beyonce biography |
- Halloween, Silicon Valley billionaire-style, is a dazzling, competitive extravaganza - Stuff.co.nz
- This 'choose your own adventure' story about working as Beyoncé’s assistant is a triumph of humanity - indy100
- Beyoncé's longtime choreographer Chris Grant on working with the pop star - ABC News
| Halloween, Silicon Valley billionaire-style, is a dazzling, competitive extravaganza - Stuff.co.nz Posted: 03 Nov 2019 01:50 AM PDT There are certain predictable outcomes when you live in a neighbourhood with a bunch of billionaires. The real estate prices have gone up, of course. Prices in nice restaurants have doubled, too. But Palo Alto resident Bill Glazier did not expect to lose trick-or-treaters to the annual Halloween production staged outside the home of his neighbour, the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. "The Jobs used to give out this organic chocolate that nobody really likes. It's not like they're handing out iPhones," Glazier says. "People go because they want to see the show." The show on Thursday night, put on by Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, who was married to Steve Jobs, was a series of professional-grade set pieces featuring a lighthouse, a metal shop and a lunch counter. READ MORE: It involved actors and props and lighting and stagehands, some of whom handed out bags of gourmet candy at the end of the display. The zombie cheerleader, zombie gym teacher, zombie lunch person and zombie friends zombie-danced to pop hits like Beyonce and "Whip It." The show required permits from the city of Palo Alto for noise exemption, special events and road closure to shut down traffic for six blocks. In recent years, the show attracted roughly 3000 people, according to a spokesperson for the Palo Alto police. The tradition started with the former Apple CEO, a Halloween aficionado, who famously dressed up as Jesus Christ for Apple's first Halloween party in 1979, "an act of semi-ironic self-awareness that he considered funny but that caused a lot of eye rolling," Walter Isaacson wrote in the 2011 biography Steve Jobs. In addition to the organic chocolate, the Jobs house also used to hand out boxes of carrot juice, a favourite beverage of Steve Jobs, the inveterate health nut and vegetarian, according to the 2005 book iCon Steve Jobs. BRIAN L FRANK/WASHINGTON POST People came from across Silicon Valley to celebrate Halloween in Palo Alto's wealthiest neighbourhood. But more recently, much like the tech industry itself, the Halloween festivities have rapidly scaled from an organic attempt at connection into something unrecognisable. In Palo Alto, the suburban home to some of the richest billionaires on the planet, lines form hours before the show starts and curve around two blocks. At times, the setup felt like a suburban Burning Man, the annual "commerce-free" desert festival where Bay Area techies, who might otherwise not interact with people outside their social circle, build elaborate stages and structures and delight in the communal ritual of gifting other Burners with free things - revelling in the freedom and safety of bounded generosity. Like Burning Man, the Palo Alto displays are ephemeral, often going up Halloween morning and vanishing 24 hours later. BRIAN L FRANK/WASHINGTON POST Jack 'o lanterns adorn a neighbourhood halloween display in Palo Alto. In recent years, flashy new entrants have joined the race. Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo and employee No 20 at Google, waged her own competing Halloween bonanza in nearby Professorville on Thursday night. Trick-or-treaters lined up for a stupefying selection of movie-size candy: bags of Haribo Gold Bears and Sour Patch Kids, full bars of Nestle Crunch, and boxes of Hot Tamales, Juju Fruits, Goobers, Milk Duds, and Nerds. Plush stuffed animals - swans, zebras, sloths, elephants, pink giraffes, narwhals with sequins - were constantly restocked by a handful of adults behind-the-scenes. Kids were allowed to grab one candy and one toy, according to the adult restocking bars of Toblerone. The density and decadence was dizzying, at any age. "Palo Alto is so spirited at Halloween - I just love it!" Mayer said, in a statement. "Trick-or-treating in Professorville is a fun activity that really brings the neighborhood together." One of Mayer's neighbours, Kim Blanding, who works in product marketing at Facebook and brought her three boys to trick-or-treat at Mayer's house, was dressed in all-black with red lipstick as disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, a costume she chose because Theranos was "the epitome of Silicon Valley and VC demise," said Blanding. "It's such a chauvinistic world and yet this woman was able to capture it, but she was a fraud." BRIAN L FRANK/WASHINGTON POST A juggler performs as part of the "haunted carnival". A mile away in Old Palo Alto, in the empty lot across the street from the Jobs house, Yaszmin Lukatz, the stepdaughter of billionaire casino magnate and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, threw a carnival-themed show. Circus performers took turns on a makeshift stage near a blow-up funhouse maze, while a witch perched on a tall bendy pole and bobbed in the air. "It feels like because of where it is, you have to be part of the party," said Lukatz, who bought the property that was listed for US$11.4 million (NZ$17.7 million) in 2014. An invite-only section of Lukatz's carnival had banners for ICON, for Israeli Connection Network, a group founded by Lukatz to connect tech communities in Silicon Valley and Israel. In past years, the show outside Google co-founder Larry Page's house, 500 feet away from Powell Jobs' Tudor mansion, has been epic, as repeat visitors will attest. There was the UFO theme and the Carnival theme. Dennis, a Palo Alto resident who works in fire protection and declined to give his last name, said the best year was Gotham show a few years ago. "It looked like some Disney Hollywood people came up and spent US$1 million," he said. But this year, there was only a table with Christmas lights and plastic cauldrons filled with normal fun-size candy. Andy, who also declined to give his last name and works in logistics for one of the families on Page's private cul-de-sac, said the families were "calming things down," this year and have been very busy, so decided to keep it low-key. BRIAN L FRANK/WASHINGTON POST Stuffed animals are given out as trick-or-treat gifts to children. Some regular visitors were disappointed, peering past the rotating cast of women in costume handing out candy to make sure they didn't miss anything. But across the street, the party went on, with a nine-person band blasting Motown classics and the fog machine next door at the Jobs house beckoning. Meghan Horrigan-Taylor, chief communications officer for the city of Palo Alto, said the "neighbours reimburse the city for city-related costs". But Old Palo Alto resident Lynne Brown, who lives down the block from Jobs, told The Post she doesn't have to chip in because the "nice neighbours," foot the bill, which she believes means it's taken care of by Laurene Powell Jobs and Larry Page. Powell Jobs declined to answer questions through a spokesperson for Emerson Collective. Page did not respond to questions. Longtime residents may miss the old days, but the event has expanded far beyond them, judging by the crowds on Thursday night. BRIAN L FRANK/WASHINGTON POST People mill at a Halloween celebration in a wealthy Palo Alto neighbourhood. Particularly in the early hours, they were mostly multigenerational East Asian families, who came from Mountain View, San Jose, Fremont, Milpitas, or just a few blocks away in other Palo Alto neighborhoods to see the show and let their kids trick-or-treat safely on closed-off streets. They spoke Mandarin and Hindi and Japanese and Turkish, code-switching to English to answer questions from The Post. According to the 2017 estimates from the American Community Survey, Palo Alto is 75.8 percent white, 31.3 percent Asian, and 1.2 percent Black, a similar demographic breakdown to most tech companies. Practical information about the Old Palo Alto Halloween event spreads by word of mouth, social media, and private messaging apps. Kiki Wei, a Taiwanese event planner from Newark, California, organised a group by sending messages on the Korean messaging app Line and WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns four homes a five-minute drive away. Wei first heard about the event years ago from a friend's Facebook, which did not specify the exact location. "You need to Google 'Steven Jobs address,'" she said. The Washington Post  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2019 12:00 AM PDT  If you're a mega Beyoncé fan then you've come to the right place, because this article will fulfil all of your wildest dreams. Come on in! Don't be shy! A Beyoncé super fan has created a Twitter thread called 'Beyonce's assistant for the day: DON'T GET FIRED'. The game was created by Twitter user @Cornyassbitch, who proudly proclaims on her Twitter biography that "Beyoncé spat on my hand as a fan on 5.14.16." Yep, she's that much of a super fan. How do you play this game, we hear you cry? Well, in the game, Twitter users pretend to be Beyoncé's assistant, and they're tasked with trying to get Queen Bey suited and booted and to an awards ceremony later on in the evening. Throughout the game, acting as her assistant, you have to complete a number of different tasks, as well as finding the best solutions.
However, sadly enough, if you choose the wrong option, you're toast.In order to give you a flavour of the tasks, we've selected a few of the best examples. And in true Ru Paul style... Good luck, and don't f*** it up!
Here goes!
First up... Breakfast.There are two options... which do you choose?
Yoghurt, granola and strawberries... Congratulations, you've made it through!
The five-star breakfast? Sorry, mate, you're fired.OK! So, we're going to choose another challenge at random, to let you see what happens. This time, we're going to choose...
You've got to FaceTime your daughter. But which one do you choose? Blue or Rumi?
Rumi? Sorry, mate, you're fired.
Blue Ivy? Congratulation, assistant, you exist to live another day.And, let's take a look at a third challenge, too.
Beyoncé now needs something to do to keep her occupied while she waits for her hair and makeup. What do you suggest? Swimming, painting, or drinking and gossiping?
Oh, great, you chose swimming. She goes swimming and is... happy!
Painting? Oh yes, you get through to the next round, too, assistant. Well done.
Drinking? With a peasant? Not a chance in hell, mate. You're fired!
We think you probably catch the drift of the game now, yes?If you've ever watched the last episode of Black Mirror, you know, the interactive one, then you'll understand how the game unfolds.
Think you've got what it takes to be Bey's assistant? Well, we hope you are as good as you think you are. You'd better SLAY. |
| Beyoncé's longtime choreographer Chris Grant on working with the pop star - ABC News Posted: 02 Jul 2019 12:00 AM PDT To most people, Beyoncé is the queen of pop. To Chris Grant, she's like a "big sister." Grant, 31, is the man behind some of the superstar's most iconic dance moves, working as her choreographer for about 10 years. He was there when Beyoncé returned to performing after giving birth to twins Sir and Rumi in 2017 and he choreographed her headlining performance at the 2018 Coachella Music Festival in California last year. "I was pushed to the limit, you know? And I appreciate that," Grant told ABC News. "I've learned so much from [Beyoncé] — so, so, so much." The show's entire concept was Beyoncé's idea, the entire Coachella concert documented in the film "Homecoming" on Netflix, Grant said. The film documents her highly anticipated return to the stage and has been praised for bringing culture within historically black colleges and universities to the masses. "She literally, I think, woke up one day and was like, 'Guys, I got it,'" he said. "She wanted to do it and show the world, like, 'Look...this [film] is art. This is not just some, you know, country black thing that shouldn't be praised.'" It can be "stressful" to choreograph for such a big star, and putting together a dance for an existing song can be like a "puzzle," Grant said. He guided ABC News' Kimberly Brooks through the process of choreographing the dance for Beyoncé's hit single, "Formation," which she performed in 2016 during the Superbowl 50 halftime show. In describing the choreography, Grant said that "Formation" had to be "militant" but with a "certain groove." Grant caught Beyoncé's attention by performing his own rendition of her famed "Single Ladies" dance. "She told me that I was unreal, you know? And that always stuck to me," Grant said. "I'm just a full-out person. I just love to explode." Grant had another big break in 2009 — when he was cast in what would have been the late Michael Jackson's farewell "This Is It" tour. "I was just so blessed to be able to make it on 'This is It,' and to be able to have a bit of it," Grant said. Since then, he's choreographed for several other pop stars including Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey and Keisha Cole, and most recently, he's been making efforts to break out on his own. Grant has been making his own music, and recently released a single called "Wristwatch." His popularity also earned him a chance to perform at WorldPride in New York City this year. "I just feel like I've been preparing my whole life for this," Grant said. "I just want people to see a different side of me in...the front, you know? Because I'm always in the back...but it's something different when you're up there and you get to let your magic just shine. And I feel like this is my moment." When asked what's next after his performance at Pride, Grant said "just me taking control of my life and my career, and not letting anybody else control it and tell me what to do. I feel like I've had 10 years plus of people doing that and I don't mind it. But now I'm taking control of it because it's just, like...it's time. Time is money, check the wristwatch."  |
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