#absolutely dogshit that it's only for seven days

[queen-mabs-revenge]

for your information ❤️

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 4/2/2024

in which i try to clean two different boxes with varying success

new people: hello! the tuesdaypost is a weekly roundup of stuff i've been listening, reading, watching, playing, and making. it is NOT a recommendation series, although i sometimes dabble in critique. when im firing on all cylinders i ask "what is the core concept of this? does it succeed in what i think it's trying to do and what it says it's doing?is it well-made but i dislike it/beautiful but not for me? why? what parts Really Work?"

if you are into purity culture, yelling at other people about the problematic media they consume, or are under 18 i am going to have very little patience for you.

listening

now that i live in houston i am legally obliged to loop the new beyonce album 24/7. there is absolutely truly nobody fucking doing it like her. every song is a multimedia art piece. goddamn do i miss the album as a tool to convey a specific concept/listening order/flow. sometimes (chappell roan most recently comes to mind, although it does feel unfair to compare anyone to beyonce) every individual song is pretty good but the listening experience if you sit down and listen all the way through the album is unpleasant and choppy. not so here. NEVER here.

my favorite like Dance Number is YA YA (it samples nancy sinatra's boots! and the beach boys' good vibrations! wildly different tones despite coming out a year apart!)

the one that goes on four different character/tone playlists is BODYGUARD.

great early roundup of influences, samples, and collaborators. delighted to see five fingers for marseilles listed, a rocky but underrated south african neo-western free on tubi rn for americans

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reading

also very texas-relevant with the recent pornhub lawsuits! pornhub and sex tech (among other things) have been samantha cole's beat for almost ten years. i trust her to report sensitively and not for like. shock clicks

this site has a free paywall (sign up with your email for a link to the full article) so bots have a harder time scraping articles: this is a journalist-founded site with only the four founders running it and writing articles. while annoying i do think this is a reasonable measure

The platform still has problems, but after years of critical reporting and a litany of legal and reputational consequences, Pornhub is now more heavily moderated than any other porn platform, and most major social media platforms, for that matter. A growing list of age verification laws has put Pornhub in a position where it is compelled to block access to its site in seven states and counting. In theory, these laws are designed to prevent children from being able to access pornography online. In reality, what is going to happen is that children are going to end up on pornographic sites that don’t care what the law says, and where some of the most harmful content that exists online is actively promoted to them.

she's also got a new limited series podcast with CBC about the rise and fall of pornhub, which was fascinating and kept me company during an extremely early morning drive

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watching

i'm lukewarm about this one but i spend a lot of time getting there, much like this movie

ive been watching a lot of frankly dogshit thrillers, which has made me wonder: what's the deal with supervillans? where did they come from? and thence arrived at the prototypical film Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922, dir. Lang). the four and a half hour cut on Kanopy is two normal-length movies superglued together, which makes sense as a streaming product but it is sort of a terrifying runtime and took me three days to get through.

sometimes, as we know, i get a real bee in my bonnet about visiting the early versions of things. dr mabuse is the blueprint for every james bond and mission impossible villain, or really any shadowy supervillain with power over [INDUSTRY] or [THE MARKET]. it is a four and a half hour long cat and mouse game through lavish, eccentric sets between mabuse and prosecutor wenk. it has some trouble sustaining itself bc it is four and a half hours long but does deliver on the cat and mouse aspects. this letterboxed review has interesting things to say about the political climate of 1922 germany and how lang subverts the formula of the pulp serial.

really the film opens with mabuse yelling at his cocaine-addicted assistant, but the film properly gets going with mabuse's henchmen stealing a trade agreement (nothing really carbon dates a movie more than a missing trade agreement. vanishingly few post-early-30s movies have missing trade agreements as plot points) and then he crashes the stock market. for fun and profit.

however. i think every time you see an evil man who is a banker or stockbroker or generally uses money as power you have to interrogate whether it's antisemitic. the answer here is "maybe" but i'm not sure if intent matters when contemporary nazi critics were eager to hold mabuse up as "this is the typical jewish criminal". (sorry about the link directly to wikipedia, it's been touch finding online sources for this section). mabuse is not specifically jewish, but there are certainly elements of stereotype. i am still not good at being presented with "this movie has a shadowy behind the scenes figure manipulating the government and all the money ever" and going "hey wait a minute".

after that tremendous glaring caveat, for which i read more contemporary reviews and reviews in general than i ever read for movies in these posts, is it good? eh. a contemporary VARIETY review remarked (and i largely agree)

The direction of Fritz Lang has moments – but Lang somewhat negates his good technical effects by twenty forty-word captions of a ludicrous unconciseness.

the night scenes are particularly well done, and imo are better than many modern night scenes--other contemporary reviews remarked

In this film the techniques of the film camera (Carl Hoffmann’s brilliant photography) are brought to perfection. The problem of how to film lit-up streets at night has been solved for the first time. It is unbelievably impressive to see the glaring lights of speeding cars flash through the night or the rapid passing of an elevated train of the initially blurred, then gradually focussed glimpse through a pair of opera glasses on to the variety stage, the nuances of light and shade—these things alone prove the value of film documentary.

look at this shit! filmed from within the cars! in 1922!!!

this film asks you to believe hypnotism is real and really effective, so i don't think it's that big of a leap when it asks you to believe in ghosts. i don't understand that quibble from contemporary viewers. there are several on screen suicides with like. specific methods. which is not currently regarded as good filmmaking practice. im curious to know what contemporary audiences thought but couldn't immediately turn anything up, and wading through masters’ theses on cinematic suicide is a little beyond my current mental health.

if i were a more content-minded woman this would turn into a clickbait video essay about the antisemitic origins of every supervillan. however i am unqualified and untalented at video editing and i'm sure there are forty theses on this already. this movie is a hard sell to anyone jewish or employed. it is also a stunning example of cutting-edge film technology and part of the genesis of the modern supervillan. Fritz Lang films tend to fall in the category of “movies i am happy to see once and feel no need to revisit”.

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playing

playing what is effectively the same game three times back to back (breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom, genshin impact) has sort of burned me out on open world games with a focus on battle skill progression and stumbling across little puzzles in the overworld. i have to get itch.io up and running on this pc and find the most linear jankiest possible one-sitting indie thing. or several of them. i might try the solo ttrpg Gentleman Bandit i seem to have acquired in one of the giant charity bundles

brief breath of the wild update bc i don't want to pull screenshots off my switch: i have gotten to the boss fight for the gerudo and goron regions, have not completed them bc my focus in this game is NOT hearts, and am in the middle of the zora temple. despite the quality of life improvements and new regions in totk i think i prefer botw: progression is a bit easier, there are fewer mmo-style hub quests and repeatable quests. things like the stable photos are cute but very repetitive, so are the sign bracing puzzles, and the sky crystal quests for sky shrines feel VERY samey. also dislike how the CLEAR OUT: [REGION] quests with the monster suppression squads reset at the blood moon.

anyway! to genshin! there was an exceptionally fun little event with a surprisingly involved management sim tacked onto the game??? you make and sell potions fulfilling different requirements, and can eventually stock travelling merchants all over the continent. the actual act of making the potions was this block-filling 1010! style thing (screenshot from polygon)

the new region, a port town and tea-growing area called Chenyu Vale, is maybe the prettiest one in the game so far? it's the one that feels the most picturesque and Designed, like this is one huge mansion garden studded with follies. they also added background chatter and noise in the cities and towns, which really startled me and makes them feels much more lived in! this is a fun trick to avoid putting in a thousand NPCs and making everyone's framerate crash. the less stuff in your game, the less shit can go wrong.

also pulled for and got chiyori, a geo-aligned seamstress (and sometime spy???) swordswoman who has what i can only call domme voice

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making

ok now we'll talk about boxes. i was rearranging my kitchen, as unemployed women are known to do, and noticed this recipe box i picked up back in mass was disgusting. the finish is starting to fail but it was genuinely grody and last summer i packed my kitchen in a blind panic inside an hour and did not have time to address it. i have never seen a recipe box at an estate sale before or since and it made me desperately sad.

it was full of a lot of stuff.

i went at it with a somewhat inadvisable combination of things: wood soap didn't budge it, so i dampened a paper towel in vinegar and wiped it down in the vain hope it would do something. the thing that worked, and would be inadvisable for anything veneered or less densely textured, was baking soda paste and the scrubby side of a sponge. it still smells Very musty even after 48h of loose baking soda inside with several changes, but that might be partly the recipe cards' fault. i would like to refinish this at some point but i don't have polyurethane on hand and the fun little project budget is empty until further notice/i get a job.

the hinge did rust a bit despite my best efforts but that has since been lightly steel wooled and oiled. a well loved object! it's possible the lady who died just fucking sucked and that's why literally her entire estate including many other things families usually keep was on sale, but i would like to think perhaps she simply had no other family? a well loved/used object even if all the recipes are for semi-horrifying fifties new england recipes.

the other box, pre-acids but post-washing: this topp trading card box with seven episode one packets of cards was intact with the original seal. i have verified it was not worth much more than the $5 i paid for it with the trading card obsessed man in my best friend's husband's friendgroup. i bought this three months ago but the man was unavailable to open it until uhhh last week. some sort of liquid got inside it at some point and it was super corroded. i was going to store embroidery floss in here but even with all my powers (barkeepers friend. brasso.) i cannot completely remove the corrosion. it's not corroded Through but it looks bad and feels rough. so it goes. it'll probably hold the tiedown straps in my car bc that plastic bucket is rapidly failing

[inkybinkyboink]

do i dare? road trips headcanons?

okay so setup: cladwell sends officer lockstock and officer barrel to run errands out of town.

he owns a factory a few hours away that produces the supplies that are provided for the amenities (toilet paper, absolutely dogshit bars of soap, and paper towel)

he sends lockstock and barrel instead of his own executives because he's short-staffed and the guys working over in the amenity number 47 jurisdiction are over-staffed

so some of the officers from 47 take over for lockstock and barrel for the day and the two goons head off in a fancy company car

its not a fancy company car it's definitely a minivan that's at least seven years old and used to be white.

(okay sidenote during our production i would argue with the director about whether or not cars exist in the urinetown canon because i was doing sound design and i wanted to put cars in the ambience.

she said no there weren't cars and that i couldnt put cars in the ambience. i tried roping our music director into the argument because he'd done the show before and he very clearly went "nope, not my fight"

i think there are cars- they mention busses and sirens in the script

tl:dr, i lost the fight and there were no cars in our production BUT THERE ARE IN MY HEART)

ANYWAYS

"im going on a big mission with the boys" that tiktok audio? that's barrel when lockstock begrudgingly asks if he wants to go with.

they of COURSE gotta stop for gas first bc you KNOW the oil industry is still going HARD gotta get that unethical coin yknow???

lockstock fills the tank and barrel goes inside and comes back with an inordinate amount of snacks

"you cant have too many snacks on a roadtrip"

no you dont understand, this gremlin bought the entire stock

lockstock picks the music and its just ABBA you cant change my mind

he loves two things, one is his ABBA Gold CD, and i dont know what the other one is but it's not barrel

they both start out in full uniform but it's warm and it only takes like. 20 minutes for them to take off the jackets

god jesus fuck those wool blazers man they suck ASS

just two dudes cruising in a mini van in white v-necks

barrel falls asleep almost instantly

bro doesnt eat any of his snacks

it's cartoonish but i think it would be really fucking funny if at one point after driving in silence for HOURS, little sally jumps up from the back seat

"HEY GUYS WATCHA DOING"

lockstock drives because barrel drives worse than a monkey on cocaine

he shoves barrel awake at one point because "look at that cloud! isn't that cool?"

"you woke me up to look at a fucking cloud?"

they bicker abt why barrel even wanted to come if he was just going to sleep the whole time, so barrel stays awake

except he's 10 times more annoying when he's awake.

drumming on the dash board

really bad abba karaoke

after a while lockstock concedes and lets barrel drive for a while because his back hurts

hypocritical son of a bitch immediately takes a nap

they get there and realize they forgot the paperwork they were meant to bring

they drive four hours one way for nothing

[red-man-of-mustache]

I managed to get my old blog back! Last time I contacted Tumblr support they basically shrugged their shoulders like they couldn't/wouldn't do anything. This time it only took ONE message and bam, I have access again. It feels good to go back and reminisce. See a bunch of old ideas I had for Mario and whatnot. I'm gonna get a little feelsy under the cut though, I just wanted to tell someone about this. I won't be going back to it or anything as I've already started over here but it's nice to have possession over it. Two-factor authentication did it's job(a little too well) when I lost that old phone number.

I made that blog when my then girlfriend suggested I do so. Tumblr wasn't even in my sights at the time. I was fresh out of High School and the tumultuous time I spent there was horrific to my general inspiration to write. What I mean is, I began Freshman year full of hope and vigor. I even wanted to write a book. I still have about six or seven chapters of it somewhere in my laptop but I gave up around sophomore year as I was an outcast, dealing with an alcoholic parent, and all around just not having a good run of things IRL. Thusly I moved further and further from certain hobbies I enjoyed, like writing/role-playing.

As stated, I graduated High School in June of 2014 and my girlfriend suggested I make a rp blog for Mario in July of that same year. I thought nothing of it. I made the blog, followed a bunch of people, and sat back for a bit to see how it was done. I learned some of the terminology and then got right to it! To this day it was the most fun I've had just goofing off, making random jokes with people across the fandom, and not having a care in the world to drag me down.

It was an escape.

If any of you were around, you'll know I spoke about follower count a lot back then. That wasn't to brag, rather I was amazed that people would follow my dumb ol' blog whether it be to watch me write or write with me. The concept still amazes me to this day really. I started going to college shortly after, and admittedly I would often be blogging when I should have been doing homework or even in the middle of class. I loved(and still love) what I was doing. I enjoy writing Mario because I grew up with him and I find comfort in his games. Mario represents a part of me that feel as though I've lost touch with in recent years. The bravery, the happy-go-lucky. The optimism.

As I wrote through the years, on and off through to 2018, I met a lot of people and more often than not I'd vanish on these newfound connections because just to be blunt I am horrible at keeping in touch. Absolutely dogshit at it. If I go too long without speaking to someone I just would figure why bother? Then never say anything again. A vicious cycle really if you feel like an outcast because you reinforce those feelings through inaction.

I was in an especially horrible slump the year I lost that blog. I had a job I hated(but paid well) I was smoking constantly to escape the pain, and I was in a very unsavory living situation. From almost every angle I felt suppressed and tumblr was my only escape. But I started letting it affect my time here as well. Another not so glamorous fact about me: I have trouble letting go of things. Paradoxical with what I just mentioned about keeping in touch I know but people, things, experiences, I cling to the good in my life given the trials I've had to endure. So, I contacted support and tried to hash things out. I was turned down and although I felt at the time it wasn't fair I could just pick back up and do as I used to do, for once I resolved to not give up and made this blog here. I still had access through my old phone(the app specifically. That was the only place I was still logged into it on)) it just didn't have service or the phone number assigned to it for me to receive the Two-factor authentication code.

It hurt at the time to archive my old blog and just go about my day but that was a practice in letting go. Sort of. I'm still using the same name, same character, and my method of writing is just a little bit spruced up. But I needed it. I needed to move on because there was just as much pain associated with that blog as there was good times. I needed to grow and move past it. And I did.

Of course, I took an extended hiatus on this blog as well. At the time I was financially in the gutter, emotionally I was volatile and my physical health didn't help either of those things. It's not all bad though. I've made a lot of good progress recently. The past year really. Unfortunately at first, my weed consumption got to the point where I could hardly function in day-to-day life without it and I was simultaneously worse off mentally for it. It almost drove me to suicide. I did attempt it, once. But that was my breaking point. May of last year. I decided I cannot go on this way and I checked myself into a mental hospital.

After a short stay I came out with a new resolve to fix my life and get over the time I wasted burying my feelings in THC. I had quit, after smoking daily from 2015 until then(2023) I stopped cold turkey. That jumpstart being away from it for a week helped a lot. I'll be a year clean in two months. Afterwards I started seeking better job opportunities, even working two jobs at one point to maximize gain. The truck my uncle helped me get had broken down in November and well, I decided that it would take an exorbitant amount to tow and fix it. I took THAT money and went to the dealership, got a used car I loved. First time I've had a car note in my adult life and I was 27 at the time. My mom (who deserves her own post really. She's not been the best person and that's putting it lightly) ended up in the hopsital around that same time for dry bronchitis. Still an alcoholic by the way, but I actually had hope for her. If I could kick my habit then she should be able to as well, right??

Wrong. She got out the hospital and got even worse. I came back home to look after her tentatively for a bit but planned on going back with my roommate afterwards. Her belligerent drunken rants had gotten markedly worse and if I were to guess it was that brush with death. She claims she went to the hospital because she couldn't breath. I wasn't around at the time to get her there but someone luckily was. Fast Forward to the end of January. My mom and I get into an argument. Usually that doesn't happen because I'll either let her speak her piece and move on or I legit just ignore her. But tonight she was trying to get physical with me, a grown man. Throughout my childhood she was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive and always used threats to keep me in line but she realized none of that worked anymore and was especially angry.

She was poking at me, trying to land punches on me and eventually I shoved her away. I tried multiple times to walk away by this point by going to other parts of the house but she would follow me, block my way and again try to get physical. Things simply boiled over. After shoving her she grew angrier and we got into things physically. I didn't hit her the entire time. Not a scratch was on her because(and this isn't my ego talking) I was only trying to control the situation. I mostly pushed her around while she clawed at my face, threw things, and she ended up hitting me with an air fryer. When she did that I called the police.

The police came and saw the two of us. Me bleeding with cuts on my face and her unmarked. They spoke to both of us and took me to the hospital and her as well to get examined. I was able to go home that night. She went to jail.

My brother heard what happened and stole my car that night, but again that's a story for another time.

I'm putting all this out there about me because I returned to rping Mario a little bit after all this happened(January 31-February 1st is when it all went down). I was going through a lot on my old blog but I still chugged along because life has it's ups and downs. That's something Mario would say. This past year I've won more than I lost. I've been getting therapy as well to try and pin down if I have anything going on in the ol' noggin so, really, I'm in a place where I think I can sustain this hobby again. At first it felt like life crushed my optimism and hope for a better future but that was because I let it.

I say all this to say, that I'm glad to be back. I'm glad all of you no matter if we write together everyday or every other day gives me a chance. It warms my heart to write these posts even if I'm not here everyday. Sometimes I get busy, sometimes I don't have the energy but I refuse to give up as I've done in the past. That will never happen again.

So bear with me is all I ask. I wouldn't give this up for the world.

[partoftheairforce]

hihi, sorry but im not really upto date kn info abt the band (the 1975), did matty adress the rina thing nd why r ppl talking abt jamie?

no worries! i will gladly get you up to date the best i can xxx let me know if you have any other questions 💋

matty/rina:

so no, matty has not addressed the rina situation. not only because he’s a stubborn idiot, but also because i think he’s quite ignorant about the affect that his words and actions have on the greater public.

obviously he needs to be held accountable for the things he has said and done. there is no question there at all. but i also think that the bands pr team (or seeming lack thereof) and how they are handling everything is absolutely dogshit, because in what world could this be acceptable behaviour to just push into a corner and let fester?

something i saw said about the band a few years earlier comes to mind: “It's great that we come here to admire their work but there's no reason to defend them with blind faith or place them on a pedestal removed from reality.”

jamie:

with jamie it’s a different issue for me. as people have been saying lately, the energy he gives off is “How do you do, fellow kids?” he is an old man that is trying to continue to appear relevant and educated in the minds of the new generation, and clearly he is not. it’s embarrassing to witness.

most importantly in my opinion, two years ago when the stuff about adam powell came to light, jamie took seven whole weeks to address it in any manner. obviously that is unacceptable. (look here for more on that)

he also always used to tweet about things that the band were supposedly doing, but they would never end up happening so that was pretty annoying.

overall it’s clear the man does jackshit and does not take his job seriously in the slightest. he gets payed to sit on his ass all day being a serial killer looking freak and frankly i’ve had enough.

i just feel like things would be so much better (and morally and ethically correct) if jamie got fired. and plus i would also have an excuse to throw a massive black party.

the rina things just brought these feelings to the forefront of people’s minds to the point where it’s become too much to let fester in that corner. i feel that her words just really personified and solidified the hurt that matty was causing.

sorry for writing you a fucking novel, but i hope i explained it good enough!! nevertheless, i really hope this helps xxx

[wrestlingisfake]

The CM Punk Saga

It's almost time for AEW's "The First Dance" show, and everybody's still prefacing their hype with "if CM Punk isn't there it'll be a huge disaster, but..."

I'll be in the building. They could've booked CP Munk and I'd still be there. But obviously the Punk tease makes this special. If he's there, it'll be historic to witness the reaction in person. And hell, if he's not there, it'll be historic to witness the fiasco in person. I find that kind of funny--after all these years, it's not the man that sold me a ticket, it's the drama surrounding the man.

Punk had wrestling fans in the palm of his hand after the 2011 "pipebomb" promo, in which WWE allowed him to air his real grievances with the company to build tension for a world title match with John Cena. I get the impression WWE expected it to cast him as a whiny heel. But Punk tapped into the fans' frustrations with WWE, and they embraced him as someone who would fight to change what they resented about the company. He was "the voice of the voiceless."

The problem with that kind of role in WWE is that you can only "fight the power" as far as Vince McMahon lets you on his TV show, and then he'll book his side to win the argument. Within a couple of months a lot of the edge was taken off the storyline. Fans still wanted to believe in him as a rising force for change, but the product didn't reflect that. That dissonance came to a head at the 2014 Royal Rumble, which happened to be the day before Punk quit WWE.

In hindsight, Punk's departure had nothing to do with the fans' frustration with the Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority storyline. But at the time nobody knew what Punk's problem was, and neither side was talking. So the two issues sort of got blended together--Bryan's crusade against kayfabe management and Punk's beef with the real thing. I'm sure a lot of fans figured, if Bryan wasn't going to defeat the Authority at Wrestlemania, then Punk was the logical alternative, and WWE must've screwed that up too. Unless...maybe it was all a work, a storyline to make things seem hopless for Punk and Bryan before slamming them into key Wrestlemania matches.

The buildup to the March 3, 2014, episode of Raw was surreal. Stop me if you've heard this one: The show was booked in Chicago, weeks away from a big pay-per-view, and CM Punk wasn't advertised, but it felt like the perfect opportunity for him to make a surprise return, so the live crowd was ready to go apeshit if he didn't appear. When he didn't appear, I think fandom truly started to accept that he was gone for good. But the saga shambled on.

When it was clear Punk wouldn't be fighting for their cause in WWE, fans nevertheless clung to him as a symbol of resistance. The "CM Punk" chant became a potent and controversial tool for disruption. If you just boo at the show, WWE can play that off like you're mad at the bad guys, but if you chant the name of the guy that walked out on their bullshit, there's no good way for the company to spin that.

A lot of people came to hate the Punk chants, but here's the thing: They mainly happen during an absolute dogshit Raw segment. If you listen to your audience and keep them entertained, then they're easier to control, and it's less of an issue. WWE instead prefers to control the audience by telling the them how to be entertained and refusing to listen if they dissent; the Punk chant puts the lie to that approach.

Punk's next move outside of WWE was a huge topic in 2014. Again, fans wanted to believe he'd continue to fight for them somehow. Remember, this was back when Global Force and Lucha Underground had just been announced, and before Impact had gotten thrown off Spike TV. It felt like it wouldn't take much for a serious alternative to WWE to emerge, and give Punk a way to quit WWE without quitting wrestling.

Months of silence led to increasingly wild speculation. A friend of Punk's wrote an editorial about how fans were hanging around outside his home waiting for him to throw out the trash. I'm pretty sure I know what they wanted to ask when they met him. His appearance on Colt Cabana's podcast and his UFC run helped clear the air, but not enough. Fans never gave up trying to find out when he'd come back to save pro wrestling. Punk's comments on the matter were rare, and never seemed to be enough to get people to leave him alone about it. He'd gone from wrestling's Che Guevara to wrestling's JD Salinger.

The rise of NXT and the ROH/New Japan alliance in the mid-2010s seemed to almost be enough to distract fans from their CM Punk fantasies. But then in 2018 Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks decided to run their own indie supercard, and picked Chicago as the location. You could almost hear the Punk in fans' heads saying, "At last, a non-WWE US show big enough to be worthy of my star power. This is what I have been waiting for!" Punk denied that he would be there; of course, to wrestling fans that just means he's swerving us and he will be there. And he wasn't there.

But this is the turning point in the story. I was at All In. I heard like one guy try to get a Punk chant going, more out of ironic self-awareness than anything. Nobody was into it. They'd have been glad to see Punk on the show, but they were there to see the Young Bucks, Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, Kazuchika Okada, Kota Ibushi, etc. That's probably when it hit me: Everyone had been waiting for Punk to lead the revolution, because they thought no one else could, but these guys had gone ahead and done it without him.

As All In led into AEW, speculation about Punk remained high. But then another funny thing happened, when Jon Moxley dramatically exited WWE in 2019. Moxley didn't immediately announce his future plans, and lots of people figured Moxley must be done with wrestling. The Punk saga had clearly taught fans to manage their expectations. Rumors about both Punk and Mox appearing at Double or Nothing were all over the place, but were generally dismissed as wishful thinking. Then, out of nowhere, Moxley ran in at the end of the show. Then he was announced for a run in New Japan. Fuck, I thought, who needs CM Punk?

And so, I've spent the past few years being over this whole thing. I'd given up trying to figure out CM Punk, or what it would take to bring him back to wrestling. I had a whole array of big names trying to play the part everyone wanted him to play, in a promotion that I thought would never exist without him. Let him enjoy his retirement, and I'll enjoy AEW. So of course he'd decide now is the time to come back. Allegedly.

I'm excited about the possibility of seeing Punk blow the roof off the United Center. It'd be fascinating to see some satisfying closure to this whole thing. And yet, I have no idea what CM Punk means to pro wrestling in 2021. What does "the voice of the voiceless" do in a company full of people listening to their audience? Will fans be into him when they realize he can't/won't be exactly like they remember him from seven years ago? At 42 years old, will he need to play a bitter old heel to stay relevant? How will fans respond when they realize this isn't the big comeback they always dreamed of?

It's those questions that are the real draw for me, regardless of whether The First Dance lives up to expectations. And it's strange to think that's the main attraction to Punk, as if we're talking about an Ultimate Warrior comeback or something. Seven years ago I just wanted him to return to wrestling so I could see him wrestle. Now I kinda just want to see if he looks totally different from the last time I saw his picture.

[thefandomcassandra]

Star of the Show (Complete)

"But that aside, one of the big things Donatella and I discussed was this: you are going to submit to a psychiatric evaluation and attend regular therapy for your entire time here among the Psychonauts. This not only means you'll be regularly seeing one of the many therapists employed by the agency, but you also will have to undergo occasional psycho-therapy with one of the Senior Agents." Raz cocked his head. "Psycho-therapy?" "Sometimes it's easy to ask for help. Other times it isn't. A lot of the time, what cannot be expressed without, is expressed within." Forsythe placed her hand over her heart, fingers splayed as she spoke. "Which is just a fancy way of saying that sometimes a mental check-in with a Psycho-Portal goes a long way. Whether it's to make sure your brain is properly defended against intruders or to find underlying issues you don't have the vocabulary or energy to express verbally in standard therapy, having someone inside your brain—someone you trust—can bring to light issues you didn't know you had and, in the same trip, help you learn to resolve those same problems." (Or Raz Gets Therapy, the Fic — Sandr Ed.)

—

It took three weeks after the events involving Gristol Malik and the attempted resurrection of Maligula before Psychonauts HQ finally settled down enough to begin functioning properly. Part of that had to do with the fact that, for all Grand Head Zanatto was a capable leader and a powerful psychic, he was absolute dogshit at some of the paperwork aspects of running a large company—and also, as he kept reminding everyone whenever he felt like taking a break, was suffering from lingering psilerium poisoning—and Second Head Forsythe had her entire psychic network on Do Not Disturb so she was unreachable for two weeks of that time. Part of that had to do with the sudden acquisition of seven new Junior Agents that needed assignments and offices and salaries and so on.

And, well, some of that headache came from the understanding that one of the new Junior Agents was a minor and his paperwork and terms of employment had to be negotiated through his guardians and a mediator. Forsythe was doing the negotiations on behalf of the Psychonauts with Donatella Aquato representing her and her husband, so no one really wanted to be in the middle of that nonsense. In the end, Agent Mia Vodello was tapped by the young Junior Agent in question and was a capable and appreciated balm between the two intense women, allowing them to reach an agreement both found acceptable, equitable, and that didn't put young Agent Aquato's life and livelihood on the line.

When Razputin Aquato—newly minted and now official, due to the aforementioned negotiations, Junior Agent—was called up to Forsythe's office, he slipped out of the nearest Otto B.O.N. and strode in with much less trepidation than he had his first day as an intern.

"Agent Aquato," Forsythe gestured at a chair across her from the desk, nodding her head.

Read the rest on AO3

[manjuhitorie]

Shinoda’s Instagram Q&A July 18th 2020 - Part 1

👋How are Retro Tone’s Saddles? 🗣The steel saddles are way worth a shot　 　👀 http://astronauts69.com/retrotone/ - https://twitter.com/sho_do_teki/status/1019548356383682561

👋What bandsmen have you been keeping in touch with? 🗣I got calls from Hiroki-san of Lego Big Morl And Adam Touch Takahashi of Bed In (honorifics omitted) I’m usually never the one to hit people up first... 

👋What are you doing awake this late? (approx 3AM JST) 🗣Listening to Audrey on the radio 　👀 Audrey are a manzai comedy duo! https://wow-j.com/en/Allguides/other/tips_manners/02304_en/#2

👋 Have you eaten any pudding lately? 🗣I deeply apologize for waiting so long to make this clear. The pudding phase has long ended. We had a good run everyone.

　👀 https://twitter.com/sho_do_teki/status/1245973638550917121 Shinoda had found a pudding recipe on cookpad which requires only a microwave, a single egg, then milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of vanilla essence! This discovery sparked a trend among Hitorie fans, as many were giving it a shot themselves and joining in on the sweetness!

👋 What is your favorite? 🗣My favorite what?

👋 Are you sleepy? 🗣No problems here

👋 What’s your opinion feeling on cicadas? 🗣My opinion is that they’re dogshit

👋 I’m knee-deep in depression right now, what do I do.. 🗣Watch Audrey videos on youtube You’re bound to laugh and whisk the time away, it’s ideal

👋 How are you? 🗣Physically I’m healthy. Mentally I’m so-so.

👋 Did you get ygarshy any presents for his birthday? If you did, what did you get him? 🗣I can’t tell ya bastards.

👋What happened to your smoke machine? 🗣I still have it 　👀 https://twitter.com/sho_do_teki/status/1269167465499521025 
For SND’s birthday, ygarshy had gotten him a smoke machine. The kind commonly seen at concerts to add effects.
 To quote Shinoda’s reception, he said, “I’m sure y’all got a taste of the level of insanity our bassist is, judging from the MC chat reports of last year’s tour but… This should really set in stone just how insane he is.” 

👋Any new song recs? 🗣SUTENEKO by Siamese Cats 　👀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVSBarQH6ZY

👋Are you still working out? 🗣If it’s okay to say that I’m still at it then.. Yeah I’m still at it.

　👀 He had been developing aches/feeling like he had muscle atrophy due to drawing so much manga. Thus, after even Hitorie’s manager urged him about the necessity to work out, he finally picked it up. Though he did tweet “I was working out while I slept last night, and now I can’t stand up… Fuckkkk thissssss!!” https://twitter.com/sho_do_teki/status/1264486160211951617  So… Fight on, SND!

👋I want to know what you’ve been eating lately! 🗣I’m cooking hamburgers and hotdogs at home

👋What have you been up to? 🗣Listening to Audrey on the radio

👋What are you up to right now👀 🗣Listening to Audrey on the radio

👋 Do you create distortion by using your amp, or by stomping around by your feet? 🗣By my feet

👋 What’s next after the pudding phase? 🗣I’m in a hamburger phase now

👋 Who manga artist you especially like 🗣I’ve always loved Douman Seiman sensei 　👀 https://myanimelist.net/people/12266/Sayman_Dowman

👋 What’s good about Jaguars? (*the car I think) 🗣They look all robotic

👋 What cigarettes have you been smoking? 🗣Marlboro gold

👋 You strike me as the type who talks to himself a lot, so I ask, do you talk to yourself a lot? 🗣Kinda, yeah

👋 What Hitorie songs are best to start out with? 🗣Like Senseless Wonder Or any relatively simple one

👋 What shampoo do you use? 🗣The Seven Eleven one

👋 I can’t make a song.. The day is going to end in vain again..

🗣The day you finally make it will answer everything Or at least we can hope...

👋 How’s your kitty? 🗣I don’t fucking have one

👋 I want to go to a concert 🗣I wanna go tooo

👋 Any RPG recs? 🗣Landstalker You can play it on a SEGA Genesis Mini, go ham on the ungodly maps

👋 I like you? 🗣What?

👋 Do any movies hold a special place in your heart? 🗣9 Souls probably  Chihara Junia is so awesome 　👀 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370244/

👋Please take a selfie 👣 🗣I can’t right now fella

👋What onigiri filling do you like? 🗣Spicy cod roe and/or tuna

👋I just want to give up on studying for entrance exams. But I can’t. How do you achieve that which you don’t want to do? 🗣I feel like I’ve never ever even achieved that which I don’t want to do.. 👋 Any recent purchases?
 🗣 *https://www.jimdunlop.com/cry-baby-mini-wah/

👋 Who’s the greatest genius you know? 🗣Shimoyaka 　👀 Check them out here: https://twitter.com/simoyaka - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9qsoxiPKaY - Tanaka Bunko is the name of Shimoyaka’s doujin group.

👋 Do you ever have troubles or worries? 🗣I do

👋 Which do you recommend out of the great Ghibli 4 playing in theaters? 🗣Well, anything but Mononoke Hime..

👋 My ex girlfriend introduced me, so when I listen the memories come flooding back... 🗣What are you talking about?

👋 I’m torn on whether to cut my hair or not, should I? 🗣Enough already, just cut it.

👋 Do you have a favorite Tanaka Bunko song? 🗣High Score Girl (👀 https://ch.nicovideo.jp/simoyaka/video/so36488388) It sounds like Dinosaur Jr. ( 👀 The western band)

👋 Have you gotten good at any cooking recipes lately? 🗣Do hotdogs count as cooking?

👋 What to do when you can’t sleep 🗣Listen to the radio and stuff

👋 Why don’t you get a kitty?
 🗣Laziness and allergies as a joint force are preventing my kitty endeavors

👋 Will you sleep after this? 🗣I don’t know

👋 For my Coming of Age Ceremony, I’m not sure if I should cut my hair into a short bob or let it grow long so I can style it. Which suits your tastes more Shinoda-san?
 🗣The short bob 100%

👋 So you like girls with short hair.. Then, what hair color do you like? 🗣I don’t really care as long as it looks good

👋 I slept as this time yesterday, but I woke up at this time today. I want to be reborn as a Marlboro gold cigarette.

🗣It may be wise to not aspire to turn into consumables much

👋 What kind of gear is on your current pedal board? 🗣 *A picture consisting of a BOSS TU3W, Xotic EP Booster, WEED MDW-1 wah, Crowther Hotcake, Electro-Harmoni Nano Bass Big Muff, Arion SCH-Z Stereo Chorus, and BOSS DD-20.

👋 I just woke up, good morning 🗣Good morning

👋 Then I want to be reborn as a bed or sofa 🗣Chill

👋 Time to go to work! Cheer me on! 🗣Have a swell day

👋 I’m job-hunting right now, tell me something 🗣I hope it all works out…

👋 I’m a fan from Taiwan and a guitar newbie, do you have any tips and tricks for pressing chords? 🗣Make sure you’re pressing cleanly, I think

👋 Good morning~ Due to various circumstances I’m living in Tokyo for one month starting today, cheers to our battles to come 🗣Battles!?

👋 After drinking all night yesterday, I fell back to sleep 3 times before finally waking up just now. I woke up out of fear after remembering the news about the man who’s bladder exploded. 🗣That shit’s scary as hell? 　👀 https://nypost.com/2020/06/23/mans-bladder-explodes-after-holding-pee-for-18-hours-after-beer-binge/

👋 As a guitarist/vocalist what are you most careful of? 🗣Don’t wiggle around too much and wear yourself out

👋 Alco and Peace’s radio segments are just too damn good, ain’t they…? 🗣I’ve listened to the skit about Ichiru at an international tournie so many times that I’ve lost count, they’re seriously the best 　👀 They’re a manzai comedy duo too!

👋 What temperature do you keep your air-conditioning at? 🗣It depends but, when I do use it I’ll bring it all the way to 24 degrees celsius.

👋 What are you going to do now? 🗣No idea

👋 Have you ever been approached by fans at festivals or out in town? On that note, is it okay to approach you? (；.Д.) 🗣I have. It depends on the time and place.

👋 I love you. Time to go to work… 🗣Have a nice day

👋 Do you ever go to cat cafes and stuff? 🗣I’ve been.

👋 I’ve been job hunting with no resolution in sight, please give me words of encouragement! 🗣You can do it~

👋 Good morning,,, I bombed my mock exams and would love a picker-upper,,, 🗣Well, mock exams aren’t the end so

👋 What do you think of girls who cheat? 🗣I think they’re girls who cheat

👋 I keep doing Hitorie cover bands but I can’t seem to improve the skill* (I’m the drummer) 🗣I’m amazed that you’re even trying at all

👋 Good morning.. Please cheer me on,, 🗣You can do it~

👋 Can you tell me what entertainer you like! 🗣Kamomental 　👀 Another nother manzai duo!

👋 How to restore absolute exhaustion 👀Find something immersive, or laugh-inductive, or just go to sleep…

👋 What’s your favorite out of all the Hitorie merch released thus far? 🗣The album art pins

👋 What is the philosophy behind men who have affairs? 🗣They’re the type who can do it and stomach it, so they just do it, I think

👋 The album cover pins are so cool that I hesitate to use them, Shinoda-sensei what pins do you use? 🗣I always lose pins in a matter of minutes so I’m too scared to use them..

👋 I miss Shinoda-san’s girl and cat drawings 
🗣I haven’t been drawing much huh

👋 Do you listen to anything besides Audrey on the All Night Nippon radio station? 🗣Not much, only like Creepy Nuts (👀 They host a hip-hop/rap battle station!) or Sakuma (👀 He takes letters from listeners and digs into various hypothetical or real events)

👋 What’s the most recent movie you’ve watched? 🗣Lost Paradise in Tokyo 　👀 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1519647/

👋 It’s Sunday yet I have to wake up early and go to work, please put my heart at ease,,, 🗣I pray for your health…

[artlessictoan]

this one’s actually a request I got on the ao3 version of this drabble collection, butch!sak/tomboy!hina coffe shop au! and is this the first coffee shop au I’ve ever done?? I think it might be!

(requests open)

(ao3 mirror)

---

It had been a long morning and Hinata desperately needed caffeine.

She’d had to wake up hellishly early – which might’ve been fine if she hadn’t been up until three in the morning desperately trying to finish her thesis in time for her first class – then spent almost an hour being jerked around by the aggressively indifferent receptionist of her school’s laboratory, before learning that the time she had booked for her vital preliminary experiments, had in fact been given to another student and the next available slot wasn’t until the end of the week. Handily throwing a wrench in her entire year’s calendar that she would be trying to work around for months to come.

And, on top of all that, the heavens had opened up the second she stepped outside, releasing several days’ worth of water all at once, leaving her to trudge home through a downpour, or hang out in the waiting room of the lab until it passed.

With the smirking receptionist, who she was too polite to tell to fuck himself, but who she dearly hoped would suffer several minor inconveniences for the rest of the day.

She chose the cold, wet walk instead.

Perhaps it had been a mistake, she could probably have found an empty classroom to quietly study in for an hour or so if she’d tried, but with her mind only lightly tethered to reality in her current state, it was more likely she would’ve just had a cry-nap instead.

It wouldn’t be the first time, but if a lecturer found her like that again, someone was bound to try and contact her father to inform him of her struggles, and he would wield that knowledge like a sledgehammer against her dreams of a career of her own; one without constant parental oversight and criticism.

She was absolutely not going to let that happen. Right now, however, what mattered most was getting out of the rain.

Squinting against the water running off the hood of her coat, she searched for somewhere – anywhere – that she could duck into and while away the time until her next lecture in a few hours. When she spotted a small café tucked away between a derelict bookstore and a corner shop that proudly called itself ‘Cheap-mart’ she didn’t care how dingy it looked, she just threw open the doors and shook herself off like a dog the second she was inside.

The barista leaning against the counter with his head in his hand glanced up at her; she offered him an awkward smile as she tried to brush down her damp hair. He returned with his own smile, one somehow even more awkward than her own, but straightened up and waved her over.

“Welcome, what can I get for you today?”

She didn’t bother to peruse the blackboards painted up behind him. “Black coffee, thank you.” Definitely not a drink that fit her usual tastes – she was more of a tea person – but she was about five seconds from collapsing on the cold, hard floor and wanted as little diluting the terrible, life-giving substance as possible.

If she’d had a syringe with her, she would have injected it directly into her bloodstream.

“Can I interest you in something to eat?” he asked, voice robotic and smile unnaturally fixed in place. “A sandwich, perhaps even one of our homemade cakes?”

The word ‘cake’ immediately caught her fraying attention and she stared into the glass display to scrutinise the options available with the same keen eye she would use for chemical analysis. It was actually quite impressive how… unappetizing they all looked; sponges were wonky, frosting looked like it had been applied with a slingshot, one was painted in the garish colours of a toddler given free reign of the crayon box and they had apparently all been cut with a chainsaw, she had no other explanation for the crumbling edges and uneven slices.

“I’ll have the coffee and walnut.” She glanced back outside, noting that the storm didn’t look like it would be passing any time soon and she had already skipped breakfast. “Actually, make that two slices.”

Dark eyes blinked at her in pure shock, before the man wordlessly fulfilled her order, only breaking his silence to tell her the cost and exchange cash.

She barely noticed, taking her plate and her cup and her sopping bag, she stumbled to the nearest table and sank down into the wooden chair like it was a plush, feather pillow. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the barista slipping through a door that presumably led to a kitchen; she might’ve found that a bit unprofessional, if it weren’t for the fact that she was literally the only customer in right now.

As she gulped down half of her coffee – grimacing at the taste, but pushing through it regardless – she wondered if the place was always this quiet. Sure, it was a little out of the way and if she hadn’t been looking for somewhere to escape the weather, she probably wouldn’t have noticed it was even there, but it had a stylish interior, wall painted with abstract ink patterns and rustic furniture.

And, when she shoved a generous forkful of cake into her mouth, she had to wonder even more about how a café with such incredible goods had flown so completely under the radar.

She literally closed her eyes and moaned.

Her fatigue was completely forgotten as she eagerly shovelled another mouthful between her lips, then another, and another. She was onto the second slice in about thirty seconds.

“Holy shit, I didn’t actually believe it…”

Hinata glanced up, absolutely no clue who would be disturbing her mid-meal and, even if her mouth hadn’t been full of soft, melting deliciousness, she probably wouldn’t have been able to say anything.

The short, stocky woman, with arms practically bursting out of the sleeves of her chef’s jacket – which presumably had been white at one point, but was now littered with so many stains in basically every conceivable colour that it was basically tie-dye – pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down heavily, crossing her arms on the table and leaning forwards with a slight frown. “Someone actually bought a cake.”

She was still chewing and had to wash down her bite with a generous gulp of coffee, just to respond.

“Huh?”

Very eloquent. Her father would be proud.

“No one buys the cake, we get about fifteen customers a day, I would remember someone buying the cake before-” she jerked a thumb in the direction of the barista leaning boredly against the counter “-Sai was so shocked he immediately came into the kitchen to tell me about it.”

That a customer actually choosing to eat the food on offer was such an anomaly that the chef had to come out of the kitchen, just to see if it was true, was a damning report on the state of their business. “Really?” she asked, looking down at the slice on her plate. “I can’t imagine why, it’s delicious.”

Dark brows narrowed over her green, green eyes. “Are you making fun of me? Did my mother send you here? Are you an EHO?” The woman was standing up now, leaning ever further into her personal space, flour-covered hands steady on either side of the table. With her face only a few inches away, Hinata could pick out individual pores on her nose and several old, faded scars. “I assure you; all my paperwork is up to date,” she said slowly, in such a low, threatening tone that left Hinata less assured than ever before.

She waved her hands in front of her face and backed away as far as the chair would let her. “I don’t’ know what that means and I came here on my own, I just… really like the cake?”

The speed at which the chef’s entire demeanour switched left Hinata feeling a little dizzy. Suddenly her bright eyes were sparkling and she had a wide, toothy grin stretching across her face as she asked, “For real? Even though it looks like absolute dogshit?”

“Well, as long as it tastes good, I don’t think the appearance really matters that much.” A statement easily reinforced by the fact that she was wearing an old, faded hoodie and some leggings she’d technically bought just for the gym, but were so comfortable that they’d wormed their way into her everyday wardrobe anyway.

Also, she was still soaked through and probably looked like a bedraggled cat, but she was trying to ignore that right now.

“Finally, someone who appreciates my genius!” Slapping a hand against the table hard enough to make it rock on its uneven legs, she turned around to shout at her co-worker, “You hear that Sai?”

“As glad as I am to have a satisfied customer, I would point you to the forty-seven other slices of cake that have been consistently rejected by everyone else who’s come in today.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, but Hinata got the feeling that he really was trying his best. “You can’t decorate cakes for shit and no one wants to eat them.”

The scoff and dramatic rolling of eyes suggested that this was a regular argument for these two. “Ignore him, he just thinks that he’s a better artist than me-”

“I am an objectively better artist than you.”

“Anyway-” she displayed a middle finger at him over her shoulder, all while keeping her gaze fixed on Hinata “-I’m really glad you like the cake, I know my presentation’s a bit… rough, but I know what tastes good, just wish more people would give it a chance.”

Hinata had to give a wobbly smile at the woman’s childish pout; ohhh she was in trouble. “You do have a talent for flavour, I must admit,” she said, “I think this is the best coffee cake I’ve ever had.”

“Right? I’ve been playing around with some ideas for new recipes- actually wait here a sec, I’ll go cut you off some samples.” She was charging through the door leading to the kitchen before Hinata could object, but, looking at the rain still hammering down against the windows and taking another bite of beautifully soft cake… she could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon than being fed a selection of baked goods by an incredibly handsome woman with biceps that could probably crush steel.

Maybe she could even come up with an excuse to touch them. Just to satisfy her scientific curiosity.

---

By the time the rain had settled down to a slow drizzle, she had completely forgotten everything that led her to the café in the first place, so distracted was she by chatting to the charmingly exuberant chef – who was called Sakura, she quickly learned.

They had shared several slices of experimental cakes and, while none of them looked very pretty, Hinata had been blow away by the taste each and every time.

If her alarm hadn’t started buzzing insistently, she would’ve happily spent the whole day getting lost in sugar and soft pink hair and distractingly shifting muscles and a boisterous, snorting laugh that had absolutely no right being as cute as she found it. Alas, she still had classes that she could not afford to skip and she really shouldn’t keep Sakura from her work for any longer. Even if she didn’t seem to have much to do.

As she gathered her things and pulled on her coat, she glanced down at the woman with a soft smile. “Thank you for all the wonderful food, and conversation.” She rummaged through her bag and drew out her wallet, dropping a few notes in the tip jar as she passed. One benefit to coming from a wealthy family, she afford to be very generous.

Sai grinned at her, slapping a hand over Sakura’s mouth before she could object to the payment – and judging from the look in her bright eyes, that was almost certainly what she was planning.

Rolling her eyes as she pushed his hand away, she leaned over the counter to grin widely at Hinata. “Please, come again!”

“Yes, and bring friends with you next time, as you can see, we’re pretty desperate for business.”

“Idiot, don’t tell that to the customers!” Sakura yelled, slapping a hand to her forehead hard enough to leave a red mark there.

He gave her a Look. “It’s advertising.”

“No, it’s desperation, you better not have been telling that to everyone who comes in here.”

“Are we not desperate?” He asked, voice completely even and reasonable. “Do I have to show you our account books again? Maybe you should focus on trying to find a cake decorating course, before you start criticising me.”

Hinata laughed softly to herself, but not quietly enough that she didn’t catch the attention of both workers. She smiled at the pair, marvelling at their bizarre friendship that she wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of. “I’ll tell everyone I know that the food here is delicious and they need to come try it-” she glanced at Sakura, who was almost glowing at the compliment, and had to duck her head to hide her blush “-and I live pretty close by, I’m sure I’ll be coming in here a lot more too.”

Before she could rush out of the doors, a voice called out to her, “Hey, what’s your favourite kind of cake? I wanna make it for the next time you come here.”

She stopped and had to take several calming breaths before turning around. “Anything with cinnamon,” she said, not wanting to give herself too much hope, but unable to deny the rush of excitement fizzing through her veins at the thought of spending more time – much more time – with the wonderful, strange, charming baker.

Sakura nodded, eyes already sparking with ideas. “Alright, I’ll make you something amazing, you better come back to taste it soon!”

“I will,” she said, stepping out into the damp afternoon, feeling lighter than air and ready to take on the whole world.

---

[spursroundup]

Pre-Match Thread: Burnley vs Spurs (Feb 23rd, 2019)

Premier League Match Day 27

Saturday February 23rd, 2019

Kick Off: 12:30 (GMT), 07:30 (EST)

Venue: Turf Moor

Referee: Mike Dean

TV: Sky Premier League (UK), TSN2 (Canada), NBCSN (US)

Evening Standard Preview

-"No doubt still on a high from their thumping Champions League last-16 first-leg win over Borussia Dortmund and well rested over FA Cup fifth-round weekend, title-chasers Tottenham return to Premier League action on Saturday lunchtime. Mauricio Pochettino's side currently sit five points off the pace in third position and will have the chance to put some early pressure on Manchester City - who are in EFL Cup final action against Chelsea - and Liverpool, who do not travel to Manchester United until Sunday. Spurs are seeking a fifth consecutive victory and are likely to have Harry Kane back in the fold after the England captain returned to training ahead of schedule following an ankle ligament injury. Opponents Burnley are in the midst of a seven-match unbeaten run that has seen them rise to 15th place, three points above the dreaded relegation zone." - George Flood, Evening Standard

-As it says above Burnley are on a 7 match unbeaten run but the only impressive result was the 2-2 with Man U and even that should have been a win. 2-3 more minutes and they probably would have lost. Away to Turf Moor is never a joyous trip and Burnley will likely sit on it all day and try to nick a 0-0 or sneak a goal in through some dogshit setpiece.

-Here is the match thread from our last meeting with Burnley, a late 1-0 win where justice prevailed after Burnley played shithouse timewasting hoofball all day and Eriksen saved the day. Was also the full league debut for Oliver Skipp.

Team News

Davies and Kane are back in training. Kane being an absolute monster and returning weeks before originally anticipated. Rose may miss out through illness and Dele continues his on-field rehab from his hamstring injury.

Burnley are getting Gudmundsson and Robbie Brady back but Steven Defour and Aaron Lennon remain out.

COYS

submitted by /u/Panencephalitis [link] [comments]

[randomvarious]

Aaron Carter - “I’m Gonna Miss You Forever” Bravo Hits 20 Song released in 1997. Compilation released in 1998. Pop

Hey, girl. I’m sad.

Oh yeah, we’re doing this. 

You all know who Aaron Carter is, but you don’t know how funny this kid’s story was. I’m serious. Yeah, he was a manufactured tween pop star who rode his Backstreet Boy brother’s coattails, and yeah, he only sold because his music was spoonfed to Radio Disney listeners and Nickelodeon kids, but there’s more hilarious facts in his backstory than you probably know.

But before we get into that, did you know that Aaron, much like the Backstreet Boys themselves, was a star in Europe before he made songs like “Aaron’s Party,” “That’s How I Beat Shaq,” and his “I Want Candy” cover? It’s true. His self-titled debut album made minimal noise in the States and none of the singles charted, but that album sold a million copies worldwide, with 250,000 of those solely bought in Germany. Released when he was only nine years old, Carter sounds absolutely ridiculous on it and the album cover depicts him wearing a red set of overalls with the letter “A” on his chest like he’s some Alvin & The Chipmunks gimmick:

But let’s get to the story of how he came to release music in the first place, because it’s really funny. There’s a book on the Internet Archive called Biography today. Volume 11, issue 3 : profiles of people of interest to young readers, which contains an entry that Aaron Carter’s publicist one hundred percent definitely wrote:

Aaron’s musical career began officially at the age of seven, when he took the lead singer position in a band called Dead End in Orlando, Florida. Aaron met the members of the band in a “rock school” he was attending in Tampa, where he was studying voice, music, and dance, determined to follow in his brother Nick’s footsteps. But the band did’t prove to be a good fit. As it turned out, the other band members wanted to play alternative rock, including songs by Green Day. According to Aaron, “they wanted to do alternative music and I wanted to do more pop.” Concerts with the Dead End would be a scene of screaming angry lyrics with young audiences of head-banging fans. This was a far cry from the upbeat crooning and slick choreography that Nick was performing with the Backstreet Boys.

I would kill for some footage of a Dead End concert. Just clones of the bullies from the Little Rascals movie losing their shit to covers of “Basket Case,” mixed in with screaming originals about subjects they despise like girls and homework. Fuck, that would be incredible. But, ultimately, all that negativity wasn’t the life for Aaron. He would’ve been faking the funk had he continued on with his band, what with being rich and admiring the success of his big brother (an alleged rapst, btw), and so, due to creative differences, Dead End eventually reached a...dead end. 

Following the band break-up, Aaron’s mom asked one of the Backstreet Boys’ musicians, Gary Carolla, to write and produce a song for him. That song ended up being “Crush on You,” which would serve as the lead single on Carter’s debut album. With months of practicing his performance of this one song under his belt, the Backstreet Boys’ producer, Johnny Wright, agreed to let him open for BSB in Berlin with a one-song set.

More from this ridiculous biographical entry:

And as it turned out, it was that one song, one show, one chance, that set Aaron Carter’s career in motion in a big way. His mother describes how Aaron, only nine years old at the time, “torpedoed out there on the stage [in front of 50,000 screaming girls]. He sang his one song. He gave that one shot his best. The girls went absolutely nuts!” Sitting amidst the pandemonium was a representative from Edel, a German record company, and she immediately got on her cell phone to her boss ["Chuck, Chuck! It's Marvin! Your cousin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you looking for? Well listen to THIS!"]. Before the night was over, Aaron Carter had his first record contract.

That summer, Aaron would continue to open for BSB, and by early December, he released his debut album. The guy who produced his first song, Gary Carolla, would end up producing or co-producing most of the songs on the album, including its third single, “I’m Gonna Miss You Forever,” which, as it turns out, is a big pile of dogshit. 

You’re probably saying, “yeah, but all of that teenybopper pop stuff is garbage.” Not so. Hanson made. some. fucking. bops. Production on “MMMBop” is phenomenal (it has turntable scratches!) and it goes, eternally. And I’m not even faulting Aaron Carter for the quality of this song. He was only nine years old and he couldn’t help the fact that he sounded like Brett Kazoo at the time. He was fortunate enough to be living a fantasy, having been given an opportunity to follow in his brother’s footsteps. 

But I am going to go in on Gary Carolla. How do you get away with writing a song with the following lyrics?:

My girlfriend, my best friend I don't wanna see you go I just wanna let you know That I have a crush on you I can wait no longer, girl To say what I feel

First of all, why would Aaron need to tell his girlfriend that he has a crush on her? That’s not how relationships work in any age bracket. Crushing comes before the relationship. How could you fuck this up so badly? Like, what possesses you to write something this nonsensical and lazy? And secondly, the production. This isn’t 1992. This is a beat for an old Toni Braxton ballad or something, man. Know your talent. I get that you didn’t have much time to flesh out an album and you probably had a limited budget, but damn, this shit sucks on so many levels.

Check out the video which features Aaron’s rockin’ bowl cut:

Here’s another little nugget. Also appearing on that album is a song called “Shake It,” which is also co-produced by Carolla, and features none other than Florida rap / Miami bass duo 95 South. You remember them, right? They’re responsible for that 1993 hit, “Whoot, There It Is” (which you should never, under any circumstances, ever confuse with Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is),” which came out a month later). “Shake It” wasn’t a single, but there was a music video, and if you’ve made it this far, you really need to see that, too.

Oh yeah, we did that.

[crimsxnrebellion-blog]

So, I’m gonna be dumb for a bit and just...literal word vomit for a bit. Stress, depression, and general anxiety have kicked in harder than hell this past week and I need an outlet. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about it so this is what’s happening so maybe I won’t worry people? And if you do read this (I expect no one will, and I don’t expect anyone to because I’m just going to come off as a whiny little shit) you have no reason to worry. I’m stable now. In a midzone of numbness with an edge of all the bad junk that comes out once in a while. I just need to work through some stuff. I’ll relate it to my blog in this way: activity is going to be garbage, even though I have like one thread going here and a few on discord.

So I guess I’ll start with what I know is a trigger for all this bad juju: my job. Yeah, everyone hates their job. Why don’t you just quit? Why don’t you get a new job? (BTW asking me any question like this or variation does not help, and I can’t imagine it helps anyone else in a similar situation either, just saiyan) The short answer to those questions right now is that I’m going on a cruise at the end of the year, and I hate to get a job and be like, “Hey, I need a week and some odd days off in December, that cool?” right off the bat.

As many of you know, I work in retail. Customer service in retail. For seven years now. And it is just the most soul sucking and depressing job I think I could have. Like...my coworkers don’t even make it worthwhile any more. I go to work and I just feel like absolute dogshit. And, when I don’t, someone, whether it’s an entitled customer or management, just ruins any semblance of a good mood I had. The place just makes me feel worthless. The work is unfulfilling. Now that I work more hours, I make enough money but...ugh. The money isn’t worth it. The money isn’t worth feeling this way every day. It’s not worth the long hours, the weird hours, the leniency on needing days off...This shit isn’t worth my sanity and my life but I feel trapped right now. It’s so hard to be patient. 

I wish I could quit and just spend my days writing but I can’t do that. My dad is retiring at the end of the year and, since I’m living with them at the moment, I pay them some money for rent and help with groceries. And it isn’t a lot, but it helps them out with their bills and I should pay them to live here. I’m twenty five; there’s not reason I should expect them to take care of me. I don’t want them to, even if they would to an extent. I just need to hold out a little longer...deal with the bullshit for a few more months...

Next item is...a little harder to talk about. Like even to myself. Tried with my brother but talking to him is hard even though he can most relate to what I’m going through (depression and anxiety wise).

I’m not a lovey dovey person. Like I’ve suspected that I’m aromantic and just...incapable of loving someone. But I knew that wasn’t true because I was...am in love with someone. Well, why don’t you tell them, Momo? Let them know how you feel? Shit, I’d give this advice, and I wish I had ages ago. I’m kicking myself so hard, and I just feel stupid. I was too slow because I was coward. I was scared to be rejected. I was scared to ruin the friendship I had built with them over the years, easily one of the best friends I have, even though it’s long distance. 

So that story...it’s not hard to guess after this outpouring. I’ve been friends with this person for years (like 5 or 6? I’m not sure). Started out as a crush but developed into more as time went on. Typical shit. Thing is...I never told her because I was sure she wasn’t into other women. I thought she was straight and would never date me. The long distance didn’t help for her either, I don’t think. At least, that’s what I had gleaned from all of our conversations. So, that helped keep my blossoming emotions in check: 1. she’s not into girls, 2. she doesn’t like long distance, and 3. don’t fuck up a friendship that you would absolutely hate to lose because you already know you hate when you don’t talk to her for even a day. How somehow you miss her even though you’ve never officially gotten a chance to meet. It seems so dumb because I doubt she thinks that but...fuck, here I am.

As expected, she got a boyfriend. Which is great, don’t get me wrong. I was happy she found someone. After all the shit she has been through, she deserves a good relationship with someone who treats her right and makes her happy. I want her to be happy, most of all. He seems like a good guy, save for a few things that have happened but that’s a relationship for you; there are going to be ups and downs. For a while, my Three Reasons held up with jealousy popping it’s ugly head in every once in a while. I also had school and ex roommate drama to distract me, so that helped.

It wasn’t until there was a mention of her thinking he MIGHT MIGHT propose that I just...broke. I told her that’s exciting, and if it DID happen I would be happy for her but...I don’t remember what all was said but she sensed that I just shut down, that I was fleeing into myself because I had zero chance with her left. No matter how many times I whispered to myself that she would never love me like I did her anyway, that it would never happen anyway...it tore me up inside. I have a feeling she had figured it out before this...that when we said I love you to each other, mine didn’t mean quite the same thing her’s did. And she called me out on it. I admitted to it, late as I was to the party. 

And then it was the most bittersweet moment when she told me if she wasn’t with her bf, she would probably give dating me a shot. My heart soared but felt heavy. My chest tight and of course I was still crying. For once, it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough for someone. It was because I didn’t say anything. I didn’t tell them how I felt, and somehow, that felt worse than not being enough. Even as I write this, I can’t decide if I’m sad or angry at myself.

And I feel so gross thinking any of this because she is happy. For the past week I’ve been trying to shut it all out again, especially because she has enough on her plate without worrying about me being sad. I hate that this part of me exists. That it keeps me from being 100% fully happy for her in this situation. That a tiny, minuscule, disgusting .05% part of my nature is hoping it won’t work out. And it’s so so so so so so so gross and it makes me sick that it’s a reality, and pushing it off as human nature and just hurting or being in love doesn’t make me hate myself less for even that tiny bit that feels that way.

There was a part of me that night that said I should just...stop talking to her, there were moments before. Once where I offered it because her bf didn’t like us talking, and I didn’t want to wreck their relationship. But I couldn’t stand the thought of losing my best friend because I’m dumb and caught feelings. And we still talk obvs; her finding out (or vocalizing that she knew) didn’t disgust her, thankfully. And, after my mental breakdown early this week (only partially related to this whole thing; an episode at work with a customer like SUPER LYING about an interaction I had with them and my manager seeming to take their side over mine plus coming home and accidentally hurting my mom’s dog’s leg and she yelled cuz she was worried and not mad at me but my emotions just exploded anyway, I threw my phone, and left for an hour or two, ugly crying in my car as I drove). But she helped me come out of that...out of this state of absolute emotional turmoil that I can barely remember super clearly. 

(btw if you read this bebe I’m not mad at you in any way, shape, or form and I don’t want you to worry about me. Like I said...this is just me word vomitting. Working through all of my fucked up feels. You focus on you ok?)

So that brings me to that mental breakdown cuz wow. I haven’t had a REALLY bad one like that in a while. And it was a lot of things building up. Fear of the future. Will going back to school pay off. Would I ever be able to quit this fucking job that is killing me. Just feeling helpless, hopeless, and worthless in general for so long. And I think it all just festered up and welled over until I finally just...broke. Completely broke. And it was scary. I wanted to die. I wasn’t at a point of hurting myself or killing myself but...there were a few moments where I wanted it all to end. But yeah...it’s...been awhile since I’ve gotten that low, and I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered? Like I should probably get help but...I dunno. 

wow. This got long. I feel liek I have more to work through but eh. I’m getting sleepy and just ugh. Plus I have work at 5:30 am ;-;. So me @ me is saying go to bed. should probably keep a journal for shit liek this cuz I think this helped some. Just to word vomit....

[samanthasroberts]

The 5 Best Halloween Episodes You Should Watch Tonight

Happy Halloween, everyone! How you choose to celebrate this most blessed of holidays is up to you. Some of you will drink pumpkin beer until you poop jack o’ lanterns, some of you will take your children trick-or-treating, and some of you will sit on the couch and absorb horror films. But if I can make a suggestion for that last group: In between your annual viewings of Halloween 4: The One Where Michael Myers’ Mask Looks Like Total Dogshit and Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Not That Bad, Actually, consider watching some Halloween-themed TV episodes. Because while movies are great for frights, there are a few TV shows that actually capture the spirit of Halloween. For example …

5

The Office: “Employee Transfer”

The year is 2008. The place is every theater in the known world. The movie is The Dark Knight. And the thought that’s going through four billion heads simultaneously is “I know what I’m going to be for Halloween this year.”

Read Next

How The 'Last Of Us 2' Trailer Ruined A Sure Thing

On October 31, 2008, you couldn’t throw a Batarang without hitting someone dressed in a Heath Ledger Joker outfit. The simple act of going outside was an invitation for swarms of people in purple sweatpants to come up and ask you if you wanted to see a magic trick. Drama kids draped themselves in long wool coats and ventured into the cool autumn night, looking for prey to listen to their story about how they got their scars. Former frat bros lathered on white facepaint and sipped vodka red bulls as they mumbled through half-remembered things about “chaos” and “killing the Batman.” And the one guy dressed as Beetlejuice spent the whole evening correcting people.

It was like magic. Somewhere in Heath Ledger’s wonderful performance, the worst people you knew heard a dog whistle. A dog whistle which screeched “Annoy the fuck out of everyone you know and love.” The Office understood that this was going to happen, and that’s why “Employee Transfer” is so great.

Airing on October 30th, it was like a warning to the general public: Beware, for tomorrow your neighbors will turn on you, your children will betray you, and your roommates will spend six hours attempting to apply cheek prosthetics before giving up and just using a pound of lipstick. Any show that can accurately capture the frustration of existing in the same universe as the mob of Jokers before that day of frustration actually occurs is worth your attention.

“Employee Transfer” features some of Steve Carell’s best acting in the whole series, but it’s also a great parody of the time the Earth cancelled Halloween and replaced it with Jokerfest 2008. I’ll never forgive Christopher Nolan. Never.

4

The Spectacular Spider-Man: “The Uncertainty Principle”

It’s hard for superhero shows to do a good Halloween episode, and I think it’s because superheroes wear masks all the time, and a lot of the comedy from any Halloween episode comes from what the characters decide to dress up as. It’s really hard to properly dress up as anything when your main wardrobe is one bright color with a huge symbol on your chest. That’s why most superhero Halloween specials are just plain adventure stories. In The Batman episode “Grundy’s Night,” Clayface pretends to be unkillable zombie Solomon Grundy to better rob intolerable old rich people. It’s great. You should check it out.

Unsurprisingly, The Spectacular Spider-Man, the best superhero cartoon of all time, broke the mold a little bit and gave us a Halloween episode that’s a little more think-y. However, all this metaphorin’ doesn’t prevent the episode from having a fight between Green Goblin and Spider-Man which takes up the entire third act. That was probably the greatest strength of the show: being able to balance teen drama and deep reflection with radioactive boxing matches that usually lasted about seven glorious minutes.

While most interpretations of the Green Goblin never get past the whole “Curse you, Spider-Maaaaaan” section of their shtick, this Green Goblin is a playful, sadistic dick. He’s constantly asking Spider-Man to consider what “mask” is real — the mask that hides your face or the mask that is your face. This doesn’t just play into the mystery of who the Green Goblin is, but also deals with something that’s lacking in a lot of superhero shows that are made for kids: At what point does your human identity become the facade? The Green Goblin and Peter Parker aren’t opposites; they’re both freaks who only find respite and fulfillment when they wear their masks. Peter Parker is a bespectacled shell of a nerd. It’s only when he’s Spider-Man, quipping and punching with psychopathic consistency, that his actual mask gets taken off.

Anyway, Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) fakes a leg injury and then retreats back to his home. There, he finds his son passed out, breaks his own son’s fucking leg, and puts the Goblin costume on him. Then, when Spider-Man gets there, Norman is all like “We gotta get my son some help. He’s really sick. See, his leg is broken. He’s helpless. WINK.” So yeah, if you want to watch something with all the fun of a Marvel character and all the “Oh my god, no” of comic book child abuse, this is a good one. Jeez. Maybe you should’ve just gone to a costume party or something, y’all.

3

Any Roseanne Halloween Episode

If you grew up in a small town like I did, you know that Halloweens are a gamble. You’ll get to go trick-or-treating, but only if your parents are down to drive you to a more populated place that supports such an activity. Otherwise you’re just trudging in a ditch down a lonely country road, hoping that a passing car doesn’t hit you and ruin your Dollar Store Wolfman mask and spill all of your candy. And when you age out of that, you go to a local haunted maze, which never fails to be out in the middle of nowhere. There, you watch theatrical rednecks rev chainsaws, wave severed prop heads, and ignore copyright infringements. In North Carolina, you don’t legally reach puberty until you’ve held someone’s hand through the Hacker House. It’s the law.

One of the draws of the sitcom Roseanne was that it was about a lower-middle-class family. So many sitcoms were based around how cool it would be to have friends in New York City, or how great it would be if you could shove a dozen family members into the same piece of prime San Francisco real estate. But Roseanne was hunkered down in the suburbs. The main set looked like it had been cobbled together from a thrift store’s going-out-of-business sale, the costumes were from a Fashion Bug clearance rack, and the family was loud and loving, just like mine.

Except on Halloween.

The Halloween episodes of Roseanne are things of sitcom legend. Barely having anything to do with the show itself, the Halloween episodes would go all out and present an alternate Roseanne reality where the family could suddenly afford elaborate costumes and expensive makeup. Halloween was the biggest day of the year (as it should be in all worlds, fictional or otherwise), and the usual relaxed pace of a Roseanne episode was replaced by a frantic joke parade. And for me, it was pure wish fulfillment.

You wanted to have a Roseanne Halloween. A Halloween where you could buy that expensive costume that you saw at the mall and run around and play pranks on everyone. A Halloween where you could go trick-or-treating with your friends, because most houses were less than a quarter of a mile from each other. A Halloween where everyone, adults included, understood how important Halloween was to you.

The Halloweens I experienced as a kid were fucking wonderful. But just once, I wanted a Roseanne Halloween.

2

How I Met Your Mother: “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns”

I moved from North Carolina to NYC, because it’s the true path of an artist to be miserable in a small town and then move to a large town where you’re only mostly miserable. And it’s there that I learned that you will see most of the people you know maybe once every few months. It’s just hard to hang out with people. Sure, a subway system connects the whole city, but deciding to use it is flipping the coin on whether a particular train works that day or not. So you’ll go a long time without seeing someone important to you. “Oh, I remember you! You were at that thing in 1988! New Jersey now, huh?”

The How I Met Your Mother Halloween episode “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns” gets that more than most NYC-based sitcoms. In it, human sweater vest Ted Mosby finally meets up with a girl that he saw at a Halloween party years earlier. She’d been dressed as a pumpkin, and as he did with most things with a pulse, he fell in love with her. But now, upon meeting her and dating her, he finds that they have absolutely no spark. Sitcoms, right? One minute you’re in a zany situation, the next you’re finding out that you’ve spent the last ten years pining after a lie. Laugh track!

Halloween in a big city is weird. On one hand, you want to explore what it has to offer, but it’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you know that something like “HALLOWEEN PARTY FEATURING DJ QUANTUM. HALF-OFF SHOTS. PEOPLE IN COSTUMES GET A FREE PUMPKIN TEQUILA ENEMA” will attract roughly 30,000 people. So you go to parties, where you make friends you don’t see again for eight years. And so your big-city circle of friends becomes a mix of a core group you hang out with constantly and people you see once a decade. It’s kind of nice, especially in a sea of sitcoms that portray NYC as a place where you apparently can teleport from borough to borough, never having to worry about petty things like time or physics.

1

Walker, Texas Ranger: “The Children Of Halloween”

I don’t blame you if you don’t want to watch Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris is a pretty cartoonish figure in pop culture, but most episodes of Walker are a slog. Chuck kicks some criminals, administers a moral lesson, and talks down to everyone. Chuck Norris is judge, jury, executioner, God, Jesus, and Shakespeare in Walker, Texas Ranger. Somehow, Chuck Norris made a show about roundhouse kicks into something as boring as a Pat Robertson colonoscopy.

However, if you’re looking for something that is simultaneously a piece of batshit holiday insanity and the Walker-est Texas-est Ranger-est episode of Walker, Texas Ranger ever, watch “The Children Of Halloween.” It opens with Norris scoffing at his black co-worker’s George Washington Carver costume. Walker is a Texas Ranger, but more than that, he’s an awful dickhead.

One scene of men in ape masks shooting machine guns at a convenience store for no reason later, and we get a touching montage of kids practicing martial arts that feels like it lasts two hours. One of those kids is abducted by a satanic cult, and Walker is dropped into a race against time to stop children from being sacrificed. How spooky is all of this? So spooky that the opening credits adopt a Tales From The Crypt font and show us a cemetery with a blue filter over it. Fucking boo.

Sony Pictures Television Distribution

That’s ultimate spooky.

Regardless, Walker has never met a problem he couldn’t quite easily resolve by beating it unconscious. In the nick of time, he literally flies onto the screen with a side-kick, and then breaks a Satan worshiper’s neck in front of a group of stunned children. He proceeds to kick an entire cult into submission and saves the day. Walker finishes the episode by drinking coffee in a bar while ignoring the women who hit on him, because as the theme song says, “That’s what a ranger’s gonna be.” Yep. Murder a bunch of strangers in front of elementary schoolers and never have sex, like, ever. It’s what a ranger’s gonna be. Who am I to argue?

Daniel has a spooky, scary Twitter.

The Simpsons Tree House of Horror Collection is objectively the greatest Halloween TV you’ll ever find on this Earth. Enjoy!

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/12/06/the-5-best-halloween-episodes-you-should-watch-tonight/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/the-5-best-halloween-episodes-you-should-watch-tonight/

[adambstingus]

The 5 Best Halloween Episodes You Should Watch Tonight

Happy Halloween, everyone! How you choose to celebrate this most blessed of holidays is up to you. Some of you will drink pumpkin beer until you poop jack o’ lanterns, some of you will take your children trick-or-treating, and some of you will sit on the couch and absorb horror films. But if I can make a suggestion for that last group: In between your annual viewings of Halloween 4: The One Where Michael Myers’ Mask Looks Like Total Dogshit and Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Not That Bad, Actually, consider watching some Halloween-themed TV episodes. Because while movies are great for frights, there are a few TV shows that actually capture the spirit of Halloween. For example …

5

The Office: “Employee Transfer”

The year is 2008. The place is every theater in the known world. The movie is The Dark Knight. And the thought that’s going through four billion heads simultaneously is “I know what I’m going to be for Halloween this year.”

Read Next

How The ‘Last Of Us 2’ Trailer Ruined A Sure Thing

On October 31, 2008, you couldn’t throw a Batarang without hitting someone dressed in a Heath Ledger Joker outfit. The simple act of going outside was an invitation for swarms of people in purple sweatpants to come up and ask you if you wanted to see a magic trick. Drama kids draped themselves in long wool coats and ventured into the cool autumn night, looking for prey to listen to their story about how they got their scars. Former frat bros lathered on white facepaint and sipped vodka red bulls as they mumbled through half-remembered things about “chaos” and “killing the Batman.” And the one guy dressed as Beetlejuice spent the whole evening correcting people.

It was like magic. Somewhere in Heath Ledger’s wonderful performance, the worst people you knew heard a dog whistle. A dog whistle which screeched “Annoy the fuck out of everyone you know and love.” The Office understood that this was going to happen, and that’s why “Employee Transfer” is so great.

Airing on October 30th, it was like a warning to the general public: Beware, for tomorrow your neighbors will turn on you, your children will betray you, and your roommates will spend six hours attempting to apply cheek prosthetics before giving up and just using a pound of lipstick. Any show that can accurately capture the frustration of existing in the same universe as the mob of Jokers before that day of frustration actually occurs is worth your attention.

“Employee Transfer” features some of Steve Carell’s best acting in the whole series, but it’s also a great parody of the time the Earth cancelled Halloween and replaced it with Jokerfest 2008. I’ll never forgive Christopher Nolan. Never.

4

The Spectacular Spider-Man: “The Uncertainty Principle”

It’s hard for superhero shows to do a good Halloween episode, and I think it’s because superheroes wear masks all the time, and a lot of the comedy from any Halloween episode comes from what the characters decide to dress up as. It’s really hard to properly dress up as anything when your main wardrobe is one bright color with a huge symbol on your chest. That’s why most superhero Halloween specials are just plain adventure stories. In The Batman episode “Grundy’s Night,” Clayface pretends to be unkillable zombie Solomon Grundy to better rob intolerable old rich people. It’s great. You should check it out.

Unsurprisingly, The Spectacular Spider-Man, the best superhero cartoon of all time, broke the mold a little bit and gave us a Halloween episode that’s a little more think-y. However, all this metaphorin’ doesn’t prevent the episode from having a fight between Green Goblin and Spider-Man which takes up the entire third act. That was probably the greatest strength of the show: being able to balance teen drama and deep reflection with radioactive boxing matches that usually lasted about seven glorious minutes.

While most interpretations of the Green Goblin never get past the whole “Curse you, Spider-Maaaaaan” section of their shtick, this Green Goblin is a playful, sadistic dick. He’s constantly asking Spider-Man to consider what “mask” is real — the mask that hides your face or the mask that is your face. This doesn’t just play into the mystery of who the Green Goblin is, but also deals with something that’s lacking in a lot of superhero shows that are made for kids: At what point does your human identity become the facade? The Green Goblin and Peter Parker aren’t opposites; they’re both freaks who only find respite and fulfillment when they wear their masks. Peter Parker is a bespectacled shell of a nerd. It’s only when he’s Spider-Man, quipping and punching with psychopathic consistency, that his actual mask gets taken off.

Anyway, Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) fakes a leg injury and then retreats back to his home. There, he finds his son passed out, breaks his own son’s fucking leg, and puts the Goblin costume on him. Then, when Spider-Man gets there, Norman is all like “We gotta get my son some help. He’s really sick. See, his leg is broken. He’s helpless. WINK.” So yeah, if you want to watch something with all the fun of a Marvel character and all the “Oh my god, no” of comic book child abuse, this is a good one. Jeez. Maybe you should’ve just gone to a costume party or something, y’all.

3

Any Roseanne Halloween Episode

If you grew up in a small town like I did, you know that Halloweens are a gamble. You’ll get to go trick-or-treating, but only if your parents are down to drive you to a more populated place that supports such an activity. Otherwise you’re just trudging in a ditch down a lonely country road, hoping that a passing car doesn’t hit you and ruin your Dollar Store Wolfman mask and spill all of your candy. And when you age out of that, you go to a local haunted maze, which never fails to be out in the middle of nowhere. There, you watch theatrical rednecks rev chainsaws, wave severed prop heads, and ignore copyright infringements. In North Carolina, you don’t legally reach puberty until you’ve held someone’s hand through the Hacker House. It’s the law.

One of the draws of the sitcom Roseanne was that it was about a lower-middle-class family. So many sitcoms were based around how cool it would be to have friends in New York City, or how great it would be if you could shove a dozen family members into the same piece of prime San Francisco real estate. But Roseanne was hunkered down in the suburbs. The main set looked like it had been cobbled together from a thrift store’s going-out-of-business sale, the costumes were from a Fashion Bug clearance rack, and the family was loud and loving, just like mine.

Except on Halloween.

The Halloween episodes of Roseanne are things of sitcom legend. Barely having anything to do with the show itself, the Halloween episodes would go all out and present an alternate Roseanne reality where the family could suddenly afford elaborate costumes and expensive makeup. Halloween was the biggest day of the year (as it should be in all worlds, fictional or otherwise), and the usual relaxed pace of a Roseanne episode was replaced by a frantic joke parade. And for me, it was pure wish fulfillment.

You wanted to have a Roseanne Halloween. A Halloween where you could buy that expensive costume that you saw at the mall and run around and play pranks on everyone. A Halloween where you could go trick-or-treating with your friends, because most houses were less than a quarter of a mile from each other. A Halloween where everyone, adults included, understood how important Halloween was to you.

The Halloweens I experienced as a kid were fucking wonderful. But just once, I wanted a Roseanne Halloween.

2

How I Met Your Mother: “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns”

I moved from North Carolina to NYC, because it’s the true path of an artist to be miserable in a small town and then move to a large town where you’re only mostly miserable. And it’s there that I learned that you will see most of the people you know maybe once every few months. It’s just hard to hang out with people. Sure, a subway system connects the whole city, but deciding to use it is flipping the coin on whether a particular train works that day or not. So you’ll go a long time without seeing someone important to you. “Oh, I remember you! You were at that thing in 1988! New Jersey now, huh?”

The How I Met Your Mother Halloween episode “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns” gets that more than most NYC-based sitcoms. In it, human sweater vest Ted Mosby finally meets up with a girl that he saw at a Halloween party years earlier. She’d been dressed as a pumpkin, and as he did with most things with a pulse, he fell in love with her. But now, upon meeting her and dating her, he finds that they have absolutely no spark. Sitcoms, right? One minute you’re in a zany situation, the next you’re finding out that you’ve spent the last ten years pining after a lie. Laugh track!

Halloween in a big city is weird. On one hand, you want to explore what it has to offer, but it’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you know that something like “HALLOWEEN PARTY FEATURING DJ QUANTUM. HALF-OFF SHOTS. PEOPLE IN COSTUMES GET A FREE PUMPKIN TEQUILA ENEMA” will attract roughly 30,000 people. So you go to parties, where you make friends you don’t see again for eight years. And so your big-city circle of friends becomes a mix of a core group you hang out with constantly and people you see once a decade. It’s kind of nice, especially in a sea of sitcoms that portray NYC as a place where you apparently can teleport from borough to borough, never having to worry about petty things like time or physics.

1

Walker, Texas Ranger: “The Children Of Halloween”

I don’t blame you if you don’t want to watch Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris is a pretty cartoonish figure in pop culture, but most episodes of Walker are a slog. Chuck kicks some criminals, administers a moral lesson, and talks down to everyone. Chuck Norris is judge, jury, executioner, God, Jesus, and Shakespeare in Walker, Texas Ranger. Somehow, Chuck Norris made a show about roundhouse kicks into something as boring as a Pat Robertson colonoscopy.

However, if you’re looking for something that is simultaneously a piece of batshit holiday insanity and the Walker-est Texas-est Ranger-est episode of Walker, Texas Ranger ever, watch “The Children Of Halloween.” It opens with Norris scoffing at his black co-worker’s George Washington Carver costume. Walker is a Texas Ranger, but more than that, he’s an awful dickhead.

One scene of men in ape masks shooting machine guns at a convenience store for no reason later, and we get a touching montage of kids practicing martial arts that feels like it lasts two hours. One of those kids is abducted by a satanic cult, and Walker is dropped into a race against time to stop children from being sacrificed. How spooky is all of this? So spooky that the opening credits adopt a Tales From The Crypt font and show us a cemetery with a blue filter over it. Fucking boo.

Sony Pictures Television Distribution

That’s ultimate spooky.

Regardless, Walker has never met a problem he couldn’t quite easily resolve by beating it unconscious. In the nick of time, he literally flies onto the screen with a side-kick, and then breaks a Satan worshiper’s neck in front of a group of stunned children. He proceeds to kick an entire cult into submission and saves the day. Walker finishes the episode by drinking coffee in a bar while ignoring the women who hit on him, because as the theme song says, “That’s what a ranger’s gonna be.” Yep. Murder a bunch of strangers in front of elementary schoolers and never have sex, like, ever. It’s what a ranger’s gonna be. Who am I to argue?

Daniel has a spooky, scary Twitter.

The Simpsons Tree House of Horror Collection is objectively the greatest Halloween TV you’ll ever find on this Earth. Enjoy!

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 6 Unnecessarily Horrifying Episodes Of Beloved Kids Shows and 5 Inexplicably Creepy Episodes of Family Friendly TV Shows.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Darkest Episode of an 80’s Sitcom Ever, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Boo!

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/12/06/the-5-best-halloween-episodes-you-should-watch-tonight/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/168246093102

[allofbeercom]

The 5 Best Halloween Episodes You Should Watch Tonight

Happy Halloween, everyone! How you choose to celebrate this most blessed of holidays is up to you. Some of you will drink pumpkin beer until you poop jack o’ lanterns, some of you will take your children trick-or-treating, and some of you will sit on the couch and absorb horror films. But if I can make a suggestion for that last group: In between your annual viewings of Halloween 4: The One Where Michael Myers’ Mask Looks Like Total Dogshit and Texas Chainsaw Massacre III: Not That Bad, Actually, consider watching some Halloween-themed TV episodes. Because while movies are great for frights, there are a few TV shows that actually capture the spirit of Halloween. For example …

5

The Office: “Employee Transfer”

The year is 2008. The place is every theater in the known world. The movie is The Dark Knight. And the thought that’s going through four billion heads simultaneously is “I know what I’m going to be for Halloween this year.”

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On October 31, 2008, you couldn’t throw a Batarang without hitting someone dressed in a Heath Ledger Joker outfit. The simple act of going outside was an invitation for swarms of people in purple sweatpants to come up and ask you if you wanted to see a magic trick. Drama kids draped themselves in long wool coats and ventured into the cool autumn night, looking for prey to listen to their story about how they got their scars. Former frat bros lathered on white facepaint and sipped vodka red bulls as they mumbled through half-remembered things about “chaos” and “killing the Batman.” And the one guy dressed as Beetlejuice spent the whole evening correcting people.

It was like magic. Somewhere in Heath Ledger’s wonderful performance, the worst people you knew heard a dog whistle. A dog whistle which screeched “Annoy the fuck out of everyone you know and love.” The Office understood that this was going to happen, and that’s why “Employee Transfer” is so great.

Airing on October 30th, it was like a warning to the general public: Beware, for tomorrow your neighbors will turn on you, your children will betray you, and your roommates will spend six hours attempting to apply cheek prosthetics before giving up and just using a pound of lipstick. Any show that can accurately capture the frustration of existing in the same universe as the mob of Jokers before that day of frustration actually occurs is worth your attention.

“Employee Transfer” features some of Steve Carell’s best acting in the whole series, but it’s also a great parody of the time the Earth cancelled Halloween and replaced it with Jokerfest 2008. I’ll never forgive Christopher Nolan. Never.

4

The Spectacular Spider-Man: “The Uncertainty Principle”

It’s hard for superhero shows to do a good Halloween episode, and I think it’s because superheroes wear masks all the time, and a lot of the comedy from any Halloween episode comes from what the characters decide to dress up as. It’s really hard to properly dress up as anything when your main wardrobe is one bright color with a huge symbol on your chest. That’s why most superhero Halloween specials are just plain adventure stories. In The Batman episode “Grundy’s Night,” Clayface pretends to be unkillable zombie Solomon Grundy to better rob intolerable old rich people. It’s great. You should check it out.

Unsurprisingly, The Spectacular Spider-Man, the best superhero cartoon of all time, broke the mold a little bit and gave us a Halloween episode that’s a little more think-y. However, all this metaphorin’ doesn’t prevent the episode from having a fight between Green Goblin and Spider-Man which takes up the entire third act. That was probably the greatest strength of the show: being able to balance teen drama and deep reflection with radioactive boxing matches that usually lasted about seven glorious minutes.

While most interpretations of the Green Goblin never get past the whole “Curse you, Spider-Maaaaaan” section of their shtick, this Green Goblin is a playful, sadistic dick. He’s constantly asking Spider-Man to consider what “mask” is real — the mask that hides your face or the mask that is your face. This doesn’t just play into the mystery of who the Green Goblin is, but also deals with something that’s lacking in a lot of superhero shows that are made for kids: At what point does your human identity become the facade? The Green Goblin and Peter Parker aren’t opposites; they’re both freaks who only find respite and fulfillment when they wear their masks. Peter Parker is a bespectacled shell of a nerd. It’s only when he’s Spider-Man, quipping and punching with psychopathic consistency, that his actual mask gets taken off.

Anyway, Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) fakes a leg injury and then retreats back to his home. There, he finds his son passed out, breaks his own son’s fucking leg, and puts the Goblin costume on him. Then, when Spider-Man gets there, Norman is all like “We gotta get my son some help. He’s really sick. See, his leg is broken. He’s helpless. WINK.” So yeah, if you want to watch something with all the fun of a Marvel character and all the “Oh my god, no” of comic book child abuse, this is a good one. Jeez. Maybe you should’ve just gone to a costume party or something, y’all.

3

Any Roseanne Halloween Episode

If you grew up in a small town like I did, you know that Halloweens are a gamble. You’ll get to go trick-or-treating, but only if your parents are down to drive you to a more populated place that supports such an activity. Otherwise you’re just trudging in a ditch down a lonely country road, hoping that a passing car doesn’t hit you and ruin your Dollar Store Wolfman mask and spill all of your candy. And when you age out of that, you go to a local haunted maze, which never fails to be out in the middle of nowhere. There, you watch theatrical rednecks rev chainsaws, wave severed prop heads, and ignore copyright infringements. In North Carolina, you don’t legally reach puberty until you’ve held someone’s hand through the Hacker House. It’s the law.

One of the draws of the sitcom Roseanne was that it was about a lower-middle-class family. So many sitcoms were based around how cool it would be to have friends in New York City, or how great it would be if you could shove a dozen family members into the same piece of prime San Francisco real estate. But Roseanne was hunkered down in the suburbs. The main set looked like it had been cobbled together from a thrift store’s going-out-of-business sale, the costumes were from a Fashion Bug clearance rack, and the family was loud and loving, just like mine.

Except on Halloween.

The Halloween episodes of Roseanne are things of sitcom legend. Barely having anything to do with the show itself, the Halloween episodes would go all out and present an alternate Roseanne reality where the family could suddenly afford elaborate costumes and expensive makeup. Halloween was the biggest day of the year (as it should be in all worlds, fictional or otherwise), and the usual relaxed pace of a Roseanne episode was replaced by a frantic joke parade. And for me, it was pure wish fulfillment.

You wanted to have a Roseanne Halloween. A Halloween where you could buy that expensive costume that you saw at the mall and run around and play pranks on everyone. A Halloween where you could go trick-or-treating with your friends, because most houses were less than a quarter of a mile from each other. A Halloween where everyone, adults included, understood how important Halloween was to you.

The Halloweens I experienced as a kid were fucking wonderful. But just once, I wanted a Roseanne Halloween.

2

How I Met Your Mother: “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns”

I moved from North Carolina to NYC, because it’s the true path of an artist to be miserable in a small town and then move to a large town where you’re only mostly miserable. And it’s there that I learned that you will see most of the people you know maybe once every few months. It’s just hard to hang out with people. Sure, a subway system connects the whole city, but deciding to use it is flipping the coin on whether a particular train works that day or not. So you’ll go a long time without seeing someone important to you. “Oh, I remember you! You were at that thing in 1988! New Jersey now, huh?”

The How I Met Your Mother Halloween episode “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns” gets that more than most NYC-based sitcoms. In it, human sweater vest Ted Mosby finally meets up with a girl that he saw at a Halloween party years earlier. She’d been dressed as a pumpkin, and as he did with most things with a pulse, he fell in love with her. But now, upon meeting her and dating her, he finds that they have absolutely no spark. Sitcoms, right? One minute you’re in a zany situation, the next you’re finding out that you’ve spent the last ten years pining after a lie. Laugh track!

Halloween in a big city is weird. On one hand, you want to explore what it has to offer, but it’s easy to get discouraged by the fact that you know that something like “HALLOWEEN PARTY FEATURING DJ QUANTUM. HALF-OFF SHOTS. PEOPLE IN COSTUMES GET A FREE PUMPKIN TEQUILA ENEMA” will attract roughly 30,000 people. So you go to parties, where you make friends you don’t see again for eight years. And so your big-city circle of friends becomes a mix of a core group you hang out with constantly and people you see once a decade. It’s kind of nice, especially in a sea of sitcoms that portray NYC as a place where you apparently can teleport from borough to borough, never having to worry about petty things like time or physics.

1

Walker, Texas Ranger: “The Children Of Halloween”

I don’t blame you if you don’t want to watch Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris is a pretty cartoonish figure in pop culture, but most episodes of Walker are a slog. Chuck kicks some criminals, administers a moral lesson, and talks down to everyone. Chuck Norris is judge, jury, executioner, God, Jesus, and Shakespeare in Walker, Texas Ranger. Somehow, Chuck Norris made a show about roundhouse kicks into something as boring as a Pat Robertson colonoscopy.

However, if you’re looking for something that is simultaneously a piece of batshit holiday insanity and the Walker-est Texas-est Ranger-est episode of Walker, Texas Ranger ever, watch “The Children Of Halloween.” It opens with Norris scoffing at his black co-worker’s George Washington Carver costume. Walker is a Texas Ranger, but more than that, he’s an awful dickhead.

One scene of men in ape masks shooting machine guns at a convenience store for no reason later, and we get a touching montage of kids practicing martial arts that feels like it lasts two hours. One of those kids is abducted by a satanic cult, and Walker is dropped into a race against time to stop children from being sacrificed. How spooky is all of this? So spooky that the opening credits adopt a Tales From The Crypt font and show us a cemetery with a blue filter over it. Fucking boo.

Sony Pictures Television Distribution

That’s ultimate spooky.

Regardless, Walker has never met a problem he couldn’t quite easily resolve by beating it unconscious. In the nick of time, he literally flies onto the screen with a side-kick, and then breaks a Satan worshiper’s neck in front of a group of stunned children. He proceeds to kick an entire cult into submission and saves the day. Walker finishes the episode by drinking coffee in a bar while ignoring the women who hit on him, because as the theme song says, “That’s what a ranger’s gonna be.” Yep. Murder a bunch of strangers in front of elementary schoolers and never have sex, like, ever. It’s what a ranger’s gonna be. Who am I to argue?

Daniel has a spooky, scary Twitter.

The Simpsons Tree House of Horror Collection is objectively the greatest Halloween TV you’ll ever find on this Earth. Enjoy!

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 6 Unnecessarily Horrifying Episodes Of Beloved Kids Shows and 5 Inexplicably Creepy Episodes of Family Friendly TV Shows.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Darkest Episode of an 80’s Sitcom Ever, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Boo!

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/12/06/the-5-best-halloween-episodes-you-should-watch-tonight/