the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.
Darlings, lend an ear & mind your hems, because this is one of those proper Hollywood fairytales stitched not in satin modesty but in rhinestone audacity!
Born Nuta Kotlyarenko (Нута Котляренко, if you fancy the Cyrillic), on a wintry December day in 1902, this Ukrainian émigré reinvented himself under the razzle dazzle handle Nudie Cohn, & by heaven did he earn it! By the time America had clocked him properly, he was less a tailor & more a one man spectacle… the sort who turned a sewing machine into a confetti cannon. Nudie didn’t merely make clothes… he gilded the West! Stone by sparkling stone, until cowboys looked like kings & singers strutted as though the sun itself had taken notes.
Nudie & his wife Helen Kruger packed themselves off to California in the early Forties, doing what so many hopeful souls did: setting up shop in a garage & getting on with it. There, amid oil stains & optimism… they cut, stitched, & dreamed. The legend goes that in 1947, Nudie persuaded a young and skint country singer, Tex Williams, to flog a horse at auction & buy him a sewing machine with the proceeds. Fair swap, mind you: in return, Nudie kitted Williams out. That humming machine turned out to be worth its weight in gold lamé, because before long the word was out. The look caught on. The sparkle spread.
Soon enough, the Cohns flung open the doors of ‘Nudie’s of Hollywood’, perched at the corner of Victory Boulevard & Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood, dealing exclusively in Western wear, which at the time was frightfully the thing. Only this wasn’t your standard cowboy clobber. Nudie took the already flamboyant Western style & sent it up like a Catherine wheel. Rhinestones were lobbed on by the handful, chain stitch embroidery told entire epics across backs & trouser legs, & themes galloped everywhere: wagons, wheels, moons, stars, UFOs, songs…
One of the earliest jaw droppers came in 1962, when Nudie dreamt up a peach coloured suit for Porter Wagoner, positively dripping in rhinestones, complete with a covered wagon blazing across the back & wagon wheels rolling down the legs. Nudie didn’t even charge him! Why would he? Wagoner was walking publicity, a moving hoarding with a microphone. Nudie’s gamble paid off handsomely. Orders poured in. By 1963 the business had outgrown its seams & relocated to a bigger spread on Lankershim Boulevard, rebadged with rodeo bravado as ‘Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors’.
What followed was nothing short of sartorial folklore. Many of his designs became inseparable from the stars who wore them. Elvis Presley shimmered in a $10,000 gold lamé suit, immortalised on the sleeve of “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong”. Hank Williams was wrapped in white, his cowboy suit singing with musical notation stitched along the sleeves. Gram Parsons went gloriously rogue in the suit he wore on ‘The Gilded Palace of Sins’: pills, poppies, marijuana leaves, naked ladies, & a whopping great cross, all splashed across fabric like a confessional gone psychedelic.
Hollywood came knocking too. Roy Rogers & Dale Evans rode the silver screen in Nudie finery. Robert Redford swaggered in one of his creations for ‘Electric Horseman’. Rock royalty followed suit, quite literally, with Jimmy Page stepping out in a black dragon embroidered number that burned itself into memory… & the client list? Pure name dropping heaven! John Lennon, John Wayne, Gene Autry, George Jones, Cher, Ronald Reagan, Elton John, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, Michael Landon, Glen Campbell, Michael Nesmith, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, & whole bands besides. ZZ Top even posed in their Nudie suits for the cover of ‘Fandango!’, beards & bling in perfect harmony!
Porter Wagoner later admitted he’d amassed 52 Nudie suits, each costing the price of a small house, while Belgian entertainer Bobbejaan Schoepen collected 35 full stage outfits, making his hoard the biggest in Europe. Clearly, once Nudie got you, you stayed got.
And Nudie himself? He was half the show. He minced about town in his own rhinestone explosions, crowned with glittering cowboy hats, never one to blend in quietly. His most peculiar trademark was a pair of mismatched boots, worn on purpose. They were a reminder, he reckoned, of the lean Thirties, when he couldn’t afford a matching pair. Sentimental, but with swagger.
Promotion came naturally to him. Nudie never met a mirror, or a dollar bill, he didn’t like. According to his granddaughter Jamie Lee Nudie, he’d sometimes pay for things with notes bearing stickers of his own face plastered over George Washington’s. His line, delivered with a wink? “When you get sick of looking at me, just rip it off & spend it.”
In a town built on shine, Nudie Cohn made sparkle into an art form, & taught the world that if you’re going to be seen, you might as well blaze!!!
The only thing worse than the la la land moonlight incident at the 2017 Oscar’s was the 2017 Tony’s because when dear Evan Hansen was announced as the winner of best musical there was no moment of divine justice where it was revealed that great comet was the real winner.
alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
With John Boyega, in a blue Agbada, a robe traditionally worn by men in West Africa, with gold detailing. A Fila, a traditional Yoruba cap, finished the look:
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
janainaart
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
2087
pixelskylines
vaporwave
stormborns
areudirty
