On The Evening News

“I read the news today, Oh boy

About  a lucky man who made the grade

And though the news was rather sad

Well I just had to laugh”

~ ‘A Day in the Life’, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

from The Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, 1967

A brief note on what follows:  Any resemblance in the following piece of fiction to any person, either living, dead, or in Adelaide, is absolutely intentional.  There.  That should see off the defamation lawyers…

(Cue pompous music.  Pompous music fades…)

Peter Hitchener:  Good evening, I’m Peter Hitchener and this is the news.  Well, mostly anyway.  Perhaps some of it will be news.  OK, it’s the news that Rupert Murdoch has permitted us to broadcast and is not contrary to his interests.

PH:  In breaking news on the recent debate concerning the environment, professional climate change skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton has presented his most recent research at a special evening convened at Monash University.  Lord Monckton’s research into debunking what he terms “the climate change myth” was presented in what was a departure from the regular method of presenting research to academics - he delivered the paper in much the same way as he created it - by standing at the lectern with his fingers in his ears yelling “Not listening!  Not listening!!”  It was rumoured that Lord Monckton’s paper also contained irrefutable evidence that the Earth is flat, the sky is indeed green, and that he saw Goody Proctor with the devil, but these claims were unable to be confirmed.

PH:  In politics today, Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has continued his persistent attacks on the government and the Carbon Tax legislation.  He made a statement at a factory in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, just around the corner from the factory in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne where he made a similar statement yesterday.  And the day before that.  Our political correspondent Laurie Oakes spoke with Mr Abbott earlier today.

(On Location)

Laurie Oakes:  Mr Abbott, can you explain why you are here today?

Tony Abbott:  Well, Laurie, I’m here to put pressure on the Government and to highlight their great, big tax, which I believe would be terrible for all Australians.

LO:  What part of the Carbon Tax does your party most disagree with?

TA:  Well, Laurie, I mostly disagree with the Government’s great, big tax, and I believe it will be bad for all Australians.

LO:  Would you concede that the Carbon Tax will discourage large companies, the worst polluters in the country, from continuing to pollute the air that all Australians breath every day?

TA:  Well, Laurie, I believe that the Government’s great, big tax will be just awful for all Australians.

LO:  Can you outline the Coalition’s plan to reduce carbon emissions?

TA:  Well, Laurie the Coalition’s policy is to be against the Government’s great, big tax, which will of course be bad for all Australians.

LO:  Do you have any ideas at all for the future development and progress of Australia as a nation?

TA:  …

LO:  Mr Abbott?  Do you have any creative ideas at all?  Can you articulate any vision whatsoever for the future of this country?

TA:  … 

LO:  Mr Abbott?

TA:  Well, Laurie, what I can say is that the Government’s great, big tax is very, very bad and…

LO:  Yes, yes, thank you Mr Abbott.  There you have it, Peter, a typically astute and erudite offering from the man who is potentially the next Prime Minister of Australia.   Back to you in the studio.

Peter Hitchener:  Well, that was certainly an >ahem< enlightening statement from the Opposition leader.  Thank you, Laurie.  That’s Laurie Oakes, on location.

PH:  In other news today, following accusations that he had lifted the practice of arrogance, xenophobia and uninformed opinion to the level of an art form, controversial columnist and broadcaster Andrew Bolt has placed himself in the State Gallery of Victoria as a living art installation.  We now cross to our reporter James Talia outside the State Gallery.

(On Location)

PH:  James, how have Bolt’s artistic efforts been viewed by the arts community at large?

James Talia:  Well Peter, art critics have dismissed this as a ridiculous stunt and an attempt by Bolt to do anything to bring attention to himself in service of his colossal ego.  It has been reported that the entire on-air staff of ailing extreme-right-wing radio station MTR have lauded it as a ground-breaking work of genius.

PH:  How does the installation work exactly?

JT:  Visitors to the gallery approach Mr Bolt, who is sitting in a corner of a room, and tell him their personal stories.  Mr Bolt then vitriolically dismisses them and claims their experiences never happened.

PH:  Well, that certainly sounds like an interesting way to pass the time, and no doubt a great drawcard for visitors to our fine city.  Thanks, James.

Peter Hitchener:  In finance news today, the stock market took another tumble in a continuation of the roller-coaster the markets have experienced in the last few weeks.  We cross now to Brandon J. Moneybags III from CommSec, to give us the latest news from the world of finance.

Brandon Moneybags:  Thank you Peter.  It was another unstable day of trading on the stock exchange today, the worst hit was retailer CheapCrap’R’Us, whose stock dipped 20% following the announcement of a profit warning.  In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, they downgraded their expected profits next quarter to a mere two-hundred million dollars, rather than the initial predictions of two-hundred and fifty million.

PH:  That’s certainly an extraordinary drop in the stock price.  What was the reasoning behind brokers punishing CheapCrap’R’Us stock so harshly?

BM:  Beats me.  Generally speaking, brokers detest any company that does anything less than deliver obscene dividends into their already overinflated bank-balances.

PH:  Don’t brokers also care about the possible impact on Mum-and-Dad investors, and superannuation investments?

BM:  Are you kidding?  Most corporate investors and major shareholders have the rampant greed of a rabid, starving ferret, and dispositions to match.  The plebs, um, I mean, the public-at-large does not factor heavily into their thinking.  The person garnering the most sympathy from financiers everywhere is CheapCrap’R’Us’s CEO, who finds himself in the unfortunate and dreadful position of having some of his executive bonuses withdrawn, meaning he will pocket a woeful twelve million dollars next financial year instead of the expected fifteen million.

PH:  Thanks Brandon.  That’s Brandon Moneybags from CommSec, most certainly unbeholden to his corporate masters, with what I’m quite sure is an unbiased account of today’s activity in the markets.

Peter Hitchener:  After the break, entertainment news, sport and weather.

(Cue ad-break…)

Make sure you tune in next week for more enthralling news - everything you didn’t know that you had to know...

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On Transformers, part 3

“Instruments of destruction

Tools of foul play

It’s a violent eruption

Existence drips away”

~ ‘Instruments of Destruction’, by NRG

from the soundtrack to “Transformers: The Movie” 1986

For the last two weeks, I’ve been regaling you, dear reader, with the  ups and downs and goods and bads of director Michael Bay’s trilogy of Transformers films which started in 2007 and were completed earlier this year.  This week as last week, I need to give the familiar warning that what follows may contain elements of plot, story and character that may spoil the viewing experience if you haven’t seen the movies yet.  So, again, I utter those vaguely silly words…

SPOILER ALERT!!  SPOILER ALERT!!  SPOILER ALERT!!

Michael Bay has never been one for bringing fully realised characters on screen.  It is fortuitous, perhaps, that the robotic casts that litter the Transformers mythology boast rich histories in both cartoons and comic books.  The first of the characters created in 1984 were given much of their character traits via the “Tech Specs” mini-biographies attached to each of the original toys, courtesy of Bud Budiansky, a comic book writer and artist who also wrote the vast majority of the initial Marvel Comics series.  Budiansky was, along with Bay and the movie trilogy’s Executive Producer Steven Spielberg, one of the non-fictitious inductees into toy-maker Hasbro’s first ever Transformers Hall of Fame in 2010.

Nevertheless, Bay does fumble the ball with his players.  I expect that Bay doesn’t put nearly as much import on character as much as visual spectacle, assuming that his target audience is likely made up of young boys who are not particularly demanding of such things as proper story arcs or character development.  Bay does frame his movies around such human touchstones as a boy getting his first car (Transformers, 2007), leaving home to go to college (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2009) and a young man getting his first job (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, 2011), via the passage of his main human character Sam Witwicky (played competently in all three films by Shia LeBeouf).  Since Bay made the decision to view the robot action through the prism of human experience (a decision as much about budgetary constraints as creative integrity), and imbued the warring robot factions with a degree of character and individual motivations, the criticism of his inability to fully realise the character’s personalities in a logical and consistent way is a valid one.  This is, as I’ve mentioned previously, despite the fundamental nature of the Transformers universe.

Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, has always been the most noble of all Transformers.  During the course of the films he makes clear a philosophy he has carried in numerous iterations of the Transformers - and notably his ‘motto’ as described on his Generation One toy’s Tech Specs - “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings”.  Prime actually utters this exact phrase during the first movie, although it seems shoe-horned into an ill-fitting place within the context in the story.  One imagines Bay shoving it in as a way to throw a bone to long term fans, without any intention to actually have Prime behave in a way consistent with this credo.  Indeed, rather than Prime being the reluctant warrior who kills only when it is the only recourse available (such as in the opening scenes of T:ROTF, when he takes down Demolishor during a particularly destructive romp through Shanghai), Prime says “We will kill them all” at the beginning of the final battle in Chicago in T:DOTM.  Bloodthirsty is not a trait loyal fans associate with Optimus, and yet he executes his traitorous predecessor, Sentinel Prime, following Sentinel’s weakened and helpless state after a brutal fight with Megatron.  Sentinel Prime pleads with him before Optimus delivers the coup de grace.

There are clever nods to geeks everywhere early in T:DOTM where Sam’s mini-Autobot ‘pets’ Wheelie and Brains are watching a rerun of the original Star Trek, specifically an episode where Spock goes crazy, foreshadowing Sentinel Prime’s betrayal of the Autobot’s cause (Sentinel Prime of course being given voice by Leonard Nimoy).  That is, it would have been clever had the Bay not felt it necessary to actually spell it out as exactly that.  It’s not an Easter Egg hunt if someone is hurling the eggs at your head just in case you can’t find them yourself.  It’s not nearly the only example of a script that tends to belt you over the head like a blunt instrument.  The jokes are much the same.  Profane, leg-humping robots and Sam’s mother getting herself high on hash cookies are about as highbrow as it gets.  This is even more annoying considering that following T:ROTF, Bay specifically apologised for what he called ‘corny humour’ and assured moviegoers that this would not be repeated in T:DOTM.  He lied.

More troubling than inconsistent characters and awkward humour are the personalities provided to the Autobot ‘twins’ Skids and Mudflap, in T:ROTF.  They speak in what is clearly intended to be an African-American vernacular, and are unfortunately given traits that reflect the most appalling of racial stereotypes; fighting amongst themselves, admitting a lack of intelligence, even at one point revealing that they “can’t read” a form of Cybertronian script.  Supposedly intelligent characters such as Ratchet and the stuffy Que are given clipped British tones.  The red Ferrari Dino is, of course, given a broad Italian brogue.  Using accents and racial stereotypes as a way of delineating character has never been so clumsy since George Lucas gave the crafty and deceptive trade emissaries Asian accents and made the laid-back but dim-witted Gungans Rastafarian in Star Wars Ep1: The Phantom Menace.  Neither has it been quite so ugly.

I’m also somewhat uncomfortable with Bay’s treatment of women.  While Megan Fox filled the role of female lead in the first two films, she was fired from T:DOTM for publicly comparing Bay to a Nazi in relation to his fierce work ethic and demeanour on-set, which understandably did not go down well at all with the Jewish Spielberg.  One would assume that being fired was probably enough punishment for a twenty-four-year-old actress who was likely hired for her appearance rather than acting chops, but Bay was not content leaving it at that.  He saw fit to include thinly-veiled and dismissive insults towards Fox’s character in the script for T:DOTM that were clearly aimed at Fox herself.  I If I were Fox, I’d probably be more insulted by the fact that she was replaced by a Victoria’s Secret model without a single acting credit to her name.  Her replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, doesn’t get much of run in T:DOTM either.  Aside from a brief moment of clumsy deus ex machina in the final act of the film, she is essentially playing the role of over-sexualised eye candy.  The very first shot of Huntington-Whiteley in the film is a lingering full-screen shot of her barely-clad derrière (in eye-popping 3D no less!) as she climbs a staircase.  Also early in the film, LaBeouf’s on-screen mother, played by Julie White, is heard referring to a package containing a medal that LaBeouf’s character has been given with the comment “Nice box!”, just as she passes Huntington-Whiteley.  Perhaps Bay did Fox a favour.

Of the remaining human actors, Bay has assembled an impressive cast, with numerous highly respected thespians among them.  Sadly, very few of them impress in these movies, with John Turturro, Jon Voight, John Malkovich, Kevin Dunn and the aforementioned White giving over-the-top and ludicrously ham-fisted performances.  Turturro, who is capable of both great pathos and great comedy, is nothing short of embarrassing.  Voight simply looks like he wandered onto the wrong film set and is making the most of it.  The less said about Malkovich the better.  Did he lose a bet?  

Much better are LaBeouf, Frances McDormand, and the wonderful (oh, so wonderful) Alan Tudyk.  Tudyk in particular, manages some impressive action without taking himself (and the franchise) too seriously, courtesy of his impeccable sense of comic and dramatic timing.  He is horribly underutilised, and it is an enormous shame he appears in a handful of scenes and only in the final film.  Can you imagine how much better he would have performed in Turturro’s role as Agent Simmons in all three films?  What a waste.

If only Michael Bay had cast his roles better.  If only Bay had spent a larger proportion of his considerable resources on developing his script and story further (especially the mess that is T:ROTF).  If only… if only.  The movies are without question spectacular.  Absolutely spectacular.  But they could have been so much more.  It’s likely that I would not have taken all of this nearly so seriously if it wasn’t for the fact that Bay was strip-mining a childhood love of mine.  In recent weeks, T:DOTM surpassed the US$1B in worldwide box office receipts, making it the 5^th highest money earner (not adjusted for inflation) in the history of cinema*.  This reality means that despite the fact that Bay and LeBeouf have both reportedly said they will not be back for any further sequels (to say nothing of the fact that major characters in Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave, Shockwave, Sentinel Prime, Ironhide and Jetfire have all shuffled of to that scrapyard in the sky by the end of T:DOTM), there can be no doubt that film studios will be back at this particular well soon enough.

* Following Avatar, Titanic, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.  It’s only US$47M behind LOTR:ROTK, so 4^th place is only a matter of time.

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On Transformers, part 2

“Oh, If only my life was more like 1983

All these things would be more like they were at the start of me

Had it made in ‘83…

...You can paint the house a rainbow of colours

Rip out the floorboards, replace the shutters

But that’s my plastic in the dirt...”

~ ‘83’, by John Mayer

from his album “Room For Squares”, 2001

Last week I wrote about the three Transformers films directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg, those being Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011).  I’ve got more to say, and in the very best of fanboy tradition, I’m prefacing what follows with an overly dramatic SPOILER ALERT!!, that is to say, I may reveal plot points and character arcs that you may not want to know if you haven’t seen the films already.  If you’ve never seen a SPOILER ALERT!! before, you need to trust me; it’s the done thing.

So…  SPOILER ALERT!!  SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! 

My father still has a laminated placemat that I drew in 1986, at age nine or ten, depicting a Transformers battle scene between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons.  I loved the cartoon from its early days in 1984 and the animated movie in the heady days of 1986.  It was a much simpler time.  I collected the toys and had some beauties too.  If only I had a clue about their eventual worth (not just financial) back then, I wouldn’t have carelessly disposed of them as I did sometime in the late 1980’s, an action I regret more than I can say.  The movies brought me back into that world and it’s grand mythologies.  I now belong in a strange space between worlds - to most of my friends I have an interest that is strong enough to be likened to obsession, but within the fan community, I would not be considered to be very serious at all.  My interest is well within the realms of hobby, rather than the driving force of obsession.  Nevertheless, the lore of Transformers is one that resonates with me and I will certainly admit to a large degree of affection for its stories and traditions.

I was initially wary of Bay’s choice to depict the characters that form the basis of the Transformers universe as extremely complex pieces of machinery, far more so than any other iteration of the same characters.  Many segments of Transformers fandom have rejected the look of the characters, pejoratively terming them (and the many, many toys they inspire) ‘Bayformers’, characterised by less blocky forms than the more traditional depictions and often featuring complex transformation sequences.  These designs did eventually grow on me, even though I would have much preferred Ironhide to be red instead of black, and Ratchet to be his more traditional white and red instead of a lurid yellow-green.  The flames that Optimus Prime sport in his vehicular mode were the subject of much internet angst, too.  These choices may be explained by the fact that large tracts of red tend to photograph poorly, hence the designs needed revising for practical reasons.  This does not, however, explain the perfectly clear presence of the red Ferrari car mode of Dino (more on him next week) in T:DOTM.

The same excuses can not be made for things like Decepticon leader Megatron’s look, which makes him appear as though his head has half-swallowed his face.  Most all of the robots have odd-looking faces, with Optimus Prime sporting a very cool look until his traditional mouthguard disappears to make way for something far more simian.  I do suppose it is somewhat fitting, as the characters are, after all, aliens.

Those designs represented a risk taken by the filmmakers, in that they risked alienating a large enough segment of the loyal fan base in the early days of the film’s development (via the inevitable leaks of photos and footage from the set, as well as the teasers, trailers, posters and other promotional material). If the fans were turned off, the filmmakers may then have had to potentially rely too heavily on casual film-goers to make a financial success of the film.  The studio no doubt intended Transformers to be a tent-pole, blockbuster summer release and potential franchise starter. One would have to admit the designs were a popular success by virtue of the fact that Bay’s vision of characters such as the popular Autobot Bumblebee have taken its place in pop-culture consciousness as the more-or-less definitive versions of the characters, at least for the time being.  That may seem a big statement, but if you disagree, I challenge you to try and find a Transformers lunch box without Bay’s Bumblebee on it at K-Mart.

I would have liked to have seen more characters from my youth realised on the screen, but sadly, the robot rosters are slim, particularly in the first film.  I can understand that a larger cast represented a larger budget in CGI effects which perhaps couldn’t be justified by Bay, but it is perplexing that they still referred to the struggles between the good and bad characters as a war in the initial promotional material (the tagline “Our World. Their War.” appeared in some posters).  It was far more like a fight between two small gangs than a war.

Last week I discussed the merits of Michael Bay as a visual director, and that his storytelling style is a good fit for the subject matter.  Unfortunately, like much of Hollywood, Bay does not have the same grasp of story and character and is not nearly as interested in the finer details of his scripts as he is in his camera angles, shot selection and special effects. In the first film, a plan to prevent the evil Decepticons from capturing the powerful and life-giving Allspark Cube, the human military characters decide the best course of action is to take the cube away from a relatively remote location and into the middle of a city full of people.  To ‘hide’ it from the huge, destructive, evil creatures who are happy to destroy anything in their path to get at it.  Was there ever a denser or sillier plot device?  I get the reasoning behind it; a battle between giant robots in the middle of a bustling city is appealing on a visceral level, but surely the script writers could have thought of a logical and intelligent way of getting them there?

As I said last week, there is an inherent inconsistency with expecting a movie based on a line of toys to be exceedingly nuanced.  Bay was reportedly hamstrung while making T:ROTF due to the Writers Guild of America’s strike between November 2007 and February 2008, at which time the shooting script for the first sequel was only one draft old. It was in desperate need of serious revision by writers who were unable (and rightly unwilling) to work on it.  Bay shot the script as it was, and the film was a mess.  I’ve written enough first drafts to know they almost always stink.  The movies also seem to lack a cohesion between them; while the level of threat reaches a dramatic climax in T:DOTM’s last hour (the invasion, destruction of and fight for Chicago is clearly the best 60 minutes of the franchise), the character’s motivations to possess and control the various McGuffins (the Allspark Cube, the Matrix of Leadership, and the Space Bridge respectively) don’t always make sense and hence the overarching Transformers movie mythology lacks a certain consistency.  More’s the pity.

There are deeper problems with the movies than mere quibbles, but that’s a discussion for next week, where we will conclude.

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On Transformers, part 1

“The Transformers! More than meets the eye!

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons!

The Transformers! Robots in disguise!

The Transformers! More than meets the eye!

The Transformers!”

~ ‘Transformers Theme Song’, by Anne Bryant and Ford Kindler

from the Transformers (Generation 1) animated TV show, 1984

I was chatting with some friends the other day and the conversation turned to a problem someone was having with his car’s gearbox.  My eyes glazed over.  I explained that my only interest in cars would be if they should happen to change into robots…

Flashback to the mid 1980’s.  My parents divorced, a tumultuous time in any young person’s life, no doubt.  Despite that, one of my fondest ever memories is of waking up at a ridiculously early hour of each Saturday morning when staying with my father and tuning the TV to Channel 10 and The Early Bird Show, with Darryl Cotton and Marty Monster.  My very favourite cartoon featured on the show was Transformers, to the point where I used to sit by the TV with a tape deck and record the audio of the show and re-listen to them over and over again.  I knew several episodes, as well as the 1986 animated movie, off-by-heart.  Watch that movie with me sometime: you’ll hear the dialogue coming from me as fluently as from the speakers.

Flash-forward to June 28^th, 2007.  I was at the local Cineplex, waiting to realise a dream that I, like many other fans of my age, had been awaiting for most of our lives - a live action Transformers movie.  Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Michael Bay, the movie has to date grossed nearly US$710M worldwide and spawned enormously successful sequels in 2009 and 2011.  I was tremendously excited.  While Michael Bay’s movies had largely failed to set the critical world on fire, he was clearly a world class visual auteur, and I longed for him to be equal to the task.

As is his wont, Bay produced three bombastic pieces of cinematic nonsense with these three films.  There is a clip on YouTube which compares potential critiques of his storytelling style with that of the ballet or opera.  The argument goes something like this:  If one claims that it’s somehow justifiable for the so-called fine arts to eschew such storytelling elements such as a logical plot, believable characters, and realistic dialogue in favour of an exhilarating spectacle, then the same argument is equally valid for the more low-brow, popular arts.  The critics who sniff self-importantly at those who contribute to the many millions of dollars flooding through cinema multiplexes worldwide can be dismissed as mere snobs.  Stephen King has made similar claims against the literary ‘elite’ in his 2000 book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (which, as I’ve mentioned before, partially inspired this blog).

It seems a reasonably valid argument on the surface, but proves somewhat specious.  The fact is that a great many filmmakers have indeed managed to span the divide between special-effect laden spectacle and intelligent, thought-provoking and inspiring plot and story in creative ways.  For recent examples, the films of Christopher Nolan come immediately to mind.  Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is likewise a blockbuster series of movies of rare quality.  However, It does bear remembering that the initial Transformers cartoon was nothing more than a vehicle for advertising a creative new line of toys, so perhaps expecting more from these movies is a bridge too far.

Visually, Bay’s Transformers films are nothing short of stunning.  Few in modern popular cinema makes use of light like Bay does.  One imagines his crew meticulously setting up and waiting all day for one shot of a few seconds, where brilliant beams of of sunlight are captured that highlight and frame his actors and actresses just so.  Likewise, his special effects are extraordinarily intricate, some of models of his robotic characters consisting of literally thousands and thousands of individually designed and moving parts.  Battle scenes are his symphony, his players weave an elaborate dance as they pummel, slice and blast their way through each other in pursuit of a belaboured plot device or fanciful McGuffin.  This has sometimes been likened to a child mashing his toys together in mock combat, many claiming that Bay’s tendency towards lightening quick edits produces nothing more than a vertigo-inducing blur.  It is a fair point, but I personally find Bay’s visual style a perfect match for the subject matter.  

The first two of Bay’s Transformers films have a place on my DVD shelf (with a space reserved for the third) and I have dipped my toes (and feet and ankles and etc.) into the chaotic waters of the films many times since acquiring them.  Each of the three movies has significant flaws, with Bay himself retrospectively dismissing the first sequel (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, 2009) as a poor movie, but I enjoyed the films.  I’m glad they were made.  There’s a part of my inner-child that giggles with glee while drinking in the extravagant clashes of the robotic titans that arrested my imagination so completely as a young boy.  The financial success of the films (combined worldwide box office of over US$2.5B so far) also owes a debt to its ability to appeal to new, young fans as well as re-capturing the imagination of older ‘kids’ like me, complete with our disposable incomes and desire to reclaim our youth while bringing up young families of our own.

Next week, I will put my ‘fanboy’ hat on and delve into more specific issues that I have with the films and the creative choices the filmmakers made.  Make sure you tune in, right here.

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