Iconic series : "Malcolm in the Middle"

Dear Charlie,

I hope you all are doing well! This is my first article on the blog and I am going to speak about my favourite series (I mean the only one I have ever watched, shame on me) :

Sorry, this one is not for the “My Wife and Kids” fans lol ! “Malcolm in the middle” is one of the most iconic series in the 00’s (already twenty years old !!), but I was way too young (or not even born yet) at the time, so I never watched it until … quarantine ! It was available on “6ter”, in French unfortunately, and I watched the seven seasons with my family.

The series was created by Lindwood Boomer and as you may already know, the story is about an American stereotypical family of six (the parents and their four sons). It is quite realistic and I love the silly humor it has. Here is a little description of the characters :

 

Malcolm is obviously the main character. He is played by Frankie Muniz and is eleven years old at the beginning of the series. He is very smart and egocentric.

Reese, a bit older than Malcolm, is the "silly bully", and according to me, the funniest ! He is good at cooking too. He is played by Justin Berfield.

Then there is Dewey, the youngest. Malcolm and Reese are jealous because he is Lois’ favourite and they often hit him. But he is also smart and, later, we discover he is a great pianist.

Their parents really love each other. The mother, Lois, runs the house, and she terrifies everyone when she is angry. She sometimes feels lonely as the only woman in the family. The father, Hal, is immature and really close to his sons. He often does stupidities with them. They are played by the famous actress and actor Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston.

(The latter also played in “Breaking Bad” (don’t spoil me I haven’t watched it yet !), and a lot of people say both of the series are related. I love this theory lol)

 

And finally, Christopher Masterson played the role of Francis, the oldest and extremely turbulent brother who was sent to a military school by his parents.

There are a lot of other characters but I let you (re)discover them 😉

My favourite episode is the fifth of the sixth season (titled “Kitty’s Back”).

Here is the music of the generic if you are nostalgic : https://youtube.com/watch?v=J8y8Ziwswe0www.

I hope I made you want to (re)watch the series, and if you already saw it, then tell me what you thought about it !

Finally, I would add : Reese graduated high school, so can we !

Bye Charlie !

Hip Hop Styles n°1

Hey Charlie.

So, today, I’ll once again bring you in an introductive journey, this time about dancing. And more specifically, hiphop, where we’ll learn the basics, of what it is and its multiple times.

I guess everybody has heard of hip-hop and knows that it comes from the streets… but we’re not here today to learn about history, maybe later. But now we will learn about the few styles that you need to know to start on this subject that is a real rabbit hole.

So, first of all I need to put a disclaimer, I DO NOT have expert level knowledge, nor will the information given be extremely in detail. These are basics to be able to recognize and identify moves, to know the codes. Even more so, every style goes tons of variations because in art it’s always so difficult to classify anything and especially to encapsulate everything.

Our first style is one that most people think it is all of what hip hop is. “Yeah it’s just some people in sweater throwing themselves on the floor and standing on their heads”

Indeed we are now talking about THE original and very, very VERY old Break dancing that has appeared in the 60s. Also generally summarized by just the word break since its popularization in the 70s.

Break dancing is so old and has evolved so much through the time, that it doesn’t just have its own institutions or tournaments. It’s that it’s even considered as its own dance! completely separated from hip hop in some instances!

Break dancing is composed of 2 very distinct substyles, there’s the part on your feet, and the part on the floor. The first part is called Top Rock, it’s mostly foot work, some parts where you think its really cool and simple to replicate… but when you try and it turns out it isn’t simple AT ALL.

This is where breakers mostly start to show off and give a taste before having the move where they get to the ground and start some of their real work.

In break dance there's the second part which is the major part of what break dancing is. (it is sometimes called coupole but its like any lablisation, not all people use it and sometimes it is used to describe anyhing and its opposite so take this with a pinch of salt)

There are a number of acrobatics in this sub-style, on the grounds there are windmills and ways to spin on the floor, freezing in a pose that does not seem even possible. But this part of break dancing also features a lot of real steps (i mean by that, that the ones before, in the coupole categorie are more powermoves or avrobatics) with footwork and i guess you could call handwork since its basically the same but you also use hands.

And this is here where you mostly distinguish 2 types of amateur break-dancers:

The ones that are power heads with very simple dances but one power move like a head stand for example that they’ll just drop in the middle and sustain on the wow effect of this move.

And other with much more simple steps but it’s through their wit, originality and capacity to create powerful choreographies out of a number of step work that sets them above the rest. (I guess you can see where my preference lies)

My final word on this style is about the music, and holy moly this music is fast and has powerful beats. Here are some really nice songs to break dance to and to understand what type of song it is done onto : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6g3yQ1Y3vo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQz478apQw8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qNz8SYK6IM

You can see they all are generally what we would call old school, which is to be expected from the fact that this style is very old in dancing standards. Break dancing music can also come from rap directly because as it is extremely fast paced and accentuated they correspond to the rapping standards too. 

Raps are usually avoided in hip hop music because it goes much too fast for people that usually use beats that are very repetitive, and for people who seek originality in ever move, they are much too repetitive, so this kind of regular cohabitation is almost solely seen here in break.

By the way this combination rap and hip hop is mostly a falsehood, as they both influence each other but are not one and the same. As a matter of fact, I would say that the kind of music that is most present in hip hop dancing, without special mix for dancing is disco and pop.

Phiew, I didn’t expect to ramble so long about break so I think we are going to take a break and explore other styles in other blogs (and I promise you these won’t be as long because break dance is just a thing so niche and separated from the rest of hip hop dancing that I needed to say all of this)

Anyhow, I hope you’ve had a good time

That’s all for today, I will see you later

And never the 3 rules of hip hop culture

Peace

Love

And having fun

Bye Charlie!

Music Club

 /!\ Since I don't want to flood the blog with Music Club related things, EVERYTHING REGARDING THE MUSIC CLUB WILL BE FOUND IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST (yes, everything, including the new dates, themes and rooms of the future meetings, and the playlists of every meeting). /!\

Hello everyone!

As I'm (finally) registered to the blog, I wanted to write my first article about a club that Marilyn and I are going to be presenting : the Music Club.

The idea is that we have a new theme every time we meet, and you guys have to send us songs that fit into the theme that was chosen. It's not very complicated, we just wanted to broaden your musical culture, as well as ours! So do what you want in terms of the songs you pick (make sure there's an appropriate language though), but if you can, try and bring not blatantly famous songs that everyone already knows, this way we can actually discover new things. If you can, and we encourage that you do, try and think of an anecdote about this song (it can be how you discovered it/the band, what it means to you, why you like it, just anything that you think of really!). I had many people tell me they wouldn't take part in the music club because they don't know enough music : you don't have to bring a song!!! If you don't know any song fitting the category, you can still come to the club to discover new songs!

At the end of every club, we will gather the songs and create a Spotify playlist (or Youtube or Deezer, we haven't figured that out yet), and we'll post it in the comments of this post. That way, if we didn't have the time to play your pick at the meeting, it can still be found by others in the playlist, and if you couldn't come to the club, you can still find the songs somewhere.

The first Music Club will take place tomorrow (Wednesday the 14th of November) at lunch, in room 308, and the first theme is music from the 2000s (from 2000 to 2010, not before and not after) If you have friends outside of the section interested in music, be sure to mention it to them!

Now I don't want to sound annoying, but in order for this club to work, we really do need you to send us picks! So far, we haven't received a single email and the club is tomorrow (we know we were badly organised, but still, I heard many people, particularly Secondes, being really excited about the creation of the club, but no one actually sent us anything which is surprising). My email address is sibylle.janin@free.fr. I hope to receive some emails because if no one is involved, we will sadly have to stop the club just when it finally started.

I hope to see some of you tomorrow in 308 then!
Peace, Sibulle