Skin

She released the first single of her new album today, "Make Me...", it's very 90's Janet Jackson inspired, you can definitely tell the influences especially on the second verses. It also reminds me of TLC for some reason too, I would definitely peg this as a nostalgic 96-98' kind of sound, with some pretty nice updated production, the bass guitar and the synths in particular are heavenly in this. Britney sounds good on this too. Seems like she is progressing her sound out of the dance-sphere which I am happy about. She's mined all that she is going to get from that musical sphere. There's a rent-a-rapper, for cross format airplay purposes, but it works just as well, if not better, without him.

I think the issue with that comes from Andrew Haigh, I remember when she said something to the effect of the second season premiere that Patrick was missing Richie and when he saw a Richie look alike it was supposed to symbolize, Patrick missing Richie which is why he called Kevin, and had sex with him in the woods. This interpretation of events, literally made no sense to the viewing audience, and most people read the scene as Patrick having the chance to hook up with the Richie look alike, but declining that invitation to call Kevin and screw him in the woods. Overall the writing just didn't make any sense, and they never really grounded the Richie and Patrick relationship enough to make their relationship viable. Patrick was ashamed of Richie more then he really wanted to be with him, which is why Kevin and Patrick more or less "worked" because they were on more equally footing with what Patrick wanted for himself in a partner.

Yeah they cleaned up with nominations (5)

3 in Supporting Actress and 2 in Supporting Actor.

I feel like they are really planting the seeds for Dom/Patrick

Hilary named CIA personnel in her personal emails, and put their lives at risk on her personal email server.

 

None of this will matter though, I'm starting to think nothing Hilary does at this point will be considered illegal, they'll still let Hilary walk right into the white house.

That makes no type of sense. I voted for something but never wanted it to actually happen.

Yeah looks like Patrick/Richie is almost a certainty. But Dom is a potential spoiler, which is kind of odd in that Dom has been such a background character for most of all of season 2.

 

 

I don't think that's the democrats problem. Democrats seem to grow more rapidly than republicans do in most voting elections in regards to growth. I think we've seen that through out the last two elections, the problem is largely that the democrats are so large that they end up fracturing at certain points and they have so many agenda's through their voting populace that it's hard to unite them all under one broad banner. Democrats are home to pretty much every minority and minority sympathize known in the country more or less. Republicans are the ones who alienate everyone who isn't a white male, basically. This will eventually end up killing their party if the can't transition to the 21st century sometime soon.

Two seasons in one year.

I completely forgot about Arya being blind this season. It makes sense that she would have the advantage in the dark, and it made the extended chase scene justifiable.

Mostly I just think they are stuck in the past, I admit I used to think like this, when I was younger, or at least I could follow the logic back in the day where one would need to arm themselves against someone else who had a weapon. But then I realized that the advancements the military has received in the past few years is far beyond the capabilities of what a regular citizen would be able to combat. So that's already chalked up to as a "loss." 

 

I've been reading a lot online about these individuals who feel that "good guys with guns" shouldn't be penalized for other shooters, and that it is our right to have guns and no one should take that away from anyone. But it's plainly obvious that everyone should not have a gun. When does their right to have a gun preclude my right to live? There should definitely be psychological evaluations, stricter laws for those who can't responsibly handle their firearms as well as more difficulty in acquiring a gun.

Well this is what you get when you follow the ideology of I am only going to vote for the most likely to win candidate. You end up in a position where you are only voting based on who you theorize the winner will be, not whose policy profile you truly believe in. I think that is the biggest issue with both parties to this day. This is why I don't think unity makes sense, you have different values being prioritized and no one is ever going to be satisfied with what is presented, which is why people need to vote for the things that mean the most to them, and look for candidates that have platforms which mean something to them, and support them. Branch off, break apart, and support the causes that mean the most you.  

 

It's a sad thing but too often I hear people say, "Oh well, it won't matter, Trump will win anyway" or "My vote doesn't matter this other candidate is going to win anyway." The two party system gives no favors for people who want other alternatives.

 

I've read some of the vitriol online from many Sanders supporters and wonder what would that solve? I even see a split between some Sanders supporters, some who are vitriolic- many who are insulting Elizabeth Warren as I type this, while others are disavowing that vitriol.  I don't think that people should assume that their is unity even among Sanders supporters but it will be interesting to see where the movement goes from here.  Whether it is built upon, the way that the Civil Rights movement adapted and moved in various directions after the Voting Rights act was passed or whether it stagnates or corrodes from within like far too many revolutionary movements have done.  I hope that the positive part of the movement (minus the vitriol) can sustain itself and change the way politics is conducted.  You don't need to burn everything else to do it.

 

I don't think of it as burning so much as I view it as a deep incompatibility between Clinton's policies and Sanders. Hillary just released a video not too long ago where she blatantly says she was unmoved by Sander's campaign and that her view still stand the same as the day she announced her candidacy in the democratic primary. If there has been no compromise or move to her policy ideas, then what is there to unify and integrate? The audiences are seemingly to different to just accept Clinton's beliefs and discard their own values and ideas of how things should be. These candidates are not alike, and have many differences, and as such I do not see an easy integration, especially as Hillary is a very divisive figure and has been ever since her earlier 2008 campaign, which also had similar negative connotations.

I largely don't think this matters, his policies found a home in the democratic party enough to get people to vote for him in significant amounts. How he got there as an independent or not is irrelevant. Bernie being farther left than the typical democratic obviously didn't matter to his supporters. It obviously hurt him in super delegates, but that's an establishment issue that further highlights Bernie's platform of government being controlled by oligarchs, and wall street running America.

Interesting that you posit the opinion that he established himself as a democratic to receive attention, when in reality he has been the least covered political candidate the entire race. Ultimately his policy positions held enough weight with voters to gain him a following to make him a rival to Hillary with voters that lasted nearly the entire primary season. I just don't see why everyone has been so dismissive of him, in light of all he achieved. He was not a slouch. By comparison he far out paced many of his other primary rivals, and performed well against Hillary. There is something to his decision not to drop out. Despite what people may believe, in their support for Hillary being the best for a quick election win in November.

I am a person of color, so I am not sure what you are saying here. There has been this conflation that if you are a person of color then you automatically should vote for Hillary, (this narrative has been particularly damaging all through out, there has also been a similar narrative of if you are a woman you should vote for Hillary too, and that is also tiring) and I just think that thought process is flawed and wrong.

Doing a quick wiki viewing Nader topped out at around 2 million voters during an election year sometime in the 00's. Bernie's platform is 5 times larger then that in primary season. I don't see a link between them. Bernie isn't some odd ball candidate that can't gain a following, after five campaign seasons. His platform actually is pretty powerful, and popular by comparison.

I think it's more important for people to vote their conscience, then to vote to stop someone else from winning. That fear is how things stay the same forever, and how progression dies. If people don't believe in Hillary, then it makes absolutely no sense for them to vote for her. If the Republican's are truly unhappy with Trump then they should do the same, instead of just following him for a win.

No I think people are becoming tired of things never really changing and things only getting worse. It might not happen now, but I think the more important thing is that it could, and maybe it should. I won't pretend that I know anything about Ralph Nader, but Bernie's 10 million votes account for more then just a minor/fringe voting population.

 

Also the Republican's shouldn't be looked at as a system of functional political strategy, they seem completely at odds with what today's America is moving toward, and seems perpetually ignorant to the rights and needs of women, gays, minorities and immigrants.

This might all be for the best, I think. I actually hope that Bernie doesn't fold, and moves to the green party and takes all of his voters with him. It's clear that the democrats never really gave him a chance, and that they never considered him an actual player compared to Hillary, and he pretty much surprised them all by getting as many votes as he did. Maybe if he goes to the green party, America will finally break out of it's two party system, and real change can be possible rather then swinging back and forth between an endless pendulum.

 

It's clear that there are a lot of people that do not want to vote for Hilary or are reluctant to, and need a real alternative to her. If they don't provide it I fear historically low turn outs come election day of voters who feel completely disenfranchised by the voting process. Never have I heard or seen so many stories about voter suppression, media bias blackouts, and closed primary controversies as I have this election season. I think denying the voters, that opportunity would be a drastic mistake at this juncture. Despite everything that went against Bernie this political race he still managed to match up to 80% of the votes Hilary received, once you take away super delegates which means Hillary won with only a fifth of the vote of the democratic party.

 

With that in mind, Bernie should stay in this race to give a voice to those people who feel the establishment is harming them. Hilary isn't that voice for them, and she doesn't share the same values, ideas and beliefs that Sander's voters do. In such they should be able to choose a candidate that will reflect their views. The party cannot be unified because the party has completely different thoughts on what it needs. Let the party split and let people vote their conscious.

Why are they premiering it on a Saturday? Game Of Thrones will be over in June. Why not stick it in one of the Sunday spots where it initially aired?

Sansa is not driving anything at this point. Sansa is a wholy reactive character. Joffery, Ramsey, Little Finger, etc. are the catalysts to her story, and are the reason for pretty much everything that has ever happened to her. Dany, Cersei and even Arya are catalyst, active characters in which the lead their own stories, and activate their own sagas by their own actions and choices for better or for worse. Sansa for pretty much the entire duration of her character has been a tool utilized by other people to get what they want and nothing more. The main criticism everyone talks about in regards to Sansa is her lack of agency in her own storylines, until that changes I don't see how one can say Sansa is having a "great year." When she is still being utilized as a tool for another male character, and is an accessory to another storyline she isn't controlling or in a dominate position in, in this case Jon's.

Saying that Sansa is having a great year is a bit much. Unifying her with Jon and Brienne has been an undeniable high point for the character, but a lot of that is plot mechanized. The pay off comes from story positioning more than anything else. She is much more likely to be able to drive plot now, as she is no longer a perpetual chess piece being utilized by everyone and their mother, but that's a pyrrhic victory at this point, because the character seems eternally lost.. 

 

Sansa still feels empty in relation to similar female leads on this show such as Dany, Cersei  and even Arya who have continually defined and re-defined themselves season after season. Watch her scenes in the last episode, compared to say Dany, for instance and she just ends up coming up so short. Same with Cersei, and it belabors the problem with Sansa's character. She's been stuck in a statis of perpetual victimhood for so long, that it is hard to see her as anything else, and we've lost a great amount of salient character construction for Sansa over the last consecutive seasons. Does anyone even remember who this woman was before Jeoffery used her as his personal play toy to torture day in and day out? I don't.

 

Her uniting with Jon is purely political, and lacks a great deal of sentimental attachment that would have been there had it been a reunification of Jon and Arya for instance, and that's another issue and of itself. Sansa isn't attached to anyone or anything, anymore, and she has lost touch with so much of what once made her who she was that it's hard to see her as being tangible to a lot of the things happening now. Jon could probably do a lot of the things he is doing now on his own, without Sansa. She's a help but the plot was going this way a long time ago, it doesn't help that Jon and Sansa barely had any relationship at all, and as such a lot of their interactions feels unearned. Even if they come from the same family.     

This season is better than last, but there are still a few things that aren't tracking for me, but they are relatively minor. Bran is really injecting some much needed life to this Walker's drama, which is pointedly needed, because it's always been the weakest part of the series. Jon facing off against them last season, and then basically acting as if they didn't exist because no one would believe him crippled the progression of this story. But it's being brought back. *Is it Bran or Rickon,  I can't tell because these two children always felt the most ignored in the series). I don't know how much traction the show is going to get out of Jon the reluctant ruler story, they seem to be going, but I am hoping it ends soon. He's the character I feel the audience is the most invested seeing take what is his and create order in the north.

 

I am so happy to hear Dany being connected to Westeros in a larger context with the Greyjoy's, now that she may finally have Mereen and the Dothroaki secured and all of Slaver's Bay united, she is the one I am most excited about taking over and exerting control over the ridiculousness going on with Cersi, Jamie and Tyrell's. Ever since Tywin died, I can't be bothered to care about that mess anymore with the capital and the High Sparrow. I just need Dany to take control of it and have that be the end of it.

 

Ramsey finally has a purpose, for the first time in I don't know how long, I finally feel he has a reason to be on this show outside of gratuitous torture porn, and the show having the biggest crush on him. He is still a worthless character, but there is some utility in him in that he is finally becoming this big bad that unites the Stark children. This almost makes all the airtime he consumed in the previous seasons worth it. Almost.  

 

Is it wrong that I wanted Sansa to make the deal with Little Finger? They need a bigger army to destroy Ramsey, and if they fail she will just go right back to whatever horror Ramsey will inflict on her. The north is fractured. She needs as much help as she can get.

 

I get what you are saying but I am not there yet. Sansa has not had a break out moment where she has felt as if she was in complete control, they may be building to that, but even now she still feels as if she is an instrument or an accessory to move chess pieces where they may.

Beyoncé has been planning this tour since the Super Bowl. I don't think she really cares anymore about the typical album-tour release schedule like a lot of artists. Similar to Rihanna. She goes on tour and releases her album whenever and whatever way she wants. This album is supposedly her least commercial effort yet, and she supposedly stopped performing her most popular songs on her most recent tour. She really isn't playing the game anymore.

I've hated Ramsey since the moment I laid eyes on him. I feel like the writers have such a crush on him, so I feel we're stuck with him until the end of this season, if not the end of the series.

This show is horrible. It's not even the break neck pacing that's the issue, it's that nothing seems connected in any real way and Empire tries to be like 5 different shows every other week, which destroys every narrative story it tries to implement within record time.