JackViolet

Man, just checked the website and he really did/does write a lot. Kudos to him for actually sticking with this thing then! That's a pretty hefty commitment to keep up with. (There, Mikasounds people, see we appreciate it, stop lecturing us now plz.) I kinda wish he would get a livejournal feed/an rss of these though, just so I don't have to add another website for my daily trawl. There's an author I really like, Neil Gaiman, and he blogs something like several times a day, and it's really convenient to have these entries show up on my lj friends list rather than on their own website. Then again, you can't comment on his entries that way, so maybe this is better. --Jack

The ones who would possibly need the patronizing tone are all so over-the-moon over Mika that they think he's perfection embodied and each time he scratches his nose they want to faint and so they don't need a defensive email anyway. Phunks, I wish I could paste it in for you, but I get it as an image, not text, so I can't copy-and-paste. Eh, I bet Mika doesn't read these. He's a much better advertiser than that, I'd think if he read them, he would have corrected it. Jemma, thanks for teaching us a new word! It's so dirty-sounding too. --Jack

I agree, that's why it's annoying. If it had been just one email like that, but--as you say--they've all been like that, and it gets pretty irritating. Like being constantly talked down to. I mean, Mika's own blogs and the fact that he keeps doing them is terrific. But god, the online PR team! It's also weird because I know that he himself is much, much better at stuff like that, and at plugging himself. I guess he must not read the mass-emails, but I wish he would, and would show them how to do it properly. (Unless he rather likes the idea of lecturing us by proxy. ) --Jack

He'd be lucky if so! Frank Zappa is a gorgeous man. Y'all can relax, because even though I'm pretty sure Mika does not have any STDs, even if he did, we are 20 years past the point where people die of them. Even AIDS, as serious as it is, is no longer necessarily fatal--especially if you have money, and Mika does. Lots of people with HIV live fairly normal lives. I liked babs' suggestion better. Auto-erotic asphyxiation is so rockstah. --Jack

I posted this in the Mikasounds blog thread, but thought I'd repost it here all the same. Re: New Mikasounds email--I'm glad they're reading the MFC but they need to stop telling us how to feel about these blogs! Ugh! It is so patronizing and presumptuous and disrespectful and annoying. We don't need to be "assured" that Mika's blogs are not a "flash-in-the-pan" and that he "remains dedicated to communication with fans" or whatever unless there's suddenly a blog drought and they're just trying to let us know it's only temporary. If he's continuing to post on a regular basis, we will see for out selves that this is true! I suppose one could imagine they were just trying to reach the fans who may have stopped checking the website after the Paris gig or the main European festivals, but then there is no need for the defensive tone! Just say, "hey, there are new blogs, they're exciting, check 'em out." And the bit about how rare it is to find an artist of Mika's stature who would--out of the goodness of his heart--deign to favor us fans with blogs because he so cares--so, the implication goes, shouldn't we all be oh-so-grateful? Argh, lay off already. Let us decide by ourselves how to receive the blogs, whether we should be grateful or not, and just how rare or not rare we think this is. After all, we're the ones who are possibly following other artists too, of various levels of fame, and we see how different artists communicate, and we don't need to be lectured. Plus it's not like this point of view is unrepresented here on MFC--we're quite aware of it. We don't need it from Mikasounds. They're Mika's professional PR team; they need to learn how to act professional. --Jack

Re: New Mikasounds email--I'm glad they're reading the MFC but they need to stop telling us how to feel about these blogs! Ugh! It is so patronizing and presumptuous and disrespectful and annoying. We don't need to be "assured" that Mika's blogs are not a "flash-in-the-pan" and that he "remains dedicated to communication with fans" or whatever unless there's suddenly a blog drought and they're just trying to let us know it's only temporary. If he's continuing to post on a regular basis, we will see for our selves that this is true! I suppose one could imagine they were just trying to reach the fans who may have stopped checking the website after the Paris gig or the main European festivals, but then there is no need for the defensive tone! Just say, "hey, there are new blogs, they're exciting, check 'em out." And the bit about how rare it is to find an artist of Mika's stature who would--out of the goodness of his heart--deign to favor us fans with blogs because he so cares--so, the implication goes, shouldn't we all be oh-so-grateful? Argh, lay off already. Let us decide by ourselves how to receive the blogs, whether we should be grateful or not, and just how rare or not rare we think this is. After all, we're the ones who are possibly following other artists too, of various levels of fame, and we see how different artists communicate, and we don't need to be lectured. Plus it's not like this point of view is unrepresented here on MFC--we're quite aware of it. We don't need it from Mikasounds. They're Mika's professional PR team; they need to learn how to act professional. --Jack

Nope, I was directing it at those who made fun of her. There have been plenty of dissenting opinions here and most of them were politely stated--and like I implied, I don't really hold faith in the manifest destiny/Secret myself--but there were some posts that were just out-and-out mocking. And I see no call for that, especially since in the case of personal philosophies/religion/spiritual matters, unless one's an absolute atheist (and maybe even then) it's rather the pot calling the kettle black. --Jack

Ooop, sorry, the French one about him being a Pop Dynamo or something--third down in the News section? Luke's a sweetie, maybe we should make him an apple fanfic as well. Still haven't had the time to see Mika being cute on video. I may have to go AWOL again to take care of some real-life stuff for the next month anyway. --Jack

...thanks, Babs. I thought those were private diary entries!! That's the last time I put my 3rd-person BDSM blog online. Anyyyyyway. The interview and accompanying article really is cute, "Mika-angel" talk aside. I know that Mika loves the French and their media, but if I were him I would kind of puke a little whenever I read that. No offense to whatshername, Clementine's friend, intended. But this is why he is a better man than I. Suze, the close-up of your apple necklace is what I called the boob shot. Christine is right, her rack was also on fine display on that drunk photoshop. We should be careful lest this become like the Aussies' cleavage contest. Of course maybe then we could lure the Wiz himself in here. --Jack

I'm pretty tired of the French press calling him "angelic" or saying he has the face/curls/voice of an angel. Like, seriously, frenchies, it's a bit embarrassing. I picture the entire French entertainment industry as one giddy, blushing fangirl, barely managing to keep her undies dry while writing about him, hyperventilating into a paper bag for relief. That said, I am pretty sure we (the general "we," not just the MFC exclusively) are what they're talking about in terms of super-excited groupies. I doubt they're so up on our semi-official fanclub goings-on as to separate us out. The "7 to 77" is just a reference to the wide demographic of his fans, and the "super excited groupie" thing is describing some of these 7 to 77s. And come on, with all the screaming, crying, pushing, forgetting to breathe, etc that goes on among MFCers at his concerts... as detailed in our very own gig report threads... you can't deny it's true. All that aside: the Q & A is adorable. (He says "being in prison" would be the worst misfortune that could befall him, so I don't think he means he's ever been... yet.) I really like how he's constantly involved both with music beyond his own genre (and timeframe), and with visual artists. I always admire and respect people who are actively seeking out new inspirations among the arts, and not passively consuming only whatever is presented before them in the popular media. So, quite sincere and whole-hearted admiration for him there. So, you know, still charming, still engaging, love him, etc, etc. Although he should watch it a bit on the sexism. I know he's doing it in a cutesy way but it gets a bit annoying! --Jack

You know, there's no need to make fun of Melanie for this. If it works for her, great. If it's not your bag, well, pass on by. We all have personal philosophies that help us get through and that work for us at various points in our lives. Personally for me, when I was younger and depressed, existentialism helped me a lot. It isn't really positive thinking but it also isn't the idea of total self-reliance and creating the change you want or whatever, because that philosophy was part of what was making me so depressed in the first place. It's a good philosophy for some people, but it was making me anxious and stressed because, after all, if everything's up to you, then there's always the Damocles sword of failure. You always have to try, try, do your hardest, be your best, fight fight strive to get ahead. I had been trying to do that but by that point I was pretty much burned out and terrified that I'd make some kind of mistake--on my APs, in my decision process of where to go to college, in general--that would sink my battleship, so to speak. I didn't believe in God, so I couldn't rest happily thinking that there was some cozy plan for me. Existentialism helped because it said that yeah, life is absurd, random and unpredictable--but that was it, you just had to see it and laugh at the absurdity of it, and then you could rise above it. If there was no point to life except what you made of it, there was no path I had to be following--no expectations to disappoint. "Every choice is a good as any other" so long as you owned it and made it in full realization of it as a choice, existentialism held, and that was such a huge relief. And if you accepted life's absurdity, and took conscious experience of life itself as your only goal per se, then you couldn't really fail. You could be happy even in the the worst situation. (See Camus' Myth of Sisyphus for instance.) I modified the basic philosophy a bit for my specifics, of course (I am idealistic enough to feel that the betterment of the life experience of others is life's goal as well as its experience by oneself, and pessimistic enough to feel that some situation you really can't "triumph over," but in general)... and though I don't think of it as much today, I still think it holds true. But others don't find it's so for them, and to a lot of people, existentialism is a cynical, negative, alienating and jarring philosophy, rather than one of great hope and relief and empowerment. And it's like this with everything, isn't it? Belief in God is the same. The idea of an all-knowing, supposedly benevolent God's plan is comforting to some and downright obscene to others. The Holocaust, for me, blows it out of the water--I can't believe that could ever have been part of any benevolent being's plan, and no supreme being that would make it part of a plan could possibly be benevolent to me. To the gay prisoners who were castrated and pumped full of hormones and used as medical experiments without anesthesia, I doubt there was much relief in the idea that it was all part of God's plan. To the men and women who were starved and worked near-to-death and brutalized and dehumanized for years on end (and these were the lucky ones!) who often could not leave the lager behind even years after they were freed, who committed suicide--I don't think they would have wanted to hear talk of an all-loving God who was benevolently overseeing their life course. I don't think I see the work of a benevolent God in the fact that about 70% of Earth's population lives in poverty, constant fear of war and violence, that beyond the scope of the priviledged Western countries, statistics say that "up to one-third of adolescent girls report forced sexual initiation," that children lose their limbs working in diamond mines and their health working in sweatshops (even our Western concept of childhood is a privilege), that in India in the 1990s the police said they received "more than 2,500 reports of bride burning"...all of that does not put me in the frame of mind to say that God has any sort of plan and that the suffering of most of the world is somehow validated, now or ever. But I'm not everyone. And for every parent who lost a child who would consider it unspeakable to imply that the death of their baby was because "God must have wanted it for some reason," there is another who takes comfort in that same thought. And so, if directed positive thinking helps Melanie, I don't see why that's anything to mock her for. It really is no different than any other religious, spiritual or philosophical belief. --Jack

Back! Haven't watched/read ANY of the new blogs or videos yet (I may have watched the post-Parisian one, but honestly, kinda forgot it?), and don't feel too inclined to do so at the moment... I am basically 2-3 weeks behind on all this Mika stuff and feeling it a chore having to catch up, so I don't think I'll post much till I feel I actually want to go through the stuff I missed. From what I gathered just through the perusal of the front page and the apple thread: 1. Jemma cracked her rib due to pushing in Madrid. 2. Mika happened to show some part of his body or something and people went crazy because they have never seen a man's legs before. 3. Mika wore doodle-pants and people went crazy because they like him best as a half-naked hyperactive pre-schooler. 4. The apples are sour. (Ie, no news. ) 5. Suzy posted a picture of her boobs for me! 6. Christine did not. 7. Babs missed me. 8. Scutty has been having a life. Sigh. Please feel free to fill me in on anything else of importance! --Jack

Hey apples, just popping in to say that I'll be gone for the next 10-14 days on a trip! So you'll have to fill me in on stuff when I get back! --Jack

Ask Diana. --Jack

Hmm, fun thread! I'll stick to men (because I wasn't self-aware enough till college to classify my female crushes) and to nostalgic-value ones rather than any that may still be current. I'll try to pick actual "crushes" too, rather than just "people I passingly thought were hot" (so Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't count 'cause even though I thought he was cute I also considered him a bit of an asshole). JTT: We're starting early, ok? Preteen me thought he was super-cute, and his choice of roles helped. I had a literary crush on Tom Sawyer when I was 8-9 (I doodled his name all over my textbooks), and I approved of JJ playing the role, even if he didn't have curly red hair. Kevin Sorbo as Hercules: Very possibly the most butch man I ever found attractive. I don't know, I don't get it, I never even liked hairy chests and stuff, I just liked Greek mythology a lot and I was like 11 or 12 and I don't know! Tommy whatever. The green one. You know what, it happened, and it was very brief, and let's all JUST FORGET ABOUT IT. Dr. Samuel Beckett http://www.joorl.com/Wallpaper/QuantumLeap.jpg Ah, at last a crush I'm willing and proud to own even now! (I have no issues owning my past crush on JTT but, you know, he was a little kid.) This was a great show and a great character. And I totally liked him for his PERSONALITY although he was charismatic as well. ...my sister liked his sidekick. Looking back on it, they were so gay. When I was little, I used to practice doing his roundhouse kick, and hoped I could know as many languages as he did. I always had confusion issues on whether I LIKED characters or wanted to BE them. Also, I remember I had the crush on him because he never wanted to have sex with the various women he had to be romantic with, except once, and then it MEANT A LOT and ended up being this whole huge arc. Looking back on it, I think he had repression issues. Annnnnnd that takes us into my teens proper and then I stopped having so many crushes on random actors and started having them on musicians instead. Ok, one last embarrassing one: ...sigh. Asshole. It wasn't even a proper crush per se, thank god, 'cause I was done with those by then. But really, he's a jerk and eugh. --Jack

Try again. :-) It's on livejournal, and it was having some issues just now. --Jack

You've read it too? Wow! In French or in English? --Jack

I had to stop at like chapter 15 or so, I got really bored. I knew I couldn't make it through the whole real book, it's so long, but I hoped to get through the summary! But I gave up. Oh well, I suppose I shall remain in ignorance of the rest of it. However, with my knowledge of the first 15 chapters, I can now be amused that Melanie seems to be a vampire short of recreating the book! So it is not very unrealistic, I guess! --Jack

I'm sorry, this is really funny. I've only read like, half of chapter one, and it seems pretty accurate far as I read, but is it really accurate as far as the rest of it goes? I am now going to read the rest of her chapter summaries so that I can feel "in the know." --Jack

When I'm feeling sloppy, I sometimes get dressed in skinny jeans (blue or black, not colorful), a gray t-shirt, a hoodie, ratty shoes, and if it's fall, a random scarf. That's when I look most Mika-ish. I'm also fond of black-and-white striped jackets and tuxedo vests, and I do have some pairs of suspenders, but I think I look more stylish than Mika when I wear those. Recently though, these have been my style inspirations. I never like to look like I'm following someone else's style, unless they're fictional. --Jack

Yeah, that's why I tend to go along with the kissing when I go visit my relatives in Russia too. It's generally better/easier to accommodate the prevailing culture if you can (unless it's against your principles, of course). It would hurt my relatives' feelings if I insisted on not allowing kissing (I used to try not allowing men to guide me around everywhere, and man, the amount of arguments that caused), so I appreciate that it's common there and act as appropriate. And I guess your uncles may have to do the reverse in terms of what's appropriate where you live. Hah, well, she's in America now, you can teach her your huggy ways! It's not like people from other places don't hug, I just notice that Americans tend to do it more casually, not just with very-very close friends. But they're not the only huggy culture, of course. Mika, from what I am told, with his Lebanese-ness, is both extremely huggy and kissy. I'm pretty sure he kisses people on the lips frequently enough. So that's your warning to stay away from him, Kelzy. Or maybe the opposite. --Jack

Well as I said, of course if it feels uncomfortable to someone, they should tell people not to do it. And you bring up a good point about herpes, and the fact that you are right, kissing can transfer germs... But other than that, what's personal or not is culturally determined. In another culture, shaking hands might be considered extremely personal and taboo, while as licking someone's cheek may be a casual greeting. Impressionability would have little to do with it... someone from that hypothetical culture would get very upset if you tried to shake their hand, but that doesn't mean that shaking hands in itself is something that would encourage molestation or inappropriety. Example: even though my relatives kiss, I don't remember them hugging much. Hugging to me is a very American thing, and something I had to get used to. And I used to hug people very stiffly and had people at school tease me about how tense I'd get when friends tried to give me a hug, but like--that's a lot of close contact! Way more than with glancing kisses, for instance. And yet despite kisses being super-sexualized in the US, hugs aren't subject to quite the same scrutiny. Which is weird to me because hugs still feel very personal. This is partly why I kind of froze when Mika first hugged me too, rather than being all "yay awww he smells nice" or however it is others react. My instinctive reaction was "Wait stop you're invading my personal space I don't even know you!" --Jack

Well, coming from a somewhat European background, I'm a bit confused as to what the problem is? My Russian relatives are also more kissy--I just try to go along with it, since that's just how it's done. Not so much on the lips, but what does it matter? I mean, I can understand not wanting to have them kiss you if you're uncomfortable with it (I might as well) but I don't get why it has to be confusing to children... surely it's not too confusing in Germany. If I get what you're saying, you're worried about molestation, but that's a different thing... I mean, I actually think it's really sad that American culture is so hypersensitive about any sort of physical affection between children and especially their fathers. Certainly, if it makes the child uncomfortable, people should watch their distance, but it's really weird to me how Americans seem to almost make all physical contact with children have a sexual cast because they're so paranoid about it, so that no one can approach a child without having that in the back of their minds. Like, Americans think it's really weird when a child sleeps in the parents' bed past a certain age, but it doesn't have to be weird at all. What's weird to me is when people seem to think just by virtue of people sharing a bed there'll be something sexual going on. --Jack

Very nice! He's still rather drunk-looking but now it's more convincingly similar lighting. Christine, srs, use this as your avatar or your sig! I also think I know now who the mastermind behind our next April Fool will be... --Jack

Well, I wouldn't call it "naughty." "Naughty" implies some forgivable mischief that may even be cute. With the Fratellis, I want to punch them in the face. That may be fun though. You should tell me if they ever plan to do that again! --Jack