.
Completing the sophomore repertoire jury is a graduation requirement.
The Senior Seminar is a cohort-based capstone for graduating seniors that prompts students to think reflectively about their purpose, practice, and engagement as artists in society. This course is aimed at fostering dialogue and collaboration within the graduating class cohort, supporting seniors in developing presentations of their work through portfolios and recitals, and forging meaningful connections to professional engagement beyond their undergraduate study.
The Senior Recital should reflect the student's growth, both technically and artistically, as a musician. The recital is a formal performance, to take place in the school's performance space.
The senior recital must be completed and meet programmatic guidelines before the student can graduate.
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Admission ContactKevin Smith55 West 13th Street, 6th floorNew York, NY 10011212.229.5150 or firstname.lastname@example.com