Greetings from Narnia Dispatches as we finish catching up from a backlog of topics that did not make the cut several days ago. Just a couple of items to finish today. Just a smidge. 😉
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Just in case anyone was wondering about Jake and Austin and Father's Day... That is if anyone was. 😅 Well, Jakers has remained hidden in his little cocoon and we did get a new photo of Austin with his side of the fam. Allegedly in Austin, TX. Far, far away from you-know-who.
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| Austin, his golf club, sister Ashley and her family |
Golfing on Father's Day because he has nowhere else to be. Carefree! No responsibilities.
Okay, whatever. lol. And now Austin is supposed to be back in L.A. Or is it that he's just now coming out of hiding? Here's our guy!! [although this pic is a bit hinky looking]
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| Think I can count on one hand all these years when I've seen him in sneakers |
And it kills me because somehow Austin gets the bows on his shoelaces to lay so flat and mostly horizontal. Remember his bowling shoes pic from way back when? They were flawlessly tied! I want to know his secret. 👟
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| way to switch up the shoelace colors! |
Look at that, though! Perfectly horizontal shoelace bows. How did he do that? I was impressed back then, am still impressed. 😄
Nice to see Austin!!! Meanwhile, the hubs has added yet another movie to his IMDb. Jake has so many movies on his schedule in pre/post production - he must meet himself coming and going. Then again, Jake has to demonstrate during his long absences from the public that he is not only in demand, but that he is working.
And let's add a new one:
Seriously, best wishes to Jake on his future projects, though! We just like to give him a hard time. 😉
And should we mention that Jake has been planted to be in New York City? While Austin is in L.A.
Like old times, isn't it? 😀
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And this is interesting. As we look to resurrect the timeline that is Shevine's, it's easy to see already that 2015-2016 was a pivotal time for Adam Levine and Blake Shelton. Much was going on, a lot of shuffling, musical chairs, and sudden "mood" swings about their television show, The Voice.
Gwen Stefani first appeared as a coach on The Voice in 2014, with its Season 7 premiere episode airing September 21. At this time, she was still "married" to Gavin Rossdale and Blake was "married" to fellow country singer Miranda Lambert.
Then, both Stefani and Blake Shelton broke up with their "spouses" in the summer of 2015 (Blake/Lambert in July, Stefani filing for divorce from Rossdale one month later in August).
Stefani took Season 8 off, but returned for Season 9, which began airing on September 21, 2015.
Only days later, Stefani's rep was denying dating rumors about her and Blake. As we showed in our post "Thursday Musings Part II: Resurrecting Shevine and Liam Payne is Doing Swimmingly", Blake and Stefani were "spotted" in potato cam photos at Adam Levine's Halloween party that holiday weekend of Oct 31.
In between the premiere of The Voice Season 9 on September 21, 2015 and that "Gasp! Caught!" Halloween party, this interesting Voice coaches appearance on The Jimmy Fallon Show on October 26, 2015, occurred. [and so now PG has messed with this post so much that she's jacked up the embed code and so this is just a printscreen. My apologies!]
The link is in the next paragraph, but here also is the full video.
Now, if you are going to watch the video, you'll need to watch it at the Word Press site linked in the tweet because it does not seem to be available as a stand-alone clip on You Tube, but instead it is available on You Tube as posted by (amazingly!) Entertainment Tonight, and the title of the video is: "Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani Hilariously Duet To Drake's 'Hotline Bling' ", whereas truthfully the video features all four Voices judges for the upcoming season - Blake, Adam, Pharrell Williams and Stefani. It should also be noted that the Entertainment Tonight YouTube video is edited.
The entire video on the Word Press site is a revealing study of what would be coming very soon in the public lives of Blake, Stefani and Adam. Narnia will merely bullet point our observations. The game that was played was called "Spin the Microphone" and it's like Spin the Bottle. Whoever the spinner lands on, gets to pick a card, which will have the name of a song. Then they get to pick whoever they want to get up on stage and sing the song karaoke style. Cue cards are available if they don't know the words.
• The first spin lands on Jimmy Fallon, who draws the card which has Britney Spears' "Oops!.. I Did It Again". He picks Adam Levine to perform the song. Adam is excellent at impressions and he has enthusiastically and good-naturedly played numerous games on talk shows. But for some odd reason, he performs terribly in this game with "Oops!.. I Did It Again". To be blunt - it's pretty flat and horrific. And it's so poor, that Adam slumps off the stage muttering about a "walk of shame". So he knew his rendition was bad, an impression that was quite uncharacteristic of him (Again, Adam is very talented at voice imitations as evidenced in this stint on a different episode of Jimmy Fallon).
• Jimmy Fallon even tells Adam, "You have to know this. It's Britney, baby!" Oh? Jimmy? And Adam replies, "It's not so much whether I know it." To which, Jimmy reinforces, "Yeah, yeah, you definitely know it." This conversation between Adam and Jimmy Fallon should itself be a big *wink wink* to observant viewers.
• The spinner lands on Stefani next and she picks Blake to perform the song on her card, "Y.M.C.A.". Everyone loves Y.M.C.A., right? It's a gay anthem song. Which makes one wonder. But, that's for another time. Notice, how Adam is already taking a front row seat for the anticipated performance.
They're all into it.
• ♪♫ "You can hang out with all the boysss..." ♪♫ A nice moment of Blake singing those lyrics to Adam. 😍
• And speaking of boys, there is a sharing moment between Jimmy Fallon, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton who all bond over an erection sound effect. 😉😉
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| Boys will be boys! |
• Pharrell Williams and Jimmy Fallon duet on the next spin, a rap number called "It Takes Two". Fairly uneventful. Adam steps out of the way so he doesn't block viewers and in fact, slips totally out of view. Instead, we have Stefani in her cut-out dress and Blake serving as silhouetted book ends through to the end. Foretelling of Adam being removed from the picture, literally?
• For the final spin, the arrow points to Adam, who doesn't want the honor, and instead manually moves the pointer to Pharrell. He picks up the next card which is a song called "Hot Line Bling" by Drake. Pharrell wants to select Stefani, who carries on as though she just won the big prize at the casino slots and then Pharrell selects, (Surprise, Surprise!) Blake Shelton to duet with her, at Fallon's urging. Stefani and Blake proceed to perform, while to the right, Pharrell and Fallon bop a little bit to the music. To the left, Adam is watching, arms folded until the two judges were finished, after which he politely clapped along with everyone else.
• The game concludes with this rather OTT embrace between Stefani and Blake just before the video ends. This embrace was the clue for all of the Shefani shippers that hmmm...are the dating rumors true? That looks pretty intimate! Check out Stefani - it's like WWII just ended.
Too young to remember this famous photo? We'll help. 😉 Just sayin'!
On November 4, after the Halloween potato cam pics "leakage" and this Jimmy Fallon television appearance, the rumors were confirmed. Guess what, folks?
Boy, that sure fell perfectly into place, didn't it? November 4 was a Wednesday and Pop Sugar then told us at the end of the story:
"The new couple, who are both judges on The Voice, plan to step out publicly for the first time at Wednesday night's CMA Awards in Nashville, TN." - Popsugar, Nov. 4, 2015
That very night! [Why didn't Pop Sugar just blurt out "tonight", lol?] I mean, wow, that worked out famously - just in time for those big CMA's - where there would be plenty of observers and cameras to capture any possible sightings . Kill two birds with one stone, as it were. As it turned out, Blake attended the CMA's alone, but he and Stefani attended the Vanity Fair after-party - their first public appearance together!
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| Vanity Fair after-party 2015 |
I know, right, Bradley? Amazing how that all worked out like that. The spinner on that game board could not have spun more perfectly.
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| uh huh... |
Yep, yep, precisely. A little too perfectly for Narnia's liking. Never underestimate the power of PR and talent agency teams' ability to use talk shows to help set up their tales-to-come. Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani, and Adam already long knew what was coming. Bearding contracts take time to set up and this obvious arrangement between Stefani and Shelton is a hell of a doozy of a strategized pairing.
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This past weekend was Tight End University, a weekend get together for many of the NFL's tight ends. It was organized by the Chiefs' own Travis Kelce, colleague George Kittle (from the San Francisco 49ers) and retired colleague Greg Olsen. This was the first of its kind organized by active players - quite the undertaking but it looks to Narnia like it was a fantastic success.
After all, companies practice networking all the time. There are also summer camps. There are weekend conventions for crafters, tech folks, and other various professions. Even myself, I would chat with colleagues at other factories, some who performed similar duties as myself and we would compare notes and learn from each other. This was no different.
And like many spiritual retreats or fan conventions, Friday nights are the "get-to-know-each-other", ice-breaking moments which are usually relaxed because folks are in the middle of arriving.
Here was opening night of TEU:
That is not the video, but as you can see, there was over a million views on the video and Travis could be seen having a good time, as he always does at casual events - being loud and boisterous. But it's quite possible he likely had had a libation or two, lol.
There was awesome, brand labeled swag handed out to the attendees:
And colleagues socialized on Friday night with the city lights of Nashville in the background. What a nice time it looks like!
Here's Travis visiting with his peers. I don't see him swinging from any lamp shades here (as many tweeters were accusing him of being blitzed).
Saturday was for teaching. Here's Travis sharing some of his own insight and tips. No doubt there was alot of informative sharing between these players who all played the same position.
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| don't give away TOO many of your secrets, Travis! lol |
And even class pictures so everyone could remember their good time:
Niiiiice!!! Way to go, Travis, George and Greg. What an innovative idea. A time to bond, get to know each other, learn from one another. There were very nice take-home gifts for registrants and even a yoga class. Catered meals. And, although the three men probably had administrative help, it still had to be quite a bit of work to organize.
Meanwhile, back home, a couple of people close to Travis were either feeling left out or just wanted to remind everyone that they had ties to this guy and hey, don't forget me!
This one suddenly had to change her name on Twitter to occupy his Twitter search with many manufactured replies, screen captures and spotlights on her name change.
Even though he's not a tight end and would be the only quarterback in attendance...QB1 Patrick wanted in on the action. 💭💭
and other interesting provocative postings...
And suddenly, Travis Kelce disappeared from social media after the schooling sessions during the day on Saturday. George Kittle was seen on Instagram, but Travis?
Travis???
Was Travis obviously having too good of a time in someone or several people's eyes and he had to go underground the rest of the weekend? Because that's how it looked.
Travis deserves to be able to have his own functions, on his own time without feeling knuckle wraps and being removed from social media. Narnia is proud of Travis for working with Kittle and Olsen in organizing this great opportunity for their colleagues and he ended up being one of the winners this past weekend.
What this scenario taught was how social media is used to convey messages, to cover up or to discipline in a sense. In this case, it was completely unwarranted.
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We've gotten wind of a new podcast involving Austin P. McKenzie and it looks like it is going to be incredibly fun. The first story (about their anniversary night) which I've listened to already is very entertaining. I haven't had time to listen to the remainder, but will go ahead and share this.
Here's the You Tube:
I can't wait to listen to the rest of it. Narnia is grateful for the recent content of both Kevin and Austin - who are certainly active fellows! They share a lot with many of their friends and seem to always be doing something. Kevin is much into fitness and shares many workout videos, showing his fine progress. Big thanks to both men for helping to share their personal moments on their social media, including Kevin McHale News.
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And while there have been lots of rumors this last week that
Louis is in Italy with Harry having a lovely time, lots of suggestive social
media activity is revealed today that certainly doesn’t counter the speculation. First, Harry was seen eating out with Alessandro Michele of Gucci fame, enjoying the UEFA match between Italy and Austria on Saturday.
Translation: Harry last night in a restaurant while watching the European Football match with some friends.
We then have Alessandro using blue and green emojis to comment on Gucci's Instagram account yesterday. Let's see, does this mean Alessandro believes in Larry Stylinson. Or is he a conspiracy theorist? Then again, perhaps someone who just likes to make everything about Larrie? 👀 Or, could it be that he is purposely using the opportunity with all of it's playful built-in plausible deniability to confirm Larry, while being seen with Harry in Italy and knowing Louis is nearby? After all, it is the end of June and Italy is known for a certain scrumptious fruit. 🍓🍓🍓
Tastes like strawberries on a summer evenin'
Baby, you're the end of June
I want your belly
And that summer feelin'
Getting washed away in you
Italy is rich with wild strawberries! It's one of the world's largest exporters of strawberries. Due to its climate and geographical location, there are plenty of spots to enjoy the taste...Nemi town near Rome is regarded as the Strawberry capital of Italy. Every year from late May to the beginning of June (the dates vary) it hosts the well-known strawberry festival named Sagra delle Fragole. The celebration has ancient roots. According to an Italian legend, the goddess of love, Venus, was very sad after the king of her heart, Adonis, died. She cried, and her tears turned into strawberries after contact with the ground.
Oh, but, it doesn't stop there.
Anne Twist (Harry's mom) decides to share a picture of her and Gemma from a Larry account. It doesn't matter if that account posts One Direction photos. The avatar is quite clear.
Oh, and there's still more. This time from Gemma Styles, followed by Louis' stepfather and his very visible LIKE of approval.
Oh, but the "accidental influencer," as Gemma names herself on her Twitter account, wants the last word. One that hardly communicates facetiousness or coyness, or mockery. No, her statement was rather bold. Most definitely prideful.
...and we all know that family has many interpretations, but most of all it means that nobody gets left behind, regardless of how many humiliating stunts are yet to come. And, you know as long as Harry is hanging around Italy for no apparent reason, you know those stunts will be coming.
Despite everything else, Happy 28th, boys!
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And that should wrap up this Monday Musings - is that enough, you think? We had a little bit of several of our OTP's and honorary members. Oh, J2? You thought there would be something on all of that recent Jared/Jensen manufactured melodrama? Oh, no doubt that will warrant a mention, just not this time around. Narnia thinks they're still pulling cosplay material out of that attic steamer trunk of theirs, so best to wait awhile. We're in no hurry.
Stay cool out there this week. Stay hydrated because as Liam Payne says,
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| as he's wearing a coat, lol |
Collaboration: PG and Methodical Muser
pic sources: tenor, Daily Mail, shefaniwordpress, giphy, Kevin McHale News, Oh My
Godot, many credits to shefanicrave,youcompleteme, and duchesscloverly
our playlist: Don't Leave Me This Way - The Communards
Fooled Around and Fell in Love - Elvin Bishop
Denim Jacket - Maroon 5
Never Can Say Goodbye - The Communards
Il Postino (Main Theme) - London Philharmonic Orchestra
