#Open score is so poor because we got ROCKED for the last 25 minutes

[stories-and-sails]

Beasts (Short write for NaNo)

I knew why my parents were banishing me to a year of camp up in Dragon Mountains. It was all my tutor’s fault. 

“He’s unmanageable,” the white-haired man had insisted to my mother, stuffing his maps and scrolls back into a leather bag. “And I’m not going to mince words, he’s also dumber than a pile of rocks. No one’s going to be able to teach him to tell his name from a dragon dung, and that’s a pity. But it’s worse that no one bothered to teach him to do as he’s told.” 

I stood between my parents, who kept turning stern looks in my direction. They were great at stern looks. Mother seemed annoyed, and father seemed angry, and my care-aunt seemed sorrowed. I smirked back at all of them. 

“Wait,” my mother said. “We can’t hire another tutor at this time, we need you—” 

“Life is too short to spend in the service of idiots,” the tutor said, and then he left. 

I grinned at my parents. “He thinks I’m stupid,” I said, “but he’s not talking about me.”

Which is how I ended up sitting on my trunk at the edge of the camp with the hundred other hapless fools who’d been awarded a spot at this ultra-competitive shindig. 

“It’s an honor to get to train with dragons,” my father had said. “Many people would kill for your position.”

I didn’t answer him. I knew that lots of the bravest little soldier-wannabes of my age begged their parents to be able to train  for the dragon riding corps, aching to Prove Their Mettle, or Find Their Purpose, or Die Trying. I knew my parents didn’t hold out any hope that I’d actually become one of the riders, but they hoped I’d Figure Out My Shit or Die Trying. 

They might be leaning heavily on the Die Trying. 

“Look, there’s one!” shouted a boy near me, pointing into the sky. 

For a moment, all I saw were clouds, and then, all at once, there was a beast streaking towards us, jaws open wide to show off its teeth, wings stirring the air around us. 

I screamed and fell flat to the ground, which would have been bad news for my social standing at camp if almost all the other kids didn’t follow my lead. When I picked myself up, I could see that the boy who first spotted the dragon hadn’t flinched like the rest of us. He was eyeing the dragon hungrily, thumbs hooked through the straps of his backpack. 

A girl dismounted from the beast in question and smirked at the newbies, still trembling and covered in dust. “I’m Desi. This is Hol. Commander Gao sent me to welcome all of you. So. Welcome. It’s easy to tell which ones are going to be sent home soon.”

“Can I go home now?” I grumbled.

Even though I’d said it under my breath, easy to ignore, her dark eyes caught mine and radiated scorn. “Come now. Don’t be a coward.” Then she continued in a lighter tone, addressing the crowd. “You’ll be staying in tents to the left of the mess hall in groups of four, as have already been determined. You have fifteen minutes to find your own tent and assemble on the combat field.”

She rattled off the occupants of 25 tents, including “E32, Caleb of Snocap, Geovanny, Damien Underhill, and Ivan of Cold Bay.” 

Each person raised a hand as she said their name, and when I saw Geovanny—aka the spunky backpack boy with dragon-vision— raise his hand, I groaned out loud. “Seriously? Don’t put me with him. I’ll kill him within the week. I can already tell he’s obnoxious.” 

“Wow,” Desi replied in a deadpan voice. “You must be really good at spotting the obnoxious person in a crowd.”

Now I officially hated her too, and from the snorts I heard around me, I could count on hating everyone else, too.

I didn’t know who the other boys in my cabin were, only that Caleb of Snocap and Ivan of Cold Bay were likely sons of barons or lords, and probably rich prigs. To the surprise of no one, many of the recruits were of noble birth. Most of the families had to pull a few strings to get their kid accepted. The only difference between them and me was, most of them probably did it because their kid actually wanted an opportunity to face the business end of a dragon. I had no idea how the others, the ones without family names, had scored their place at the sleepaway camp for burning and maiming. It was enough to make Geovanny interesting, and if I didn’t already hate him, I might not have minded having him in our cabin. 

I hefted my trunk into my arms and started down the hillside to the tents left of the mess hall. The mess hall, as far as I could see, was the only real structure, wooden beams holding up a thatch roof. Everything else was temporary, tents and pavilions. Great lights of the sky, I hoped they didn’t decide to take this show on the road. 

It wasn’t long before I noticed a couple of boys jostling near me. They were struggling to keep up because they were dragging their trunks over the terrain, cursing and huffing all the while. 

“Are you following me?” 

The taller boy nodded. “You’re Damien Underhill, are you not?”

“Yes. I did raise my hand when she said that name, so, yes?”

“It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Ivan of Cold Bay, here to earn my family greater honor and pride by gaining a place in the Queen’s Corps of Riders.” 

I faked a yawn. “Wow. That sounds exciting for you.” With that, I turned around and started walking faster to find the tent. 

Of course, somebody beat me there. Little Geovanny with no last name was already standing in the entrance of the tent when I arrived, his arms wrapped around his backpack. No trunk. Guess that was faster. I elbowed him out of the way and set about making myself at home. 

We had a week to settle in before we were supposed to attend our first hatching. Everyone talked about the hatching in hushed voices of awe, and every time they did, I felt a crawling in my spine. We’d stand in a huge cavern, surrounded by cracking and splitting eggs, waiting for one of them to imprint on us or decide that immediate after-hatching nutrition was more important and start chewing on us. 

I did everything to get kicked out that first week. When we were supposed to run a timed mile, I waited until all the fastest kids had finished before I even started, so my time was something like twelve minutes. When we were supposed to be doing drills, I lazed on the grass until one of the older students found me and started shouting at me. And when it came to the history and comportment lessons, I didn’t even have to pretend to be useless. 

When that failed to get me kicked out, I decided to see if some old fashioned Being an Ass could hack it. Geovanny provided the perfect opportunity when he approached me in the mess hall, holding his bowl cradled close to him. “Can I sit with you?” 

I stared at him. He was always edgy around me and kept far clear of me when he could, so I didn’t know what his angle was approaching me in the cafeteria. Maybe he thought he was safer in a public space. Poor, naive child. 

I was sitting alone because everyone, even Ivan and Caleb, had already figured out that I was best left to my own devices. But I was going to need attention for this. 

“What do you want, little freak?” I asked loudly. 

He glanced around at the students starting to turn and look. “Maybe I can sit down and talk—”

“No. Just tell me what you want. Can’t you find someone else to tolerate you during a meal?”

He pressed his lips thin, then said, “Fine. I was going to offer to tutor you. If you want to last here, you’re going to—”

I pressed two fingers down on the lip of the bowl he held so that it tilted away from him. It would have slid harmlessly to the floor if he hadn’t over-reacted, yanking the bowl up and towards him as I removed my fingers. 

“I might be stupid,” I said with a sweet smile, “But I’m not the one wearing my lunch.”

Once people got the idea that I was bullying Geovanny, it took very little to fuel the fire, and by the sixth day of camp I was facing the Commander across his very own tent, waiting for my discipline. 

“I suppose you’ll have to send me home,” I offered, bowing my head in an attempt to hide how triumphant I felt. 

“You do understand what punishment is, don’t you?” 

I looked up. 

“As in, it’s not supposed to be the exact thing you’re angling to get? We’re not sending you home. I know you miss your family.” 

I snorted. He thought he knew everything. Why would I miss the people trying to sentence me to death?

“And that you’re unhappy to be here. You’ll flunk out when we’re actually sure that we’ve seen what you have to offer and that you’re not cut out to be one of the Queen’s Corps.”

“Sir,” I offered, “I’m horrible. I’d think that’s enough to convince you I’m not cut out for such a prestigious position. There are families that can actually make it worth your while. Why don’t you just wash your hands of me and simplify things for everyone?”

He watched me impassively. “Are you finished?”

I blinked. 

“Good. You think you’re so clever because you were the worst child your parents had ever had to deal with, but guess what? I’ve dealt with thousands. I’m not afraid of you.”

My mind scrambled for a response. All I managed was, “I’m not afraid of you, either.”

He shrugged. “You might consider that while there are families with more means represented here, your own family made it worth my while to keep you away from home for as long as possible. Have a good time at the hatching tomorrow.”

The hatching was at sundown. I didn’t talk to anyone all day, which was probably an improvement for them. The third-year students held torches and marched with us to the mouth of the cavern. 

“Damien Underhill?” It was everyone’s favorite Desi-who-likes-to-terrorize-first-years.

“What?” Lights of the sky. My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “What?”

“Take the torch. You’re supposed to lead the class in.”

So this was the actual punishment. I forced my hand to rise and take the torch, but that seemed to be all I could do. I couldn’t force the blood to continue pumping through my veins. It had drained from my face and was thumping around my heart like a fist. 

“Go ahead, Damien,” she said, her voice falsely bright. “Everyone’s waiting. You don’t want to miss the hatching.”

The muttering started then. I needed to move, now. I sucked in air and it came too much like a gasp. Everyone could see me setting my shoulders and trying to gather up my nerve. 

“I think he’s freaking out,” I heard a third-year near the back mutter to her friend. And then it was a chorus of whispers, and the first snorts or laughter. This was making the grisly/toasty death waiting for me on the inside of that cavern sound almost appealing. But I still couldn’t force my feet forward. 

There was a shuffling in the crowd next to me, and I waited. Waited for someone else to take the torch and pronounce me useless and go in to find their honor or whatever they were looking for in there. And I’d be left out here, because I wasn’t looking for anything. You don’t bother to go looking when you know there’s nothing to find. 

I glanced over and saw it was Geovanny. Perfect, that he would show up in this moment. He’d lead them in, the torchlight painting the nameless boy as a hero, and it would be—

“Come on.” He put his palm at the center of my lower back and pushed. I took one jolting step forward, and then another. He kept pace with me.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. The rest of the crowd startled itself into motion behind us. 

Behind us, I could hear jostling and shoving, people complaining, “Hey. That was my foot. Wait your turn.” But no one got close enough to touch us. 

“I want to see the hatching,” he said. “You’re holding the torch.”

I had more questions, but none that I wanted to ask with an audience, so I shuffled through the mouth of the cavern. I could feel the air change around me from the warm mugginess of the summer evening to something cool and scaley-dry. I could sense the hugeness of the cavern, but I held the torch closer to myself. I didn’t want it to illuminate the walls and far off ceiling, and I didn’t want to see eggs the size of boulders all around us. 

I could hear them. The clicking and shifting. Fear tapped on the inside of me like I was the shell. 

“Hold the torch up,” someone barked. “I can’t see where I’m stepping.”

I tried for a caustic reply, but there was still nothing in my mind. Geovanny’s hand nudged my elbow higher. 

I tried to squeeze my eyes shut before I saw the light falling over the eggs, but I was too slow. I already had an image imprinted in my mind’s eye of dozens of eggs, some of them rocking softly, some of them cracked or chipped, the smallest the size of my head and the largest the size of our tent. 

I kept my eyes squeezed shut as the crowd around me gasped and shuffled out. I could hear their footsteps moving among the eggs, could hear them calling out to one another about how beautiful this one was or how close another seemed to hatching. 

“You should open your eyes,” Geovanny said. 

“You should shut your mouth,” I replied. I was annoyed that he’d been watching me. And that he felt like he got to boss me around. But I peeked my eyes open anyway.

In the flickering light of the torch, the floor of the cave shifted with the cracking and rocking of dragon eggs and the wiggling of limbs. 

“Oh my gosh,” a girl on my left crooned. “Look at this one. He’s adorable.”

I looked at the head of a dragon that had forced its way from the egg, and I let out all the air that I’d been holding inside of me. 

It was a small version of the arial burning machines. I could already see the sharp teeth, the glint in its eye, the coiling of its muscles. 

But yeah, it was also kind of cute. 

One minute, there was only one or two dragon faces to spy in the room, and the next, the cavern was full of writhing bodies as they slithered between the eggs and legs to find the human that they wanted. I saw Caleb of Snowcap bending over to pat a white-and-teal dragon that probably weighed over a hundred pounds already. Was that thing supposed to sleep in our tent? With me? Hopefully we’d be able to store them elsewhere.

For fifteen minutes I stood there, flinching every time a dragon wound itself around my legs on the path to the person it was really trying to find. As dragons and recruits united, the humans led them out of the cavern. I could hear the third-year students shouting their approval at each recruit as they came out. 

In the end, it was just Geovanny and me standing in the cavern with eggshells and a few dragons that didn’t seem interested in us as their human choices. I wondered if Geovanny hadn’t been picked because he was standing too close to me. 

“You know,” I started, “It’s really humiliating needing help from someone like you.” It had sounded more like an insult to him in my head, but saying it out loud it just seemed true.

He smiled. “Good, I was hoping it would be.”

“Is this normal?” I asked. 

“What?”

“Getting rejected by dragons.”

“Be patient.”

I hated being told what to do, but apparently life was full of things I hated. “You could have just left me outside.”

“I don’t like that,” he said. “I thought about it, but that’s not what I wanted.”

He was staring hard at the floor as he said this, and I was feeling annoyed for reasons I couldn’t figure out when he pointed suddenly. “Look!” 

 A few late-to-emerge hatchlings were shaking off the last bits of shell from their wings and tail. That red one--with the gold tipped wings. Lights of the sky, it looked terrifying. It looked like trouble. It was looking at me. 

“You got one,” Geovanny whispered as it pranced over to me, its head wobbling on a skinny neck. 

I forced myself to stand still, not to take a step back. “Hi,” I said to it, holding my hand down so it could sniff at my fingertips. “Hi, you weird little creature.”

Geovanny laughed, and I felt an actual pang of guilt. If there was one recruit at this sham of a training camp that deserved a dragon, it was Geovanny. Where—

“There he is,” Geovanny breathed. He dropped to his knees and held his hand out, waiting. I held the torch up higher and saw his dragon, sidestepping around the light, trying to make its way to Geovanny but too shy to take the final steps. 

I lowered the torch and waited with him while the little creature finally worked up its nerve. 

When we finally left the cave, all the other recruits and the older students had given up on us and gone down to the combat field, where they were celebrating the night by shouting about whose dragon was best. 

My dragon kept tripping me, trying to sniff at Geovanny’s beast, which kept darting just out of reach only to return and flick my dragon with its tail when she’d given up. 

“Look,” Geovanny smiled. “I think our dragons want to be friends.”

“I think our dragons want to be friends,” I repeated in a sing-song voice. “Honestly, you’re so—” I was about to say pathetic, but I looked at Geovanny and saw that my words had actually hurt him.

So pathetic. So stupid, to let me keep hurting him when he’d been in the position to hurt me, and he hadn’t. So obnoxious. 

“You’re so stubborn.” I finally said. “You’re really stubborn, aren’t you?”

He blinked, and most of the hurt was gone. “I know what I want,” he said. “That doesn’t always mean I get it.”

I tried to think of something to say that would actually sound like me talking, but I didn’t know how to be in moments like this. I couldn’t think of any moments I’d ever been in that were like this. 

So I said, “Thanks. For helping tonight.” 

He smiled all the way, and we walked straight past the combat field to the tent. I don’t know why he didn’t want to go show everybody that he’d matched with a cool dragon, but I hoped that everyone was writing us off tonight, assuming we’d be going home. I couldn’t wait to see everybody lose their heads tomorrow when we showed up with the coolest dragons by far.

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 9/12/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Monday, December 9th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

PM MOTTLEY EYES OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS IN AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC – Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is looking to Africa and the Pacific for new growth prospects for artists and designers from Barbados and the rest of the region. She made her intentions known on Saturday night while attending a fashion show in Nairobi, Kenya where young fashion designers got the opportunity to show off their creations for delegates from the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of nations. Asked by the organisers to speak to the audience, Mottley said: “For a very long time we have seen the benefits of cooperation with the ACP and UE for our designers and creatives, and indeed, Caribbean Export has been doing an excellent job in creating that platform for our artists and designers. “We hope that we can now create the logistical framework that will allow the trading to take place, so that we don’t only marvel at the beauty of the designs, but that we can ensure that the economics that will support the sale of the designs can make the businesses sustainable. “This is part and parcel of what this expression and the showing of the work of the designers is about, but we need now to popularise it and ensure that access to working capital is always there for our artists.” Mottley explained further: “The fact is that most of our artists don’t have the collateral to go and access funding from the bank in order to be able to expand production. So we have to have showings such as this to ensure that we have other investors come on board, but also create the markets… “Our own people from Barbados are excited about it and I know we are also excited to see what else we can take from Africa into the Caribbean because there is a strong sense of African awareness — African style, African music, African food, African designs. “The truth is, we are now only coming home to each other and discovering each other in ways that matter and we need to be able to give our people choice. I hope that the ACP partnership can create that platform.” (BT)

UWP REJECTS RESULTS AND SKERRIT GOVT –Dominicans are today fearful of more political strife and possible violence following the opposition United Workers’ Party’s (UWP) rejection of last Friday’s general election results and condemnation of the observer missions’ findings that the poll was free and fair. In a near 16-minute Facebook broadcast on Saturday night, UWP leader Lennox Linton said that “unfortunately, the people of Dominica had their hopes set aside, dashed, by yet another stolen election”. He called on his countrymen to “rise up and stand up to ensure that those who have done wrong to Dominica” pay for their deeds. “We need now to demand fresh elections because as far as we are concerned, this illegitimate result renders the election null and void, and it renders the government null and void. We will not recognise this government because it is as a result of a stolen election. That’s where we stand,” said Linton.  (DN)

QEH EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN OUTLINES PLANS TO TRANSFORM HOSPITAL – Executive Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland has outlined a ten-point plan to transform the institution into a more patient-focused and customer friendly facility. As she delivered remarks at the QEH’s 2019 RESPECT Awards at Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre last night, Bynoe-Sutherland also served notice that staff would benefit from the coming improvements. The QEH executive said the hospital was indebted to Barbadians for the Health Levy, which has yielded BDS$40, 196, 938 to date and advised her team that to whom much was given much was expected. Bynoe-Sutherland reported that efforts to improve the hospital’s finances had started and it had also managed to clear its debt. “We strengthened financial management, reporting and internal auditing, completed a comprehensive stock count and engaged auditors to 2021 so external audits outstanding since 2011 can be brought up-to-date to this financial year. We have cleared the outstanding debt to our local and overseas supplies through the BERT programme,” she said. Bynoe-Sutherland further noted that the QEH was focused on completing the costing of the hospital services and improving financial management by placing greater emphasis on value for money and evidence-based treatment. She added that the hospital would be launching a major philanthropy push in association with We Gathering 2020. Detailing aspects of her plan, Bynoe-Sutherland disclosed that an organization-wide campaign on delivering good service would be rolled out through the use of ongoing patient surveys, giving snap awards for exceptional service, and expanding employee recognition and reward systems to highlight great service along with holding poor providers accountable if they fail to meet the high standards. The QEH boss signalled that the hospital would be implementing new bed management policies, standards and protocols since the shortage of beds remains a major concern at the state-owned institution. Additionally, new posts, including bed managers and case managers who would focus on ensuring patients benefit from diagnostics tests and procedures in an efficient manner would also be introduced. Bynoe-Sutherland also outlined that the institution’s waiting list for public patients would be addressed through partnerships with the private sector. Turning her attention to staff, the QEH executive chairman noted that despite challenging times, which necessitated some cuts, the hospital had not laid off permanent staff, but rather increased temporary contracts from one year to two years to give those workers more security of tenure. “We know it has been hard, as we have had to reduce or eliminate overtime in some areas and decreased the number of relief staff. But we do this all so we can maintain our permanent staff and we thank everyone for their commitment and sacrifices, “ she said. She stressed that providing growth opportunities for staff members was also in the works, assuring that particular attention would be paid to boosting morale and ensuring their safety and security. “Our staff safety is important to us. We are going to strengthen our security to keep staff safe and prevent the loss of equipment and supplies. We will also be launching a zero-tolerance to staff abuse campaign as the amount of aggression, vilification and violence faced by staff is intolerable.  (BT)

GARBAGE ISSUES BEHIND RAT SIGHTING – Purity Bakeries says a rodent problem it is experiencing is nothing new, and is blaming it on the sporadic collection of garbage. This is according to the company in response to two videos making the rounds on social media showing a rat between baking pans in Lower Collymore Rock, St Michael facility. “Purity Bakeries, like every other food business, has experienced challenges in relation to the rodent population around our facility. The national issues related to garbage collection have compounded these challenges,” said Purity in a statement on its Facebook page yesterday afternoon after the DAILY NATION had earlier contacted general manager Ralph Holder for a comment. (DN)

PLASTIC BAN PUSHED BACK –The ban on petroleum-based, single-use plastic bags has been put back. It will now take effect from April 1, 2020 – three months after the originally proposed date. Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy, Kirk Humphrey, speaking at Ocean Fisheries’ 30th Anniversary Awards Dinner Saturday night, said the move would give manufacturers the time they had requested to produce an organic-based bag (DN)

CHRIST CHURCH MAN FOUND HANGING - Police are investigating the unnatural death of Shamar Stevenson Rojoe Bascombe, 25, of Hannay’s Valley ,Windsor, Christ Church. Acting public relations officer Inspector Rodney Inniss said at around 9:40 a.m., some people came to District B police station and reported the death. Bascombe was discovered hanging from a rafter in a bedroom by his dad. (DN)

MOTORCYCLIST SUFFERS HEAD INJURIES IN COLLISION WITH CAR – A motorcyclist suffered serious head injuries in a collision at the intersection of Drax Hall Road and Greens Road, St George around 3:20 p.m. Police have identified the motorcyclist as Rommell Stowe, 32, of Baird Village, St George. He was involved in an accident with Lester Brathwaite, 46 of #6 Parton Apartments, Newbury, St George. Parton was driving a white Mercedez Benz. Police said Stowe was transported by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for medical attention. He was said to be in a serious but stable condition when he departed the scene. (BT)

SIZZLING SIMMONS – Veteran opener Lendl Simmons stroked his first half-century in nearly four years while Nicholas Pooran made an instant impact in his first match back from a ball-tampering ban, as West Indies brushed aside powerhouses India by eight wickets to level the three-match series 1-1 yesterday. Needing a victory to keep the Twenty20 International series alive, West Indies comfortably chased down 171 at the Greenfield International Stadium to break a seven-game losing streak to the Indians and turn Wednesday’s third game at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai into the series decider. The 34-year-old Simmons, playing only his third T20 International in two and a half years, emerged from a stuttering start to top-score with an unbeaten 67 off 45 deliveries while Pooran arrived late to lash an imperious unbeaten 38 from just 18 balls. (DN)

ST. CATHERINE DIG DEEP FOR CHAMPIONSHIP – CRANE RESORT St Catherine, with their last pair at the crease, stubbornly defended the last eight overs in a tension-filled final half hour against first-time Cupid Cavaliers to become the Barbados Cricket Association’s (BCA) Second Division champions yesterday. St. Catherine’s captain Derwin Thompson rolled back the years while using all his experience and batting expertise to make a defiant 25 not out off 75 balls in 82 minutes to ensure an exciting draw at Queen’s Park in the three-day final. Thompson, a former stand out Police player, got dogged support from Chief Town Planner George Browne, who played out 16 deliveries while gathering two runs in a tense half-hour as by virtue of gaining a 67-run first innings lead, St Catherine recaptured the title they first won at the same venue in their maiden season of BCA cricket in 1972. (DN)

FREDERICK SMITH HOSTING ANTI-VIOLENCE RALLY – The Frederick Smith Secondary School will host a National Rally Against Violence on Wednesday from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The rally will be preceded by a march, which will start at 10 a.m. and will conclude at Queen’s Park via Lower Broad Street, Broad Street, High Street, Roebuck Street, and Crumpton Street. Students will assemble at Jubilee Gardens, The City, from 8:30 a.m. There will be a number of speeches and musical presentations during the rally. All schools are invited to participate. (BGIS)

There are 22 days left in the year Shalom!  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

[rawinternets]

Star Wars Episode 8: a rediscovery

The latest Star Wars installation is all of 3 months old, so it’s hard to call it “a rediscovery,” but here we are. I watched Episode 8 again, and again I was disappointed, maybe even moreso the second time around. 

This movie has lots of good, even great, in it - although for everything it does well, it completely botches at least one other thing. To use the “cooking” analogy that went so well in my Ep1 review: it’s like there are half amazing ingredients, half just straight Crisco, and the instructions, steps, and timing are all off. Instead of a cake (or an Ep1 Jar Jar Shit Cake), you end up with a nasty soup with delicious chunks of gourmet chocolate swimming around in there. 

It’s sloppy, is what I’m trying to say. Not inspiring. It felt like a fairly hollow installation. The magic was gone.

One reason? Cut scenes. Every scene felt *too* fast-paced. Cut, cut, cut. I could barely keep up with my note-taking, and had to pause many times. I reviewed 68 scenes or set pieces in Ep8, far more than the rest: 

R1: 25 Ep4: 29 Ep5: 31 Ep1: 39 Ep2: 42 Ep3: 41 Ep6: 41 Ep7: 46 Ep8: 68

(Yes, there was an upward trend - maybe I just took more discrete notes as I went on - but still, Ep8 is a clear outlier).

This cut-scening gives a frantic pace and no time to emotionally settle into the storyline. It’s almost too much to process. The movie finally settles in when Rey is trying to learn from Luke, but for the majority of the film, we’re brutally bashed between scenes and set pieces such that we become numb. 

The other structural problem with this film is one which you can’t necessarily see in the histogram or the “journey” chart. This is my belief: the glittering veins of the film are the Jedi-Sith struggle, the blurring between the two... the genuine, moving, and perplexing connection between Kylo Ren and Rey. An orthogonalization (is that a word?) of the Jedi-Sith struggle into a young-old struggle (sounds kind of similar......... #trump). 

This is truly some inspired stuff. Some great scenes. many 9′s, a 10. But these veins of value are set in a truly worthless plot substrate. We have a horrifyingly re-treaded and cheesy and just generally infuriating attack on some ship called a “dreadnought,” and then we have a Battlestar Galactica simulacrum for the remainder of the film, a wretched and unnecessary and heavy-handed side-excursion to a cantina v3 (this time rich and black-tie, not a grungy bar!), we have Hux over-acting, and we have a god-awful Snoke, whose cancerous presence from Ep7 metastasized and was mercifully destroyed in Ep8 but not before causing lasting damage to the story arc.  We have so many moments of “this will never happen now... oh wait, it happened!” both on the good swing, and the bad. It’s as if in trying so hard to subvert the old tropes, the movie itself was simply an inverse image of the same old tropes. 

The other problem this movie has is that everyone... I mean pretty much everyone, except Kylo, Luke, and Rey, are mediocre at best. They’re caricatures of themselves, or someone/thing else. They have no depth and nuance. It’s extremely off-putting.

You can see I have a lot to say about this movie, which maybe is not surprising since it prompted me to undertake this entire exercise. Without further ado... 

Average score: 6.31 Standard deviation: 1.89

SCROLL. 6. Really lacking nuance. Everything is "heroic" vs "tyranny". And then... "But the Resistance is exposed!” How did they get exposed? I just don't get any of this. Why do they hope Luke will save them? This scroll is a total shit show. And it sets up another desperate escape from another rebel base... You know what? It seems like a bot got trained on all the other scrolls, and this is the output.

Rebel base discovered. 6.  Umm, intense walking and stilted dialogue and "oh no..." as the First Order arrives... mmm ok? This is at least a cool shot, where you can see the Star Destroyers from Earth.

Hux. 5. Dialogue is so bad. "I have orders from Supreme Leader Snoke himself... this is where we snuff out the Resistance once and for all." Incinerate Obliterate blah blah blah. Dreadnought.... meh. Burned out on superweapons.

Dreadnought and Poe’s Joke. 5.  Are we supposed to be afraid of another Mega-Star Destroyer after seeing so many destroyed by single ships in the past? And this is like a Death Star Lite with ground assault capabilities. I mean this just feels kind of uncreative and bland. Maybe a bit like Star Trek sorta showed up in Star Wars... REALLY bad cheesy joking with Poe. "Can you hear me now” joke? Your mother joke? Come on. Meh.

Attack the Dreadnought. 4.  Like I said... another single ship beats a huge ship... another “droid fixes shit in the middle of battle” shot... another hot shit pilot disobeys orders... and the worst part of all, Fuckin' gravity in space! If the bombers’ bombs are so dangerous, why do multiple bombers fly in such tight formation? Why not put them on oh, I dunno, missiles? Anyway, it's all down to one bomber... one person has to save everyone, of course. Of course the trigger falls below the deck but OH WAIT! she catches it with a backhand grab. Of course the bomb doors are open and she's not sucked out into space... Of course one bomber can take down the whole ship but they had like 10 at the beginning all tightly clumped. This is pure spectacle with no thinking at all. This is Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3. This is Michael Bay level shit, and not The Rock Michael Bay.

Snoke angry. 5. Snoke sucks. He can do Force shit that nobody else can to the extent that it’s diminishing, kind of like back to Eps 1-2 treatment of the Force. Slaps Hux from across the galaxy. OK. 

Finn wakes up. 5. Why was he in a coma again? Because he got back-sabered by Kylo on the Death Star 3? I guess. And he wakes up: “I’m sure you have a ton of questions...” “Where’s Rey?” Laying it on preeeeeettty thick here with the whole “hey, guys, this guy really cares about Rey!” unrequited love thing. (By the way, this unidimensional Finn shit will continue). 

Rey meets Luke. 8. ... and Luke throws the lightsaber over his shoulder. Some have criticized this for being a “try too hard to be different” moment but the first time I watched, I laughed genuinely and appreciatively, and the second time, I still liked it. What’s with this Rey hair of three-loop-ponytail? It’s trying too hard. Leia’s earbuns were truly singular. 

Porgs+Lightsaber. 8. I liked this near-Porg-death joke. And Rey sees the X-wing. OK. 

Chewy and Luke. 7. Luke starts putting it all together... but if he abandoned his family, the Jedi, and everyone else so many years ago, why does he care “Where’s Han?” Shouldn’t he be totally resigned to the inevitable decay and death of the universe and everything? 

Throne Room Snoke. 6. Meh. “We have them tied on a string.” Meh. Snoke is being a dick to Kylo. I am distinctly aware of Serkis overacting. Maybe Serkis Saturation is a thing... March of the Empire music is hokey here, rather than good. Snoke says "HOPE lives in the galaxy" Meh. The former evil empire wasn’t so like, blatantly and caricature-evil. “You're just a child in a mask.” Fine. Snoke sucks.

Kylo kills his mask. 8. Another “Reject Ep7″ moment, but I still liked it. Fits well with the character also. 

Rey and Luke. 7. "Within weeks, the First Order will control all the systems." "You think i'm going to walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?" Three thoughts here: 1) yeah good point Luke, actually. 2) Wait, how does Luke even know what the First Order is? 3) Wait... this is the first of many “I’ll/we’ll never X” and then (spoiler) X happens later. Anyway, the island is beautiful. I don't know how I feel about the milking the weird animal. OK I guess? It's different at least. Flying across a pole to a cliff to stab a fish? It's OK. I guess this is a decent sequence.

The Jedi Tree. 8. Rey is called to the tree, Luke figures out she has force sensitivity (why didn't he sense it before? wasn't listening for it?) and she explains she feels the Force after he confronts her. I liked this scene fine. “It's time for the Jedi to end, i came to this island to die.” All good.

Leia on the ship. 6.  Cloaked binary beacon connecting Leia to Rey... mehhhhhh. Poe demoted - good, what an idiot. The Dreadnought thing was a disaster. Finn sucks here. Just not greatly acted. Probably not his fault - script problem. So overly focused on Rey. Now they need a new base for asking for help from outer rim.... wonder where we’ve heard this kind of thing before...

Snoke’s ship shows up. 5.  Snoke's ship is like 1,000x the volume of regular enormous Star Destroyers? Mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And Poe “permission to get into an X-wing and blow something up,” with Leia’s “permission granted”... meehhhhhh. and then Kylo Ren fucks up the entire hangar bay anyway. Just doesn’t feel right. And this is where the “poor man’s Battlestar Galactica” really starts to set in. 

Kylo attacks the cruiser. 6.  Another "one ship destroys the fuck out of an enormous ship"... but I liked the conflict in Kylo, can’t fire on his mother.

Keeping out of range of shields. 3.  It was at this point I realized there were a lot of cutscenes in this movie. Like we had been been cutting and cutting and cutting for the first 30 minutes. I wrote: “I can barely keep up. and what the fuck? a smaller, lighter ship in space can keep out of range? what kind of bullshit physics is this? SPACE! FRICTIONLESS!”

Leia survives. 3. I wrote: “ OH dear god. that was atrocious.”

Chewy and Porgs, Luke. 6.  "Nothing can make me change my mind." OH REALLY? I BET SOMETHING WILL! R2D2 Plays Leia’s old message to Obi Wan. Mind Changed! Luke: "Tomorrow at dawn. 3 lessons."

Battlestar Galactica Laura Linney. 5.  Back to trying to escape the Cylons. Akbar dies offscreen, all Resistance leaders are dead. Bridge dead. Laura Linney comes in as the so-blatantly-queer leader of all. "The downtrodden and oppressed"... Hollywood laying it on a little thick, here. They are the spark that will light the fire, fine I guess. But even as a pretty left-leaning person, this scene broke my fourth wall. 

Holdo slaps Poe silly. 8. Very good scene. Finally, someone puts Poe in his place. This was the kind of feminist “resist toxic masculinity” thing that regardless of whether you like the message or not, had some subtlety to it rather than being ham-handed. 

Finn escapes, meets Rose. 4. Finn the idiot trying to find Rey for really no good reason. No depth of character - really obvious. He’s just the "GOTTA FIND REY!" guy this movie. Rose overacts. Finn running away again... Good, this makes sense! Finn and Rose are smart enough to talk jibberish at each other and solve the whole situation! Yeah, let's shut down the Destroyer! Yea let's sneak on board the Destroyer and disable the tracker! Also... how did Rose not already know they could be tracked through lightspeed? that obviously already happened literally hours ago, and there’s no way she didn’t know about the attack...

Poe and Finn stupid mission. 3.  Poe: "It’s a need to know plan and she doesn't." Ughhhhhhh booooooooo. Worst fucking plan. This is truly painful... another ragtag small group mission against the odds and against the wishes of leadership. Sure, this movie (spoiler) subverts the trope eventually, but in such a clear and blatant way that it still feels like the trope. 

Maz Kanata in union negotiations. 3. You can just imagine the writer’s room... “well, Kathleen Kennedy / JJ Abrams says we need to have Maz in Ep8 so she can return in Ep9. So how are we gonna get her in there? Hmm... well, let’s make it a hologram cameo so we don’t have to change script or design set. And maybe, hey, here’s an idea, a fun cameo! Something funny and unexpected! Like let’s have her be in the middle of a gunbattle! With who though? Nothing too serious... Oh! What about like Union negotiations? haha, that’s great! But let’s make sure it has some plot relevance... I got it, she can be the one who tips them off to the master codebreaker! Let’s make sure she says ‘find the master codebreaker’ twice so everyone is clear what’s happening.” fin

Rey-Kylo mind bridge. 8.  Pretty interesting scene. Kylo is good again, here as in most scenes. "You can't be here... the effort would kill you." Foreshaadowwwwwwingggg. Rey fires her blaster at the wall and the Nuns are pissed. Why didn't Rey tell Luke? Caretakers of the island. nice.

Luke trains Rey. 9.  It's a bit too fast how Rey just "gets it" ... like can't we warm up into that please? Kind of OK with the joking around with her when she reaches out, literally... OK and then the balance point is pretty cool, and Luke's lesson is pretty good. Although I don't love the seaweed anus (you know what I’m talking about), I do think that was a pretty cool scene. Luke is scared of Rey.

Back to Battlestar Galactica. 4. Getting frustrated, I wrote: “fuck i mean why are they so dead set on dumb ass missions?”

Chewy and Porgs. 7. Still too many scenes! I’m fine with porgs, I guess. I dunno. Not loving them, but also don't hate them like I hate the plot.

Rey and Kylo bridge 2. 9. Pretty great bridge scenes. Kylo more nuanced and mature than Rey. Kylo has water on him from the rain... should have been a foreshadowing to transportation in the galaxy or something awesome like that.

Canto Bight intro. 6. “Worst people in the galaxy.” Of course this would also be Hollywood ham-handed... The worst people are fancy richers. Stupid Western accent on big monster. It’s basically Monte Carlo. And it’s a New Cantina... but with bowties and cocktails this time! meh.

Canto Bight reveal. 4.  It's bad people! Heavy-handed. BB8 full of coins, ha, ha.... ha. Codebreaker plot gamut is over, good (sort of). 

Rey training. 7. Rey knocks over some rocks with her lightsaber. Funny. Decent. Although I wasn’t really impressed with her lightsaber wielding, to be honest. It seemed like they were trying to make it impressive. 

Luke and Rey lesson 2. 7. “The Jedi legacy is failure, hypocrisy, hubris.” I NOW KNOW THIS IS TRUE! Kylo takes a couple students and kills the rest... fine. Leia blamed Snoke... boooooO!!! Snoke is so dumb.

More BSG - fleet dying. 4. Current fuel at 6 hours. How does this square with the Luke/Rey pacing? Are we on two different timescales, like the great movie Dunkirk? Hux is lame.

Back on Canto Bight Benicio. 3.  Benicio del Toro is fine. The stutter tick is a bit overwrought. I wrote: “BB8 shoots coins like a fuckin’ bullshit idiot” so you know I was enjoying myself. I continue: “They escaped and left the fuckin' grate open?! now they're with the big dumb animals. show kids they're with the resistance. yay rebel logo. now they're riding the big dumb animals. on a track. now they're bulldozing a casino. now they're destroying cars. now the ship is destroyed. now they run up cliffs. and of course there's a cliff they almost fall down. ‘It was worth it to tear up that town and make'em hurt’ BOOOOOOO. Free the animal! ‘Now it's worth it...’ booooooo.”

Benicio saves the day. 4.  ddddddddd need a lift? what kind of stutter is this, anyway? 

Kylo-Rey and Luke-Leia bridge. 9. “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. it's the only way to become who we're meant to be.” In addition to being a fantastic @EmoKyloRen tweet, this line and scene was pretty great. 

Rey goes to the dark hole (seaweed anus). 9. She opens up to Kylo. so cool. Really like this complexity. They fall in love halfway between light and dark, kinda? Luke blows up the cabin and Rey confronts him.

Rey and Luke fight! 8. “ This is not going to go the way you think!” “I saw Kylo's future as solid as I'm seeing you. Ben Solo will turn.” Seen this before! It's cool but it's also a bit of a rehash. Luke won't take the saber. she leaves.

Luke and Yoda. 9. Yoda, laughing, burns the tree. “Skywalker. teach the failure. always looking to the horizon, not here, the need in front of your nose.” “Failure the greatest teacher is.” “We are what they grow beyond, that is the true burden of all masters.” I guess Yoda is just an amazing character because the lines writers write for him are almost universally great. 

Finn, Rose, and Benicio. 7.  Selling weapons to the bad and good... military industrial complex. "It's all a machine. Live free, don't join." OK... I like the different take, at least. 

BSG Again. 7. Poe confronts Holdo. Meh.

Rey goes to Snoke’s ship, Poe mutinies, Finn and Rey slip through shields. 6.  Who cares.

Robots ironing joke. 8. I liked this!

More sneaking around. 6. Is the hacker a good guy!? they get caught trying to shut down the tracker. I wrote: “Now stupid chrome Captain Phasma is dumb.”

Rey and Kylo in throne room. 9. “My good and faithful apprentice, my faith in you is restored.” Snoke still sucks but this scene is good. 

Poe and Leia. 6. Poe stunned by Leia. He's a dumbass.

Leia and holdo bye. 7.  Didn't feel that much emotion here either. Rebels "escape" sneaking out the back. 

Throne room again. 7. Snoke is super all powerful mehhh. "I bridged your minds, I baited you all." Emperor 2. Just like Luke, Emperor, and Vader. Tired. 

Crait rebel base. 6. Send a signal to allies in Outer Rim. Holdo knew to get transports out. Hide until First Order passes. Poe: "that could work" mehhhhh.

Benicio Betrayal. 3. How did he know that the transports were happening? nobody else did. Ridiculous. Why are the bombs arcing!?!!?! TOO MUCH GRAVITY. THIS IS SPACE. 

Throne room again. 7. Snoke super all amazingly powerful evil amazing omg. so dumb. Andy Serkis overacting is not good. Kylo "turns" against Snoke. Snoke really ruins this scene.

Transports getting domo’d. 5.  Still meh!

Post-Snoke throne room battle. 10. It's fine. So much action. Not sure why Red Guards are scary really. Rey and Kylo kill all the red guards. TWIST! Kylo didn't actually turn! Old v New, not Light v Dark! Great stuff here. "Your parents sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert. You don't have a place in this story. You're nothing. But not to me. Join me. Please." I mean this is really interesting!!! This like light-dark love mixing here! The Rey-Kylo interactions in both movies have been great. 

Holdo’s sacrifice. 9. I mean OK holy shit, but why had nobody ever done it before? Beautifully shot, total quiet was very impactful as well. Good job on this, although potentially problematic for the greater Star Wars universe.

Finn vs. Phasma. 6. BB8 in an ATST? meh. Finn: "Let's go, chromedome." Phasma: "you're a bug in the system." Matrix callback! Bleh. another villain falls down a large chasm. Good riddance, Phasma. 

The New Supreme Leader. 6. The supreme leader is dead, long live the supreme leader, mehhhhhhhh.

The New Hoth. 5.  Rey and Rose sneak under the door, of course :( Miniaturized Death Star Tech. Battering ram cannon. Siiiiiiiiiigh. Ice foxes are cool I guess. We have now had a Death Star or a Death Star-like superweapon in all films except Episode 1.

Battle of Salt Hoth. 6.  Trench warfare. It’s salt, so it's OK that it looks just like Hoth! Everyone drive in straight lines right at the enemy, Yeah that's the ticket. Monoski, yea that's the ticket. It's pretty, at least. Remember at the beginning of the movie when they said it was “A dreadnought,” not the last one? Why not just bring a dreadnought to this situation and destroy the whole planet? Falcon + Chewie + Porg + Rey having fun again. The falcon goes into a mine that looks exactly like the Death Star 2 scaffolding and tie fighters follow...... sigh.

Finn tries to sacrifice. 3. Rose saves him from himself.... booooooo. And in the process basically kills herself... to save each other from .... the evil? By love? We're gonna win by not fighting what we hate but saving what we love! As the Death Star tech punches thru the door and she passes out. dumb dumb dumb. Could have given Finn a non-unidimensional redemption!

Luke and Leia. 6. “The galaxy has lost all its hope. The spark is out." I BET IT’S NOT! mehhhh. How many times do we have to do this in this movie? "nothing can change my mind." "it's over." the spark is out." Just kidding! Something Can/It's Not/No it isn’t! Here's Luke! zomg!

Luke faces down the First Order. 9. Very pretty. intense. Hux "do you think you got him?" is funny. Kylo's anger is good. Very pretty shots. Luke brushing dirt off his shoulder is good. Hux getting crushed to the wall is a good and funny joke.

Luke vs. Kylo. 9.  Luke no footprints on second viewing, hey, nice job guys! “Every word of what you just said, is wrong.” Good Luke line. Second time in the movie he’s said it to good effect. I like that. 

Escape! 7. Why wouldn't Luke have just told them, "Hey, I'm stalling, you escape?" Why make Poe figure it out? Rey lifts the rocks. Hooray Force. 

Luke was projecting!! He dies. 9. That was an emotional end. Well done. Sun setting. Good callback.

Resistance escapes. 7. Luke is gone, Rey and Leia talk, Finn and Rose, how do rebuild Rebellion from this, we have everything we need right here. Meh. Aaaaaand we're back where we started 9 movies ago.

Little kid has Force. 6. ...and Rose’s rebellion ring. Hooooookey. "The masses will rise up.” Once again... It's been 70 years and we're back where we started.

VERDICT: 

Given the score distribution, I was surprised to see that the stdev was not the highest of all the films - but I suppose Ep1 had both Jar-Jar and Darth Maul. With the sheer scene count, our histogram starts to approximate a normal distribution around 6. Which is sad. The outlier 9′s come to us because of the good Force-centric scenes with Kylo, Luke, and Rey (but not Snoke). The outlier 3′s come to us because of Dreadnoughts, Canto Bight, Poe, and Finn (bad storylines). 

Which brings us back to what I said before about this movie being great in its Force thread and bad everywhere else. When you calculate the scores for all scenes with any of Luke, Rey, and Kylo Ren, but nobody else, the average score is an 8.42. All other scenes average a 5.52. This movie had a very good story vein, set into a very bad plot structure. 

Perhaps the most damning verdict of all, however, is that I just don’t really care what happens next. I read one review which made the point that by this movie, the struggle between the Empire and the Rebellion has been going on openly for 70 years, and so little has changed. I noticed that, too. Death Stars have been built and destroyed and built again, destroying planets, narrowly missing the chance to destroy planets, and so on. Rebel forces have been against the wall and overwhelmed all odds to defeat an evil menace, only to find themselves under the menace’s thumb once again with historically instantaneous speed. Why is Leia still fighting? Maybe beyond the botox, this weariness is what kept me from connecting with her character or struggle at all. And no wonder nobody answered the call for help at the end of the film. 

Yes, Ep9 will have some inspiring uprising by a bunch of nobody’s, just like the climax of V for Vendetta, but how predictable, how uninspiring. Episode 9 - take it or leave it. And that’s the saddest realization of them all. 

REVIEW LINKS:

Introduction: Star Wars, a rediscovery.

Rogue One: 6.92 / 10.00 (stdev 2.06).

Episode 4: A New Hope. 8.00 / 10.00 (stdev 1.34).

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back. 8.00 / 10.00 (stdev 1.29).

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. 5.00 / 10.00 (stdev 2.08). But probably worse than that, actually.

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. 5.48 / 10.00 (stdev 2.07).

Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. 7.00 / 10.00 (stdev 1.77).

Episode 6: Return of the Jedi. 7.90 / 10.00 (stdev 1.91).

Episode 7: The Force Awakens. 6.57 / 10.00 (stdev 2.01).

Episode 8: The Last Jedi. 6.31 / 10.00 (stdev 1.89).

Verdict: Star Wars, A rediscovery.

[grapsandclaps]

GRAPS AND CLAPS REVIEWS FUTURESHOCK RELOADED 4

Hello everyone!! Welcome to the review of Show 96 of the #100showyear which took me to the quaint venue of 53two in Manchester under the arches of Deansgate featuring Jay Lethal vs Xander Cooper & T-Bone vs Champion Ashton Smith in a Manchester Bullrope Match.

Arriving in Manchester at around 3pm it gave me a little bit of time to sample some of the pubs in the city which I don't get to visit that often for a change. Constantly travelling into Manchester it is sometimes hard to get away from the same old boozers and you end up feeling like Groundhog Day.

First port of call was going to be The Brink but for some reason the shutters were down, even though it said on the door open from 12 Noon, but when it is open this pub has been a great addition to the scene with all the drinks locally sourced for nearby breweries at a cost of £3 - £4 a pint.

So with that pub shut, I walked across the road to The Gas Lamp which as you go down the stairs, makes it look like you are visiting one of them old war shelters - very rustic. A good range of beer and bottles are on offer here but I do feel over the last year or so that the prices have shot up a bit, either that or I'm just a tightarse. A pint of 4.2% Brewsmith pale was had here at a cost of £3.30 a pint - ok pint but nothing outstanding.

A short walk down Deansgate took me to The Cask Bar which is another small boozer offering a number of belgian lagers, cask ale and a good jukebox. Here I had a pint of Thornbridge 4.8% Lucifer Ale at a cost £3.70, which was like most Thornbridge drinks - a safe pair of hands.

Next up was the Knott bar which has had a change around with its beer taps with the keg drinks now on the back wall with a range of 25 keg beer which is maybe if not the biggest in Manchester. 2/3rds of a Blackjack 7% Double IPA at a cost of £4.70 and a pint of 4% Dan's Brewery Ekuanot Ale were had here and I would say the 7% Double IPA won the days drinking with a smooth fruity taste this was a very good IPA.

With the clock ticking at 510pm, we decided to try a new bar which we have never been before, which was Lock 91 on Deansgate. This is very cubihole in size with a bar and two small seating areas, drink prices were £3 for Coors, £4.95 for Pravha and Wolf Rock respectively, I went for a pint of the Wolf Rock which was decent. Maybe I will visit this drinking hole again if fancying a change from the norm.

Arriving at 53two it was time to take my front row seat on the woodenless floor so no ear deafening stamping like a elephant (thanks to Simon) for the evening. A crowd of just over 100 were in attendance for what initially on paper looked a good card still despite the withdrawal of Kenny Williams who was missing due to 'circumstances', so lets see what went down.

First up was a legacy tournament match with Futureshock academy graduate JJ Webb facing The Nordic Islands No.1 Accountant Thomas Wolfe. This was an ok start to proceedings with Wolfe getting the upper hand early on his opponent, until 6 minutes in JJ made the comeback working on Wolfe's leg and then locked in the crab to make Wolfe Howl enough for the surprise tapout victory.

Mr Long Legs Abel Stevens was out next complaining about how shit Christmas is and how over hyped it is, I could see out of the corner of my eye Halloweens No.1 fan Shauna was nodding in approval.

Abel offered anyone in the back to come out and challenge him to a match for the evening prompting 'The One Man Blackpool Bin Man' James Drake to come out. This was a good 10 minute match with both guys getting in a good amount of offence, but it was Drake who would get the win here and then proceed to stuff Abel in the black bin to add insult to injury. Many a photo opportunity was had here with people in Drake shirts to rub further salt in the wound for Abel.

Drake as a good guy I am a big fan of more than his heel persona in Progress, maybe because he is a bit outshined next to Heel magnet Zack Gibson. But good guy Drake is going to go places.

3rd match was Joey Hayes facing an uphill task, once the sound of stomps and sirens sounded with the Monster Cyanide making his entrance. This was like one of them 1990s Big Van Vader batterings with Cyanide dominating for 98% of the match with Joey trying to make the valiant but to no avail as he succoumbed to the Choke Backbreaker more commonly known as 'TOXIC DEATH'. Cyanide could be well due for a title shot soon.

Half time main event was Adrenaline Champion Xander Cooper vs ROH Star Jay Lethal. This went well over 15 minutes in an excellent encounter despite the occassional interference from Bobby Gage who was told by Xander at the start of the match that he didn't want Little Daddy Walter to help him. But it was with Gage's help in the end in which Xander picked up the victory over Lethal and he now goes on to face Will Ospreay at the year end show in Prestwich on the 28th December. Certainly watch this back on demand, probably Xanders best match in Futureshock and another in the line of Adrenaline Title corkers - maybe the best title in the UK at the moment from a match quality standard.

Legacy tournament time with that young scamp Bubblegum replacing Kenny Williams, Gum was playing the cocky Man City Heel that is still great today as it was a couple of years ago when I first saw it, it shows the talent of the guy. His opponent was Former Adrenaline Champion Soner Durson who had to keep one eye on his arch nemesis Sam Bailey who was doing commentary sat behind me.

As you can guess shenanigans a plenty with Bailey ringing the timekeepers bell whilst Durson was trying to get the win. Which prompted Soner to get distracted enough to fall to Bubblegum and a loss inside 15 minutes. As expected this was a fantastic match between two of the North Wests best all around.

We were supposed to have Womens title actiom next with Champion Lana Austin facing Molly Spartan in a rematch from a couple of months ago. But Lana was attacked from behind at the entrance way by the former Bete Noire and her and Spartan beat poor Lana down and promptly throw their names in the hat for a possible title match.

Main event with Ashton Smith and T-Bone was originally build as a Title Chain match but was changed to a Bullrope match due to the local B&Q not stocking Chains on a Sunday. Bullrope matches tend to be slow affairs but this was far from it, with both Ashton Smith and T-Bone making a lot of use of the outside areas including the hardest part of many sides of the ring.

With the tension reaching fever pitch at the 15 minute marker with the scores at 3-3, it got tense for the fight for the 4th buckle but it was Ashton who booted Bone out of the way to jump and hit the 4th buckle to regain his title. Cracking main event and a fitting end to a decent show.

Drink prices were £4 a pint from a Brightside Brewery ale.

In closing, Futureshock have continued their run of great shows this year and I would go as far to say it has been up there in the UK Promotion of the Year stakes on the quiet.

You have a consistently hot crowd, a secondary title which has been put on the same pedestal as the main title. Around £12-£15 General entry, good matches and the cream of the North West scene mixed with some of the more familiar UK names.

Make sure you go and get a ticket for theor December 28th show at Prestwich or even go and see one of theirs show next year, you won't be unhappy #grapsandclaps.

[flauntpage]

Deconstructing Hextall: Is the GM Delusional after Sharks 3, Flyers 1?

photo from (@ripits247)

The natives are now restless.

During an absolutely dreadful 3-1 loss to the San Jose Sharks last night, one in which a trailing Flyers team had all of one shot on goal in the third period before pulling starting goaltender Michal Neuvirth, the sound from a half-empty Wells Fargo Center swelled, starting in Section 218 and then spreading like wildfire throughout the rest of the building:

“Fire Hakstol. Fire Hakstol.”

It was almost sing-songy, like there should have been clapping in between. And it made me happy, because at least it was giving me something to write about after the performance on the ice was as brutal and depressing to watch as any game this season, and offering opinion on a ninth straight loss was susceptible to a writer’s own brand of mental fatigue.

And the chant got louder, and louder.

“Fire Hakstol. Fire Hakstol.”

Everyone heard it. Heck, the coach himself heard it. The players heard it. The general manager heard it.

There are certain expectations to be met in the city of Philadelphia, and when you aren’t coming close to meeting them, you are going to feel the fans’ ire.

And no, I don’t feel like the Pied Piper of Hamelin because I was the first to write publicly that change needs to happen within this organization. I don’t take pleasure in suggesting someone lose their job. It’s not like Dave Hakstol isn’t trying. The guy isn’t sitting in his office playing tiddlywinks between games. He’s certainly giving it his best effort.

The problem is, whatever he’s doing isn’t working.

“Fire Hakstol. Fire Hakstol.”

It was a new narrative for a team that, of late, was telling the same story every game.

Little did we know, a whole new chapter was being penned in the locker room and the offices in the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center as soon as the game ended.

First, there was a closed-door team meeting called by captain Claude Giroux. Why it took nine games for this to happen is beyond me, but hey, it finally did. The levee finally burst. And from the look on the faces of a number of young players, it wasn’t pretty.

Guys took forever to get out of their uniform.

Nolan Patrick sat in stunned silence in the corner of the room, just staring blankly forward. It took Travis Konecny to go over to him, put an arm around his shoulder and whisper some words of encouragement for Patrick to finally move, get out of his gear and exit the locker room.

This was after two other players had held their media scrums. Two. Giroux and Andrew MacDonald, the latter of which talked at length.

Whatever was said in that meeting really affected Patrick.

None of the players would say what was said, but there were a few comments about airing grievances. It’s good to get that stuff out in the open among teammates. It is a sign that they care and are desperate to figure it all out.

Then, the GM decided he needed to hold an impromptu State of the Flyers address, and well, this is where the unexpected story twist occurred.

Ron Hextall came into the locker room – and we all assumed he had a big announcement. We knew it wasn’t firing Hakstol, because the Flyers wouldn’t do it that way. They’d hold a big press conference for something of that magnitude. But a big trade? A significant roster move? That may have been on the agenda.

Instead, Hextall defended his team, said that he doesn’t have a problem with the way they’ve been playing, and that they deserve a better fate.

Woah. What?

It was certainly unexpected. Many think it’s delusional. Some felt like he was saying stuff he truly didn’t believe and was giving lip service. And, a small faction of people felt he was spitting truth.

Well which is it?

That’s what today’s story ultimately is about. Deconstructing Hexy. So, let’s get to it and dive into what he really means here:

Here it is, in all it’s glory. I will comment after each response to a question and try to break down what Hextall meant or was trying to imply. In the end, I will give it a grade of Delusional, Lip Service or Truth, because, to be honest, this was an interview that had elements of all three.

Do you feel caught between a rock and a hard place with how things have gone recently? To do something big could be an overreaction. (Dave Isaac, Courier Post)

“Great Question. If you look at the way we’ve played from the start of the year, I’m pretty good with the way our team has played. Pretty good with the way our team has played the last nine games. I think tonight we ran out of energy. Obviously results lately are not very good. We deserve better, but we haven’t gotten better. Obviously we gotta find a way.”

The initial reaction here was one of astonishment. Did he really just say he was OK with the way the team has played in the last nine games? They’ve lost nine in a row!!! Yes, some have been heartbreakers, but still, a loss is a loss. They’ve now played 25 games and only won eight of them. That’s less than a third in the win column. They’re in last place. Only two teams in the entire league have fewer wins. What team is he watching?

But then, after letting his comments germinate for a little bit here, you can start to see where he’s coming from.

With only a few exceptions this season, the Flyers have been in every game. They could easily be among the league’s best teams right now if things bounced a little differently for them. They are certainly the cautionary tale about how fine a line there is between success and failure in hockey.

And because of that, they are not the worst team in the league. Far from it. So, you can see why he thinks they have deserved a better outcome.

Coming out and saying this, with the fragility of the locker room right now and with the fans calling for the coach’s head, he feels that even if he is sugar-coating things, that by sending a public message to his team that he still believes in them and supports them, that it’ll pay off with better play beginning as soon as the next game against Boston Saturday.

All that said, it’s disingenuous to say that you are “pretty good” with the way the team has played – especially in the last nine games. I respect Hexy as a hockey guy and know he’s no fool, so he can’t be completely delusional here to think what he said was accurate. So, I’m chalking this one up as Lip Service – not to the media or to the fans, but rather to his own team. He wants them to feel like they have the support of management even though times are pretty tough right now. It’s a gamble, but Hextall is hoping it pays off.

Ron you’ve been in this city a long time. Do you know how that sounds to fans when you’ve lost nine in a row and you’re saying you’ve played well?

“Have you seen our games?”

I have.

“How do you think we’ve played?”

Not well enough to win all of them. (Chuck Gormley, The Sports Xchange)

“Not all of them. If we were playing poorly I would be the first to say we were playing poorly. I would be, We are not playing poorly. To look objectively at our team right now, and say, ‘Are we playing poorly?’ No. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot at times? Yes we are. Critical mistakes at critical times? Yes. It’s kind of what happens when the snow ball starts to go the wrong way and you start doing things that are unpredictable. If you look at our effort and at times execution? If you took the score away from the last nine games I’ve seen and told me we’re 0-9, I’d be like ‘come on.’ The point is we have to find ways to win. Nobody is looking for excuses around here. We are gonna battle though this. We are going to get through it. If we thought we were a really poor team, that’s totally different. Losing nine games in a row is unacceptable. Let’s be real. It’s not acceptable for many franchises and certainly not ours. In saying that, as a manager I gotta be realistic with how our team’s playing. Let’s say the last nine games we were .500, 5-4, somewhere in there. It’s not great, but it’s not bad. It’s what we deserve. Now again, we shot ourselves in the foot.  But as a whole we’ve certainly played better than our record.”

I’m going to use your own words against you here Ron… “Come on!” You’ve lost nine in a row. The team HAS played poorly. Not consistently poor – there have been stretches where they’ve looked O.K., but they are as inconsistent as any team I’ve ever watched. They play great for 10 minutes then zone out for 10. Then good for five, then poor for eight. And it’s all because of the same things. There have been repetitive mistakes. The same breakdowns are happening every game. There is a complete lack of discipline. The third periods in this stretch have been an abject disaster. You have two goals after the second period in the last nine games. TWO! If that’s not a definition of poor play, I don’t know what is. It’s one thing to double down on your first answer to show support and faith in your team for their benefit, but to do it in this way, there’s only one way to describe it: Delusional.

Does rectifying that fall on the players? Or is that something that you or the coaches have to get involved with to try and find a way? (Anthony SanFilippo – Crossing Broad)

 “That falls on all of us. We’re all in this together. Nobody’s jumping off any ship here. We’re in it together. Right now it’s hard to find a lot of positive. I think one of the impressive things is this group hasn’t started pointing fingers at each other. That’s a sign of strong character. It’s a sign that we’re going to come out of this.”

That’s not how I hoped this question would go. I was hoping to use it as a lead into the coach and talking about the job the coach has done, but Ron answered it differently – and we never really got back to the coach’s job in the interview, which I’m mad at myself for. As for how Ron answered this question, he’s not wrong. This is a collective problem. It does fall on everyone. The roster construction is all Hextall. The lineup deployment and scheme is all Hakstol and his assistants. The mistakes and sloppy play are all the players. Everyone needs to channel their inner Andy Reid and do a better job. I don’t know if I completely buy the whole “not pointing fingers” bit. Players don’t have team meetings where they air grievances if everyone is on the same page. But other than that, I think this is Hextall being honest. Truth.

The mistakes, everybody in the world can see them, you can see them, the fans have seen them, but often is a least interpreted as loss of confidence and grinding on yourself because you’re not getting the results, are you worried about that part of at all? (Sam Donnellon – Philly.com)

“Well that’s what happens when you go all of the sudden start five, six, seven, eight games in a row without a win, you start to get frustrated. I think the frustration started showing there in the third period for us, but for the most part we’ve done a pretty good job of trying to move on from one game on to the next. It’s not easy, you’ve been in a locker room when you’ve lost seven, eight, nine games in a row, and it’s ugly, right? But this group I give them credit they’ve stuck together, they’ve battled through it, if we weren’t battling right now we’d have a problem.”

As is often the case in an interview, once you get a few questions in, all the prepared statements go by the boards and you start getting some real honest answers. This is Hextall being brutally honest. He’s a former player. He knows what it’s like in a locker room when the team is playing badly. He even says it – the locker room is ugly. THAT is the truth in this locker room right now. There is a lot of frustration. A loss of confidence. A n amount of uncertainty for the young guys who have never experienced this before. Hextall wants to give them credit for not completely falling apart as a team and for not quitting on the coach, on each other or on the organization. That’s fine… but really, this has got to be close to the tipping point. Will he still feel the same way if, say, they lose Saturday to Boston and maybe two of three on the always tough road trip to Western Canada next week? That’s a big question. These next four games might be the benchmark for the rest of the season for coaches and players. Truth.

Do head coaches react differently in times like this?

“In terms of what?”

In terms of the way they act during a losing streak, in terms of how they deal with their players, in terms of any kinds of moves they may or may not make. (Rob Parent, Delco Times)

“Of course, I mean every coach is different, every coach is his own man so of course they react differently.”

Rob tried to go back to the coach here. The fact that Hextall sort of blew off the question rather than expand on it might be telling. This was a chance for him to say he has a lot of confidence in Hakstol, but he chose not to. Hakstol’s record as a coach is telling. He’s now coached in 189 games in the NHL. In the first 114 games, his team was 60-37-17 for a .526 winning percentage. That was through the 10-game winning streak last season. In the 75 games since then, his team is 28-33-14, a .373 winning percentage. That’s a precipitous drop. Hakstol has to be on notice that it needs to be heading back in the direction of his first 114 games soon, or else he will run out of time. There’s four days off after the Western Canada trip. There’s also a four-day break at Christmas, but nobody ever loses their job at Christmas. The Flyers do have their “bye week” in early January. So, if this is going to happen in-season Hakstol either has the next four games to right the ship, or the next 17 games before the bye to turn the team around. Otherwise, one of the lip service comments Hextall would have been certain to make is his coach is doing a great job. He didn’t. That says more to me than anything from this interview last night. Truth.

The fans you hear it as much as I do, you need physicality or some perception, Sam Morin is down and came up very briefly and is down again.  What don’t you see that could help this team at least in terms of physicality? (Sam Donnellon – Philly.com)

“Well when I looked the other night we had a 20, a 21, two 22, and a 24-year old defenseman, that’s five of our six, that might be the youngest defense I’ve ever seen.  And to say right now we need to get younger on defense? I’m not sure that’s a solution. I think we missed AMac, he’s an older guy, he’s a glue guy, he’s a guy that makes the younger guys feel better. Radko Gudas is the same, the veteran presence I can’t explain it to you guys, but it makes a huge difference, so just to patch six kids in there and say ‘go get ‘em guys,’ you’re looking for a disaster, you’re not helping those kids.”

Whether you agree with Hextall’s rationale here or not, this is definitely something he believes. He is a patient GM who believes in a slow development and maturation process for his prospects. He’s not a guy who wants to throw them all to the wolves simultaneously. Some GMs do. Some GMs put all their kids out there at once and sink or swim. But Hextall is more methodical. He wants his young players to find success when they arrive to the NHL. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that is his M.O. Always has been, always will be. We can sit here and debate the merits of MacDonald and Gudas all we want (Notice he didn’t mention Brandon Manning – that’s the one that perplexes me a little more than MacDonald or Gudas), but the fact is, regardless of who the veteran defensemen are, that’s how Hextall wants to play it. He wants developing players to develop at their own speed, and not a minute sooner. So, while we can disagree with him here, this is definitely Truth. 

Last season you thought the team was good enough to make the playoffs. Do you still feel that way or does this make you reassess what type of team you have?

“No, I still believe we’re a playoff team.”

What needs to be done to make that happen? (John Boruk – NBC Sports Philly)

“We need to be better at some critical moments, but part of it we need to continue to do what we’re doing. We’re doing a lot of good things. Again, tonight I don’t think was our best game. We’re feeling some fatigue. Probably a little bit of frustration. We gotta stick with it. We gotta stick together. We gotta win Saturday. That’s our focus right now. We gotta win Saturday.”

Gah! Hexy you were doing so good with your honesty. You were giving us your true feelings. Even if we disagreed with you, we respect the fact that you stand by your principled beliefs. But then you go and throw us this line? That this is still a playoff team? That this team is doing a lot of good things? Let me reiterate – you’ve lost nine games in a row. Nine. This is only the fourth time in team history they’ve had an L in the result column for that many games. (I’ll dive into this more later). You’re on the brink of the worst run of losses in franchise history. You’ve won consecutive games ONCE all year. No matter how well you think you’ve played, if you are going to be in the playoffs, you need to be better than that. This was probably said with the intent of being Lip Service to the team. But really, it’s just Delusional.

You’ve been in closed door meetings before. Is this just a chance to sort of air that frustration? Sort of control the finger pointing before it gets started.

“Was there a closed door meeting?”

Yeah. (Wayne Fish, FlyingFishHockey.com)

“I didn’t know. I’ve been in a lot. I don’t know what was said. I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but I don’t know what was said. Closed door meetings are closed door meetings. Those are a good thing. It’s a team being together, shut the door, let’s talk this out. Any grievances, air them. But I’m guessing it was probably a stick together meeting because these guys have done a good job sticking together.”

First of all… Hexy is feeding us a line that he didn’t know there was a closed door meeting. Everyone knew there was a closed door meeting. As for what he feel about it – I think he’s spot on. I’m surprised they don’t happen more regularly – even after wins. I’m surprised teams don’t have these pow-wows after games more often. But, when they do, they are indicative of the state of the team – and the state of this team is a lack of cohesion. Hextall takes stock in these meetings as a positive, and he’s likely right. But, again, let’s not sugarcoat it. They happen for a reason – the team is in a little bit of turmoil. Credit to Giroux and his fellow leaders for having one of these accountability discussions, but this isn’t something that shows they are together, but rather that they are fractured and trying to put the pieces back together. That’s an important difference. Lip Service.

Going back to the Calgary game, there’s been a lot of penalties. Shayne took it upon himself that particular game, but when you negate power plays like that with penalties, how do you clean that aspect up? (John Boruk, NBCSports Philly)

“We gotta play a little bit smarter there. I think in the last eight games we’ve given up seven more penalties then we’ve taken. It doesn’t sound like much, but two minutes a game is quite a bit. Especially the way our special teams haven’t exactly been right on the last eight games. That’s a big difference. Those are the types of things we gotta clean up.”

No doubt. Penalties have been a big problem. So has the penalty kill. But hey… we’re not playing poorly. Nothing to see here. At least he was honest with his answer. Truth.

You say nine is unacceptable. Regardless of how close they are, is there a point where you say we gotta do something? Even if they are some overtime losses. (Dave Isaac, Courier Post)

“I try to make this team better every day. There’s something that can be done. That doesn’t change throughout the year.”

I thought this was a telling response too. It was basically Hextall giving himself an out, saying I spent the last seven minutes saying what I said, but I still reserve the right to change my mind at any time. In other words, if this doesn’t get fixed soon, I might go ahead and make the changes all you guys are calling for. Truth

More soon.

Deconstructing Hextall: Is the GM Delusional after Sharks 3, Flyers 1? published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv