#tori serpico

[stretchjournalemerson]

Do I Look Like That?: Bitmojis and Perspectivism

By Tori Serpico - 

The Bitmoji app, launched in 2013, is massively popular and has seemingly ever-growing success. The app allows users to create cartoon versions of themselves, which then are placed into hundreds of small animated photos, or “stickers,” that can represent nearly any mood or situation that you can then send through text -- all integrated into your phone’s keyboard. In the early days of Bitmoji, the app’s avatar customization was sparse. Should my Bitmoji be fully blonde or fully brunette? What skin tone is just right? Would I even wear that outfit? After spending too long attempting to answer these questions and make a Bitmoji to capture my essence I showed it to my sister. She looked at it, and then at me, and then back at it, and said: “That doesn’t look like you.”

This was a disappointing response. I handed her my phone and let her give it a try. She would periodically examine my face or ask me to turn my head. “Done!” She handed me back my phone. It didn’t look like me.

While what I am describing is truly a first world problem, there is an underlying question that reaches far beyond the Bitmoji: how can we truly capture the self?

To begin, we must consider the factor of perspective from someone who has explored this in depth. Let’s look backward to discover what historian and theorist Jane Tompkins, has already explored this topic of seeing the self through varying representations (Pifko). Tompkins, in her essay "’Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History,” describes the trouble she faces in attempting to piece together the encounters between the Europeans settlers and the Native Americans. Throughout her research, she discovers massive disparities in information as she reads varying accounts of what should be the same experience. This is troublesome to her, as clearly there is only one true history. However, these inconsistent records suggest otherwise. Due to this frustration, Tompkins concludes that the nature of facts, or of truth, is that although there is only be one base truth in the context of any given situation, due to the external human factor of perspective, multiple truths exist. As seen through Tompkins’ essay, this concept of perspectivism, or the idea that truth is inherently muddied by point-of-view, is closely aligned with understanding historical events. But I can’t help but wonder, what role does perspectivism play in an examination of the self?

The Bitmoji conundrum I described serves as an instance of perspectivist self-examination. When noting the disparity between the Bitmoji I created for myself and the Bitmoji my sister made for me, the differences were slight. A wider nose, a longer face, a few freckles.

But I was bothered by these small details that I failed to recognize in myself that were so simple for someone else to identify. Which was more accurate? Should I trust an outside eye’s perspective of my physical appearance because it is inherently less biased? Or is my own recreation of myself more true, as I am the self I am attempting to capture? And where do these two selves intertwine? If we view these questions through Tompkins perspectivist lens, then even "...if the accounts don't fit together neatly, that is not a reason for rejecting them all… one encounters contradictory facts and divergent points of view in practically every phase of life” (Tompkins 118). By the logic of perspectivist theory, there is no one true self to capture because each perspective provides a new insight. Therefore, I am all of my failed Bitmoji attempts. Yikes.

The belief that the self is a collective idea as opposed to a static being is not new. In fact, it’s almost three hundred years old. David Hume, a skeptic Enlightenment philosopher discusses his views on the permanency of self in “A Treatise of Human Nature.” Hume writes: “I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (134). This is known as the Bundle Theory. What this theory is arguing is that the self ever-evolving concept as it is constantly the object of others’ perspectives. These perspectives are so varied and so frequent that it is impossible to claim that one’s identity is singular-- it is only within our minds that we prescribe oneness to self. In this way, the Bundle Theory is inherently perspectivist. There cannot possibly be one true self if that self is being constantly externally perceived.

So who are we, if we are not who we think we are? To attempt to answer that question, let’s get back to basics: we are all human beings that possess human features and qualities. Now identifying these qualities is what creates implications that illuminate our perceptions of ourselves, ultimately aiding in others perceiving us. For example, my hair was once both brown and purple. At this time, Bitmoji did not have the option of multiple hair colors, meaning I had to choose between the two in order to best represent myself.

These hair colors are “signifiers,” or physical representations of greater meaning, or the “signified.” If I consider this post-structurally, as Tompkins would, these signifiers create a multitude of meanings that then contribute to larger structures of culture and identity. As I chose between two coexisting signifiers, I was deciding between selves. My choice would ultimately force me to perpetuate an idea of myself that was not entirely physically true. The implication then becomes that I view myself in a way which is inherently inaccurate. We all possess our signifiers, but the deliberate nature of the creation of a Bitmoji places a pressure upon the user to have a heightened understanding of them.

This pressure to have an accurate Bitmoji exists for several reasons. As its popularity has grown, the app has been integrated into a multitude of other popular social media apps, such as Snapchat and Tinder. Now instead of our “real” faces being plastered onto profiles, it’s our recreations of ourselves. Why is this preferable? I feel the aspect of control over our signifiers is something that society has striven for. Through the lens of the Bundle Theory, this is entirely impossible in reality. We are constantly being captured by various perspectives that we have little to no control over, no matter how much effort we put into physical appearances. The ability to capture the preferable, to show what we want to be seen, is a widely accepted part of social media culture. Bitmojis indirectly caricature our inclinations towards either embracing or rejecting this culture simply through the choices we make in attempting to recreate ourselves.

This is not to say that Bitmojis cannot be true to self or to say that Bitmojis deemed to be misrepresentative of their subject are done so purposefully. As I described, there is a margin of inaccuracy due purely to the lack of signifiers to choose from within the app. However, Bitmoji has become aware of this and has since released a game-changing update that drastically increased the accuracy of the recreation of the self: Bitmoji Deluxe. Bitmoji Deluxe offers such specificity in its signifiers that the pressure to have a true-to-self Bitmoji has not been relieved-- it has been heightened. In her essay “Thanks to Bitmoji Deluxe, my Bitmoji now gives me anxiety,” Stolyer expresses exactly what her title implies. The increased realism of the update caused Stolyer to “question physical looks [she has] never noticed before,” and described her “experience with the new feature [to be] filled with(…) anxiety.” While I cannot assume that this is a universal experience, this account clearly illuminates my point. Bitmoji is a new form of virtual identity that requires users to constantly be in a state of self-examination.

And for the reasons I have already discussed, self-examination is not a simple task. If I am truly just a bundle of selves or a collection of contradicting perspectives, then how can my Bitmoji ever really look like me? I posed the question: “how can we truly capture the self?”-- a question worth my exploration, and a question I wish I could answer within the confines of these closing thoughts. The only sentiment I can confidently leave you with is that we cannot allow philosophy to rob us of the existence of something as simple as physical appearance, as tempting as it may be. Truth and self still exist, just not in the ways that we think they do. Tompkins says it herself: “bringing perspectivism to bear in this way on any subject matter [has] a similar effect; everything is wiped out and you are left with nothing but a single idea-- perspectivism itself” (Tompkins 117). Perspectivism gives us the ability to diminish almost any truth, whether it be historical or personal. In my opinion, understanding the complexities of self is not an excuse to reject the self altogether and make your Bitmoji look like a big fat purple dragon. We are difficult to define, we are not intrinsically indefinable. As we must in any undertaking, in attempts to capture the self we must make decisions-- decisions formed by accepted facts. I will always have brown eyes-- and even if they may look hazel in a certain light, or if an unknown onlooker mistakes them for blue-- they will always be brown. We must take perspectivism with a grain of salt, and acknowledge that while truth exists in layers, there is always a foundation. So let’s use Bitmoji responsibly, with the understanding that even though we are victims of perspective, ultimately our own perspectives of ourselves should rise victorious. But first, be honest: does this look like me?

Acknowledgments

For my mom and my sister, who love my Bitmoji no matter what it looks like!

Works Cited

Hume, David. “Of Personal Identity.” A Treatise of Human Nature, 1738, pp. 133–139.

Pifko, Matthew. Class workshop. 15 November 2018.

Stolyar, Brenda. “Thanks to Bitmoji Deluxe, My Bitmoji Now Gives Me Anxiety.” Digital

Trends, Digital Trends, 1 Mar. 2018,

www.digitaltrends.com/features/my-bitmoji-gives-me-anxiety/.

Tompkins, Jane. “‘Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History.” Critical Inquiry,

vol. 13, no. 1, 1986, pp. 101–119., JSTOR,

www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/IndiansbyTompkins.pdf.

[greatearthquakestudent]

Cobra Kai Season 6 Cast fanmade

Season 6

Main Cast:

William Zabka as Johnny Lawrence Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso Yuji Okumoto as Chozen Toguchi Sean Kanan as Mike Barnes Martin Krove as John Kreese Xolo Maridueña as Miguel Diaz Tanner Buchanan as Robby Keene-Lawrence Mary Mouser as Sam LaRusso Peyton List as Tory Nichols Jacob Bertrand as Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz Gianni DeCenzo as Demetri Alexopoulos Alicia Hannah-Kim as Kim Da-Eun

Recurring Cast

Courtney Henggeler as Amanda LaRusso Vanessa Rubio as Carmen Diaz Thomas Ian Griffith as Terry Silver Dallas Dupree Young as Kenny Payne Vanessa Rubio as Carmen Diaz Griffin Santopietro as Anthony LaRusso Joe Seo as Kyler Park Oona O'Brien as Devon Lee Annalisa Cochrane as Yasmine Hannah Kepple as Moon Khalil Everage as Chris Owen Morgan as Bert Nathaniel Oh as Nathaniel Aedin Mincks as Mitch Alicia Hannah-Kim as Kim Da-Eun Paul Walter Hauser as Stingray Bret Ernst as Louie LaRusso Dan Ahdoot as Anoush Norouzi Julia Macchio as Vanessa LaRusso Terry Serpico as Captain Turner Barrett Carnahan as Young John Kreese Rose Bianco as Rosa Diaz Diora Baird as Shannon Keene

[aion-rsa]

Cobra Kai Season 3: Does Young Kreese Redeem Cobra Kai’s Founding Sensei?

https://ift.tt/3q87H7F

This article contains Cobra Kai spoilers.

Cobra Kai season 3 revealed the backstory we didn’t know we wanted – the harrowing Vietnam experience of Cobra Kai’s biggest villain, Sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove). Cobra Kai has been on point when it comes to filling in the personal histories of their characters. The writing team of Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Bob Dearden have keen eyes for details and find reasonable justifications for the actions of its villains. Johnny’s (William Zabka) abusive father Sid (Ed Answer) has provided some redemption to his character’s initial villainy. But Kreese has remained villainous throughout the entire franchise. We don’t need to rehab all the villains, do we? 

Kreese’s origin tale is told across three episodes. Despite their brevity, they’re packed with clever Easter eggs for fans to find over repeated viewings and tricky red herrings that toy with fan expectations. They also give us clues to what season 4 might bring. 

Enlisting Kreese and His Son

Episode 2 “Nurture vs. Nature” begins with the grill of that iconic yellow 1947 Ford Deluxe, the very model that received Daniel’s (Ralph Macchio) wax on wax off treatment. As the car pulls into a soda shop, the driver is a cocky kid in a varsity jacket with a bullying attitude. He even says “They’re the opponent. You don’t show them mercy,” but in a quick Cobra Kai red herring, it’s not Kreese. The owner of that Ford is the first bully of the canon. Young Kreese (Barrett Carnahan) is his server who gets bullied mercilessly. 

The exquisite irony here is in the casting. Playing the Varsity Captain David is Jesse Kove, the son of actor Martin Kove. It’s a deliciously brilliant play by Cobra Kai. The first person to bully anyone in the history of the franchise and set off the chain of events that led to the formation of Kreese’s ultimate villainy is played by the actor’s son. 

The rest of the flashback scenes reveal how Young Kreese’s hard luck life became the building blocks of his character. His mother committed suicide and is branded as crazy, giving rise to the implication that Kreese may have inherited some of his mother’s mental illness. Kreese is a naturally gifted fighter. When pushed, he is able to defend himself against the Varsity Captain and his thug buddy, and steal David’s girlfriend Betsy (Emily Marie Palmer). However, with few options for advancement at the soda shop, he enlists for the Vietnam War and heads out for basic training at Monterey. He wants to be a hero.

Episode 2 has an unusually redemptive moment for the present-day Kreese. We see him do something good for a change. Kreese reaches out to Tory (Peyton List), offering her free tuition to come back to his Cobra Kai Dojo. While he’s visiting her, he picks up on the fact that she is being sexually harassed by her landlord, Rodney (Grayson Berry). Kreese returns and solves that for her in his usual Cobra Kai way, by striking first, striking hard and showing no mercy. Although recruiting Tory back into his fold serves his own selfish purposes, he does get her out of a sticky situation, but it’s not enough to redeem him entirely.

Prisoner of War

Episode 6 “King Cobra” takes Young Kreese to Vietnam in 1968, where he is pulled aside by Captain Turner (Terry Serpico) to join his special team. Serpico bears a passing resemblance to actor Anthony Michael Hall, so much so that many fans thought it was him, sparking a wave of chatter on the web and subsequent articles refuting the mistaken identity. Given the playfulness of Cobra Kai casting, perhaps Hall will have a cameo in season 4. 

Turner is the second significant bully to shape Kreese’s villainy. He instructs Young Kreese in the martial art he learned in Korea from Master Kim Sun-Yung and it’s not Karate. It’s Tang Soo Do. This resolves an issue that martial arts savvy fans have had with the series since the original films. The martial arts choreographer for The Karate Kid was Master Pat E. Johnson, who also played the Referee throughout the original trilogy. Johnson is a black belt in Tang Soo Do under Chuck Norris and well respected within the martial world. Martial arts aficionados always knew that the style propagated in the Cobra Kai Dojo was more like Tang Soo Do than Karate, so the quick clarification was welcomed. Despite this being Chuck Norris’ foundation style, most Americans don’t know enough about the martial arts to know about Tang Soo Do even today. During the era when the Cobra Kai Dojo was founded, Tang Soo Do school owners advertised Karate instead as a marketing ploy so this tiny rectification resolved a lot for martial savvy fans of the show.  

Read more

TV

Cobra Kai Season 3: What Happened to Aisha and Stingray?

By Gene Ching

TV

Cobra Kai: How the Show’s Martial Arts Level Up in Season 3

By Gene Ching

Zabka continued to study under Johnson after the original film wrapped and that still shows in his fight scenes in Cobra Kai. And given that season 4 is headed back to the All-Valley Karate Tournament, Johnson would make for a great returning cameo.

Young Kreese pulls two of his comrades into Captain Turner’s special team, Twig (Nick Marini) and Ponytail (Seth Kemp) teasing another major cameo that fans are anticipating for season 4 – Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), the main villain from The Karate Kid Part III. Silver was Kreese’s old war buddy and he rocked a sleezy ponytail years before Steven Seagal broke into the movies. Silver has been referenced throughout Cobra Kai, and many fans believe the phone call Kreese makes at the end of season 3 is to him, so his inclusion in Young Kreese’s Vietnam years was essential. 

Turner establishes the foundation of the Cobra Kai creed while training Kreese, Twig and Ponytail when he espouses his philosophy “No hesitation, no second thoughts and no mercy.” It’s only a short jump from that to “Strike First, Strike Hard, No Mercy.” However, their mission goes awry. Radio feedback gives away Ponytail’s position as he is laying explosives in the enemy camp and the whole team is captured. And then, shockingly, Ponytail is executed right in front of Young Kreese, Captain Turner and Twig. It’s another superb red herring. Clearly, Ponytail is not Silver. Twig is Silver.   

Twig’s parting line to Kreese is “I owe you man, you saved my ass. Anything you need, I’m there for you, your whole life. You hear me Johnny? Your whole life. I owe you.” We’re all expecting payback in season 4.

The Snake Pit of PTSD

The Kreese back story concludes in the season finale “December 19.” As Captain Turner’s special team is imprisoned in a bamboo cage, Kreese blames himself for their failure. Turner taunts him about it, deepening the psychological damage. The weight of that guilt surely drives Kreese’s psychosis. 

Their captors force Kreese to fight Turner to the death over a snake pit. Cobra Kai overplays that. There’s a lot of snakes in that pit, dozens of them, but they appear to be constrictors, not cobras. When Young Kreese kicks Turner into the pit, we can hear them striking, but constrictors don’t strike. They constrict. It’s a picky point, and it’s understandable that the show creators went for the quantity with a brimming bed of snakes for dramatic effect, but it was a heavy-handed play. A lone king cobra would have been better. King cobras are indigenous to Vietnam albeit endangered now. And a king cobra is the world’s longest venomous snake averaging 12 feet in length. The largest measured one was over 19 feet long. A cobra would strike, first and hard. 

We already know the rest of Kreese’s story. He returns from Vietnam as a hero, as well as martial arts champion, but he’s psychologically scarred. Season 3 made us understand Kreese’s motivations and justifies his character flaws, but it doesn’t absolve him. We honor our military veterans for their service and now have a better sense of post-traumatic stress disorder, but no one has the right to stand above the law, no matter how much they have sacrificed. Will Kreese finally have to answer for his wrongdoings? Or will he find peace? We’ll just have to wait for season 4 to see. 

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Cobra Kai season 3 is available on Netflix.

The post Cobra Kai Season 3: Does Young Kreese Redeem Cobra Kai’s Founding Sensei? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[stretchjournalemerson]

Of Finstas: a Philosophical Essay in the Style of Montaigne

By Tori Serpico 

“In the knowledgeable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.” -Plato, The Republic

The social media world that we inhabit has distinguished itself from our physical reality, bearing a realm of its own in which we are able to present ourselves in whichever way we deem most opportune. A post made to social media is something of an imprint of physical experience that becomes translated into a shared public moment within this alternate realm. Having this ability allows us to include or omit aspects of physical reality as we wish to. Through social media, we have created a dual society in which we produce reflections of our true existences. None of this information is new or groundbreaking, it simply is the nature of social media that we have all learned, practiced, and accepted. But it is within this social media realm that exists distinctions that further complicate both our perceptions of others and of ourselves.

I remember specifically learning of the “finsta,” and did not understand its purpose or function. Ultimately I gathered that it is a separate Instagram account to post things that one wouldn’t post on their public, or advertised, accounts. It is used to make either “personal” posts, stream-of-consciousness thoughts, or to document more outrageous opinions or experiences. I asked the thirteen year old girl who introduced me to the concept of the “finsta” if she was hiding from an employer. She didn’t laugh.

I further questioned her. Who was she hiding from? What was it about her thoughts or experiences that she couldn’t let people see? What compels her to make a post on one account and not the other? Generally, the catalyzing factor of the existence of the finsta is the audience. Certain information belongs in one place and not the other because it is considered to be “private.” I was very interested in the statistics of this, specifically the numeric value of the concept of “private” in the social media realm. Most finstas I have seen are accessible to approximately one hundred people. In comparison to the number of followers an average Instagram account has, I would say that about one out of five of a user’s public Instagram followers also have access that that user’s finsta. Clearly, I am not a mathematician, nor have I done any legitimate research on these numbers, but for the sake of my point, they are close enough.

“Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare” -Descartes

It is difficult to have a perfect estimation because there are so many factors at play. How many followers is too many? Not every finsta has hundreds of followers. But if so, who is to say a person cannot feel personally connected to hundreds of people? In my opinion, finsta population is extremely high considering its alleged “private” nature. From my experience, finstas are almost equally as accessible to a public eye as a “public” Instagram page. I will go as far as to say that I feel that “privacy” is non-existent in the social media realm. Based on the limited knowledge I have, I believe finsta-users are more concerned with the factor of exclusivity as opposed to privacy, curating a specific audience for their more “private” posts that may not necessarily be private at all.

“I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions” -Hume, Of Personal Identity

In deciding to make a finsta post, one creates a new perception of themself that is targeted only towards one certain group of people. This reaffirms Hume’s bundle theory in a deliberate, self-aware fashion, as well as it muddies my entire idea of “finstagram.” Originally I was made to believe this practice was an exercise of reversing the facades we maintain on social media, instead the user is creating an entirely new one. Finstas are simply a public forum, under the guise of “privacy,” that have normalized the act of declaring private information.

I started encountering more finstas, more people who felt they needed to distinguish their “public” self from their exclusive “private” self. The concept of the finsta reveals the dualities in our characters, and out of them arise dueling personas. The simultaneous existence of these characters distinguishes and compartmentalizes our human qualities, insisting that they must remain separate from each other. In doing this, one signifies that if a quality exists in one persona, there is an absence of that trait in the other. For example, if one is expressing insecurity on their finsta, it is implied that they would not allow themself to reveal that insecurity in the public realm. Therefore, they would be thought of as someone who is confident by those who are solely exposed to their public account.

“Esse est percipi, and he recognizes himself as being only insofar as he is perceived.” -Sartre, Saint Genet

The finsta holds a mirror to the account’s owner as well as reflecting their self-reflection onto the viewer of the post, creating perception through reflection. But here arises the issue: as one allows themself to be externally perceived in a contradictory fashion, they are in turn accepting these contradictions internally as well. The issue here is not the existence of the contradictions themselves, but the desire to allow these contradictions to separate oneself into opposing forces instead of embracing the dualities that make us so human. While the act of separating our characteristics is dangerous in the sense that it creates dual selves for the perceiver, it blurs the lines of reality for the perceived, creating artificial boundaries of personality based on social media exclusivity.

The general willingness to share our deepest thoughts, beliefs, or insecurities in this “privatized” public forum is troubling to me. One’s internal and external processes are put on display, and are able to be witnessed almost simultaneously by those who wish to. Clearly there is a comfort within the social media realm that does not exist in reality, which I feel is rooted in the disconnection from our physical experiences that creates an artificial distance between who we are and what we do or think. The commonality is the “who,” and the disparity is the “what,” or the container. Because of social media we are able to place ourselves in handmade, curated, two-dimensional environments with lower stakes than the perceptions of true reality. This explanation, however, is cyclical, because our actions within the social media realm ultimately influence our external perceptions from others, as I claimed earlier. We simply must exist, unafraid of our perceivers, unafraid of who we are, where we are, and what we are.

Works Cited

Descartes. “‘Perfect Numbers, like Perfect Men [or Women], Are Very Rare.".” Jim Adler, Jim

Adler, 5 Mar. 2011, jimadler.me/descartes-1943c42a6b60.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739.

Plato. “The Republic.” The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato,

classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Saint Genet: Comédien Et Martyr. 1952.

Acknowledgments

For Montaigne-- thanks for the inspiration!

[stretchjournalemerson]

As Long As My Ticker’s Good

By Tori Serpico -

“My grandparents’ house had always felt like a museum. It is the smallest abandoned QVC warehouse-- dusty and filled items you “could only buy now!” but will never leave the plastic. The door knobs are covered in hangers, that are covered in door knob extenders-- which are essentially hangers for the hangers-- because the door knobs aren’t long enough to hold all the hangers in the first place.”

My grandparents’ house had always felt like a museum. It is the smallest abandoned QVC warehouse-- dusty and filled items you “could only buy now!” but will never leave the plastic. The door knobs are covered in hangers, that are covered in door knob extenders-- which are essentially hangers for the hangers-- because the door knobs aren’t long enough to hold all the hangers in the first place. Divorce Court and Dr. Phil play from the distance, in the living room where my grandma keeps her things on her table that is actually two pillows stacked on top of each other. It was always like this, but the feeling of claustrophobia I felt that day wasn’t because I couldn’t fit my seltzer can on the table without knocking over the pills in the Altoid cases or the napkins that towered over the dusty nut cases. As my grandpa slowly came to the top of the steps from the basement, he needed a minute to catch his breath.

Before the ambulance came, my grandpa showed my mom and I how to take care of his pigeons. He took us outside to see how he fed the them, changed their water, and cleaned the coop. He only had a few since the day a few months earlier a little cat snuck its way into the coop, not frightened by his makeshift broom-knife contraption. He didn’t want to hurt the cat, and he didn’t want to hurt the birds. He buried about twenty of his pigeons, leaving only four survivors.

At the hospital, the fluorescent whiteness of the walls and the tiled floors did not brighten the hallway that we sat in, surrounded by sicknesses that at least had curtains around them. My grandpa was still stubborn, and refused to keep his oxygen up his nose when the nurses weren’t around. The brightness of the room illuminated a rash on my chest that he hadn’t noticed. He told me to go home and put some “itchy booboo powder” on it.

“Take a picture!” He stuck out his tongue and closed his eyes, pretending to be dead. I laughed, and I took it.

I watched the doctor as he slowly made his rounds. With a nurse, he sat a woman down. They were not close enough for me to hear his words, but close enough for me to see the woman’s face turn the moment that she had understood them. The room was frozen cold. There was static besides her screaming, her fighting, and her pleading. Suddenly the whiteness was burning and I was suffocated and shaking. When I looked over at my grandpa, he was laughing and imitating her scream. He thought she was hysterical, it was like a little show just for him. The bathroom was locked, or I would’ve sat and cried for a bit.

Sometimes even a slight shift in emotional energy can leave my stomach unsettled-- this was paralyzing. I had never lost someone I loved before, I never knew what it meant to bargain and deny. I had never felt the numbness, the anger, or the sorrow. But that moment hearing that woman plead so desperately made the reality of death become so present. I suddenly remembered where I was, who I was with, and what we were there for. We were fighting with death, and my grandpa laughed right in its face. I was so much more scared than he was. And if anything could bring me any sort of comfort, it’s that.

Nurse shifts came and went as we waited, remaining placed aside a receptionist desk. They gave him an x-ray, a blood test, and another EKG-- the same test he passed with flying colors a few months ago. He was happy to know that whatever was wrong wasn’t so serious. “As long as my ticker’s good!” He took a celebratory whiskey shot. He was feeling better already.

We watched the doctor walk towards our little hallway. I knew the answer was in his hands, in his stupid little doctor folder. The EKG was fine, again-- he found traces of a heart attack in the blood work. It must’ve happened the day before, the day he walked to the bank. The day my grandma called in a panic because he took too long to get home.

“Heart attack? I thought that was gas.” He explained to the doctor that he had been self-medicating with peppermints and Natty Light. “Made the tightness go away.” They found him a room soon after.

My mom, my sister, and I went to visit him the next morning as soon as we were allowed to. He was ready to get a “magic pill” and get out of there. We laughed, and we agreed. We knew how strong he was. The doctors had a plan, and the nurses all loved him. They wanted him to feel comfortable, and he was. Well, sometimes he was. Other times the hospital bed hurt his ass. But it would only be like this for a little while. They had a plan.

The moment the three of us were alone in the lobby, we sat and cried. It didn’t matter what any doctor said, or how nice the nurses were, or how strong we knew he could be. He was so sick.

So we walked to the numbest establishment our three minds could imagine: Applebee’s. We sat in a booth next to the bar. They didn’t ask me for an ID, so we drank. I have no recollection of what we drank, but we drank a lot of them. And we cried. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have something to say. I wanted to be able to provide some kind of levity, or be some kind of light for my mom and my sister. I wanted to so badly. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t speak. I drank. We sat and we drank and I didn’t speak. I excused myself to find the dirty bathroom floor and I sat there for a while instead. And I wailed everything I had out of me.

For that woman that day in the emergency room, death was on that stupid doctor’s chart, it was on that bench, it was between a vending machine and a sliding green curtain. I didn’t understand it yet. I felt it, but it wasn’t mine. For me, death was on the floor of the Applebee’s bathroom. It clutched the base of the toilet seat, it didn’t pay attention to the eye-level passing feet.

That night we all slept in his room, on his broken mattress, together. It was impossible to sleep, the room was so awake and filled with his presence. Everything was left for him to come home and pick right back up again. His baseball caps, his watch, his peppermints and half-finished nip of Ciroc, his broken bed. It was the bed I sat on with him, watching the same two Disney VHS tapes he had for when we visited. The same bed we made matching bracelets on, stringing together wooden beads and copper pigeon tags and a quarter he found with a hole in it. It was the same bed I jumped up and down on with him as a baby, maybe that’s why the mattress was broken. Or maybe it was just a sixty year old mattress. Who’s to say?

The month that followed familiarized me with that age old practice of crying in public places. I cried wordlessly in the dimly lit wine bar across from the hospital where he would go into open heart surgery the next day, we cried tears of joy in a crowded pub when he came out alive. We asked the waiter to guess why we were celebrating. He asked if someone died. We told him someone didn’t die and then we clinked our glasses. It was such an anxious kind of relief.

We saw him open his eyes that day. He was barely awake, but he was alive. That was enough for one day. He was in recovery. They told my mom they weren’t going to rush to take out his breathing tube until they were confident-- putting it back in is never a good sign. It came out on Christmas Eve. He still couldn’t talk, so I gave him my notebook and my pen. He scribbled incoherently-- “they’re killing me.” We laughed at him, he was in recovery after all. We told him how badass his scar was, and how tough the guys in his neighborhood are going to think he is. He spelled out “woter,” and when we asked what channel he wanted he held out five fingers.

The hospital called my mom the next morning, they had to put the breathing tube back in. His heart was strong now, but the rest of his body wasn’t. I don’t like to think that my grandpa’s heart was ever weak. It was, sure, but it didn’t fail. It would never. His heart was so much stronger than mine so many times.

My mom, my sister, and I continued to go into Brooklyn to take care of the pigeons. But one day when we opened the coop, there were only three. We found the fourth bird stiff in the back of the coop. We buried him, afraid of accidentally digging up another one. My grandpa passed away the next day, leaving us behind. His three little birds, his three survivors.

Acknowledgments

For grandpa, and the pigeons.

Photo by Eitan Miller

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Cobra Kai Season 4: What to Expect

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This article contains Cobra Kai season 3 spoilers.

“Hey. Long time,” Kreese (Martin Kove) says at the end of Cobra Kai season 3 when he calls someone mysteriously, as if to ask a favor. Now just who could it be?

The most likely candidate is Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), Kreese’s war buddy and the main villain from The Karate Kid Part III. Season 3 of Cobra Kai explored Kreese’s backstory, adding credence to this postulation. We see Young Kreese’s (Barrett Carnahan) traumatic experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and how he saved his friend that he nicknamed Twig (Nick Marini). It’s implied that Twig is Silver. In The Karate Kid Part III, Silver was a rich CEO of DynaTox Industries, an unscrupulous nuclear waste disposal company. He helped to fund the Cobra Kai schools and was a major sponsor of the All-Valley Karate Tournament. Since the season 3 finale reveals that season 4 is headed to another yet showdown this tournament, Silver would be a good play. 

And here is everything else we might be able to glean about Cobra Kai season 4.

Potential Villain Cameos for Season 4

There are some other possibilities for a potential Cobra Kai season 4 villain for as we’ve already seen, Cobra Kai Easter egg clues can be intentionally misleading. Tory’s (Peyton List) mom was an expertly played red herring, which we’ll come back to in a moment. The writers know that their audience is watching the callbacks closely and are game to toy with our expectations. 

With the season 2 cameo of Chozen (Yuji Okumoto), Cobra Kai has exhausted all the villains from The Karate Kid Part II except for Sato (Danny Kamekona). At the end of that film, Sato had mended his ways so he wouldn’t have returned as a villain anyhow. In season 3, episode 4 ‘The Right Stuff,’ Sato is mentioned when a villager explains the changes at Tomi Village to Daniel (Ralph Macchio). But in the following episode, ‘Miyagi-Do,’ Chozen reveals to Daniel that he inherited the Miyagi-Do artifacts when Sato died. 

Sadly, Kamekona died in 1996, so even if Cobra Kai wanted to revisit him, he would have to be digitally reincarnated like Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) in Rogue One, and that doesn’t seem likely. Those episodes also revealed that Yukie (Nobu McCarthy) died too, which is appropriate since McCarthy died in 2002. But back to villains, Chozen had some dojo-mates, Toshio (Joey Miyashima) and Taro (Marc Hayashi), who helped him harass Daniel (Ralph Macchio). However, they were tertiary henchmen roles. Few fans would recognize if they reappeared in Cobra Kai and Kreese had no ties to the Okinawan Miyagi-Do villains so he wouldn’t call them. 

The other great villain from The Karate Kid Part III was ‘Karate’s Bad Boy’ Mike Barnes (Sean Kanen) although he was Silver’s guy, not Kreese’s. Both Kanen and Griffith are still alive so maybe they both can return. Kanen is still acting with movie and TV roles as recent as 2019. Griffith retired from acting about a decade and a half ago and shifted to writing. Most recently, he was a writer for the NBC TV series Grimm. Regardless, he’s still in the business. What’s more, Barnes had two henchmen, supplied by Silver, Snake (Jonathan Avildsen) and Dennis (William Christopher Ford), but they were peripheral characters like Toshio and Taro. They wouldn’t have much impact without Silver or Barnes. Most fans wouldn’t even remember their names if not for the Internet. 

One other wild card for Kreese’s call recipient is Dutch (Chad McQueen) from the original films. When the Cobra Kai dojo-mates reunited in season 2, episode 5 “Take a Right,” Dutch was the only one missing from the original line-up. During that episode, the rest of the gang raise a toast to him, explaining his absence as due to his incarceration in Lompoc Federal Prison. Perhaps in season 4, he’ll be released. 

McQueen is the only son of Steve MeQueen. He retired from acting around the turn of the millennium and has devoted himself to racecar driving since then. In 2010, he founded the custom car company McQueen Racing. There were rumors that Cobra Kai reached out to McQueen to reprise his role as Dutch in “Take a Right”, but he was too busy with McQueen Racing at the time. Dutch was arguably the worst bully of the original Cobra Kai members. When Kreese beat Johnny (William Zabka) after he lost at the All-Valley Karate Tournament, the gang abandoned their sensei, but Dutch could have remained loyal. 

Mysterious Parents

One of the best red herrings of Cobra Kai was the identity of Tory’s mom. Most fans thought it was Ali (Elisabeth Shue) because Tory introduced herself in Season 2 as “Tory… with a ‘Y’” echoing Ali introduction to Daniel in The Karate Kid when she said “Ali… with an ‘I.’” Tory’s mom is bedridden due to health issues, forcing Tory to hold down two jobs while in high school to support her family. Her mom was offscreen in a scene in Season 3 which further stoked suspicions. But later in the season, we discover Ali is back and healthier than ever, and her two kids are Lucas and Ava, not Tory.

So, who is Tory’s mom? The only potential remaining lead female characters from the original films are Jessica Kennedy (Robyn Lively) from Karate Kid Part III and Julie Pierce (Hilary Swank) from The Next Karate Kid. Both actresses are still active in TV and movies. Tory had some martial arts background which she may have received from her parents (Tory’s dad could be in play too, but her mom has already been presented, albeit hidden from view, so she’s a more likely reveal for Season 4). Jessica wasn’t a student of Miyagi, but Julie was. So maybe Julie is Tory’s mom. 

Fans are split on the possible return of Julie. The Next Karate Kid was a critically panned flop, so it is generally disdained by the fanbase. It was Swank’s first lead role, and she shines despite the awkwardly bad script. Swank went on to win two Oscars, two Golden Globes and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine. She is the most successful alumni of the Karate Kid franchise. What’s more, if Cobra Kai should bring Julie back into the canon, it opens the possibility of The Next Karate Kid villains, Colonel Paul Dugan (Michael Ironside) and his school security squad, the Alpha Elite, including Ned Randall (Michael Cavalieri). 

Beyond Julie and Jessica, there weren’t many other women in the original films. Ali had some high school girlfriends in The Karate Kid, Susan (Juli Fields) and Barbara (Dana Andersen) but like Toshio, Taro, Snake and Dennis, they were peripheral characters. The dramatic impact of one of them being Tory’s mom would be minimal. 

The other mystery parent is Miguel’s (Xolo Maridueña) father. His mom Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) describes him in Season 3 as “a very bad man.” Perhaps he could be Barnes or Dutch (Silver should be around Kreese’s age because they both served in Vietnam so he’s too old for Carman, although it’s noteworthy that despite playing his elder, Griffith is a year younger than Macchio). If Miguel’s dad is Dutch, that could really mess with Carmen and Johnny’s blossoming romance. 

Return to the All-Valley Karate Tournament

A key figure to bring back at the All-Valley Karate Tournament in what will probably be the season 4 finale is the Referee (Pat E. Johnson). Johnson was the martial arts master behind the original franchise, a noted master of Tang Soo Do. And in season 3, episode 6, ‘King Cobra,’ Captain Turner (Terry Serpico) tells Young Kreese that the martial art he will learn is Tang Soo Do. This confirms a theory that many martial artists have held about what martial art Cobra Kai really practices – it’s Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art often labelled as Karate. Following the original movie, Zabka continued to train under Master Johnson. Coincidentally, Johnson also taught Steve McQueen and along with several other notable celebrities. Now in his 80s, Johnson still teaches Tang Soo Do. It would be so fitting to honor Johnson with a cameo because he was largely responsible for the Karate in the franchise.

One character we’d like to see developed in season 4 is Anthony LaRusso (Griffin Santopietro), Sam’s (Mary Mouser) punk little brother. So far, he’s only been a nuisance for the LaRusso family, the one slacker, but he has untapped potential for a more significant role. He appeared in almost every episode of season 1, but his role diminished to just two appearances in season 2. At least he’s still in the cast for season 3. Aisha (Nicole Brown) and Raymond (Paul Walter Hauser) were major characters who simply vanished in the third season. 

A huge wild card might be a cameo from Dre Parker (Jaden Smith). In the 2010 redux of The Karate Kid, Dre was the reinterpretation of Daniel’s role, the bullied outsider who finds redemption in the martial arts. While many hardcore fans of the original reject this as part of the Miyagi canon because there’s no connection of any of the characters to the original films, there’s no reason Dre can’t be integrated. After all, if Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy) can meet Spock (Zachary Quinto) from the Kelvin timeline in the Star Trek redux, anything is possible with franchise reboots. Admittedly, the plot of Cobra Kai doesn’t include time travel (except for an overdose of nostalgia), however that doesn’t exclude the possibility of Dre existing within the world of Cobra Kai. More intriguingly, it would open the door to a cameo from Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). That would really raise the bar on the martial arts of Cobra Kai. And most significantly, Will Smith is an executive producer of Cobra Kai. Smith’s company, Overbrook Entertainment, acquired the rights for The Karate Kid to make the reboot and retained them for Cobra Kai. Cobra Kai has been incredibly witty with its homages to the original film franchise, but with more seasons to come, it will need to expand its scope lest it exhaust its supply of those golden Easter Eggs.

For years, there have been persistent rumors about a sequel to the Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan version of The Karate Kid. The film was by far the most profitable installment of the entire franchise, earning $359 million from a $40 million budget, more than all the original four films combined, so it is surprising that Hollywood hasn’t pushed harder for a sequel. But Jackie Chan is a busy man. There have been unconfirmed rumors of his involvement with Rush Hour 4 and Shanghai Dawn for years too and those are no closer to fruition. Nevertheless, a Dre cameo in Cobra Kai would be a good steppingstone for a redux sequel. And Dre could fit right in with the cast easily. Jaden Smith is the same age as Tanner Buchanan (Robby).

One of the reasons that Cobra Kai left YouTube Red to go over to Netflix was because YouTube wouldn’t commit to a fourth season. Given how the show has played out, the writers seem to have the underlying story arc sketched out, at least as far as season 4. With the escalating surprises that Cobra Kai has already brought, season 4 should be even more fun. 

Cobra Kai never dies! 

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Cobra Kai season 3 is available to stream on Netflix now.

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