There’s a movie here begging to be let free from the cage, and it cannot.

Give me Toy Story, the 1995 original, with the 2026 beautiful visual effects and animation, and I will be satisfied.

🤔

Toy Story 5 in the final third is the movie I wanted. Leading up to it is, I fear, going to be a quickly outdated “tech = bad” exaggeration. A shame really, because I love seeing the friends on the big, or now small, screen again.

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave Toy Story 5 two out of five. He wrote the franchise "needs new batteries ... It is played out and IP exhaustion has set in."

– Wikipedia

Disagreeing on IP exhaustion because I will watch some franchises decades from now when Superman hits Superman 50, it’s the storytelling. I wanted story. We get a great movie interrupted throughout by tech taking over paranoia.

I will be around for more Toy Story tales whenever you want me as a fan. Please give us imaginative playtime again.

I don’t mind one bit if you sing along in the shower to this. In fact, I hope you do! 🧙‍♀️

The piano on here was brought up to dramatic coolness with UJAM UFX Reverb 2, available on Plugin Boutique! UJAM is a nifty company co-founded by synth king Peter Gorges, Hans Zimmer, and Pharrell Williams, gentlemen who really know their stuff. As you might guess, UFX Reverb 2 includes settings mimicking a “parking garage,” “scoring stage,” and other spots that people record amazing film scores and hit tunes in. I love playing with the custom settings to make my own. A setting of mine is called “Nicole Is Fancy!” with an exclamation mark.

Some links on this site may be sponsored links, which means I may receive a commission if you make a purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. I only feature products and services I genuinely use and enjoy.

A picture tells a thousand words.

Thank you so much, WWE team, for using my track in your "Faction Frenzy" episode! You have no idea how happy this makes me. Every man I know around the world is obsessed with WWE, my dad to actor pals, thus, I'm now cooler than cool with them all. Chef's kiss! 🏋️‍♀️🤼 xoxo, Nic

August 20. Today.

I looked at my BMI statements and saw “Unfaithfulness in the Tallgrass Prairie” (penned by me, published by Amadea Music Productions) made it onto WWE NXT in early 2026. WOW! 🤩

There’s nothing cooler than getting to do what you really enjoy and have people want to use your music for their projects you’re in awe of.

Thank you a million times over, WWE!

Find Dr. Shafer’s website here.

I decided to clean this up a bit and make it more serious in tone.

Posting this because I am:

• extremely happy with my results going on almost 17 years later; I’m never redoing Dr. Shafer’s corrective work on my breasts for the rest of my life; in the 0% chance I do, fingers crossed I never need it, ☺️ it will be going to see him!

• giving Dr. Shafer the 5 star review, with my real name, he deserves for making me so incredibly happy with myself to this day on the procedure he fixed – shhh, Dr. Shafer, you’re not allowed to divulge anything other than I was a patient! NO DETAILS, I’ll spill a few here, that’s it!

• warning young people about how you can mess up your shape with “pretty" / “handsome” weight loss and not strictly the big weight loss makeovers or Ozempic makeovers we see

• providing an explanation for people that no, I’m not going to drop a few dress sizes to damage my body anatomy again for the sake of any project you hire me for and why

• A great example of the large area between reality TV star “plastic everything” and “I’m all natural” superiority; I wanted a correction and got the huge confidence boost I needed. I can’t have fillers for obvious reasons outlined below. With my circle face and greasy skin, I’m never going to need Botox. For me, this experience is pretty much all I wanted.

• showing how you are not any less intelligent, ambitious, driven, or talented within your inner beauty aspect because you want to fix something about yourself; people seem to give this mistreatment more to women than men

• ending the stereotypes that everything is about dating or looking attractive on camera, or showing yourself off in revealing clothes or bikinis 24 hours a day; I always wanted to look great for myself in normal clothes, which is what I wear most of the time because I’m a normal person!

• ending the concept of anything around your chest region being humiliating to talk about; I feel this a lot because right now, sharing this post is me forcing myself to be a better role model for a younger version of me; it would’ve stopped me from restricting my food to wrecking my chest if someone had shown me what before and after “restricting a lot to be attractive but not ‘eating disordered’” dieting looks like

When I was about 15.5-16, I started losing weight because very curvy me wanted to make it in life with my true goal of landing in the entertainment industry eventually, doing whatever until then to be “pretty.” All I ever got was early oughts era comments that wouldn’t have happened now from everywhere, every single time. Stores. Peers. The woman fixing up my music performance costume that matched the other girls saying she didn’t think my waist would be that small.

My weight loss in the beginning was a smidge. The smidge became by 16 turning to 17, full on teen movie popular girl if I didn’t go to school online, “great on camera” weight loss. It was forced. As was typical with the early 2000’s, it wasn’t to be bony but the “pretty” kind of thin that was in. People told me how great I looked. Maintaining that was nearly impossible.

As a consequence, younger me wanted breast surgery to fix my newly sagging, awfully shaped breasts and began secretly hoping for it at 16 and full time by 17. Nobody ever warns you when they pose in magazines, “I’m a starlet who lost weight and had surgical procedures correcting body parts I ruined from my own poor choices.” I wasn’t a middle aged man in a cosmetic dentist’s chair being warned there’s no going back from filed down teeth for crowns. I was a young person who was never told by anyone that I would ruin my chest region from basic weight loss to look better. The lie we’re all told. Lose weight. Be successful. Money will come. Power will arrive from money to do whatever you please. Restricting yourself plenty and at times with bad eating manners but not into bones isn’t an eating disorder, so what do we call it? Breast corrections were for “old” women who had lots of kids, according to TV makeover shows, not teen girls who wrecked their bodies doing what everyone else did just fine.

If ever you watched FX’s The Beauty, the very beautiful young Chloe Sevigny looking character named Bella (played by Emma Halleen) sees everyone else doing well with The Beauty makeover injection. She thinks nothing will happen to her, finding any means to get it done. Her self esteem is in the basement. She can’t see how pretty she is. Bella, after her injection, becomes a monster in the closet begging her mom for her help. That’s me. It was certainly me crying in the middle of the night when I phoned the plastic surgeon a week later, “My top lip is dripping disgusting smelling water and pus.” My upper lip was gigantic. Enflamed. A big hole formed in my top right area. He arranged to meet me the next morning, early, for my first surgery removing the infection and some tissue.

It was me, crying when I saw how destroyed my chest was from simple dress size dropping when I was already a healthy dress size and good BMI, or how nothing I did post surgery one on my breasts worked out.

Whenever I have tried any makeover quick fixes, they fail. Dye my long, faded auburn hair extremely dark or platinum, it breaks. Get lip fillers at 18 at a clinic with actual Oscar winners and nominees, movie stars, as patients in my face ahead, I’m the unlucky rare one who had to have multiple reconstructive lip surgeries because I got infected. My final lip implant/revision is the lip you see today. My upper lip is just silicone wrapped with whatever is outside, because the flesh got eaten, and I removed the rest of the inside lip tissue because it was bumpy and ugly. The Hollywood celebrities didn’t get that. Their smiling faces in magazines in 2026 show me they’re still obviously getting fillers and more done.

Losing some weight to be attractive but not skeletal when I looked fine, kind of like that Bella character, I didn’t blossom into some it girl head to toe. My breasts looked horrible. Maybe I’m just unlucky with things like Bella was.

When I was towards the second half of 17, I met the plastic surgeon who would perform my first breast correction surgery. He was very nice, funny, charming, and like a cool uncle you wished you had. I trusted him. He told me to wait until I was 18 to perform it and all was well.

Moving to go to UT Austin and having graduated early online, I was around kids my age and talking to them. It felt good being far away from negative influences and being normal. I made it a goal to eat better, meaning not either direction, and follow the way I was taught to eat right. To work out in a healthy, normal sense.

Until surgery day, age 18 and a half-ish. He told me, “I made you look natural.” Meaning, not lifted and sculpted up to my neck. But when I looked after a week or two of healing, what looked “nice” to him looked to me like “about to fall again.” It fell a little. Then a lot. Then tremendously.

Because the nice first doctor was so not on the same page aesthetically, I didn’t want him to redo it. He was very “say one thing, I do another.” Nothing I said I wanted was done on the surgery day.

By the time I was 19, things didn’t look so good. Age 19 and a half, I looked bleak. The right side was so unevenly saggy compared to the saggy left, it was horrendous without chicken cutlets or stickers to keep everything up.

At 21, I’d lost a pinch of weight because again, I was trying to:

A) hide that mess, which made it easier because I gain and lose weight in my breasts wildly depending on how I diet down; I look merely somewhat curvy for my thinner self when I restrict my diet and really the other way when I don’t, it’s crazy with the drastic difference

B) aiming not for as thin as before but a pinch improved version of me to get on camera work / modelling jobs and be taken by an agency.

Got the agency. Didn’t get the megawatt success at the time from it but some jobs. Nice. Great. Right? Happily ever after? No.

Nothing disguised it, it only made it worse. My chest just began looking so ugly, there were no words for it in my head. I was young, in what magazines and every movie said should be the prime of my “beautiful” youth. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.

Some “famous” NYC surgeons were rude to 21 year old me. One refused to meet me until a few minutes prior to the surgery. No thanks!

The end of summer when I turned 22. After finding Dr. Shafer in a magazine at Duane Reade as I did my usual fun little shopping, I love convenience stores like Walgreens, I got in touch. He was friendly and welcoming, so I went in. Also welcoming was Elaine, his then office boss. He was so lovely and went over everything in detail as humiliated me felt scared to describe why I disliked things and what I wanted fixed. He promised he would fix the right side that was farther down. The scar tissue on my left side that hurt when I laid back in beauty salons to dye my hair jet black for expanding work opportunities. A lot went on. Some will remain a mystery, because I don’t need to go into details. He fixed me.

And, in fixing me, he made me feel better. I made an effort to quit caring about what people think. I told myself, if it were true that everyone got work and advanced their careers on/off camera in the arts/beyond from being “trendy thinner” versions of themselves, thousands if not more model-slash-actors would not be waiting tables all around LA, NYC, and London to make ends meet. So I tried to eat better on my new meatless diet that made me feel more confident and much happier and work out to look like the best version of myself. In the process, some weight gain was inevitable, and it only made my breast surgery revision results look all the more fabulous because I was back to a more improved version of my regular body type: healthy and curvier.

That my surgery results look not like they were just done last week but amazingly better, and we’re about to hit the 17th year anniversary brought on so much guilt for me not thanking Dr. Shafer with a review like this that could bring him many more satisfied patients. I saw him in an article I read online and was telling myself, the least I can do is credit the gentleman who transformed my body into what it should look like through fixing one area that had gone wrong. He’s a super nice man who agreed to be an article source in some of my freelance journalism articles some years after my surgery. He is absolutely like the Matty character in 13 Going on 30 with optimism and kindness. You feel like you can tell him anything, a perfect thing for a doctor discussing these embarrassing things. Someday, once again, fingers crossed, I’ll be the big time success story I hope to be within acting, music, and filmmaking, and if/when people think I look great, part of that will be owed to Dr. Shafer fixing one bit of my whole self.

“But it’s normal! Make peace with your body. Look at women outside of mass media and Hollywood.” Body acceptance is beautiful. Too bad. I am human. Before my first breast surgery, things were so upsetting, I wanted to cry when I saw how I messed up my body often, or avoided doing things like going to the pool when invited to work out with a girl preparing herself for a successful NCAA swimming career. I felt like even with weight gain back when I was at my university, nothing would ever fix it. There is no going back. When you destroy your chest, it’s done for good. I don’t care how “normal” it is, because bad breath is normal. You brush your teeth. Health problems that occur from not eating right are normal. You eat better. Why shouldn’t I fix a problem that bothers me if it makes me feel better to where I’m able to live my best life and feel confident, not perfect, confident in myself?

I would do it all over again, including the ugly first surgery, because it led me to a perfect result with Dr. Shafer. Had I gone to another surgeon for surgery one, it might have resulted in a so so surgery I was OK with 50-80% and never redid. Everything worked out great.

Maintaining my results might help that I practically live what I call “mummified:” in a heavy duty sports bra whenever I can under normal or workout clothes, and in great bralettes or normal bras from Victoria’s Secret Pink when not, right back into the sports bra when I’m done. Having biological children was never for me, so that contributes to keeping things fresh looking. Standard band/cup sizing bras never fit me as I’m not shaped anywhere like a bra fit model, so my normal bras and bralettes are always XS-XXXL size chart based.

In one of the plastic surgeons’ offices where I did consults but never had a corrective second breast surgery done, pre-Dr. Shafer’s redo, I met some amazing male film stars in the waiting room during the visits. Very friendly guys who were down to earth and normal, chatty. Naturally handsome who had some insecurities for whatever reasons they never said and wanted to look superhumanly handsome is my guess. They each provided me with comical over explanations of why they were there getting plastic surgery done soon as we talked for some time about fun topics afterwards. I never asked. Nobody needs an explanation. One was one of my fave movie stars who goes to some of the same businesses and medical care I do in life. If he, or anyone else, were to openly say something positive about plastic surgery experiences, my teen self, my present self, would feel a lot better.

Outing myself for this feels very scary. You aren’t supposed to talk about these things if you want a serious career or to be respected. Talking about this is for fading stars seeking a desperate magazine article or reality TV people.

Like The Beauty, some things might work for lots of people and not for you. Or those who find themselves in pickles after trying them aren’t going to tell you. The odds are scientifically high that you will be that rule, not the exception, to sagging and something going wrong with weight loss. It can never be corrected, period. Sorry. I wish someone told me.

I’m a big worrywart, so when Dr. Shafer had me do my surgery at the hospital with multiple anesthesiologists for each step and several nurses, being guided around an elevator by nurses, the whole fancy hotel experience I was surprised could be found in a hospital, it was incredible. My first surgery had been in a simple suburban plastic surgeon’s office surgical suite. I’m always freaked out something is going to go wrong where I need the hospital as a precaution. A world of difference in reassurance. At the hospital, they weighed me so many times. Had my blood work. Made everything specific so nothing could go wrong. I couldn’t wear contact lenses, so everything looked mildly blurry. Squinting at Dr. Shafer post surgery made me feel silly. That was the worst I could say! Everything healed nicely. It went as great as surgery can go.

I did in my back of my mind hope I was pulled up extra tightly so when things settled, I would look great in a normal way. Whatever magic happened, it did. I look great, in a normal way, as I wanted. You don’t stare at me, but if you were to look at my body as a whole, you would only think I look nice.

It’s said that anything bad is visible in the first few months or years. If it’s been 17 years soon and remains looking great, it should last for quite some more time, and probably the rest of my life if I take care of that part of me. Thank you for fixing my problem, Dr. Shafer!

If I could tell young people more, never go by Photoshopped images or costume trickery as proof of what someone looks like “before vs. after.” You leave a garment unzipped/unbuttoned to given the illusion of thinner/less curvy, the zipper and back of the outfit digitally removed, and got tighter, possibly with chicken cutlets and forms of stuffed alterations, for a curvier illusion. Magazines will shave people down or enhance people whichever way. A magazine’s editor once told me off the record how their brand liked the “high fashion” smaller busted aesthetic, so everyone posing for their magazine had that done in photo retouching, including female actresses on their covers. I’ve been that person getting that, because they all do it in greater variations with the less star power you bring.

Back when I showed a young girl at a hair salon my blink and miss it picture buried in a magazine, she told me I looked a lot better in reality and normal. She said, “Why don’t they just not have real people?” Meaning what we now in 2026 know as AI models. I agreed with her how weird my photo was and, very plainly, yuck. My skin had been photoshopped to extremely yellow undertones. My lips and face were reshaped like an old Palm Beach woman with multiple facelifts trying to look young again.

Write verbatim. Dictate, leisurely. Silly post. Don’t sound like “Nicole worked ages as a former freelance journalist” mode. “100% human.”

I don’t care anymore. Would have an LOL moment were it not for the depressing subject matter.

With how anti-gun Hollywood is, how was this movie ever made and applauded?

The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, is in incredibly bad taste on guns. All of it. I couldn’t count one second of this after the meet cute, and the “oh look how nice it was having a partially deaf disabled romcom character as a bride,” where I said, I AM HAVING FUN.

That alone doesn’t necessarily make a bad film. Cinema can explore horrible people, horrible actions, and subjects that make audiences deeply uncomfortable. Look, I’m coming off a review about Heroes’ redemption plot for Sylar, a magic serial killer. I’m willing to entertain the most horrible character imaginable, write one myself someday, and even entertain a tasteless premise portraying someone involved in a mass shooting as a gloriously changed human being, if the film actually has something interesting to say about that person. Or, a plot. The Drama gives us almost nothing.

The plot isn’t merely thin. It’s two dimensional Best Buy copy paper. No shame, Best Buy, I love you.

Zendaya plays a bride-to-be who reveals a secret about her involvement in a mass shooting that never happened. Everyone is horrified. And then, for what feels like the rest of the movie, everyone continues to be horrified.

That’s basically it. Not a spoiler. Googling this movie pulls that up a lot. You’ll live, it’s not like I told you Santa is a whopping lie. The press is wild with the activism from school shooting survivors, or their dead loved ones’ families, with the arrogance of this movie. You want a plot, go get Despicable Me, volume one, or Kill Bill, which does a lot with wanting to kill that Bill in the two movies.

The revelation could have opened dozens of doors. What does rehabilitation mean after an act that society considers unforgivable? Is rehabilitation even possible for someone like Zendaya’s Emma Harwood? How do the other characters view gun control versus pro-gun legislation and second amendment believers? Does the film believe someone can become fundamentally different from the person they once were, or are we trapped for the sins of our younger selves’ misjudgments? What happens when private identity collides with public morality?

Surprisingly, considering how provocative the setup is, the film barely explores any of it. Like I said, there is one drunken reveal, and everything else reminds us of the discomfort. There was room for something fascinating about a woman occupying the traditionally male cinematic role of the violent villain. Some critics have discussed the story through the intersection of gender and race, an area outside of my familiarity with my basic knowledge of feminist history, particularly against the overwhelmingly white and male cultural image associated with mass shooters. There is potentially an entire film hiding inside that idea.

But The Drama doesn’t really make that film either. Nor does it give Zendaya’s character enough life beyond the big, drunk revelation. If you’re going to ask me to spend this much time with someone fictional who has done something appalling, let me understand the rest of her mind. Give her opinions. Contradictions. History. Humour. Mundane characteristics. Let the people around her disagree with one another. Instead, everybody seems trapped in variations of the same conversation.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat, and a little something on “the Internet made me want to do it.” Fine, what do you want to say with your film about the world wide spider web infecting this sad girl’s feelings? Nothing gets said.

The film’s biggest problem, then, isn’t offensiveness. It’s dramatic starvation.

This could have made an excellent five minute short film. As a feature, there simply isn’t enough material. A shocking revelation can begin a story, but it cannot be an entire story. Wipe away this movie for a plot about spilling orange juice on the floor. Every scene, someone says how disgusting someone was for the juice without caring to mop it. A man wonders every scene if he can see you the same way. Can he marry you? His friends don’t like you. No, you spilled juice. We get it. You spilled orange juice. Nobody wonders, “Why the Tropicana and not the fresh squeezed Publix variety? What did she have against pulp? Was it the fear of stomach rumbles because Tropicana or Simply offers more safety in the department? Did she shoplift the juice? What’s her story?”

That also makes the marketing surrounding the film more frustrating. One of the major criticisms has been that the commercials, publicity, and red carpet presentation suggested a different fan experience, particularly with Zendaya method dressing as a cool bride amid attention surrounding her real life wedding plans. to Mr. Marvel Spider-Man. The presentation makes you expect a sophisticated relationship drama where secrets will emerge from every direction. Cheating, OK, fine, a stabbing of an ex, maybe back and forth bickering.

Instead, there’s one trick. It’s a one-trick pony that keeps performing the same trick until another horse metaphor becomes irresistible: how many times can you beat a dead wedding horse?

I’m genuinely puzzled about what attracted Zendaya and Robert Pattinson to the material. These are enormously prominent actors capable of carrying complicated characters, yet the screenplay gives them astonishingly little territory to explore or act out.

By the end, I wasn’t disturbed in the productive way challenging art can disturb you. I wasn’t left wrestling with some uncomfortable argument the filmmaker had made. I was simply irritated. Like, REALLY irritated. In fact, reviewing The Drama may be the first time I’ve found myself in a genuinely bad mood simply because I watched anything for my reviews. Provocation without exploration isn’t automatically profound. Sometimes it’s just provocation.

Yuck, what a displeasing event I would nuke from my mind like Men in Black if I could.

A man warns another, he may need a talisman to tell reality from fiction. Several characters have the ability to enter dreams, trap you in them, and make your dream world resemble the outer world. A brick wall in a basement is a giant brick wall in the dream. One hour in reality is one year in a dream. Heroes predates Inception by some time, or some viewers might think the series borrowed from it.

A fan boy/fan girl show proudly admitting it is, Heroes itself is clearly based on the principles from X-Men and X-Men’s own reflection of the Holocaust and every human anti-”them” movement in history. Anything of “not us” = bad. You know people reviewing this series thought it was fake again, this world might never happen. In the 2020’s, we’re starting to see more again that anyone “not us” does equal bad to many. We don’t have enough shows like this.

Heroes is one of those television shows where the conventional wisdom of things and my own opinion part ways. Season one is unquestionably the famous one. It’s the season that became a phenomenon and gave us that, “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” Weirdly, I was old enough in 2006 where I should remember that everywhere and don’t. My memory is of heavy TV and print marketing with that phrase. Reddit tells me otherwise.

But for me, the most interesting material comes much later, particularly in season four, when the series really starts digging into the complexities of Sylar, our serial killer. His entire season four storyline feels like something pulled out of The Twilight Zone or a classic sci-fi film. Everything against Matt Parkman, which you friends will all see when you get that far in, and yes, you will need to survive the lameness of some of season three to get there. Identity, isolation, morality, reality itself: Sylar becomes far more interesting once the show starts asking what actually happens inside the head of someone who has spent years becoming a monster. Zachary Quinto gets much more to play than simply being the creepy villain stalking everyone. He is a metaphor for mental health. Relatable, surely, to many of you, when we subtract the serial killer part. Desiring. Fearing solitude. Wondering if this is all there is.

In fact, Sylar is also one of the few characters on Heroes who consistently seems capable of thinking. I would put Hiro and Ando alongside him as the show’s most intellectual characters, followed by Micah Hawkins and his father, D.L. Hawkins. Everyone else seems periodically determined to make the dumbest decision imaginable. What show are we supposed to be watching again? Heroes would probably be a considerably shorter television series if everyone occasionally sat down for five minutes and thought about what they were doing. Like perhaps, “There is a serial killer with magic powers on the loose. Do something!” Oh no, let’s not. Until the next time. Again. Again. AGAIN. These are the people in a horror movie who get off the major highway to use the bathroom in a Southern ghost town.

After season one, the storytelling fluctuates wildly. There are stretches of Heroes that could be edited together into one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. The concepts are that good between everything for me to have kept going. Then there are lots of scenes that feel like reality television filler, where characters stand around discussing something we just watched happen because the show apparently needs to fill another few minutes of airtime. That inconsistency becomes part of the Heroes experience. You deal with it, or you skip through the bits of Noah Bennet rambling again. Nobody tunes into this show to see a 90’s sitcom about dad-daughter bonding poorly remade a decade later. We’re here for the thrills.

A season three (?) climatic scene with Sylar and Claire alone is legitimately top tier horror/sci-fi cinema history forgotten forever because it was part of Heroes.

Characters also have an odd habit of entering the story looking tremendously important and then simply disappearing. Claire the cheerleader accumulates the cute boys in her life who appear positioned to matter to the larger story, only for the series to seemingly forget they ever existed. It gives the mythology a strangely disposable quality: never become too attached to a subplot because it may quietly wander away. Maya, where did you go? Justin Buldoni’s character whatever your name was, you appeared and left! Did you lead Claire on!?!

One thing I hate about the current conversation around Heroes is that there really isn’t enough of one. With all the parallels to racism, the Holocaust, difference being treated as disability, persecution, and the fear of people who are deemed abnormal, this is exactly the kind of older, correction, any TV series people should be discussing. Heroes reaches into these themes with more effectiveness than many new films and even news segments manage. The superpowers are fantasy, but the human impulse to categorise, fear, control, and eliminate people for being different certainly isn’t.

Hiro’s character arc is so brilliant that you could practically carve his story out of Heroes and give him and his BFF Ando their own series. Their relationship encompasses jealousy, betrayal, loyalty, family, shame, friendship, ambition, and forgiveness. Beneath all the science fiction and his bursts of “Ya tai!”, there are wonderfully ordinary human emotions driving them and Hiro’s family. And so much of it is beautifully acted in Japanese. WOWWWWW.

That becomes even more remarkable when you remember this was American prime time network television from roughly two decades ago, and we have not much of that today to my awareness. A substantial portion of the series unfolds in languages other than English, with Hiro’s storyline in particular allowing Japanese dialogue to simply exist as part of the show. Maya and her brother stole the show with their Spanish language narrative. This series doesn’t treat another language as an exotic garnish. It lets major characters live, joke, argue, grieve, and develop in it. Besides, duh, you speak things other than English outside America. Only Quentin Tarantino understands that.

There’s another accidental advantage to watching a series made before smartphones swallowed modern storytelling: limited cell phone technology forces the characters to actually do things. They have to go places and chatter. They have to find people. They miss information. They can’t instantly solve every logistical problem by staring at a screen. Technology exists, but it doesn’t become the setting. The limitations of the special effects also work in the show’s favour. Heroes can’t constantly throw gigantic spectacles at us every minute, so the powers are often integrated into otherwise ordinary environments and the story has to carry the excitement in writing. Strong writing. The effects arrive when they’re useful rather than devouring every scene. Better storytelling because they couldn’t overdo the effects? Hip hip hooray! What effects remain lean practical.

Then there’s Noah Bennet. Yeah, Claire’s dad. For a character given so much screen time and importance, Claire’s father has to be one of the most boring characters on the show, or any show, any MOVIE. He’s also frequently rotten as a human being, which might be fascinating if I found him more interesting to watch. Instead, whenever the series returns to him, I’m usually waiting to get back to one of the moving pieces of the screenplay clock, if we quote Sylar. Don’t ask me how such a bad dude makes for really bad TV. He does.

People do heinous things, unspeakable things(!!!!) every season then patch up and become friends/family again. It all gets a bit ridiculous when the government turns on the heroes, X-Men style, and people act like nothing after it. Would you speak to any of these people again after some of what happens, well, did happen?!

“But I don’t want to watch science fiction!” you say. There is, however, another important feature of Heroes that deserves acknowledgement. The men are unusually attractive, Reddit users say. Look around old discussions and Reddit threads and you’ll find viewers of all genders enthusiastically appreciating Mohinder, The Haitian, D.L. Hawkins, and Sylar. The series is unusual in that the traditional female Hollywood attractiveness scale feels noticeably male heavy in the cast. I wholeheartedly agree, The Haitian was like a missing attractive action film star who needed more screen time. He got about one to two episodes during an eclipse theme. Come on.

And Sylar undergoes perhaps the most dramatic transformation of all. He begins with a deliberately ordinary guy next door quality and gradually arrives at the final season looking extraordinarily polished and hot. Apparently existential crises, telekinesis, and an increasingly complicated relationship with your own identity also constitute a makeover. Meanwhile, the female cast members largely look like however they did season one or when they were introduced, and are all sorts of frumpy, dressy, flashy, or dull today like real women. Interesting how the tables turned on Heroes!

Of course, the real standout is the dog playing Mr. Muggles, a series regular. Poor Mr. Muggles witnesses the good, the bad, the ugly, the weird, and the scary. Can’t a guy Netflix and chill with his dog treats?

Do you remember those “chi chi chi chia!” Chia Pet TV ads? With the hair blossoming out of a clay figurine? Mine was probably the alligator. Proudly purchased at Walgreens. 😉 Seen here: the Chia Pet kitten my heart missed out on.

Growing my music catalogue the length of here into deep space like a Chia Pet on adrenaline has been a lifelong goal I was unable to act on. Piano cover songs, dance, film scores, and whatever the future may hold, it’s a lot. I needed people willing to provide attention for much of it that I wouldn’t get elsewhere.

All of my CinematNIC Music and Lucky Pineapple Films, and select releases as Animationsaurus!, are now at home in comfy slippers on RouteNote.

Luckily, Spider-Man showed up in my window and came to my rescue. All right, RouteNote did. A UK based music distributor out in Cornwall, everything is now moved over, ready to rumble. You won’t find any swanky Dr. Evil lairs and slick looking henchmen, nor sharks with laser beams on their heads beneath living rooms. That’s OK. I needed people who get stuff done, who have business savvy with expected human manners. A good music distributor is lock and leave: you upload, get it accepted, voila, you’re in stores. Your focus is back on making the work.

Is RouteNote cool? Uncool? Shhh! It’s both, or neither. You are whoever you want to be. You can be that trendsetter on TikTok, or you can be like me, leaving your music up to the everyday people playing tastemakers of TikTok to tinker with. You can appear in a bikini, or a wool turtleneck sweater covering everything but your eyes. No one forces you to be anyone you feel uncomfortable being.

This is a unique selling point in 2026, where you’ll find many open to all and invite only music distributors want that person who is a social media star over working musician, or want a narrowed down choice of PR images. Some DIY music distributors refuse to take on piano and/or classical music, not caring that the genre brings in income, because it won’t fit the image they want to sell.

Let’s have real world examples from types of situations people find themselves in, in the ladder of the fame game, on camera, off, writer, musician, actress, model, anyone aspiring to be anything:

RouteNote isn’t going to care if one day I use a pink wig for a fast food run, or that I eat fast food, because good heavens, of course said in a 1950’s tone, how dare a lady eat food with calories? That I told a dad joke falling flat over breakfast with friends when I’m female and have no children, so why am I telling goofy dad jokes? I can ask someone out without that person being picture perfect for a staged PR campaign trailed by Backgrid, as I pretend I don’t notice the photographers I made follow me around West Hollywood. That I live and am a whole person away from work. That my work has freedom to be wonky, incredibly beautiful, honest to who I was as a youth, a new adult person overnight, or whatever direction I pull it. That in one day I can release a 19th century romantic era piano piece out of a Central European royal listening session and a dance instrumental blasted on speakers at spinning classes near you. I can have social media and post all night, or I could hide from it in the rural of the ruralest Australian Outback log cabins, living so off the grid, the mailman can’t find me.

The beauty of music is things work best when people aren’t told what to do. Ironically, that is what everyone does now: try to earn a quick buck telling musicians what to do and limiting them from moving forward. When the lab rat cage breaks free, soon you’re out of the room, then the building. The sky becomes the limit. You rise and rise until you go to outer space. And that is where I shall be with more and more music releases. “Aim for the moon, and you rank amongst the stars,” as a poster at my school used to say. 🌙🚀⭐ You and I, all of us, the secret that people don’t want you to know is this:

We are all destined to be stars.

Find yourself a company that welcomes everyone, not only a select handful of those they choose, to be stars. For me, RouteNote is that company. They aren’t holding up a velvet rope to let in some people, and another VIP room at the club, where only a select handfuls get attention. You standing there watching, “Hey, I’m one of the ‘beautiful people’ attracting more people to this nightclub, and I can’t get near the VIP room?” Or you’re left outside wondering why you will never be let in until you get thyself a giant limo like The Mask?

No. Anyone’s star power is allowed to shine here!

As we are on the topic of a largely female cast and story? A million girls would kill for the $100 million budget wasted on this movie, making at least ten $10 million movies directed by women, or a whopping one hundred $1 million budgeted films directed by women with actual value. How about one thousand $100,000 budget films directed by women who have stories to tell?

Did anyone ask Emily Blunt what movies she might direct? Sign me up to see her acting in her own work.

Toy Story, Shrek, Indiana Jones to name a few, all carry sequels fine.

The Devil Wears Prada has little in common with the first film at all away from the title. The cast and crew had to do what they were told for a delicious payday. You know this sequel was made for packing audiences in, duped thinking it might be a fun evening.

Do you like business meetings? You’ll love this movie. It’s largely music-free, business meetings in slow motion and people talking about them later.

The Sex and the City films were nothing like the show in quality. They were entertaining. I didn’t walk into them finding myself an unwilling participant in a corporate meeting masked as cinema.

Because that is what this is. A corporate meeting. You sit like a phantom, watching higher ups communicate their disdain for Miranda Priestly’s horrifying overspending.

Nor are these entertaining big business, Wall Street themes.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is an ad for Vogue. Runway can lose money into the sewers of NYC as we speak, but we must “protect Runway,” whoops, Vogue, because it is an institution. No one else may run Runway, sneeze ACH-OOO Vogue, because it is an institution. Vogue is an insti–are you brainwashed yet?

Brainwashing you on that is the plot. Enjoy it.

When I talked with a gentleman years ago in the know, a question I asked was why jobs got cut but Vogue remained. He, of the media world, knew THE Vogue budgets from being an editor.

“I don’t know,” he said, how it bled money that any other magazine would get it cancelled entirely.

No one may bring Runway forward with the times! NO ONE!!!!

Vogue does have value. It will survive centuries with change.

The solution, this film says, is avoid selling Runway to a businessman apt for turning consumerism gold into diamonds when you can sell it to someone else who doesn’t care how much money you waste on a dying magazine. A new owner who will be drained of finances in no time, when you see Miranda’s spending left and right.

Billionaires are “bad.” Wanting to be one is “bad.” Giving yourself a makeover is “bad.” Until you sell the magazine to a brainless new billionaire letting you spend as you please. Those billionaires are “good.”

I might see how the film works the “billionares=bad” angle, were it billionaires should donate more to charity or serve the greater good. No, all they want is billionaires dumping their money fuelling the fire to keep a dying magazine alive at full spending.

“So Nicole, skip it or watch on Disney+?”

Oh, my.

I lean skip it. I can watch all kinds of fluff.

Viewing this made me exhausted. I felt like I was reading city council meetings minutes.

Some excellent films survive on one clever Matilda-can-do-magic twist. How to Make a Killing seems determined to deliver one surprise after another. Every time I thought I knew where the story was heading, it tricked me and veered somewhere else more fascinating. That’s one of my favourite qualities in a film: keep me guessing, screenwriter(s).

One of the things I appreciated most is that nobody in this story, outside of the uncle, pretends to be a good person. So many films built around morally questionable characters still pause every so often to reassure the audience that someone has a heart of gold after all doing cute little do gooder things. Here, the characters are refreshingly unapologetic 24/7. They’re self-interested, opportunistic, awful, rotten, and perfectly willing to make terrible decisions looking out for number one. Rather than making the film unpleasant, it actually makes it far more entertaining. I can meet nice people every day. Show me your worst.

Despite the murder at the centre of the story, much of the setup feels surprisingly grounded. Strip away the criminal element, and the situations themselves aren’t especially far fetched, OK, and with it, plenty you might find in the New York crime news. That touch of realism helps sell everything else the film asks the audience to accept in surrealism.

Glen “one N in the first name” Powell is also excellent here. His performance reminded me of the great dark comedies and caper films of the 1960’s, those weird movies that shouldn’t exist, but hey, they do, looking at you, North by Northwest. There’s a confidence and rhythm to his performance that feels like a home run modern take on that era without becoming an imitation.

I had a great time with it on HBO Max expecting a meh movie, and it’s a film I would happily watch again.

My great uncle, born about sometime in the 1920’s, not the Illinois based guy the other one on the East Coast, loved Ally McBeal. He used instant messenger, e-mail, and a flip phone. Sometimes, people thought I was IMing, that is texting over instant for you younger folks, people my age. I was, not always. My great uncle was checking in on me. He was a worrywart. Or he might be complaining about something.

A cool kid thing he did was be a super fan of Ally McBeal. Seeing Calista Flockhart at a restaurant once when he took me out in junior high made him extra happy for the rest of the night. About the year 2000-2001 when that happened. As you might expect, he got up and asked Calista for an autograph. I’m just kidding about the second half, he would never do that. What was he going to do with an autograph unless it were on a paycheck? 😂 I knew her from The Birdcage. How he spotted her face in person, I will never know. She looked like any relatively attractive, very thin lady to junior high me.

My younger self believed he wanted Ally for the legal drama. He was a serious corporate exec! Would he follow this show if not?

Ally won Emmy awards. It had to be really good?

🙄

The year 2026. Freshly turned 39 year old me, hoping for a straight up legal drama I could use, or maybe a Lifetime-esque night soap, bring it on. OK, I’ll do a She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. No, Ally McBeal is all along live action Family Guy in the courtroom. I thought maybe a short bit. No, it’s sort of 90’s/Y2K stale men vs. women, “yuppie” professional chitchat with Family Guy daydreaming segments.

Be silly. Be serious. Be romcom. Be indulgent night soap that makes no sense. Be an obsolete 90’s corporate drama for young women. PICK ONE. This show doesn’t.

The one genre Ally never, two episodes in, attacks is horror. Please, someone invite the Scream guy in because seeing the paralegal’s head balloon all episode, each episode, in a legal drama was weird.

“And Melrose Place is from 1992 and still deliciously bats*** crazy addictive,” a Reddit user says on a discussion how outdated Ally is.

“I find if I skip through all the scenes with Ally, it’s pretty great.”

“I got really excited when it first went on streaming about a decade ago and I found it unwatchable...I was wondering how I used to think this was the best show ever.”

Ally makes all women look catty and weird, putting down other women when they can. In episode one, her ex’s current wife confronts her at her apartment because Ally joined the firm. Ally paces outside the vicinity of her fake workplace, filmed at the real 14 Beacon Street in Boston, yelling at old people. The crazy female stereotype appealing to female viewers, uh, no. Ally looks down on the paralegal and seemingly all women. She will not stop digging into other people’s business. Nothing about Ally is a likable character. You understand why her ex dumped Ally, going to Michigan when he could have remained at Harvard Law.

I’ll go with that guy and dump this show. LOL.

The pancakes were, “I’ll be back for more.” The cinnamon is so good, the fruit atop you can add from the platter just right. The pancakes without syrup could be from any high end restaurant with the right spin. At home with my carry out, I added a special gourmet cherry pecan syrup for a kick. I felt like someone whipped this up for me on call.

Introduced in early 2025, one year and a half later, I’m rediscovering Denny’s. As a kid, it was where I didn’t know what to do with the ordering around the bacon and sausage problem. Got myself basics: the burger and fries when I ate beef, or eggs. My great aunt always said/says eggs are safe. She is the guru on all things nutritional and approved.

When I quit meat, the sausage and bacon thing was around. For people who eat eggs, Denny’s presently solved that problem with a two eggs breakfast, so their vegan pals or mostly vegan can eat with them, and the meat eaters are happy. It took a while, me asking corporate I feel some ages ago woth all of you, my “egging on” ;) Denny’s in person why they didn’t have an eggless slam. As I got my meat free burger and fries, classic.

It’s here. 🤤😋🙀❤️

Forgot to photograph it with all the fun eating it. Will try next time, or videoing it.

Thank you, Denny’s, it’s never too late!

Seeing her name pop up on this series kind of took me aback because I am always surprised when someone you least expect lands a juicy major speaking role. There is so much competition with too many people in line for acting talent. Good for her! Mean it. ❤️

Now, the review. Pop quiz.

How do you feel about Gossip Girl, the original on The CW?

1. I hated it.

2. I loved it / liked it.

The Season looked at the HBO Gossip Girl reboot, said, “We can do that,” and made their own Hong Kong set Gossip Girl for adults. Same beats, dialogue, delivery, acting style, gazes, camera cuts, focus shots on the city, aspirational designer wardrobe in a general trying to please every viewer way, sets, furniture, window views, sex/drugs/cheating, hotel plots, money, the Gossip Girl entirety, basic backstabbing, jail(!!!!), lady catfights through stuff that does not really matter, secrets(!), classism, with a scattered curse word now and then The CW never permitted.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and what probably counts is I felt like I was reviewing Gossip Girl: Hong Kong. Of this and the HBO remake, The Season feels like part of the official Gossip Girl universe. And no, I don’t think that is a coincidence.

Visually, The Season appeals to me more because Hong Kong looks fantastic. They filmed on location, and no, it is not all set on a ship, what I thought I was in for. A full six episodes on a boat without leaving looked dreadful. When they stepped off the ship and plots went into Gossip Girl land, all was a warm familiar in a passably entertaining late night soap you watch for comfort.

Jessie Mei Li, the lead playing female character Cola, is actually super pretty as her/their normal self on the Wikipedia photo whenever that was taken. Whoever gave her/them that Lord Farquaad hair don’t bob-bangs combo should be arrested by the fashion police. Have to say what you’re thinking.

Cola is kind of like the Jenny character, the outsider who did not grow up with money until she did, literally outside of Hong Kong in America. You will see why on the series.

Everyone else on the show is so sleazy. You wonder if anyone is a good person. Cola herself isn’t that great as the series rolls on. That nice seeming head maid is out for herself. Guess they have that in common with Gossip Girl.

Hong Kong is a destination I could see myself in, and watching this show was for me, being a dog in a moving car staring at the window. I’d watch it again to see Hong Kong cinematically.

The Season is great because you can pause it and return to it, not feeling lost. The plots are easy to follow, and the plots guessable. That’s OK. We don’t need Meryl Streep on the nightly.

Check it out on Disney+ in the USA.

It had to be good, 9/10-10/10 good for the value, for me to want it. So I chose Arturia.

My first criteria in choosing a MIDI keyboard I put on a credit card was it had to be priced low-ish enough that it is “affordable,” good riddance because $300 USD is plenty of money for many musicians and music students, and not so bad, it might make me feel like MIDI controller a lo pobre about to break. Funny enough, the Peruvian-Chilean dish doesn’t make you feel bad, but you know what I refer to. That feeling of, “I got this, and it’s overpriced junk about to fall apart on me, aesthetically hideous, a visual reminder I only got this because I couldn’t afford what I wanted” every one of us has had at one point when our parents refused to buy what we wanted.

Budgeting for anything is a big deal to me. People buy from people. And women are rarely, if ever, marketed to in music software and production tools.

When I go out, either someone else I see out and about or I personally get asked about something. Or people online. What I’m wearing. Makeup. Cute workout clothes. My hair products. Other people’s outfits, computers, hair products. You see these patterns of psychological analysis from centuries, people buy when they see real, normal people, good looking, average, plain but normal, everyday people using things.

Using a $3,000 MIDI device and bragging about it online when I can make music just fine, fingers crossed, someday that Best Original Score Oscar winner we all dream of, on a pretty basic but cool MIDI keyboard felt like two different paths in the fork in the road. I wear cheap makeup, my main fancy items are accessories because my outfits showcase me when I dress up, I am quite often in Victoria’s Secret PINK head to toe apart from wearing my own graphic tees or local business graphic tees sometimes, so I felt the moral thing to do was be that person who can change the world. Post it online. Write in this diary entry. Share with you friends. Putting out the little change you want to see online doesn’t require you to be today’s biggest A-list star. It might be me, or you.

And in my knowing, music marketing targets a largely almost exclusively music nerd-dom male buyer’s world, with this push for younger men to throw everything on credit cards with money they do not have. Heartbreaking that so many people consistently buy the latest fad, or they’ll own who knows how many MIDI keyboards reviewing all of them online, or posting about them on socials for everyone to have a shared fun moment as they try not to remember that credit card debt.

I could sit this one out. Or I could post this review because maybe you’re LGBTQ, female, old as the dust on this earth, in first grade, a single everyday Old Navy dad raising kids on his own who doesn’t feel cool, or somehow feeling left out of the marketing because I have been there and am, in fact, there in the dark hole of feeling like I am not the intended audience. My motto of keep something, use it with passion, isn’t the message consumerism wants us to have. They don’t want some gal composing on the floor or the park in workout clothes like me with some brands because they can have a conservatory trained lady who is in all of the right social circles and looks like their concept of what women in music look like, who scores subdued, “quaint” work, and that’s fine.

Arturia boldly made this keyboard in turquoise and pink, meaning someone there, at least one person on the team, cares about people having fun with composition and music production.

Brights speak to me a lot mentally. Your mental health is the most important thing you can own. I code my laptops and tech gear in brights. My flip phone that’s my primary device is neon pink. For me, this little thing boosts my mental health so much, I become more productive. So thank you to Arturia, whoever made this decision, because you have made me happy and certainly, countless people who are using this device.

It’s (most likely) class complaint! 🤩

What is a class compliant MIDI controller? That means you pop it in, without anything, no drivers, nothing special, and can input notes into your DAW.

I’m not talking about the extended controls and mapping. The basics.

My laptops I work on are:

• 2022 M1 13” MacBook Air

• 2013 11” MacBook Air, upgraded inside like new

• late 2008 aluminum 13” MacBook, upgraded inside like new, purchased in February 2009

I popped this in. The Arturia MIDI worked instantly on all of my laptops, and I was wowed when my first born child, my first ever Apple computer, the late 2008, ran it splendidly in Logic Pro.

With the installers, everything worked great in the 2013 and 2022 MacBook Airs for the special feature buttons.

It comes with the Arturia Lab Pro plugin and many virtual instruments!

A major selling point to me as someone who dipped in the Arturia synth pool with their cheap plugins and really loved what they had to offer. Synths in every category of music, every instrument, sounding like you could make a blockbuster movie right now with them or a dance tune. Outstanding.

While you’re at it, browse the additional $5+ synth packs because they are so genre specific, it’s like you don’t need to work very hard to sound impressive. The synths enhance whatever you have going from your originality.

You can program the drum pad buttons any shades of the rainbow.

Mine went kawaii, with musical notes as my picks.

Physical touching and visuals review.

Before the item arrived, dropping it and breaking it was my fear. Semi weighted keys? How heavy would they be?

The “semi weighted” keys feel really lightweight and springy. Not junk, lightweight. Might weighted keys be preferable? Sure, the good news is this is so light and portable. I don’t have to worry about the keys going sour because it was immobile.

The side of the device feels like a mock lightweight ceramic. I was expecting plastic throughout.

The shade of pink in real life is comparable to a lighter SMEG pastel pink kettle or toaster. You see those a lot in videos and movies. Barbie has pink SMEG at the start of her Dream House journey in 202'3’s Barbie. I absolutely love it. Everyone around me who saw it thinks it is the cutest thing ever. You wonder why this shade is a seasonal product and not a permanent option. If the new Arturia 37 mini key came in something not basic black or white, like a pastel from Candy Land, I would love it. Because I am so wired to be productive when I see happy things. Right now, the 25 key MiniLab is the only available bright item. For who knows how much longer. You are never too old or young, the wrong gender, the wrong person, to love a good yellow, orange, pink, bright blue, or lilac. I dont understand the lack of choices. The Roland GoKEY in aqua seems to be the exception to the “composing must be visually dull” rule.

Someone said online how the drum pads feel like “rubbish.” I disagree, they seem fine with me.

Would I pound out the plastic keys on this? No, never, but they don’t feel like they are going to break on me if used responsibly for the sole purpose of recording music on my computer and rehearsing ideas in my head before I record them.

“Should I get 49 or 61 keys?”

I felt the 61 keys were worth the extra smidge of money. With 61, I can make quick edits for the missing extra low or extra high octave. Octave jumping drama from the 19th century is my dream whenever I am able to compose it, and you can’t go wrong. Maybe for a more travel setup where you want enough room, I would get a 49, or if you want to take it around campus or the park. The 61 can go outside fine, but 49 feels a little lighter and transportable, probably? Or if you have money to burn, get all of them while the collectible brights last? Because you’ll never know when you are in the mood?

People say get the 49 for producing hip hop beats and dance music. Hip hop really uses lots of classical elements, so I wouldn’t listen to that much. Do whatever feels right. I don’t regret the 61 keys as my purchase.

With those people online reviewing every piece of tech gear that ever comes out, take that with a grain of salt. They aren’t going to say anything bad. They are going to worship the ground people walk on because they want more free stuff, or say something extra mean to scare you from purchasing an item because meanness brings in clickbait, clickbait brings in ad revenue.

The Arturia keyboard isn’t the most perfect MIDI controller ever that will please people because you dumped money on it. It’s cute, not fancy, does the job it says, and is a very decent quality for the price. I am a very satisfied customer. Looking at it and using it brings joy to me. Joy isn’t going to come from spending more money. You cannot fabricate joy in a lab.

Joy is what makes your creative outcomes improve. You are hungry getting to work on something, or that idea flew to you, and you have to jot it down. Happiness brings that faster and better.

Read my experience with Guitar Center placing an order for this item in a prior post.

What appealed to me:

• Store pickups! A relief in this time period.

• I heard about price matching.

• Returns sounded easier for me.

• Guitar Center is everywhere. If unable to get my horse and buggy out to one, or I’m stranded in the desert, a Guitar Center is by a nearby oasis for any drama and/or returns.

• “What happens if it’s registered to someone else? The company sends a used product sold to your brand as ‘new?’” Guitar Center’s team told me they would help me work through this issue if it happened.

• Can I get in touch with humans there? I can.

• How do those humans treat me when I ask about normal customer concerns? Do they ignore me? Move on? Call me a loser? Imply I am one? Some store and product customer service teams very often look down on you.

Overnight was fast, as promised. 🙀

I asked for a price match.

Because my website was outside of the USA, the staffer said he wouldn’t be able to match it, but he could get me overnight delivery for free for my first Guitar Center in a while purchase. So he did.

With other stores, “overnight” generally means “we mean overnight from when it ships, possibly delayed by the carrier.” I can’t speak for every time Guitar Center mails an item. My MIDI keyboard was ordered late afternoon, delivered early this morning to a local store. An e-mail flew in that my order was ready.

And the day was saved by the Powerpuff Girls, I mean, Guitar Center.

Disney bought the rights to Avatar. Pixar borrows the plot, does it better, and openly says in the lead character’s line, “Hey, this is just like Avatar!” That’s something I would do if I had Elon Musk money.

James Cameron’s Avatar is a masterpiece on its own in fairy tale lore. Hoppers makes it wildly entertaining and with stronger social messages. Mr. Cameron, going down as one of the best filmmakers of all time, did it a bit with Dances With Wolves intent. Hoppers is funny, sweet, never stopping. Give me Avatar on a plane and Hoppers for a fun party.

You know that mayor, Jerry Generazzo, has to be based on California governor Gavin Newsom. The man is said to have quietly spent $97,000 on a statue of himself, while alive, while in office.

My single complaint is the lack of hilarious mayor Jerry in the beginning, with the length of time it takes getting the lead’s activism across as a point. With the sequence failing to get signatures for her petition, I felt like I was personally boring myself with getting them in real life in slow motion.

In that moment, you might think, “This movie is too boring. Turn it off.”

And you would be making a mistake. Because it’s so lovely, and I am not going to spoil anything for you. You do not know where the movie is heading. Animated films straying from the setup formula in 2026? Who knew?

I caught this on Disney+ and regret not watching it theatrically.

Can this product go sugary sweet?

Hint, it did.

Nepotism runs deep in this household. Why cast a human actress when I can work with my real life cat, Sheila, voicing her own no budget film series, Sheila the Siamese Cat?

For Sheila’s animated visit to New Mexico, trailer below, the full movie online here, Sheila needed cute, sugary, delicious calories served in synths.

The following options were used from Evolve Nest Acoustics:

• Sheila’s March Frost (custom edit on an instrument)

• Tomorrow

• Glimmers

That’s it! Combined, we’re back in elementary school, waiting in line for that delicious ice cream sandwich. Of course, today, we’re in 2026 and paying inflation rates for those sandwiches. 😂

Enjoy the track on Spotify, reliving your ice cream loving childhood.

Certainly hit music of some sort has used it, because it can sound very Jack Antonoff at times, and everyone these days loves getting his sound, Robyn’s, EDM, a lot of his work influencing everyone else.

It is one amazing brand and product. But how weird can the U-He Zebra 3 synths product get?

Sci-fi, sure. Epic. KEWL.

Can it get spooky? Scary? Gothic horror weird? Romantic era inspired? I decided to test those limits.

Hit it, emoji ghost. 👻

Some back story, for anyone who does not know me. Were I to take a step back in time to work in any other century, I would be thrilled to work in the 19th century romantic era, the times of gothic horror. Deadly romance. Forbidden thoughts. Imagine meeting some of these authors who every studio depends on for hits from the first talkies to now. I can compose anything. Do. Have my pick? You guessed it. Sunshine happy me has a hidden side of depressing, dark, sinister music ready for that piano.

My itch was very strong, wishing that someone, anyone, might bring me on to make some thriller slash horror music again. Opportunities for that are scarce. Ask any production music library, and they will want reality television music or something quick. My usual collaborator, Paul Sutton’s next film is not ready for me to go to town scoring on my laptop. My newest no budget short concepts are all happy themes starring my cat as Sheila the Siamese Cat. Then I remembered, “I have my own gothic horror short in the making, slow motion, for several years.” Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Gothic horror at its finest (once upon a midnight) hour.

The trailer below contains a quick sample of the original music. Listen to the full song on Spotify! Please do. Bump up my Spotify streams to buy me some lunch.

Making the track. What could I do without the custom sounds tinkering?

I already experimented somewhat with Zebra 3’s custom sound abilities making my 1980’s princess movie music inspired Lana Del Rey cover of “Body Electric.” It was almost too easy making U-He go happy and sweet. Suspiciously easy. Could U-He have made something so simple that any of us could nail down sounds we’re after in any particular creative mood?

No, I craved something U-He had, as far as I know, never done professionally: time travel into the 19th century underworld of music notes. Not Little Women hooray tunes, or anything cute I could make.

And, could I do it without editing anything? The grab and go choice in a hurry for maybe most of you as students, composers, or music producers who don’t have much time? A fun fact I learned watching Kylie Minogue’s Netflix documentary series was how her first hit, “I Should Be So Lucky,” was recorded in less than one hour before she jetted off, London to Sydney.

Zebra 3 turned out to be really cool after I laid down a reworked piano tune of my own. I mixed a free orchestral kit, pretty basic outside of mainly strings and a few more choices, with some wind FX I edited, and parts played on the following U-He Zebra 3 instruments:

• Bass Pointer

• Arcology Skyline

• Belletje FM

• Hollow Worlds

• Lead Like Nothing Else

• Ehlerrium

• Pulsating Waves

Suddenly, the track became the perfect soundtrack for me, the red eyed evil version of me as The Mistress of the Red Death with my ghost friends, to create some havoc against Prince Alexander Prospero.

A while ago, I was that flute person who insisted I would only work with an orchestra when I was older. I am now fully a convert to the dark side of strangeness that can be pulled off from the unexpected.

Want to make your head spin? Wikipedia says that French feature was based on the 2010 French short, Majorité Opprimée, posted on YouTube. Don’t knock YouTube as a choice akin to film festivals, friends. The director of that short had Netflix offer her the French language feature opportunity from YouTube success.

How do they all stack? Ladies First has the weakest opening. It’s dull, and the setup is necessary. Could be a bit brisker. What Women Want, the Mel Gibson version, dove right into comedic things well and became sort of a dramatic Lifetime movie by the end. Against the Mel one, the Chinese remake was a lot more romantic, not at all crude. What Men Want, I can’t remember anything that happened in it today.

Ladies First becomes the Western version I liked the most after it gets rolling. Seeing Sacha Baron Cohen in his normal being was wonderful. I love his normal acting delivery when he isn’t Borat and Ali G. Calm and reserved.

Meeting anyone who works with film or fashion, the talks of how men’s wardrobes are versus women’s is our chitchat. How can I make things work for my dream on camera film characters? Give me some tips on how to make fit and fabric work on me, because I’m so tired of this? Help me with my shoes? I want shoes I can run in that aren’t flats? How can I look classy because all of the clothes on the market nearly are working against my healthy body shape with little ruffles and weird stuff?

So when I saw all the men in the movie dressed like women, their open V-necks, getting fitted for the male take on bras, the absurdity of it all, my smile grew softly. This was all those conversations put to the test in a film.

Ladies First had some missed chances for further dipping into the comedic male culture swapping. The strides away from What Women Want (2000) to the new 2026 one were pretty good. I’m still recovering from how badly that movie soured halfway in. If it is on TV at a hotel or some public place, I flip the channel around that mark so I don’t have to watch someone tell Mel Gibson with ESP she keeps looking at his crotch, and that quiet music works overtime hiding the plot going on spring break.

Ladies First all a little silly sometimes, very fun, when you meet people like Pigeon Man. A bit frisky at the plastic surgeon’s clinic. Nothing feels rough like What Women Want #1. Not bad, Netflix.

I relaxed with this movie surrounded by pet fur and plush bedding. Highly recommended for a cozy, sleepy night. The cats enjoyed seeing the cat on camera, true story, and one tried to catch it!