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gigi-tastic

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Posts posted by gigi-tastic

  1. Posted

    There were a surprisingly large number of ways you could legally get alcohol without having to abandon your knocked up fiancee on Christmas during Prohibition. You could brew your own wine legally, up to 200 gallons a year, and you could even have a doctor write you a prescription for medicinal alcohol. Those prescriptions could be for a wide variety of things to from insomnia to depression.  If you still needed a kick there was always religion! Religious exemptions for things like sacramental wine were allowed. And many beer companies sold this stuff called malt syrup that you could basically add yeast and water too to ferment at home. Wine makers sold a similar thing for wine that was like a concentrated  wine brick.  Would these ways save your struggling inn and the only reason your soon to be father in law thinks your worth anything? Maybe not but I don't think they would get you murdered either

    scaletowidth#tl-443819241028714497;10431

    This is an example of an alcohol prescription.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/during-prohibition-your-doctor-could-write-you-prescription-booze-180947940/

    • Like 2

  2. Posted

    1 hour ago, taylor anne photo said:

    I think my favorite thing about that birth certificate photo isn't anything you listed, but the fact that this movie has Daniel pegged as a man from the 1920s when this in fact reveals he died December 24th 1919. He never even made it to the 20s.

    This also begs the question of the whole idea surrounding him being a "rum runner" during Prohibition. For his final 6 months of life there was a technical war time prohibition on anything with an alcohol content greater that 1.28%. In October 1919 they did finally pass the Volstead Act, which banned the sale of all alcohol, but the country lacked the resources to enforce it at the time. To me this means that the idea of rum running probably didn't even become a thing until the actual 20s, because the country was not actually considered "dry" until January of 1920. After Daniel's death.

    So technically his job as a rum runner would not exist or if it Dr it wouldn't be as profitable.  Like unless he's stockpiling like a crazed alcoholic doomsday prepper his job is pointless?  Wait I take that back! Actually people often get this key fact about prohibition wrong: the only thing illegal was the *sale and manufacturing of alcohol*NOT the drinking of it. SO TECHNICALLY any alcohol people had after January 1920 was theirs to do with as they pleased as long as it was for personal use. In fact many wealthy people did have large stocks of wine and other libations. So him becoming a mad booze squirrel desperately trying to stockpile alcohol for the dry years ahead would make a weird kind of sense ...

    • Like 2

  3. Posted

    3 hours ago, Kothel said:

    Totally agree. I was coming here to say almost exactly this. Remember that while drinking during prohibition was harmless (except to one's own liver), bootlegging was an extremely violent industry. Prohibition created a lot more problems than it solved. Daniel was involved with people who were willing to kill anyone who quit. And this is very clearly a world where Heaven exists. That seems to be where Lily is headed at the end (unless it's to be reincarnated somewhere, but the implication seemed to clearly be that she and Daniel would be together for eternity). 

    I also wanted to add to the hosts trashing of Molly, the tavern owner/innkeeper love interest. Daniel says he's the best bartender around, and then something like, "Come here tonight and you can test the veracity of my claim."  And she says, "Well I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll come tonight." The only tough word there is veracity. I'm 37 and if an age appropriate lady told me on a date that she didn't know the word veracity, I would walk out. How do you make it to middle-age and never hear the word veracity? Maybe I'm a vocab snob but total turnoff. 

    Lastly, the names they chose for the two brothers, Patrick and Daniel, were the two most common names for Irish men near that period. (To test the veracity of my claim, simply listen to the song "No Irish Need Apply" where the singer says "Some may think it a misfortune to be christened Pat or Dan, but to me it is an honor to be born an Irish man"). I thought it was weird to make one sound French-Canadian and the other really WASP-y. 

     

    I would have to disagree with you on the fact that drinking during Prohibition was relatively harmless. The United States Government actually poisoned industrial alcohol knowing it would be stolen and used to drink. Originally commercial/ industrial alcohol became "denatured", by adding chemicals to make it unpleasant to drink so people couldn't avoid a tax on beverages.  It wasn't stopping bootleggers though who hired chemists of their own to "renature" or just masked the taste anyway they could. So the government decided to add even more chemicals into industrial alcohol knowing that they would potentially kill people. They did it anyway hoping those deaths would serve as warnings to others.  It should be noted that only those who were poor would have been affected by the deadly alcohol. Rich people could afford to buy actual whiskey and other libations .  This doesn't even cover how deadly some home made booze could be. 

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    20 hours ago, taylor anne photo said:

    I'm not sure if you grew up Catholic or not, but this was not a thing I knew about until my lapsed Catholic friends talked about how they celebrated this, so I assume this idea was really heavily adopted in only certain subsets of Christianity. Cause my Methodist ass certainly was never raised to give a fuck past the 26th lmao.

    Also, slight correction on the amount of Hallmark movies each year lmao. I work in graphics for a TV listings company so I have direct contact with Hallmark's graphics in order to make sure everything shows up properly when these movies air. They premiered 40 new Christmas movies this year, and they started airing them on October 26th, because fuck Halloween right?

    One more point, because this is extremely important in my household, Hallmark has three channels (the main one, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, & Hallmark Drama) and ALL of them have been taken over by their Christmas agenda. Why does this matter? Because on HMM every night at 11 PM CST they air two back to back episodes of the one and only Murder She Wrote. This means since literally the end of October my house has been without Jessica Fletcher in a free manner and this is a TRAVESTY!

    It's a Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran thing I think? And more importantly Murder She Wrote is free to stream with Amazon Prime ! Never be without a murder in Cabot Cove again!

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    So I know I'm always going to be disappointed in "historical" clothing on something like this but holy fuck. While Lily wouldn't be fully outfitted as a flapper ( because the flapper didn't exist yet), the Volstead Act was passed in January of 1920. So we have to assume this takes place in the December of that year at the earliest. If he's been at this for a while like he said he was maybe it's a year later? Either way  they had her outfitted in some Edwardian bullshit. True she lives in a sleepy little inn but they said her widowed father had come from Boston. She would have been aware of current fashion at least up to then. Even in sleepy little nowhere you could get magazines and catalogs. In fact that's how many people kept up with things and we owe such publications a debt of gratitude because they have helped us see how life was like then. Advertising alone is an invaluable tool to get an insight into how people dressed and lived. For example basically everything Daniel was wearing was an even  bigger  historical fashion sin than poor Lily. At least I can allow she might have a very old dress. He was wearing a suit from Men's Warehouse for fucks sake!  if you look at this ad from 1920 for a tailoring service you can see how different the suits aresljlek2jqtvbfs.jpg,

    Jackets were much longer  and he clearly doesn't have a hipster White Supremacist hair cut. 

    This is a link to the December 1st 1920 issue of Vogue. https://archive.vogue.com/article/19201201065

     

    You have to be a member to read the full article but the photos of the drawings you can see are great.

    for reference here's a time line of the decade from Glamourdaze an amazing historical fashion resource: 1920s-DRESS-TIMELINE-eveningwear.jpgt

     

    and yes I'm up on Christmas Eve obsessing about this because some fucking asshole children are playing football extremely loudly at ONE IN THE FUCKING MORNING and I'm too sober for this shit.

    • Like 3

  6. Posted

    23 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    Regarding toys for 4-year-olds, I think the caller might be stressing about it a bit too much. Like Paul said, kids that age really aren’t too savvy about what they want. To them, everything is new and you can never really tell what’s going to resonate or not. Even with my own kids, I’ve bought my kids stuff that I thought they would love only for them to be apathetic about it. Which, I agree with Paul, is almost worse than getting them nothing. I have also seen them fall in love with stuff that I never would have guessed. For example, I did a charity run a couple weeks ago and they gave us participation gifts (or whatever you call it) that included a cheap, plush Chik-fil-a cow. My youngest son sleeps with it every night 🙄

     I would suggest either doing what Paul suggests and ask the parents (even though that’s not even 100%) or just find something that looks cool to you. I would avoid licensed stuff unless you know for a fact the kid is into that specific character. Your best bet is to go with something arts and crafty. Something they can actually do something with. 

    However, whatever you do, don’t get things that make noise. I have an almost identical story to Paul’s regarding a toy train. These things get so loud it actually hurts your ears when you turn them off. And when you finally get fed up and take the toy away because it’s “broken,” you have to deal with disappointed children - which is never fun.

    Oh I was deeply stressed, children terrify me especially really young ones! Thankfully I have figured it out I'm getting him tickets for the local children's museum/ science museum because someone else suggested that I give an experience. If that fails we go with Candy Land!

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    4 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    I liked it okay. It has all the trappings of most biopics. Rene Zellweger is pretty good.

    It's focusing on her final weeks as a performer. So, it's not uplifting. It covers her childhood and, though it's shown as not great, I still think it kind of glossed over how bad it really was for her.

    I know that Liza said she wouldn't see it. Apparently she  doesn't watch portrayals of herself or her mother and thinks that this film would be particularly painful. As a person whose lost their mother tragically , I can't imagine how I would feel to see a movie based on the lower points of her life. I'm torn on seeing it because I know it's kind of dark and personally I can read all about how much someone struggled in a biography but seeing it acted on screen for some reason hurts more? 

    • Like 2

  9. Posted

    22 hours ago, joshg said:

    At the risk of stating the obvious, I just want to point out that "Strings and Dance" competitions are not a thing. Sure, there are dance competitions. But they dance to something called MUSIC, not any one particular instrument.  Why distinguish strings from, say, woodwinds or percussion? Are they judging the playing or are they judging the dancing?  If they're supposed to be judging the overall symbiosis between the two art forms, then who gives a shit what kind of instruments are playing the music? What happens if Group B had the best dancing but Group C had the best violinist? There were 3 judges on that panel.  We would assume that at least one was a dance expert and another was a violin expert. How would they be expected to agree on anything? it's like speaking different languages. There very much do exist string competitions...there are competitions for every instrument.  But the judges are experts on that instrument, and aren't going to be distracted by another discipline which they know nothing about. On America's Got Talent the 4 judges have different backgrounds or areas of expertise, but the point is they are judging based on commercial appeal across the board, not artistic merit as they would do in a conservatory.

    Add to these complications the fact that the three groups were performing completely different styles. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that there was a dancer and a string player.  One had ballet and a back-up orchestra. The other was faux-hip-hop with an urban dance crew. With all those variables (and only three entrants) it's a miracle they picked anyone.

     

    Finally, if Johnny was so against formal classical training, why did he have "sforzando" tattooed on his arm, an Italian term only used in formal classical score-reading?

     

    I want to know what makes the strings instruments so special. Do they do wind instruments and dance competitions as well? Like just a bunch of competitions with each musical instrument section giving away millions in cash and scholarships? Because I am *almost* here for that nonsense! I'm dying to see a hand bell performer and a tap dancer take to the stage ! 

    God can you imagine how pissed off other musical students would be to be denied the chance for that money and scholarship?

  13. Posted

    3 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    Also I want to ask one more question, what's the age range?

    It seems on one hand post-secondary because they are going out drinking, but yet they have kids their practicing music. Do those kids have tutors their for their regular schooling? 

    I assumed those young kids were musical prodigies. God they probably ruined practice for the next Mozart with their bullshit. These dancers must be stopped!

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    Did anyone else get upset when the Bad Boys of Violin began dueling with their bows?  I always thought those were fragile! So I googled and apparently BOWS ARE FUCKING EXPENSIVE . At the cheapest you can get one for $50 to under $100 for a fiberglass bow. Carbon fiber is $50- $300. But our Bad Boys look like they have wood bows. That's gonna set you back $50 for a cheap brazilwood into the $1,000s. You can apparently go well over $5,000 for a bow. A violin bow should cost 20-25% of your violin.   Something tells me Bad Boy Violinists don't buy cheap bows.

    https://orchestracentral.com/ufaqs/much-violin-bow-cost/

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    So does the school want Ruby to fail? She's clearly a trained and skilled ballet dancer and I assume that's what got her the scholarship. However, she admits in the first contemporary class that she has zero experience with contemporary dance. The first day at the school she's told there is no dress code for contemporary dance and she asks what she should wear. Instead of getting a straight answer from the head teacher she gets "Use your imagination." How is that helpful? She doesn't do that kind of dancing and you know that because you just read her bio. What is the harm in saying something helpful? Then she's called out in the first class and after the second class. She has zero experience and you're trying to pull the "It's because she has so much potential." Bullshit. She's had two days and you're already threatening to kick her out even though she promises to start getting better. If you really thought she had potential you would give her actual instruction rather than berate her after her first attempt. Then what? A week goes by and you are threatening to end her scholarship because she's not showing enough improvement in something she literally just started? Maybe wait until the end of the first term or something. Fuck you dance conservatory.

    I find it odd that she says she's never done contemporary. If she's a dancer in today's world it's kind of impossible for her to NEVER have taken Contemporary classes. How did she get in this school with nothing but ballet? Yes she's a ballet dancer ( and a very good one at that) but many ballet dancers now take several kinds of dance and Contemporary is one of the main ones. She would have probably started dancing at a young age and should have had at least a few years under her belt. Also some of the criticisms of her problems in the Contemporary class I could remember had to do with her lines and angles. Ballet is all about the lines of the body and the angles.  Those aspects of Contemporary would have been the most similar to ballet I would think? 

    Also I thought that the big dance finale would have her using contemporary style. But I don't think she did anything but ballet. She might have done more modern ballet but that was ballet as far as I could tell. 

    • Like 3

  17. Posted

    So "crematiing your pointes" is a thing. Pointe shoes can be worn through REALLY quickly. It's a way to keep your shoes going longer and stay stiff.  I don't know if I've ever heard of the term in my reading on the history of ballet, but according to a dancer wear blog I found one way to do this is "Some dancers also use this method to revitalize dead shoes: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Swirl a floor polish like Mop and Glow inside the pointe shoes, the pour out the excess.  Place the shoes on a baking sheet covered in foil, and place them in the oven.  Turn the oven off, and let the shoes sit in the oven 8 hours or overnight.  The polish will re-harden the box and shank of the shoes, but it stains the satin a yellowish color and makes them super stiff.  This method is not exact, and it will take experimenting to find the perfect amount of polish.  Practice this method on an old pair of shoes you don't need before you try it with the pair you are wearing. "

    http://thedancewearguru.blogspot.com/2014/10/how-to-make-pointe-shoes-last-longer.html

    I found a lot of recommendations to use Jet Glue which I think is pointe shoe glue?  I also saw on a dance forum that some recommended putting shoes in the freezer for a brief fix.  Or to use shellac

    http://www.dance.net/topic/8757237/1/Pointe-Beginners/Rehardening-pointe-shoes.html&replies=1

    • Like 5

  20. Posted

    I haven't listened to the episode yet , in fact I just started the movie. I paused it after 2 minutes because I NEED to talk about how insane it is that Brit Boy is  playing violin shirtless.( Sorry if this is discussed! I'm in a full tiz!) Some people get these sort of chafed red marks on their neck and sometimes throat / collar bone area. They are known as "violin hickeys" or "Fiddlers Neck". In fact when selling a rare Stradivari violin only people who had a "violin hickey" could try the instrument at Christies auction house .  Some people get really painful cysts and lesions that can get infected. 

    Not everyone who plays gets one though.  There's been a theory that some people are allergic to the woods I the violin or the metals while others think it's the playing style. 

    According to Wikipedia the cause of this can be ( I'm only going to be putting the important info to prove my case) " ....Hot weather is reported to exacerbate fiddler's neck, as are tiredness, playing emotional music, and playing in smaller groups where individual stress is higher.[2] Type I hypersensitivity reactions may also be involved, particularly to rosewood and ebony in the chinrest and tailpiece, as well as to varnish of the instrument body when chinrests are not used and to rosin deposits on the instrument and on chin cloths. "  

    So technically Brit Boy ( I refuse to give him a name)  said that he burns with his music. Maybe it's just really hot in that million dollar loft?  Hence playing shirtless?  And he sure as hell wasn't using a chin cloth. He seems under the impression his music is deep and full of *emotions* ...

    In conclusion this idiot is gonna get Fiddler's Neck all over his damn shoulder if he doesn't put a shirt on.

    • Like 3

  21. Posted

    19 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

     

    Sorry to disappoint but both are just direct translations. Well Parasite has a subtitle so it is "Parasite: Semibasement/Partialy Underground Family" The word they use doesn't really have an English word. Like in the ground but not underground, like a sunken living room or a subbasement.

    I'm actually looking forward to the new year. Parasite mid January, Jojo Rabbit the next week, then Knives Out a week or so after that and the Midsummer after that. With Cats and few other things in between.

    I'm DYING to see Knives Out! I hate going to the movie theater because it's always so loud but I really can't wait for it to stream. I've been excited since TIFF

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    4 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    I want to take a poll. So early in the rotation we had Easter Parade which had Judy Garland and Fred Astaire and now we have Summer Stock which is Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. Now I don't want to start the Astaire vs Kelly debates again too much, but which pairing do you think or if you recall had more chemistry or was just the general better match up?

    Kelly all the way. Astaire is great but I honestly like him for his dancing most of all . I never seem to see anyone but Fred Astaire in his roles

    • Like 2

  24. Posted

    29 minutes ago, Omaxem said:

    Gene Kelly is so attractive ( to me ) that i can't see anything with him in it. I just... zone... out.

    I know he was straight, i know he wasn't nice to his co-stars in Singing In The Rain, i know he is dead. I don't care.

    Sorry, i just needed to get that off my chest and onto the internets.

    I literally said out loud at least five times " Christ he's hot" or various versions of that. Gene Kelly  can GET IT even in the great beyond.

    • Like 5
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