Hi everyone, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel and welcome to another comic book reading. And what we're going to do for this reading, we're going to go to the Golden Age of Comics and we're going to read Love Scandals number one from 1950. Okay, and as before, what we're going to do, we're going to crack this thing open and we're going to flip through the comic and take a look at the whole comic and then what we're going to do, we're going to come back to the first story because this is sort of an anthology. There's three, four stories in this, four comic book stories with a one page sort of a, I guess, romance story, just text type set in here. But we're going to come back and read the first story in this. And just to let you know, this cover is done by a comic book artist called Bill Ward. Okay, and Bill Ward was around. He was born in 1990 and he was basically a good girl cartoonist. He was a creator of Torchy and Torchy made her first appearance in Dolman number eight in 1946. And then Bill Ward sort of had a series of Torchy from 1949 to 1950, right? And Bill Ward sort of started off, I believe, in graphic design and stuff like this and got into comic book publishing, sort of reprenticing at a comic book, a comic book house where he sort of got, did a little bit of work for some other comics as well. But basically he pulled out of doing comic book art in 1953, right? And then after that, he basically did a lot of sort of comic book, cartooning in the same style as sort of farsight, one page, one panel with a little bit of description in the art that different types of indie comics and magazines published, including some porn magazines, right? So he basically went from comic book, cartooning to, or comic book art to creating cartoons in the same style of farsight and whatnot, right? And I had the opportunity to take a look at a couple of the original pieces of his cartoon style that he did that they used to take pictures of and sort of print in the magazines that his art was being featured and that artwork was absolutely brilliant and they weren't like small pieces of art.  They were like one meter, one and a half meter by one, one and a half meter of art which was absolutely brilliant, the details in it. And, you know, I went to a comic book shop where the person was auctioning off two of the original art pieces by Bill Ward and they were magnificent. I tried to get my hands on them but they went for way above what I was, what my budget allowed to buy, right? There was, you know, I bid a maximum of like 300 or $350 and they went for $1,500 or so. So if I had the money I would have definitely, you know, pay that price for them but that was way beyond my budget. But at some point I would love to get my hands on some of those original pieces or at least one of them, right? But what we're going to do is flip through this thing and take a look at this thing, okay? Now, while doing the research in this, okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of more history regarding this comic book while we crack this thing open, okay? And I have the sort of little notes here. I basically ended up paying for this book. I ended up paying $61, $62 US for it, right? And it's graded at good, very good, okay? It's complete but it's the inside three, the center pages are loose from the staple and there's only one staple on this, okay? So let's just crack this open and we'll take a look at it and I'm going to give you a little bit of history regarding this comic book specific to this issue, okay? Let's bring this out and the glare is going to disappear because these are mylar bags I had these in. So they have a, you know, they provide more protection for the comic book but they do have a glare to them, right? So those of you who are into comic book collecting, right? There's a couple of things you're going to notice here. When you see the CDL in some of the old Golden Age comic books that means they're Canadian edition comic books, right? And you can see Canadian edition here as well. Now, this comic book was printed by Bell Features, a Canadian company but the original comic book was called Quarterly Comics and they were very active in the Golden Age of comics, okay? Now, in the Golden Age of comics, they, you know, they did superhero comics, war comics, humor comics, horror comics, and romance comics and this is one of the romance comics they published and this series Love Scandals has, I believe, I believe it has six issues in it, right? And this is number one, right? Now, Quarterly Comics is the American version of this comic book and this is the Canadian version, right? And the Quarterly Comics, instead of having the CDL on the logo here on where you see the CDL here, it has the Quarterly Comics logo and instead of having Canadian edition here it has February written on it, okay? So this thing came out in February 1950, okay? And let's flip through this and it's only sitting here by one staple, okay? Let's take a look at the back cover as well and like I mentioned, Quarterly Comics, instead of Fairbid of, you know, Fairbid of comic books in the Golden Age of comics they were basically existed, they were founded in 1937 and they went defunct in 1956 some pencil marks here, who knows how all these pencil marks are, right? What is this thing? Newspaperscope? Are you one of the lucky winners? Contest number 83 winner, Dick Lowe. Oh, they're actually names of the people that won the contest. 410 32nd Street, West, Saskatoon, that's cool. Wolverton, Kingston, oh, these are all from Canada, these are cities in Canada. Olivia Cassidy, 96th Bay Street, Kingston, Ontario, right? Contest winner number 84 winners, Saskatoon, Ontario, Quebec, Ontario, Ontario, and the Wisconsin, Dartmouth, that's cool. Ontario PEI, wow, wow, wow. North Market Street PEI, says, right? And Newcastle, New Brunswick. The bell features of publishing and they got a little thing on top which marks it off, Ontario, okay? So bell features was the Canadian company, okay? Now, before we start getting into this, let me read you how bell features came to be. Now bell features was known as a commercial sign, as commercial signs of Canada, okay? And while we're giving you, I'm giving you a little history of this, let's flip through this thing, okay? That way, take a look at this thing. Should we read the fine print first? Let's read the fine print first and then we'll flip through it and I'll give you, I'm going to give you a little history of this. What is this thing? 25 cents, dolls, plastic, rain capes. Add one of these pretty, add one of these pretty rain capes with hood attached to your dolls wardrobe to keep her dry and rainy days. Wow. Easy mail order, how much are they charging for this? Oh, 25 cents, that's cool. Take a look at that, 25 cents. And the fine print for this, as we've done before, right? Let's just read the fine print for this thing. Okay, look at this. Published by Bell Features and Publishing Company Limited, 165 York Street, Toronto, Ontario, okay? By monthly, contents copyright and must not be reproduced without permission. The publisher accepts no responsibility for unsolicited material. Any similarity between characters and names contained herein of any person, either living or dead, is purely coincidental. All names and characters used are fictional, okay? And this is the story that we're going to read. Yesterday's Darling, okay? So let's flip through this, and let me give you a little bit of history about Bell Features. Okay, I got some notes written here for us to go through. Now, Bell Features was also known as commercial signs of Canada and they were Canadian comic book publishing during, they became a Canadian publishing company during World War II, sort of before that a little bit as well, okay? It was founded in 1939 in a commercial art business, okay? And it changed its name in 1994, or 1994, 1942, okay? It changed its name to Bell Features. And the way it worked, I'm going to read you a little bit, just quoting something that I found online through Wiki, right? So Bell Features, okay? Brothers Gene and Cy Bell ran a commercial art business in Toronto called Commercial Signs of Canada. They had previously been approached by Edmund Lugart, who was looking to publish, looking for a publishing outlet for his comic books. When the War Exchange Conservation Act passed in December 1940, the importation of American comic books was cut off, right? And I'm going to read you a little bit about what this War Exchange Conservation Act is, right? But before we get into that, just to let you know, and here's the other story, my forbidden romance, check this out. After the war, so just quoting again, okay? After the war ended in 1945, trade restrictions were loosened and American comics were once again flooded the Canadian market with better distribution color interiors and glossy covers. Canadian publishers found it hard to compete in such a small market. And their last comic that they published was in 1947, and Bell ceased operations in 1953, right? So they were publishing from 1941. It was found in 1941 and they went defunct in 1953. And here's the pages that are loose, by the way. Take a look at this. Now, what is this War Exchange Conservation Act? So let me read you a little bit on the War Exchange Conservation Act that I found here, right? And you can find this online and I'll provide the link in the description of this video. Look at that beautiful artwork. Take a look at that. White Way Heartbreak. And it's very difficult to find who the artists and writers for these were. I could only find that Bill Ward, I believe, most likely did the artwork for the first issue, or for the first story. The rest of this, we don't know. There might be some kind of information on it online, but I couldn't find it. So if you do know who did the stories for the rest of these, please let me know. But let me read you this paragraph that I found online regarding the War Exchange Conservation Act. Now, quote, On September 15, 1939, shortly after Canada's declaration of war against Germany, the Foreign Exchange Control Board was established to oversee the rationing of foreign currency, which it did with varying severity until 1951. In December 1940, as Canada's trade deficit with the US grew and British gold shipments were curtailed, government intervention in the economy broadened with the introduction of the War Exchange Conservation Act. Aided countries outside the sterling bloc, sterling bloc countries traded heavily with England and kept their currency at parity with the English pound. It was primarily designed to conserve American dollars by restricting the importation of non-essential goods. Among the items banned were fiction peer articles, a category that encompassed pulps and other newsstand magazines including comic books. The government had inadvertently laid the groundwork for Canadian comic book industry. And what basically happened was because of this War Exchange Conservation Act, all of a sudden different publishing houses, different companies that were doing print media or graphic design and stuff got into printing comic books because there was a whole market that opened up and as soon as the War Exchange Act was lifted, a lot of Canadian publishers went under because the American companies were able to flood Canada with their comic books, which is absolutely brilliant which is something that I just recently found out. Just doing the research into this and some of the other romance comics that have gotten into in the last few years. And here's a little story, love story. Dark Angel. Should we read the first couple of paragraphs of this? Let's read the first couple of paragraphs of this. So that was sort of the history of the comic book that I wanted to give you guys. I thought that was really, really cool and I'm dying to get into more of this history as well. So Dark Angel. Noro came through the backstage door five minutes before rehearsal time. Herring her lovely face. Hold on, where is it? Rehearsal time. Herring herring. Her lovely face pink with the cold that had descended upon Broadway. Johnny Wingate was just wheeling the small practice piano out onto the barren stage. He turned quickly and his dark, handsome face lit up a smile. He hurried across to her. Let me bring this up closer. Maybe you can see it as well. Read it on this. You look lovely, Noro, he said softly. I lie awake at night, trying to make myself believe you're as beautiful as my heart tells me you are. And then I see you in the morning and find I was wrong. You're more beautiful. So this is the whole thing. Why not? You should be writing poetry, Noro. Noro dimpled. Your shiftings in scenery. Why are you a stagehand, Johnny? What I have met you if I were anything else, he asked. He took her cold hands and she came into his arms naturally and willingly. Her expressive fur coat crushing against his overhauls. I can't believe it's true, dearest. I still can't believe it. Why not, Noro asked? This is America, Johnny. Does the luck that made me a musical comedy star make me? Any better than the luck that had you shifting scenery instead of selling bonds or living in a mansion? It's you, a fallen in love with Johnny. Not your job or your clothes. Their lips met in a long sweet kiss that broke only when a dressing room door opened. It was Johnny who stepped hastily back. Gloria Darren came out in her practice clothes, waved gaily and went on across the stage. Other members of the cast began to drift in. Sammy Dakin ran chubby fingers over the piano keys. Some chorus girl rattled a swift tap break that echoed through the dark, empty theater. The outer door opened and Ken Murdock, the producer of the show, came in. He looked gloomy and downcast and barely grunted at them in passing. I'll see you after rehearsal, Noro said and left Johnny there in the entry. His face radiant. His eyes dazed with disbelief. He would never, it seemed, he would never, it seemed to Noro get over the fact that a star would fall in love with a stagehand, but it had happened. Noro went across the stage to the group. Instead of barking them into line for a rehearsal, Ken was facing them so worry, so somberly. I'm afraid it's all off, kids. Mark Hamilton was angling this show, you know, putting up the money for our opening. Last night, Mark was taken to a hospital with a severe stroke. Until he's out of danger, there'll be no money. We'll have to postpone the opening. Maybe give it all up. I've tried all morning to raise money, but it's no use. We're licked. I've saved some, Ken, Noro said quickly. I can let you have 10,000. Other voices spoke up quickly, offering everything from a few thousand to a few hundred out of hard-earned savings. Ken bit his lip, and when he answered, his voice was husky with emotion. Your grandkids, all of you, I wish it would help, but it won't. We need at least 150,000 to open. Anything less is useless. I'm sorry if we had an angle. I'll put 150,000 into your show, a soft voice set from the wings. They're all world. Johnny Wingate stood there in his overalls. He had a checkbook and fountain pen in his hand. He smiled at their stairs. Oh, I have it, all right. Ken, you must know the Wingate fortune on Johnny Albert Wingate, sole heir. There was bedlam for a time. When the shouting died down, Ken was facing Johnny Wingate. But what on earth were you doing as a stagehand then? Johnny smiled. A man in love does strange things. Ken, I was in love with a girl I'd never met, so I took the only way I could to find, to meet her and find out if she was as wonderful as my heart told me. Believe me, she was even finer, Ken.  In this case, it was a gamble that paid out. I guess with my kind of luck, I'll find myself backing another hit show. Got a contract, Handy Ken? Or a preacher? Love story, huh? And this is pre-code, right? There is no comic code. Stamp on this. So the pages are loose from the staple, right? The one staple. That is cool. Just imagine the 1950s reading this, right? This was basically your only form of, well, sort of entertainment to a certain degree, with visuals, right? Unless you had the money. Movies were around, but I think there were sparse. Comic books had a lot of distribution. Thief of hearts, look at this. Smash musical, Colorado. The artwork for these are brilliant. Very pretty. Embraces, the kisses, the dances. A lot of these stories, comic books, may they be horror or science fiction or romance comics from the 1950s. They had one-page text stories written as well. Which is something that's missing from comics. From the modern age, right? Now, take a look at the cigarettes. I highly recommend it. Look into the history of cigarettes. How cigarettes were marketed, especially to women. And it basically came out in New York during a Macy's parade with Bernice, I believe. That's what his name was. I believe the nephew of Fruitt and they decided to market cigarettes to women just to show that there were independent women smoke cigarettes and that whole bunch of women in the Macy's parade smoking cigarettes and cigarettes caught on, right? What is this guy? The new hockey album is out. Check this out. 1949 hockey album. The new hockey album is out. All new pictures, new stars, new thrills. Here it is, the 1949 50 hockey album. We have printed 15,000 advanced copies of this all-new edition. Some 30,000 hockey fans today are proud owners of the 1948-49 hockey album. Now, here's your chance to be one of the first to own the 1949 50 edition. Which, with its all-new pictures, makes your hockey library more complete. I wonder how much these things are selling for online. How much they're going for. Hockey album brings you bigger thrills, more excitement for this new edition of the big illustrated hockey book has more intimate, more revealing pictures. It brings you more than 104-page action and portrait pictures. You get close-ups of all the new stars like Alan Stanley and Ray Timgren. Take a look at this. I don't know my hockey history. And many, many others. I don't know how popular, how well-known those people are. I'm assuming well-known if they're in this, right? And the Canadian editions of these comic books have Canadian ads in them, right? You too can touch. You too can be touch. What? Oh, tough, not touch. Right? When dyslexia can get in. You too can be tough. Learn to defend yourself. 55 lessons worth $150 when given in training. So how much is this? This is $1.49, right? Not only $1.49.  Sure, you've gots. But is bravery alone enough to stand up against guns, knives, clubs, while you have only your bare hands? Jack Dempsey, show you how to fight tough. Hear his co-author, Rivas, in American Combat Judo. American Combat Judo. Bernard J. Kosnick. 200 photographs illustrated. Jujitsu, wrestling, foot fighting, police tactics. $1.50 at that time. You could have bought 15 of these comic books, right? I would rather buy 15 of these comic books. That's cool. Magic, you say? Yes, it does seem to work like magic, but there's no mystery about Combat Judo. It is simply applied science, a ruthless efficient method of counter-attack, the all-out method that pulls no punches, that moves with such blinding speed, it makes wrestling and first fighting look like creepy, creeping along with your brakes on. Wow, wrestling and fist fighting. Wrestling is pretty good. I've done a little bit of Jujitsu, and I've done a little bit more than a little bit of wrestling. Wrestling is pretty powerful. Check this out. See a fine print. I'm not sure if the camera is going to be able to zoom in. This thing says police tactics. Just read a couple of these things. Fighting two men at once. Rope strangle. Hammerlock comes alive. Taking an unwilling prisoner. Arm twist. Out of gouge out eye. Out of gouge out of night. Check this out, the last one. Break from front bear hug. So it has defensive measures as well. Breaks and releases, holds and locks. Disabling blows. Wow, cool. And this was the winner stuff, right? Very cool, very cool. So, should we have a read through? Love scandals. Let's read the text here. And these things are ridiculously collectible. Just to give you a little bit more info regarding Canadian-ish and Golden Age comics. In the 1990s where I got my hands on some E.C. comics that were Canadian-edition, the Canadian-edition comics were selling for less than the American-edition comics for E.C. comics, right? As well as some of the other Golden Age comics. The Canadian editions, there weren't too many people, you know, looking for them. Right now, from what I understand, Canadian-edition comics sell for a premium relative to the American-edition comics. One of the reasons is, the Canadian collectors are trying to get their hands on them. Canadian archives, museums are trying to get their hands on them. As well, the print run for the Canadian-editions is much lower than the print run for the American-editions, okay? For example, for this comic, I checked CGC's website to see how many of these were, this comic were graded, okay? There's only one CGC comic graded, okay? And it's graded at 8.0, okay? So, in the CGC database, there's only one of these things that's graded. I don't know how many of these were printed. I don't know how many of these are around, but I'm very happy to have this graded at around three, right? Good, very good, right? Only one graded in the CGC database. Very tempted to send this in to be graded. And if you can take a look at this thing, the staple on this is rusted, right? And there's only one staple on this, right? And there is no other holes. So, they printed these books with only one staple, keeping the comic book together, right? Which is one of the reasons that three or four center pages are loose from the staple, okay? Very cool, very cool. Let's read the cover of this. Let's do a reading of Love Scandals, number one from Quarterly or the Canadian edition Bell Features from February 1950. And this cover, Bill Ward, right? Amazing artwork, Bill Ward created. Amazing good girl pinups. He did work later on once he stopped doing comics in the 1950s. 1953 is the last time that he did any work for comic books. After that, he did work for indie comics, some porn magazines, and different types of magazines, sort of cartoon style of work, right on the big pages that we talked about, like one, one and a half meters, large, large original art, beautiful work, right? So, the cover is by Bill Ward, and the first story that we're going to read, the art is by Bill Ward, okay? Let's read this thing. I close my eyes in the sheer ecstasy of Carey's kisses, though I knew the specter of my father's sin would soon come between us. Wow. A big extra-value magazine, a bonsai tree here too, right? Take a look at this thing. Japanese figure here as well. At the beginning, we took a look at this, the art, and we read the fine print, as we always do. So, let's take a look at this thing. Let's read this. I'm super psyched about this. Really. As soon as I saw the Bill Ward artwork, the original pieces, I was like, oh, wow. This guy just became one of my top go-to people that I'd like to collect their comics. Yesterday's Darling, and I'm not 100% sure if any of the other stories is Bill Ward as well. Five years ago, everybody knew Darla Manners, the darling of Broadway. You saw me in Mantrap, in Kick It Up Your Heels, and in my crowning triumph. Yes, yes, Yvonne. You heard me on the radio. You played my records. And then you forgot me. You didn't know, didn't ask where I was, those five bitter, anguished years. But those who were closest to me, who shot up with my rising star, who swore eternal devotion, that they wonder, that they care, that they remember, I had to know the answer, answer, and so, one day, a ghost came back to Broadway. It was an afternoon and early fall when I saw Times Square again. Times Square. It hasn't changed much in five years. Some new signs, some storefronts, many men and girls in uniform. I registered in a little walk-up hotel. Five years ago, I had had a suite at the Park Royal. Park Royal. What became of Max Feinster, Finster, who ran this place years ago? She asks.   That would be 250, lady, in advance. 50 for a room on Broadway. A flood of memories poured in when I left myself, let myself into the room. Why? Why? It's the very room I had when I first came here from Indiana.  And when no job came and my money ran out, there was incredible, heart-wrenching kindness to remember.  No nonsense. You stay a while anyhow.  So she's remembering. Oh, Mr. Feinster, you're the kindest, sweetest man. Thank you, she says. And the job at last, in a little second-rate musical company. There she is right there. No, no, no. For the love of mud, can't any of you babes do a simple time step with a little extra flair? I can, she says. He's the conductor of the music, I guess. Jazzed up. That, by one of those miracles of Broadway, became a smashing hit sent my small star rising. Listen to them cheer. That makes the hours and hours of aching practice worthwhile. I can't stand the memories. I should never have come back to Broadway at all. That's all over, Mina. That's all over for me. Oh, she's all red, flushed, anxious. I hurried out into the crowd, but there, but where, in all those echoing side streets, could I find refuge from memories? Majestic South Pacific, the sign says. The majestic up. I wonder if they'll stay there as long as I did in Bolly, Bolly Who girl. That was my first starring role. Lindsay's. We used to have breakfast there at noon. Wasn't that silly sob? Breakfast at noon. That show business. I didn't want to walk that next block to see the queer little name that would wrench my heart. But something drove me on.  I wonder whom he's toasting tonight. Nobody could pronounce Crick's full name, but every columnist and celebrity on Broadway made it a regular hunt. There's Winchwell, Winchell, Winchell, and the reporter for Variety and Jack Halfen, the producer, is at his usual private table. Check this out, the variety here that she's mentioning. When she checked into the hotel, check this out. In the magazine it says Variety. That's cool. Five years ago, almost to the night, they gave me a birthday party at Crick's life center photographer. It was news. Wow, she was in Life Magazine. Silence, please. Do you hear me? Quiet. A toast to our darla, everybody's. And that's the same guy making a toast to her, right? That's standing there. Harold whispered his own toast. Harold bondcrafted. My darling, my leading man, my star of secret dreams and spoken promises to the queen of Broadway and empress of my heart. Thank you, Harold. That makes my birthday perfect, she says. The club pig ale. But sweetheart, madly as I love you, I can't be late. People pay their money to see me in that show. Oh, Harold, with that girl from Hearts East, Variety said he was a hit in golden banners. I'm glad for him. Oh, wow. So these are all memory and this is going back to the present. Being his old, her old love. Oh, watch it, sister. Streets are for cars, you know.  He didn't know me. He looked right at me and didn't even know me and I believe all his ardent promises once. I hadn't wanted to come back to Broadway. Didn't want to do what I did but something stronger than my will was driving me. I'll go into Kirk's just being recognized and remembered will ease some of the pain. I know maybe I'll I'll meet old friends. I walked inside and Kirk, Kirk's Kirk came hustling forward as he did to meet all patrons. Aren't you in the wrong place, lady? Cafeteria is down street. Oh, hamburger? Or hamburger shops, maybe. This very expensive place. Yes. Yes, thank you. I am in the wrong place. Oh, he didn't recognize her. Kirk didn't even know me. I turned blindly to rush out and bumped into a man just entering. Watch it, girly. $40 shoes, you're mashing. I'm sorry, she says. That was Sam Burns going into Kirk's, my own agent. I wonder how rich he got off 10% of my earnings and now he doesn't recognize me. Face to face. Coming back was all a ghastly mistake. I'll take the next bus out and try to forget Broadway as he got me. What did the sign say? Immediate seating. Two chillers. King Kong and Dracula. That's cool. You got a bus stop, cop standing right there. Kinter, Virginia. There's a bus out at one in the morning, miss. Nothing before that. One in the morning? But what will I do all that time? It's only dinner time now. That's hours to spend on Broadway. Blindly, I stumbled into the first haven that I offered. I was through the door before the shock of memory hit me. Oh no. Not this place, dear heaven. I didn't want to remember this. Stage door seats. There were no familiar faces now. I made myself go to the counter. Coffee and donuts, please. Scuttle of mud and two sinkers coming right up. That's cool. Scuttle of mud and two sinkers. Wow. The stage door was a showgirl's headquarters. It was handy. Food was cheap and good. And Jimmy Sheldon had tips on jobs. Here you are. And a tip, honey. Keep an eye out. Keep an eye on Schubert Alley. Michael Todd may be casting for a new show next week.  But you're slipping. I only ordered coffee with a cake as well or a donut or something. Jimmy knew when a girl was broke. Eat that sinker and no argument. It's on the house. Dishwasher's birthday. You're the sweetest, nicest guy who ever lived. You big luck, she says. It's just good business to keep customers eating.  I will, Jimmy. And I'll be a star. I won't quit until I am, she says. You will be. You've got that something, whatever it is. That'll put you at the top. Maybe it's confidence.  The only date I ever had with Jimmy, I had to ask for. It was the day I landed my first course job. Jimmy Sheldon, I've been waiting for you to get off work. What must I do to get you to walk home with me? Do you mean it? I'd rather walk home with you than own Manhattan, he says. We strolled up Fifth Avenue to Central Park.   And you never ask favor of anyone. I know what you've all gone through, honey. You see, I came here to crack on this, too. And went broke trying, he says. They're sitting on a bench. I'd written some plays and I thought they were good. Nobody else did. So I ended slinging hash at the stage door. But you haven't given up, have you?  As ever, aren't they? She asks. And it's better. You see, Darla, I'm writing it for you. I visualize you as the star. That's the nicest compliment I ever had. We'll both reach the top, Jimmy. Someday I'll star in your play. Darla, Darla, the day you first walked in my heart went all crazy and it's never been the same since. It wasn't quite the same with me, darling. You were just an awfully nice guy. But you moved in on me and took over. I'm scared, honey. You'll hit the top because nothing can stop you. And there's no room up there for for a hasher. Silly lug.  If I weren't queen of the earth, my first command, if I were the queen of the earth, my first command would be to put next to mine. Between rehearsals and dance lessons, I had no time for dates. But I managed to run to the stage door once a day. Happy birthday, Darla. I hear your shows opening next month. Oh, thank you, darling. Yes, we open at the Belknap. In three weeks, I'm so excited I can hardly breathe. She says. She says remembering all this. Wow. Jimmy, it's beautiful. I'll wear it always. He's giving her a necklace. It's a heart on it. It wasn't at all what I'd like to give you, Darla. You know that? Maybe someday. The night of my opening, my dressing room was crammed with flowers. But my heart found a single red rose. It's from Jimmy. I left the ticket for him at the lunch counter. I hope he saw the show. Then the miracle on Broadway and my rocket was rising. But each new opening brought that one red rose of memory. Jimmy, I've been so busy. I haven't seen him in ages. I'm so ashamed of myself, she says. And there was Harold Boncraft, my leading man who was always near me, nearby by, with little attentions, gifts, compliments. He looks simply ravishing, darling. I've had sherm, billingsley, reserve a table at the stork for us. I plan to hunt up an old friend tonight, Harold. But if you've already made the reservations, I'll postpone it, I didn't realize how much we were together or how fickle time was slipping past until I heard Walter Winchell's broadcast one night. Special to New York New York newspapers, watched the marriage license list. It may be wedding bells for lovely Darla Manners on Broadway and her leading man. Ah, that's a reporter. Releasing that info. Harold, do you know anything about that? I know it's a wonderful idea, sweetheart, Harold says.  If everybody knows it, but us, maybe it's time we got wised to realities, he says. You must know by now that I'm mad about you, sweet. And think of the publicity together on the stage and off. I'm not sure, Harold. Please leave me alone. I want to do some thinking, she says. And she's holding the single white rose. That's cool. The moment Harold left, I rushed out, Jimmy. I don't know what got into him. In the middle of Winchell's broadcast, he ripped off and quit. Walk right out. Oh, I guess this was a radio broadcast that was being broadcast. There's a microphone and he's reading the news, right? So Jimmy heard it and ripped off his apron. And I'm like, walk right out. Oh, I've got to find him, she says. Jimmy vanished that night and I couldn't find him. I was hoping, I was opening in my greatest smile and every moment of my time was taken. Are you positive there were no phone calls, Harold? Oh, I'm still trusting Harold. Great heavens, Darla, with Broadway at your feet, stop fussing about a broken down hash slinger and smile, people are looking, she says. And there's a sign, yes, yes, Yvonne. And then the unforgettable horror of that December day, Pearl Harbor bombed.  Just when we have another hit on our hands. Oh, let us come back. I wonder what this will do to the box office, he says. The show was a smash hit, but I took more and more time to help all I could in the big job we all faced. What'll it be, folks? The boys in front have all my recordings. I'll give one with every bond sold today. War bonds, we've seen this before in another comic jingle jangle that we read, right? All about the war bonds. I put in long, weary hours at the stage door canteen. Oh, this is one of the places where people used to buy tickets to dance with the ladies, I believe. The soldiers, right? Sheldon, Jimmy Sheldon in is his name. I'm sure he's in the service somewhere. Oh, she was still looking for him.  What kind of a mug is he running out on a girl like you, he says. I made a move that changed everything.  There won't be any new opening this fall for me. Wow. You can't do this.   What about me?  It was raining when our group took off for Newfoundland and the storm grew steadily worse. I think I'm getting air-sick. How bad can these storms get? She's on a plane. There's someone else saying that. Not half as bad as the boys go through every day over Germany, kit. It rains fire and steel on them. This is only water, she says. Rain was enough. Up there near Gander Bay on the first leg of flight that was never finished. Oh, they crashed. Look at that, the plane crashes. At first there was a deluge of flowers. Enough for everyone in the army hospital where they took me after the crash. This is queer. After all those gigantic bouquets, there's one red rose with no name card. Oh, wow. Jimmy, Jimmy. Oh, where is he? Why doesn't he come? She says. Months became years and then the flowers and messages dwindled away. But each birthday, a lone red rose came out of the past. Oh, she's in a wheelchair. I'm just a floor smith. I get a telegram order from New York with no name on it. It's paid. So I hear the rose, she said. And the guy says, the flower guy, right? All right. Thank you anyhow for coming out. I'd hope you might know something about him. He's were gone and was back in the dismal, lonely present. I have to go. How much do I owe you? See the tears coming down. Eat that sinker and no arguments. It's on the house. Dishwasher's birthday. Ha ha. Jimmy. No, it can't be. I'm still mixed up with memories. If if I can always be if I can always be mixed up in your memories, Darla, I'd ask no more of life. I like the Jimmy character. He's a nice guy. My dearest, it's been so long, so terribly long with so much pain and suffering for you. Why, Jimmy? Why didn't you write or come to me? You knew where I was. You always sent the rose. I had to know your future, darling. As long as there was any chance of you starring, I didn't want to interfere. I'll never star again, Jimmy. I can walk, but I'll never dance. And something went out of my singing. I'm through with the stage, she says. As if in a dream, I heard Jimmy's story. He had finished and sold his play, the play I had promised to star in. Jimmy says but it wasn't too good. I realized I'd never be a top writer. What I really wanted was to be on Broadway helping others. What are you doing, Jimmy? Have you been working here since you came back from the war? She asks. I owe the stage door, dearest. Bought it with the proceeds of my one play. I've kept everything as it was when I first saw you. You big, silly, sentimental goof. I had to ask you for our first date, remember? She says. Do I have to repeat the pattern and propose to you? Darla, Darla, my own. I've been frightened.  I couldn't dare hope you'd be happy with this. If you wouldn't hush your big, silly mouth, I'll do it for you. Al Albert. Joan. Bliss. Happy endings. That's cool. Look at the people's faces walking by. That's pretty cool. Same type of story as the text that we read, yeah? I don't think there's any comic books like this around right now. This should be. There's a void for comic books like this, I think. I hope anyway. My forbidden romance. Take a look at this.  Scott doesn't love you. He loves your fame.  No, no, no, she says. And then they go back into memory again, I guess. When she was a little girl. Look at the coloring. So weird on the older comics, right? The press would just... The colors go past. The lines and stuff. It's offset. Very cool. Very cool. So that's the first story from Love Scandals. Right? Number one. Does this look like a happy ending too? Let's check it out. Was this a happy ending as well? Looks like a happy ending to me. But of course I'll come. Of course I'll come. But I really never left you at all. She says. Look at this one. White way heartbreak.  What most girls can realize only in their dreams. For on the toughest, most heartless street in the world. I found both success and love. But everything must be paid for on Broadway. And the price exacted from me was disillusionment and my heart's bitter anguish. Super cool. Look at this. You got dancers and stuff. Stars everywhere. Picking up the girl, carrying her. And a guy. The girl's doing the same to her. To him. Right? And they mixed together with lightning in the middle. Very cool. Looks like all the stories in this were based on Broadway. New York. Actors and actresses and dancers. Does this have a happy ending? Let's take a look. Let's go to the last panel. Oh, hold on a second. What does the last panel say? Oh, let's read the last four panels of this. We're giving spoilers. If you ever plan on reading this, you don't want to watch this part. My world seemed at an end and I heard Ted Storm out the lobby. How horrible. How horrible. Not only to accuse me of such a thing but to quote that woman on it. The woman who was supposed to be part only of his dead past. Then as the first storm of emotion subsided, I lay there thinking, was this what I wanted? The success that was tinged with heartache? If I did, I could have it regardless of Ted or did I want only the love that had led me to this stardom? The heaven I could find only in Ted's arms. It's only Ted who counts. If I lose him, I'll have nothing. I mustn't blame him for what he just did. Every actor thrives only in the nourishment of his own ego. I'll have to accept that. I hurried to Ted's apartment. Let's take a look at this. I want to quit the show. I can't be happy in it when I know I'm hurting you. All I care about is your love. Windy, baby.  I've been thinking about what I said and I'm sorry. You'll quit the show but only after it's had its full run and then you'll do it to take on the job of housewife. Ted and I were married after the show. After the show had run a year and we got Ben Yokom to be Ted's best man. That's Broadway for you. Where everybody's prediction can go wrong and usually do. But on how I love that great white way. That great white way. What a weird thing. Let's read what Ted had said to her. But the next morning I came crashing down to earth. Look at the reviews. All of them. Ted lain dwarf by Windy Mills. A new star in the ferment. I felt it all through the show. You were stealing every scene. Cheryl was right.  She was dwarfing him in the reviews. Everyone loved her. Ted, you don't believe that. You can't. That's cool. The great white way. Thief of hearts. Should we read this one too? Let's read the opening for this one too. They say there are no true New Yorkers. It's a lie. I was born in the shadows of Times Square and when my dad died I took over his ticket agency.  The thief of my heart by a guy I had been raised to hate. Does this have a happy ending? This looks like a happy ending book. Not too many love scandals. Is that it? Let's read the last three panels. You big clown.  Marcy, Marcy, darling. Boom. Look at that kiss. That's a great kiss. And that's for keeping a lady waiting while she slaps her. Bam.  That's a happy ending, too. Happy ending comics. Not that. Not that. I mean, just this. So when we put it back in the bag, the pages don't get squished. Love scandals number one. Canadian edition. I hope you enjoyed. And we'll be doing more love readings, love comics, Golden Age and Silver Age of comics as well. Cause those are the only ones I have. I don't know if there's any romance comics from the Modern Age of comics. If there is, I'll try to get my hands on them and maybe we'll do one and do a comparison between the Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze and Modern Age as well. I think I do have some Bronze as well. Right? Thanks for watching. And I'll see you guys in the next reading. Bye for now.


Hi, it's Leora from AppSec Village. Come and buy our room at the twilight at the Flamingo to learn some great AppSec. We are here enabling and raising awareness for application security. We've got a great lineup of talks, workshops. Tomorrow morning we're offering free coffee and for the first 800 people and we've got awesome swag and stickers, temporary tattoos. We'd love to see you. Everyone's welcome. Shout out to my like pickers, physical pen testers. All that check. Tip five.


I came to you, I see you with James Prince Jr. in the car, like that's the first thing to power up when you see it. How did you and him end up even knowing each other? I knew Jr. before that, I'm just like, really shit, but this shot is United's situation.  That's probably be some, that probably be some UGK type of. I'm sure. And in your entire career till today, in your opinion, which song that you have that you would say it's your biggest? Locked In. Locked In, why? Right now it's at like 304, it did like 100,000 views and like some, like a month. And this was my first shot, it was 2019, I was fresh out. So I just, we just pulled up in this little shot of video, it took off. Wow, that's crazy man. So it draw a lot of attention. I feel like, and then, was so crazy about it, I dropped, before I signed it, I dropped two mixed tapes, it got a lot of attention, you know what I'm saying, but I slowed down on dropping music. But who came to you, like I see you with James Prince Jr. in the car, like that's the first thing to power up when you see it. How did you and him end up even knowing each other? I knew Junior before that, I was on just like, regular shit, but the Saudi United situation, the person that made Saudi United, Big E, Big E made Saudi United. He's rapper like him and Nader, what, you know what I'm saying? They ran the music label for Saudi United, and they rap a lot. So it's like a branch and rap a lot of Saudi United in, you know what I'm saying, so I gotta ask you this, man, because I've asked everybody to stop down here in Houston, Texas, when, where would you add when takeoff was, was basically killed? I was at home. He was at home? What did you think when you first heard about that? Dang, that's a legend, brother. So that is huge man, RIP takeoff, RIP takeoff, crazy situation.  Don't know none of them out. We wasn't there. We don't know what went on. But just being in Houston and the way you move, how is that affected or changed the way you think about how you move in the streets? It just because of you got to realize how people looking at this. Anything can happen, bro. At any time. Anytime. So when you look at being, being, because there are so many different things on the internet, we don't know what's true, but we do know what's being said when you look at what they're saying and then your affiliations with like, say, junior and all this different stuff that wraps around it. Well, how does that affect you mentally? It, it, it don't cause like anything, anything can happen. So yeah, I'm not in the room to even speak on like, I wasn't in the room, so I don't know what you're going to say to yourself. I don't like if I'm not in the room and when he said my own two eyes, I don't believe you don't know what what's what. Yeah, because like I said, we don't know what the situation was, but we do know that they, they were down here hanging out or whatnot. But I just think that it was a very unfortunate situation, but I do know that that it's something to where we have to find a way to mend a heck of a gap. You know what I mean? Between different situations that's not taking place. You know, we definitely want to try to figure out a way to show love through this situation. No, so we love Migos. We love Jane Prince, Junior. Yeah, we love P. We love all these people. Yeah, we got to find a way to make sure that we figure out a way to build the bridge and not a wall. Yeah, you follow me? Yeah, because of the way that this whole thing can turn. It can turn real ugly over whatever the situation may be.  You know, I'm telling the truth.   That's right. You know what I'm saying? So the internet, who's to say we don't even know what's going on? Oh, what's really going on? What's really going down? We like I say, we went in the room, you know what I'm saying? The internet can make a situation a million times worse. Yeah, we on boss talk one on one.


schools the teacher will diagnose your child then go to the principal and say if you don't put your child on meds we will expel you we will expel your child because he is not on the meds we have diagnosed him with so find a doctor who agrees with our diagnosis and will medicate him immediately and then provide proof that you are medicating him every day speaking of medicating this might be a little controversial but the data on the amount of children that now are going through transition or medication or hormone therapy in that regard has exploded and I hear arguments from both sides that's because it's more accepted and I also hear well this is maybe a social contagion what do you think is going on is it an extreme form of body dysmorphia is it that they are just vulnerable and this is a new ideology do you have any opinions on this so I get this question a lot from the right and from the left everybody wants to ask that question and what I say is this we will not know what is nature and what is nurture until we get ourselves to a place where we are raising kids with fully healthy attachment and their needs are met and taken care of and then we can say okay this is how you actually are great we'll take care of that or the problem will be solved if it's not how it is either way we need to fix the attachment first and see what shakes out after that that's a good answer did you have something before I asked myself you go ahead this is kind of weird actually I get these all the time I feel like I should have a cigar tell me about your mother this is like reverse I've actually been building this list this is actually long before my wife and I have been together for 12 years now as you can imagine any 12 year relationship there's peaks and valleys relationship I mean all aspects laughter play time together sexes through the roof all the positive things you could possibly think of and I actually made a point to I said you know what we should do because we both agree on this right and we do this kind of check in like you say like almost once a month her and I will be like you know hey how are you feeling am I meeting your needs vice versa and we both agreed oh my god nothing it's never been better we should have each other and going on I said we should make a list or like ask her questions about like all of the things that are you know and I was thinking of things that I thought that would affect that like for example like my relationship with my family how's my diet how's my relationship with my exercise my money my business partners and my reading and growing at the time like so do you have some things to add to that list if I'm going really good what should I be asking okay well that's it too fuck I had like this no this will be simple I'm gonna make it real simple okay where are you oxytocin bonding with her and where are you vasopressin bonding with her okay so the research shows the couples who stay together the longest renew their vasopressin bond every couple of months or every year so the vasopressin is we are a team we solve problems together so many times when the wife gets cancer and the dude spirals off and has an affair with the secretary it's because they were not vasopressin bonded together so the problem hit and his brain went I'm gonna solve this alone I'm gonna feel better over here when you vasopressin bond together routinely by doing escape rooms or building a deck together or solving challenges together or building a business together when you build vasopressin bonding on purpose the man is 100% invested and he's all in because he trusts her with his life so when a problem hits he will go to her and solve the problem together she will too but here's the other thing is oxytocin then that opens the door for the man to want to emotionally bond with her because he trusts her with his life but then it opens the door for her to feel safe and secure with oxytocin bonding so many men forget that when you're driving with your wife you should hold her hand if you're gonna watch Netflix together have her lean against you and get body to body contact after sex have what we call after care this is the biggest moment of oxytocin bonding right here snuggle a little bit right we laugh at women they're having a snuggle after sex but they are flooded with oxytocin and then having skin to skin contact floods you with even more oxytocin the hospital that I gave birth to my wife gave birth to our children and they were born in they make them husband they make the father take off your shirt and have skin to skin contact that's such a great hospital nobody taught me that until I had my younger ones and I read about them they require it they say you will do this and if you say I don't know if I'm ready they're like no you are they shove the baby onto you and it's skin to skin contact and you actually can kind of like if you can relax into it it feels weird but you kind of like you kind of feel the closeness it is so important to have oxytocin bonding routinely with your wife on purpose schedule it we schedule everything else and then we try to kind of think about time with our wife it's like well I could probably get a blowjob no hold hands talk spend time together physical contact outside of sex and then physical contact do that on purpose and you'll find that you like each other more so that when you get to any other problems it's super easy to solve them because you'll already like each other so you saying that makes me go and trying to like unpack what I've been trying to piece together is we're probably doing a lot of that in the months right now and that's why and then feeding both those areas pretty well and that's why you are keeping a list of things to do to make the relationship better that is a sign that you are actually doing the things great because you are keeping a list of how to make things even better wow that's cool hit me well I just was curious how psychedelics have kind of made this resurgence it kind of goes back I think when I was listening to your initial like the core of what you are trying to get at in terms of like peeling back all the onions and like addressing like your childhood sort of trauma and all that stuff like what are your opinions on now like that being incorporated into therapy also what are the dangers of people like recreationally using them 100% so I have plenty of clients who come in who say Adam I'm coming to you because a year ago I did psychedelics in Israel and it didn't fully solve problems but it did help a little bit psychedelics and micro dosing and things what I have found with clients I don't do that with them but clients who come in and have had that experience is it shakes up their brain chemistry so they are willing to question everything instead at the beginning of this conversation I said attachment works this way gravity makes things fall down water is wet and I'm an unlovable piece of crap that no one will ever care for right when you do psychedelics you don't trust gravity anymore you don't trust water anymore and also you start thinking like maybe I haven't been thinking about relationships quite the right way when you come out of the experience your brain chemistry is so shaken up you don't go back into the same patterns immediately so a lot of people chase them in a new idea and then they say well even being open to psychedelics I wasn't open to that before but then I was and it kind of helped what else might be out there then they start studying then they listen to podcasts the biggest biggest driver of coaching and things like that for me is people hear me on a podcast contact me and say Adam I need to work with you right now I say okay great but the reason for that is because they've done something unusual and now they're trying to learn from other people what other solutions are out there it's the male brain and female brain sometimes healing and saying I need data from other people I'm going to plug back into the network I'm going to pull the collective unconscious information into my brain and I will find my solution and that's so many people guys right now if you're listening to this and you're crapping your pants you have just learned about attachment and that's how that works awesome it's great man we've got to have you back on at some point I'd love to appreciate what you do and I can tell that you really find a lot of meaning in what you do so core my life and it's core my family too so awesome thanks for coming on appreciate it


So improving your site, making it faster will actually have an impact on your bottom line. Having a fast site means that Google is going to send more traffic to your site, and making sure that it's fast means that they'll probably stay longer. So there's a direct relationship between how slow a site is and the likelihood for people to just leave. So at the end of the day, whatever it is that you're trying to use your site for order to have a positive impact on your bottom line, making your site faster is going to make it more effective in doing that. So there are a variety of potential factors in terms of things that can make your site slow or fast, and we'll talk about all of those in turn. But let's dive into this surgical approach that we're here to talk about. So we're going to start by running some tests to gather data. We're going to use that to formulate a diagnosis, figure out the things that we need to actually go in and change. We're going to make those changes and then make sure that we don't relapse over time and end up back where we started. So let's begin with the testing. Really, we have three goals in terms of what we're trying to do. So to start, we want to understand what can or can't be changed within our site. We want to figure out which pages within our site are the ones that we really need to focus on. And then within those pages, what are the specific elements that we need to go in and make better? So the first part of that is really having the conversation. Sometimes it's with an external client. Maybe it's a business owner within your own company around what really are the requirements and what things end up in the site just because they're sort of window dressing or nice to have or the new hotness. Really, as we talked about before, things that may make the site slightly sexier but actually degrade the performance are actually costing the business money. So a lot of times clients want a carousel. If you're having that conversation with the client and can't get them to budge, you might show them this site. Should I use a carousel? If you haven't visited, I'll give you a spoiler and the answer is no. There's lots of great UX data in here that really shows that they're really not affected and just add to the bloat of the site. And here's a site that's been attributed to DaVinci. It's also something that Steve Jobs took as sort of a core philosophy. And I think it's really important when we're having those conversations around not only the content but the features of the site. Really try and keep it pared down to those things that significantly add to the user experience and help them with the things that they need or that as a business you need for them to be able to do on the website. And everything else should really be stripped away and keep the site as simple as possible. Moving on to that question of identifying which pages need attention. Certainly for a site that's already in production, analytics like Google Analytics can give you a lot of that data. So here we've set it to show us that the slowest page is on the site and we've got a secondary metric of the actual page views. So that can be really useful because as an example, the home page is only the third slowest page, but it's definitely the one that gets the most page views and so that's naturally where we would want to start our investigation. For a site that's still in development, any crawling tool and in this example we're using Screaming Frog can give you similar data. You just basically use that response rate and sort that so that it's showing you the slowest pages first. And then once we figured out the pages that we want to dive into, we need to go in and figure out what are the specific elements and start looking at in detail all of the elements and assets that are being loaded by that page. And for our purposes, we're going to break that into three different segments. So we've got the page load, the page itself, all of the on-site assets, so the CSS, JS and images being loaded for that page. And then the third party assets or in some cases they could be tracking pixels or off-site services that get called as part of that page load. The tool that I like to use is called web page test. It's very feature rich and absolutely free. And when you run a test against a URL, it'll give you these nice letter grays at the top that give you sort of a quick sense of how well it thinks your site is doing. It gives you some very detailed metrics, not only the full page load, but also some steps within that and a couple that are really sort of about the user experience, more the user perception of speed. So things like first paint is when they first go to your URL, how long is it before they start to see things drawn on the screen. In addition to that data, it gives you this really nice waterfall view of the page call itself. But then all of those different assets that get loaded and some of the different weights in terms of server connections or first byte times as those different assets load. And as you can see, this specific example has literally hundreds of different assets that are being loaded for that single web page load. It also gives you this nice connection to you. And I like this one because what it does is it basically for every connection that the browser makes to an individual server, it sort of aggregates in line all of the different assets that are loaded. And so it gives you a sense of what things are being loaded from which domains in a more compact way, which can be really useful. And then finally, if you need all of that really detailed data on those individual calls, then you can get that too. So coming back to the way that we wanted to categorize those different calls within our page load, certainly the first line is our page load. Then we can highlight all of those onsite assets and then everything that's left is our third party. And this view of things is kind of useful to get a sense of the breadth. For this kind of analysis, actually the connection view is really nice because at a glance you sort of can quickly get that sense of which areas really have potential issues that we want to address. So for example, over two seconds for page load is much too high. Ideally you'd want to be more around a half a second. We can see that the onsite assets are contributing almost eight seconds, which again is far too high. But really actually the biggest issue is probably these third party assets. And one thing that we see pretty commonly is that if you look at any of these, the actual load of the asset itself, that narrow little sliver is basically insignificant. But the time that it takes the browser to negotiate the SSL connection and wait for that asset to be returned is actually significantly higher than the actual download itself. So that's why a lot of those things, even though if you're looking at it from a data standpoint, it may only be one or two K to add a tracking pixel or a couple of K for some JS library. The fact of using all of those different connections aggregates up to really slow down the performance of your site. So now that we've got some data, let's start to analyze it and figure out what are the things that we need to change. So for page load, the first byte is often the key metric and as we talked about, we know where to find it on our chart. If we need to do a deeper dive and really understand within that page load, where we can start to optimize, there are some tools like SIDOT, which is in D7, it's address command in D8, it's a module, but it'll spit out this nice report that really gives you a lot of recommendations around how you can better configure your site. So things like best practices, it'll talk about how your blocks are set up, caching settings, database health, which modules you're using, and so on. So lots of great information there, and that's definitely a good starting point. Commercial tool like New Relic is great because it has this historical view. So if you notice that your site is being really slow, you can go into here and see how long that speak issue has been going on. You can compare this week to last week to get a sense of is it something very recent, and then potentially it might be something that correlates, let's say, to a recent code deployment. So you can also use it to do things like look at which modules are actually contributing to the load time of the site. So in this case, we've got a single custom module that looks like it's probably the single biggest contributor to the site load times. And so that's definitely a place where we want to start to dig in and do more analysis. And even on a particular function call, we can see which functions are contributing most of the load times. So another tool that's great for doing that kind of, I'll say, code level analysis is Blackfire, again, a commercial tool. It'll do some of the same analysis in terms of telling you which functions are contributing to load times. But the thing that's really nice about this one is it gives you this tree level view, so even within your function, it'll help you to sort of visually map out what's making that actual function call take so long. So let's talk about what we can do to improve the page load. If it's the actual loading of the page itself, which doesn't tend to be the issue, but if that's the case, if you're, let's say, loading a lot of data from an external data source, try caching that locally, and that can help. Or if you're loading a lot of data, but only displaying a portion of it, making sure that you're actually pulling the data in a way that's prefilled, it can help. If it's just a lot of, let's say, page content, certainly splitting that up can help, also making sure that your markup is as clean as possible. And if you've got a structure, say, where you've got a ton of content, but some of it is hidden, let's say, within details elements or different coordinates, then consider if it's possible to load that some of Ajax through Ajax as the user interacts with it. But more typically, what you're going to run into is first byte times, where it's really being slowed down by the complexity of what the server has to sort of calculate in order to provide that page to the user. So you can try and do some things at the server level, so you can get it more CPU or RAM, which will get expensive. You can make sure you're using latest versions of software, for example, PHP, and having a reverse proxy like Varnish or some server side caches like APCU or Redis or Memcache will definitely help. Within your Drupal configuration, making sure that you're leveraging caching as much as possible will definitely be very effective. And then the other thing is, if it's, let's say, a view that's being really slow to render, you can go into your view settings and have it show the SQL query that it's actually generating. And then you can either just manually sort of analyze that or you can take that and put that into your like MySQL client with explain statement in front of it, and that will give you some data around, you know, could the actual database potentially be structured better. And it was going through an exercise like that that made me realize that in core dates and the date ranges are actually stored as strings, which creates some pretty massive performance issues if you're using those for views. So I made this module called Smart Date that stores them as timestamps. So if you run into that, there's an option for you. Other modules that you might want to use, definitely BigPipe, is installed by default now in core, and that can really help the user experience in the sense that the page doesn't wait for all of the slow elements to render. It'll start, it'll put in placeholders for the slower elements and then render the rest of the page and then dynamically replace those as they become rendered. If it's a site that recently migrated, then Fast 404 saves the server from having to bootstrap Drupal for every 404. And using syslog instead of database log will help as just a more efficient way to store any kind of error messages. To the extent that the purge module allows you to force cached content to expire automatically, it allows you to set your cache times much longer, and that can help with performance as well. And in terms of modules to uninstall, really let's go back to that idea of simplicity. I mean, anything that's only there for in a window dressing, let's make sure we strip those out and not force the server to work through more complexity than it needs to. Certainly need development modules, so Devel or Browser Sync or Kint or any of those shouldn't be enabled in production, really ideally not even in the code base. UI modules, typically in a production site, don't need to be enabled. And the statistics module is notorious as really bulking up the database, and usually you can get that same information out of the Google Analytics anyway. In a similar way, the search module that's in core puts a lot of extra stress on Drupal in terms of having to index that content and provide results. So if you're using a host like Acquia or Pantheon that has solar available as an external service, that's a much more efficient way to serve up your search. And PHP Filter, in addition to being sort of a giant security hole, degrades performance because any content that's using PHP Filter can't be cached, so definitely not something that should ever be used in a production site. So next let's talk about those onsite assets. In terms of a metric, the request invites in sort of reflect that, although it tends to be a mixture of that in the third party assets.  And I'd say this is pretty typical in the sense of images being a major contributor. So if you need to do a deeper dive on those onsite assets because you see that that's where you have an issue, a couple of tools that you can use to get even more data would be the Lighthouse audit that's built into Chrome. As you can see, it'll give you insights not only on performance but on some other areas as well. And it gives you some of the same metrics but maybe in a slightly nicer presentation. As well as some specific recommendations in terms of not only how it thinks you can improve your site but even some nice estimations of how much of an impact it thinks it will give you. And if you open one of those up, it'll actually even give you on sort of an asset by asset basis how much of an impact it thinks you'll get by optimizing those. PageSpeed Insights, another Google product. So in terms of the information it's going to give you is pretty similar. The main difference here is that it's as being read from the Google servers so to the extent that you might be optimizing performance let's say for SEO purposes, it's definitely useful to get a sense of how Google perceives the speed of your site. But as you can see, a lot of the same metrics and recommendations are basically the same information. In terms of optimizing the delivery of those assets, if you're able to use a CDN, that's definitely going to make a major impact. Sites like Cloudflare have some inexpensive plans to get started and there's a CDN module you can use. For your CSS and JS, again, only use what's necessary. If you're using something like Bootstrap, it's really intended to be a starter kit where you strip away what you don't need. But a lot of people dump in the whole thing and then start on top of it. So again, don't try to use everything that's possible.  Really try and be judicious about what you're using. The Advanced Aggregation module can be really powerful in terms of helping you to aggregate, compress, and minify sort of your CSS and JS. It'll do things like broadly compression and so on that you won't get out of Drupal core. And it can also help by doing things like moving render blocking elements to the end of the page so that the page starts to render more quickly and gets the user that perception of speed. In terms of images, definitely you want to use image styles to make sure you sort of appropriately size images, actually like resizing them as opposed to serving giant images and then making them smaller only through CSS. Responsive images, we'll talk about more in a second, but really powerful in terms of giving each type of client an appropriately sized image in a way that can be really sophisticated. The Image Optimize module can be much more aggressive in terms of not only stripping out metadata and unnecessary information out of your images but actually more aggressively compressing them. And Image Lazy Loader is a really easy way to sort of use lazy loading on your site so that only the images that are within the user's viewport are actually loading and all of the other ones can dynamically load as they scroll down the page. So let's talk a little bit more about responsive images. Here we can see demonstrated one of the more sophisticated capabilities called Art Direction, where you can actually have different sort of aspect ratios and cropping that are optimized for each type of client. But the thing to keep in mind is that that can get complex really fast. So this might be a typical set of ranges we use for our CSS in terms of how we're going to optimize our layer. But the thing to keep in mind is that even though a single media query would be able to target all of these devices for the sake of working with responsive images, we actually have to pay attention to their actual pixel sizes and then use the different multipliers that correspond between the physical resolution and what presents as sort of the device-independent pixels. So it can get complex and definitely there's a learning curve to working with responsive images. You may find that it's easier to keep the aspect ratio to start the same across all different sizes so that you don't have to have as many different use cases to worry about. But we'll just quickly talk about the implementation. If you were in the theming workshop yesterday, you would have gotten hands-on with some of this.  And then you set up a responsive image profile, basically. And for all of those different breakpoints and multipliers, you can use different image styles. So you have to set up different image styles. But depending on how complex you go with this, you might end up having to have as few as three or four, but as many as 12 or 15 different image styles. Again, depending on how complicated you choose to make this. And then this is what the output looks like within the HTML code. So you've got a picture element that contains a variety of different source sets with the different media queries to let the browser know when it should use which one. And then for browsers that don't actually support the picture element, you've got sort of a fall-back standard image. So let's move on to the third-party assets. And again, really defined by that giant area and all of the different calls within it. Again, we want to try and use as few as possible. Plants tend to like to use every tracking pixel under the sun, but hopefully if they can understand the impact on performance, they can sort of rationalize that a little bit. One thing you can do that will help is either you're using a third-party asset to cash a local copy of that and serve it off of your own server so that they don't have to make that connection to an external server to be able to use that. And within advanced aggregation, there's this relocater submodule that can automate that and do some of the heavy lifting for you. Definitely to the extent that you can use an aggregator like add to any, that will save at least the number of connections in the sense of one single connection to retrieve all of your different social sharing buttons instead of having to individually go out to Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and so on. And there are modules for a variety of those different services. So now we've figured out all of the different changes that we want to make. What are some of the things that we should consider as we get ready to go in and implement them? So the main thing is to not do everything all at once. Some of the things that you want to change will work out the way that you thought and make your site faster. Some may kind of work, but not as much as you had hoped and you may need to go in and tweak. And other things may not work or maybe even work to your detriment. And the problem is that if you do all of those at once and deploy them, you won't really be able to tell which or which. And so it's much better if you can to do sort of small incremental rollouts, test and measure between so that you understand did that have the impact that we wanted? Should we leave it and build on it or should we roll it back and potentially refine our approach and try and redo that at a later time? And ideally what you want to do is to start with what you think will be the quick wins. And a good way to do that is to do this kind of impact matrix, take all the changes that you want to make and plot on there how much effort you think it's going to take to implement that against how much of an impact you think it'll have on the performance. And then you really want to focus on that magic quadrant of things that you think are going to be high impact and low effort and start there. So finally, let's talk about what are the things that we should be paying attention to? How can we prevent ourselves from ending up back in the same place of having these performance issues? So certainly whatever dashboards or reporting you're doing about the site in general to sort of keep an ongoing picture of its health should include performance metrics, so average load time and what have you. You can leverage CI integration so that as you're pushing code to the site, let's say even to your development environment, it'll automatically run performance tasks and throw warnings if there's some kind of performance issue that's being introduced by your code. And then there are modules like monitoring or performance monitor that can help in terms of, again, giving you access to that performance data directly within your Drupal and MinUI. One thing that can be really powerful, especially again in talking with either your customer or let's say your internal business owner is this idea of a performance budget, which is kind of like a diet plan for your website. So it's saying for each type of asset, let's set a target in terms of how much we're gonna use per page and then we can use that to sort of track where particular pages are slow, are they adhering to that plan, are they over? But I think that the most powerful thing about the idea is that it really underscores this idea that if they're gonna keep adding new things to the site they need to either take away something equivalent or they're going to be degrading performance. So really helps to instill that idea as we're having a conversation around adding things to the site is, are we gonna give something up or are we gonna accept that it's gonna have a negative impact on performance. And the one limitation at least of the tools that we're gonna talk about is that they're really about data. And as we talked about before, especially with third party assets, sometimes it's really that connection bloat that's slowing down the site and that won't really get measured to the same extent. But here's a great little browser-based tool called the Performance Budget Calculator. So you say how fast you want the site to load and you can sort of target a typical connection speed. And then it will say how much data that translates into in terms of a page size and you can use these nice sliders to say that's how much we wanna allocate to the different types of assets. So just sort of a quick and easy visual way you could even do that in the middle of a meeting as a team to sort of try and drive some consensus around that. And this is a great browser extension called Browser Calories.  By default, it'll actually compare those different categories against the top 100 websites, but if you have an actually defined performance budget, then it will give that specifically for against the targets that you've set. But that's a really nice way as you're going through different pages or starting to analyze pages that you've identified as having performance issues to give you a nice quick look at some of that different data. So that's actually the content that I brought. So I'll open it up now for questions or comments. How about the musician for a single page applications? I mean, I think the same basic rules apply. I'd say, I guess that the challenge there is probably more on the content side. If you've got a lot of content on a single page, obviously that's going to sort of work against you to some degree, but typically, you know, if we're talking more about like text type content, it's not, that doesn't tend to be like performance-wise as much of an issue, but as long as you're sort of lazy loading and so on, it's probably going to be okay. Yeah. Yeah. That combined with maybe even captioning art and shoulders. Yeah, for sure. You know the questions? Yeah. Yeah. You talked about like data-based looks of it. Have you had any experience with like revisions in that specifically with workflows and to play high-five where these tables are occupied like a third of my database or more? Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely can be an issue. We ran into an issue where we were doing scheduled nightly imports from like a product information database and we ran into exactly that issue. So certainly if there are, if you can be selective in terms of only needing the content moderation on specific content types, that can definitely help. But yeah, that's definitely a thing to be aware of. Do you know like, I know there's like, sorry, there's like modules that help you import revisions. Have you had any experience with like, writing any plugins or something like that which encourages things based on some? Yeah, so we tried using some of those modules and never really found any that seemed to sort of reliably do what we needed to. So I ended up doing kind of something more custom. But yeah, hopefully, it's a common use. I'm sure over time there'll be some kind of a stable path for doing that. So, sorry, you had a question? I was just going to point out that those modules exist for the jump in the illusion. Right. Any other questions? Thanks for that. Excellent.


So we're here at the Geneva Tech booth and you have an RMPC right here. Yeah, hi Chobax. What I'd like to show you is our RMPC. Well, it's a media gateway. It's unbelievable.  It's an industry grade design. It's really a commercial design and look at the back. You see HDMI in as well as HDMI out. But you see also one port and a LAN port. And we have really, it's more or less a really a gateway, a home gateway. This is a router. It's a router. Yeah, it gives you router capabilities, antenna design, multi-mimo, 2x2, for sure, AC, everything what you need to do. And it says RMPC on the top. Why do you promote ARM so much? ARM gives the capabilities of high performance IoT computing and high performance of less power consumption as is necessary. It gives you the full connectivity to all kind of protocols and solutions we have in place. So the 1200 and the 1295 APC sample here, what we're showing here, the prototype, gives you full home gateway capabilities. It replaces your router in your home and it directly hooks you up to the network itself. So like the router companies are like, there's some big ones like Netgear and also Synology is trying to do stuff. But now you're doing a totally different way to make a home gateway. What is different that you're bringing? Well, the biggest difference we bring in, we bring in the Android-based platform here. Android? Yeah, we run an Android 6.0 on it and it's hooked up directly to your TV. It can be integrated hard drive, you do PVR functionality, but it also gives you access point functionality. We wouldn't replace, let's say, a router, which comes from the media, from the broadcast itself and from the telecommunication companies, but we give these capabilities to download and route and PVR your content you are watching on your TV or at your home. PVR, so you can HDMI input your TV box like the like, let's say here in the US, we talk about the dish box, the cable box, the cox box. You put it in, you control it directly over it and you have an HDMI in interface, which means it comes in as just a window and you also can run an overlay above it to watch your TV, which can become your digital receiver. So this becomes a DVR? As well. This becomes another hotspot? It becomes another hotspot. This becomes your Android setup box? Yeah, and it adds you the capabilities. If you stream in the DVR, let's say your digital content by your cable box, we redistribute it. So it means you can stream your content from this box, from this gateway, to anywhere in your home. This is really a remarkable design. So you have ITV functionality in there? We have ITV functionality in there. We say this is a net stream functionality as well. But no tuner, right? No tuner, no need, because we get the tuner functionality coming from the cable box. So from the cable box, it comes in here and we redistribute it to iPhone, iPads and to any kind of streaming enabled device in your home. What is the ARM processor you're using? I cannot disclose. I'm very sorry for this. But this is a very powerful one? It's a very powerful one. And you're always in the forefront of using new ARM solutions, right? Yeah, we try to be, but we try to be mature. But you need also a lot of software capabilities to do so as we do here with this model. It's not just about the newest fastest ARM, then it's about mastering how to use everything from the ARM processor, which is your specialty, right? So it's not only CPU power, it's GPU power, it's encoding and decoding power we're going to use here. And we need this encoding and decoding to do real transcoding, to move it to other devices as well in your home. So it's a multimedia beast? More or less, let's say, it's our beast. And you have some other beasts around here, what are you showing here? Yeah, okay. Here we have the APC 1966. Yeah, that's really also, again, industry grade design works. But is it for consumers or not? All this stuff? It can be also for consumers, but we always start from industry grade to make sure that we meet the highest standards. Yeah. So what are we going to do here, if you turn it around? For sure, we have all the network capabilities. We have three HDMI, three HDMI in, what? Three in, three HDMI in Starbucks. You don't believe it? It's crazy, right? But what we want to do is this industry grade design also ARM based for sure here to get three full HD or 4K video sources in, manage inside of it, redistribute it to your house anywhere you want, but also display it directly to a device. In addition to the matter of fact, you can connect to a digital antenna as well, like ATSC, T2, cable, whatever it's necessary, or not just here again in the US, it's ATSC and also get it in, display it on your TV, or distribute it in the house. Sorry, I'm in trouble, but three, that means TV box, that means the free-over-the-air tuner, that means another, another, that's a lot of stuff. It can eat any video source, can you imagine any video source? It can be a camera, it can be a digital setup box, it can be your Blu-ray player, and we redistribute it from there. Games, game console. Game console, Xbox as well, PS4, PSX, whatever is necessary, we eat all video sources, that you should know. A Chromecast, it can be a fire TV stick, can Chromecast fire TV stick, whatever is necessary, again, it's another beast, you say, it's a video in beast. And it streams all that in your home network in full HD. Full HD, what is necessary. We do a transcoding, we only deliver and give burden to the bandwidth at the home network only what is necessary. And you have one of those at home, you can see that stream from all over the world. That's possible, for sure you need to be compliant with the legal and also with the digital right management. So some content, you know it's only local-wise available. So there's, I guess, a way to comply. There's a system for that. Yeah, there's a system for that. All these devices are hooked up to our cloud services, which you make available to our OEM customers. And they are registered there. And for sure, we follow with this cloud service, we are able to give the highest security on the trusted platforms. So also integration of DRM system and also respect DRM systems. HDCP compliant. HDCP compliant as well as also local DRM compliant. You know, some content is only available in certain kind of countries and only licensed in countries. We need to be IP network compliant. And there's also Android. All Android. So this is like a crazy use of Android. Nobody does this, right? I don't think so. So nobody else can do this. So let me show you another design we may manage so far. We get all these inquiries that customers said, okay, there are some customers in the Middle East where let's say cable-connected solutions are really not so available on the network side. So therefore, the telecommunication companies work more on the LTE, so 4G 5G side. So what we develop here is actually an Android box with 4G modem integrated, which blast and give you directly a gateway to access the internet, but also access any kind of, let's say, industry-grade applications as well. So there's a SIM card slot. There's a SIM card slot for it. So as I said, it is a 4G modem integrated. SIM card in, gets enabled, watch and video on demand, get live TV, IPTV, OTT content directly to this box. So there's some people that need just the 4G to get access to the internet? Yeah, you go to the Middle East. The telecommunication only works by wireless. So you have your mobile phone and also content access. It's not that same way as we have in Europe or in the US, that you have so much cable TV or cable access to any kind of internet promotion as well. Well, that's going to consume potentially our bandwidth on the 4G, but they're used to that in those countries. And they have LTE? Yeah, they have LTE. And they have enough bandwidth. They have enough bandwidth to it. They put it in their home below their TV, and then they say they're happy. That makes a hot spot. That makes also a hot spot, for sure. So do you have some other stuff you want to show? I can't show. So you have a, this is a, that's the solution we developed so far, which is the newest one is, but you already see it, I think, also on the My Geekerside as well. It's an octa-core solution, newest one, 912, based on AMlogic. Very stable. Very stable, runs fine, happy with it, decodes any kind of content, including VP9. That's a very important part. I think there are certain kinds of content sharing companies like Netflix or any other, which needs to be decoding VP9 very seamlessly. All right. And do you have a new antenna for the Pad TV, like a new design point or? No, we don't do that anymore. I think you already know that, perhaps there's, let's say, net screen technology, which we're going to use also for our ITV brand as well. It's open a hot spot to connect to your TV and you can access from any kind of mobile or any device from Mac, PC, as well from Android devices to this net screen technology. So here, the CES has been very busy, right? There's lots of interest, all the time for Geniotech. Lots of people coming in here. Lots of sales to our customers. They're always coming back to us. We are quite happy that they are, but we've got also a lot of new approaches and new inquiries from customers. We just step by a lot of telecommunication companies, which already know us from the integration paths for certain kind of application and firmware and DRM designs. And for also their value, our quality, we deliver so far to the customer worldwide. And so this is the CES consumer electronic show. You will also plan to go to the embedded world. What are you going to talk about there? You will see, right? Well, embedded world, where we have a different story, this is all about industry 4.0 and industry great solutions, where we will show there a lot of high performance IoT solution based on Qualcomm chipsets and also other chipsets as well, where we do and follow the integration paths for our customers. And all this kind of stuff? Android Linux custom platform. Yeah. You're experts in this? We try to do good things. We have three R&D centers, one in the US, two in China, fully new people on board. It's great to work with these guys.