#and it’s Frankenstein and you know Michael was named after the author

[a-dumbass-jester]

The urge to make a Lisa Frankenstein Doorkeay au despite not actually seeing it yet 

[rockislandadultreads]

Short Story Collections: Horror edition

In the Shadow of Frankenstein: Tales of the Modern Prometheus by Stephen Jones, Neil Gaiman

Frankenstein... His very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments, and reviving the dead.

Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world's most famous creature lives again.

Here are collected together for the first time twenty-four electrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest—with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow, and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and new contributions from Graham Masterton, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton.

Plus, you're sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley's original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.

As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it's time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.

She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin

A dictator craves love--and horrifying sacrifice--from his subjects; a mother raised in a decaying warren fights to reclaim her stolen daughter; a ghost haunts a luxury hotel in a bloodstained land; a new babysitter uncovers a family curse; a final girl confronts a broken-winged monster... Word Horde presents the debut collection from critically-acclaimed Weird Fiction author Nadia Bulkin. Dreamlike, poignant, and unabashedly socio-political, She Said Destroy includes three stories nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, four included in Year's Best anthologies, and one original tale, with an Introduction by Paul Tremblay.

His Hideous Heart by Dahlia Adler, Kendare Blake, Rin Chupeco, Lamar Giles, Tessa Gratton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Stephanie Kuehn, Amanda Lovelace, Marieke Nijkamp, Emily Lloyd-Jones, Hillary Monahan, Caleb Roehrig, Fran Wilde

Thirteen of YA’s most celebrated names reimagine Edgar Allan Poe’s most surprising, unsettling, and popular tales for a new generation.

Edgar Allan Poe may be a hundred and fifty years beyond this world, but the themes of his beloved works have much in common with modern young adult fiction. Whether the stories are familiar to readers or discovered for the first time, readers will revel in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales, and how they’ve been brought to life in 13 unique and unforgettable ways.

The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates

From one of our most important contemporary writers, The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror is a bold, haunting collection of six stories.

In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin’s doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect “found dolls” from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they? In “Gun Accident,” a teenage girl is thrilled when her favorite teacher asks her to house-sit, even on short notice. But when an intruder forces his way into the house while the girl is there, the fate of more than one life is changed forever. In “Equatorial,” set in the exotic Galapagos, an affluent American wife experiences disorienting assaults upon her sense of who her charismatic husband really is, and what his plans may be for her.

In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922." the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitely ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories by Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer, George R.R. Martin, Bob Leman, Haruki Murakami, Mervyn Peake, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Franz Kafka, Stephen King, Kelly Link

From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.

Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.

[brn1029]

Get those tin foil hats ready to go!

The 10 greatest conspiracy theories in rock

By Emma Johnston

In a world where fake news runs rampant, rock'n'roll is not immune to the lure of the conspiracy theory. These are 10 of the most ludicrous

Conspiracy theories, myths and legends have existed in rock’n’roll for as long as the music has existed, stretching all the way back to bluesman Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for superhuman guitar skills, fame and fortune.

There are those who believe Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison live on, others who think the Illuminati control the world through symbolism in popular culture, and plenty of evangelical types with their own agendas trawling rock and metal songs for secret messages luring the innocent to the dark side.

Let us take a look, then, at rock’n’roll conspiracy theories ranging from the intriguing to the ludicrous, as we try to separate the truth from the codswallop.

Lemmy was in league with the Illuminati

Few men have ever been earthier than Lemmy, but one conspiracy theorist claims that the Motorhead legend didn’t really die in December 2015, instead “ascending into the heavenly realm” after making a “blood sacrifice pact” with the Illuminati.

A “watcher” of the mythical secret society some believe are running the world – despite evidence that is at best flimsy, at worst straight from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown’s discarded notebooks – told the Daily Star: “Lemmy signed up for the ultimate pact – he signed his soul to the devil in order to achieve fame and fortune.”

While we can only imagine what the great man would have to say on the matter, there’s one word, in husky, JD-soaked tones, that we can just about make out coming across from the other side: “Bollocks.”

Paul McCartney died in 1966

As you might expect from the most famous band that has ever existed, there are enough crackpot theories about The Beatles to fill the Albert Hall. From John Lennon’s murder being ordered by the US government, who, led by Richard Nixon, suspected him of communism (the FBI actually did have a file on Lennon, but the story is spiced up by the man behind murderlennontruth.com, who apparently believes author Steven King was involved due to, uh, looking a bit like Mark Chapman) to Canadian prog outfit Klaatu being the Fab Four in disguise, there are plenty of tall tales more colourful than a Ringo B-side.

The most enduring, though, is the notion dreamt up by some US radio DJs that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. They came to this conclusion having studied the cover of Abbey Road – McCartney’s bare feet on the zebra crossing apparently symbolising death, while others found “evidence” in the album’s opaque lyrics. There were a lot of drugs in the 60s.

Gene Simmons has a cow’s tongue

It’s easy to see why all kinds of far-fetched stories sprung up when Kiss first took off in the 1970s. The fake-blood-spitting, the fire, the demon-superhero personas – middle America clutched its pearls and word spread that these otherworldly weirdos’ moniker stood for Knights In Satan’s Service. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

It was Gene Simmons’ preposterous mouth that got the nation’s less voluminous tongues wagging though. So long and pointy is his appendage, and so often waggled at his audiences (whether they asked for it or not), that eventually the rumour spread around the world’s playgrounds was that he’d had a cow’s tongue grafted onto his own. The bovine baloney is, of course, bullshit, but Simmons has admitted it's one of his favourite Kiss urban myths.

Supertramp predicted 9/11

The Logical Song may be Supertramp’s calling card, but one man in the US stretches common sense to the limit having come to the conclusion that the artwork for their 1979 album Breakfast In America gave prior warning of the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001.

Look at the album cover – painted from the perspective of a window on a flight into the city – in a mirror, and the ‘u’ and ‘p’ band’s name appears to become a 911 floating above the twin towers, while a logo on the back features a plane flying towards the World Trade Center.

So far, so coincidental, but when our intrepid investigator falls down a rabbit hole of Masonic interference, strained Old Testament connections (“The Great Whore of Babylon – Super Tramp”), and the title Breakfast In America reflecting the fact that the planes crashed early in the morning, things get really tenuous.

It’s fair to say it’s unlikely a British prog-pop band had prior knowledge of the terrorist attacks 22 years before they happened. But maybe Al Qaida were really big fans.

Stevie Wonder can see

Stevie Wonder is a genius. That fact is not up for dispute. The soul/jazz/funk/rock/pop legend was born six weeks prematurely in 1950, and the oxygen used in the hospital incubator to stabilise him caused him to go blind shortly afterwards. But his love of front-row seats at basketball games, the evocative imagery in his songs, and the fact that he once effortlessly caught a falling mic stand knocked over by Paul McCartney (who, let us reiterate, did not die in 1966) has caused basement Jessica Fletchers to muse that he’s faking his blindness as part of the act.

Wonder himself, a known prankster, has great fun with his status as one of the world’s most famous vision-impaired musicians. In 1973, he told Rolling Stone: “I’ve flown a plane before. A Cessna or something, from Chicago to New York. Scared the hell out of everybody.”

Dave Grohl invented Andrew W.K.

When Andrew W.K. first broke through in the early 2000s, dressed in white and covered in blood, his mission was serious in its simplicity: the party is everything. He took his message of having a good time, all the time, to levels of political fervour. But rumours of his authenticity have been doing the rounds from the start.

Reviewing WK’s first UK show at The Garage in London, The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis wrote: “One music-biz conspiracy theory currently circulating suggests that Andrew W.K. is an elaborate hoax devised by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.”

As time went on, the theory gained traction – Grohl was believed to be the mysterious Steev Mike credited on the debut album I Get Wet. And as W.K.’s style changed over subsequent records, and his own admission that there were legal arguments over who owns his name, whispers began that he wasn’t even a real person – he was a character, played by several different actors, an attempt to create the ultimate Frankenstein’s frontman.

"I'm not the same guy that you may have seen from the I Get Wet album," W.K. said in 2008. “I don't just mean that in a philosophical or conceptual way, it's not the same person at all. Do I look the same as that person?" The jury is out, but if this is a great white elephant concocted just for the sheer hell of it, we kind of want this one to be true.

Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager

An early victim of the 27 club, the death of Jimi Hendrix was depressingly cliched for a man so wildly creative: a bellyful of barbiturates led to him asphyxiating on his own vomit, according to the post-mortem. But in the years following the grim discovery at the Samarkand Hotel in London on 19 September 1970, a different theory was offered by the guitarist’s former roadie, James “Tappy” Wright.

In his book Rock Roadie, Wright claims Hendrix was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffery, who he says force-fed his charge red wine and pills. The motive? He feared he was about to be fired and was keen to cash in on the star’s life insurance. One thing we do know for certain is Jeffery won’t be able to give his version of events, as he was killed in a plane crash over France in 1973.

The 50th anniversary of Hendrix's tragic passing was "celebrated" with the release of Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary that "explored" his death further and was described by The Guardian as "a cheaply made mix of interviews and dumbshow dramatic recreations by actors scuttling about flimsy sets in gloomy lighting." Sounds good.

Courtney killed Kurt

Courtney Love is no stranger to demonisation from Nirvana fans. When Hole’s second album, the searing, catchy, feminist, witty, aggressive, vulnerable and unflinchingly honest Live Through This was released, days after Kurt Cobain’s death, rumours almost immediately started up that Love’s late husband wrote the songs. That was insulting and sexist enough, but nowhere near as damaging as the conspiracy theory that Love hired a hitman to kill Cobain amid rumours they were about to divorce.

After Cobain’s first attempt to take his own life in Rome, the Nirvana frontman was eventually convinced to go to rehab following an intervention by his wife and friends. He ran away from the facility, and the private investigator hired by Love to find him, Tom Grant, eventually became the source of the idea that Love and the couple’s live-in nanny Michael Dewitt were responsible for Cobain’s death shortly afterwards.

His claims, made in the Soaked In Bleach documentary, include the notion that Cobain had too much heroin in his system to pull the trigger of the shotgun, and that he believed the suicide note was forged.

People close to Cobain (and the Seattle Police Department) have refuted the theory, including Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg: “It’s ridiculous. He killed himself. I saw him the week beforehand, he was depressed. He tried to kill himself six weeks earlier, he’d talked and written about suicide a lot, he was on drugs, he got a gun. Why do people speculate about it? The tragedy of the loss is so great people look for other explanations. I don’t think there’s any truth at all to it."

The CIA wrote The Scorpions’ biggest hit

Previously synonymous with leather, hard rock anthems and some very questionable album artwork, West Germany’s Scorpions scored big with Wind Of Change, a power ballad heralding the oncoming fall of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and a new sense of hope in the Eastern Bloc.

In a podcast named after the 1990 song, though, Orwell Prize-winning US journalist Patrick Radden Keefe follows rumours from within the intelligence community that the song was actually written by the CIA, as propaganda to hasten the fall of the ailing Soviet Union via popular culture.

“Soviet officials had long been nervous over the free expression that rock stood for, and how it might affect the Soviet youth,” Keefe is quoted as saying. “The CIA saw rock music as a cultural weapon in the cold war. Wind of Change was released a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and became this anthem for the end of communism and reunification of Germany. It had this soft-power message that the intelligence service wanted to promote.”

It's a convincing theory, but one that is disputed by Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine: “I thought it was very amusing and I just cracked up laughing. It’s a very entertaining and really crazy story but like I said, it’s not true at all. Like you American guys would say, it’s fake news."

There are satanic messages in Stairway To Heaven

The great comedian Bill Hicks had something to say about people searching for evidence of devilry in rock’n’roll: “Remember this shit, if you play certain rock albums backwards there'd be satanic messages? Let me tell you something, if you're sitting round your house playing your albums backwards, you are Satan. You needn't look any further. And don't go ruining my stereo to prove a point either.”

The memo didn’t get through to televangelist and stylus ruiner Paul Crouch, who in 1982 attempted to scare the Christian right into believing Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven was stuffed with demonic meaning, and that played backwards it revealed the following message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”

Guitarist Jimmy Page, of course, is no stranger to the esoteric, making no secret of his interest in occultist Aleister Crowley and the attendant magick, and there were even rumours the band made a Faustian pact to achieve fame and fortune. But hiding messa

[attackfish]

Storytelling, Craft, and Conveying an Idea: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jurassic Park

Okay I never had to learn to love Jurassic Park, and I never stop worrying.

Jurassic Park was the film Steven Spielberg directed just before Schindler's List, and it's nearly impossible for two films to be more different. Spielberg, at the time an acknowledged master of the summer blockbuster, didn't think he was capable of directing a film with the weight and magnitude of Schindler's List, and attempted to enlist other more respected, in his opinion more worthy directors for the project he intended to produce. It was only after these other directors turned him down that he took the helm himself. With Schindler's List came a sea change in Spielberg's film-making, after which he gained the confidence to take on more ambitious projects and make the kinds of movies that would bring him recognition not only as a man who made fun movies, but as a great filmmaker.

He did not spring fully formed as a great filmmaker. While his vision was much grander in his later films, Spielberg's summer blockbusters already showed him to be a master of the craft of telling a story through cinema. This mastery of craft underpins all of Spielberg's more ambitious movies. And, conversely, without his later grandness of vision, Spielberg's storytelling craft is much easier to spot in films like Jurassic Park.

And this is why I want to talk about Jurassic Park, not because of what it means for Spielberg's development as a filmmaker, but as an example of a finely crafted story. Artistic craft in general is the tools that enable an artist to convey an artistic vision to an audience. Storytelling craft more specifically is the ability to express ideas and themes in the form of a story so that they have emotional impact and are rendered compelling to an audience.

There is an idea among some critics and indeed some writers, that ideas get in the way of a good story, and writing a story with big ideas is a surefire way to get a very bad story. This is an understandable belief, but fundamentally misguided, because a story, no matter what the author's intent, is going to express the author's ideas, and it is much, much better for the author to know what ideas they are working to convey, so that the story and the ideas harmonize. So what ideas does Jurassic Park convey? What is the big idea at it's heart?

Like all good stories, Jurassic Park has many ideas threaded through it, but the central theme, that the movie comes back to over and over, is the consequences of human hubris.

This is a common theme in the human storytelling tradition. The Greeks for example loved it. Frankenstein is such a story. Because of man's hubris in creating life, disaster happens. With such a beginning, it's unsurprising that modern stories of hubris, Individual hubris, and especially the collective hubris of humankind, would find a home in the speculative fiction genres, especially science fiction.

I was a certified scifi and fantasy nerd growing up, so I was bound at some point to stumble across the mid-twentieth century intellectual scifi sub-genre. If you spend any time in the speculative fiction genres, you probably know the type of story. They focus around a single idea that the author wants to make you think about. They are short, they often have a twist ending, and half the time the characters aren't even named, they are so unimportant to the author. And once the idea has been expressed, the story ends. They are stories that aren't really stories. Everything that would make for a good story with real emotional impact has been sacrificed in service of beating the audience over the head with the all important idea. They are the kind of story your well-meaning English teacher recommends to you because it will blow your mind.

I mention these stories for two reasons, one is that the consequences of human hubris is one of the most common ideas they attempt to convey, which makes sense, because they reflect the anxieties of the Cold War and the dawn of the nuclear age. Because of man's hubris in splitting the atom, the world could end.

I am singularly unimpressed with the sub-genre and its modern descendants. I don't think they're half as smart as they pretend to be, and they're boring. It's not that the ideas these stories are trying to convey are without value, it's simply that they are badly conveyed. And I would argue these stories, and other similar stories in other genres, are a big part of the reason for the disdain some writers and critics have for "stories with ideas", i.e. stories where the teller sets out to convey ideas. Because these stories sacrifice all the characteristics of a good story to convey their idea more succinctly, they are indeed bad stories. And because they bash you over the head with their Big Idea, it can seem as if stories that convey their idea with more subtlety don't have an idea to convey. This is why I have a certain amount of sympathy for this viewpoint, even though as I said earlier, there are ideas in every story, whatever author intent, and it's much better to have them there deliberately were they can be integrated into the story in an intentional and thoughtful way. Storytelling and the ideas in a story don't have to be in conflict. In fact they should not be.

The other reason is because these stories are much more likely to be respected as smart, cerebral than Jurassic Park in spite of often sharing the same underlying Big Idea, because of man's hubris, disaster happens. I think this is because there is a strain of thought in the West that says that emotions and reason are in direct conflict and reason is superior. If a person is having an emotional response to something, they must not also be having an intellectual response, and this is bad. Emotional responses are bad and we should fear them. This is not true. Everything we know about human development and learning tells us the opposite, that humans learn and internalize information and ideas better when they make an emotional connection to them. Furthermore, a good story, where the ideas are integrated into the story allows the audience to tease out the themes and ideas for themselves, allowing for a simulated experience, and audience's own discovery. Humans are also much more better able to learn what they discover for themselves than what they are told. Ironically this means that spoonfeeding an idea to an audience, as the terrible stories I talk about above do means that the audience is much less likely to learn that idea, or remember it. This also means that stories are a profoundly important means of conveying ideas. Humans are built to learn through stories.

So, with all that background in place, how does Jurassic Park tell a good story? How does it create emotional impact for its ideas? How does it show its ideas in a way that the audience gets to learn by simulated experience? How do the ideas and the story harmonize with the story serving the ideas at its core?

First and very simply, Jurassic Park gets its audience to care about its characters. Everything else, all of the emotional impact, rests on this. The novel Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, on which the movie is based, has a lot more in common with the storyless scifi stories I mentioned above than it does with the movie. Crichton was great at coming up with high concept premises and not very good at actual storytelling, and this is why although Michael Crichton wrote the original screenplay for Jurassic Park the movie, Spielberg called for extensive rewrites mostly focusing on characters and character development, giving characters arcs, shuffling around traits, and rebuilding some characters from the ground up.

This is how Ellie Sattler got personality and agency, Alan Grant got his dislike of children, Ian Malcolm went from an obnoxious author surrogate who existed to explicitly state Crichton's ideology while high on morphine, to an anxious intelligent audience surrogate, and John Hammond went from a greedy, grasping, conniving evil business man to a genial wealthy eccentric who wants to give children the experience of a lifetime. The children also are engaging and sympathetic instead of terminally annoying. This is also where the character arcs begin to take place. Alan Grant's initial dislike of and discomfort with children leads to his character arc learning to understand and appreciate children, and Hammond, no longer so revolting, can learn his lesson and live instead of the well deserved death he gets in the novel.

Spielberg also demonstrates his understanding that character arcs serve a purpose. While character arcs can be a useful tool to keep a character, especially one who gets a lot of focus, interesting, there is nothing wrong with static characters. Character arcs should tie back to the themes of a story, and Jurassic Park the movie does just that, Hammond's character arc especially. It's Hammond's hubris that leads to several deaths, and Hammond, his beloved grandchildren, and all of the main characters being placed in mortal peril, and it's the consequences of this hubris that force Hammond to reconsider his core assumptions about the world, how it works, and his place within it. Grant's character arc ties into many of the movie's secondary themes. of coming together, of self sacrifice, and that children are the hope for the future.

Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm meanwhile do not have character arcs. In both cases, the ways in which they could evolve over the course of the story would be thematically weird. Ian is our anxious audience surrogate, who complains and warns of impending doom, and is visibly anxious and sarcastic throughout. In a lesser story, he would be eaten by dinosaurs. In a mildly lesser story, he would be given an arc about overcoming his fear. This arc would clash with the main theme of the story, because Ian's fears are justified. He is the one not succumbing to hubris. Instead, what happens is Ian is shown to be both anxious and brave at the same time. He doesn't have to change to be brave. When the time comes, he can show tremendous courage and self sacrifice, and then when that time is over, he can go right back to being visibly anxious. This subverts audience expectations and makes him a richer character without changing him and dealing with the thematic implications. Ellie meanwhile also does not have an arc. Instead, she is the one who articulates the realization Hammond needs to come to. Much like Ian, she represents where the other characters need to get to. Both characters do this for Hammond. but also for Grant. Ellie gently mocks his discomfort with children and shows her own lack of the same discomfort, while Ian regularly shows concern for the children, and understanding of them and their feelings. They both push and prod the two characters undergoing arcs into the changes they need to make without feeling preachy. And Ellie especially makes choices that advance the plot in positive ways, making her proactive and more interesting without forcing her to change.

But great characters are unimportant if the audience doesn't get to know them before the emotional impact is delivered. Jurassic Park give the audience plenty of time to get to know the characters and watch them interact and bounce off each other. This process of getting to know the main characters and coming to like and identify with them means that later, we will care when they are in danger.

Spielberg also uses story structure to advance the themes of his story. The movie is structured in such a way as to build maximum suspense, but more importantly, it is designed to play on audience expectations, and to mimic within the movie the feeling of watching the movie. Spielberg knew of course when he was making the movie that his audience would go into the theater knowing certain things about the movie. There would be dinosaurs, they would be a towering special effects marvel, and then the dinosaurs would get loose and eat people. Instead of subverting this expectation, Spielberg gives it to us and sells it.

The first thing he does is show us a dinosaur, killing someone. This is off screen and only heard, and we don't actually see much at all of the raptor. This gets everybody onto the same page. If you managed to miss the whole "people will be eaten" thing, now you know. And this is something that other characters can reference throughout the first part of the movie, to build suspense and highlight Hammond's careless faith in the safety of his park. We are next introduced to Grant, Ellie, and most importantly, Hammond. Hammond in the movie is a clear surrogate for Spielberg himself, and the filmmakers more generally. This well-meaning showman will give the other characters dinosaurs in a stunning scientific and technical achievement, just as the movie will for the audience. And Grant and Ellie are sold on the park and the potential of seeing dinosaurs, the wonder and technological impressiveness much the same way the special effects dinosaurs are sold to the audience.

We are teased some more with the prospect of dinosaurs, we get to watch the characters interact, and then, at last, the movie, and Hammond, gives us what we, and the characters, have been waiting for. We get dinosaurs.

Within the movie, the dinosaurs are a stupendous, awe-inspiring fulfillment of all of the characters’ desire to see these amazing extinct creatures walking and breathing in front of them. And outside of the movie, the dinosaur special effects are a stupendous awe-inspiring fulfillment of all of the audience's desire to see these amazing extinct creatures walking and breathing in front of them. For one transcendent moment, the experiences of the characters and the audience are in near perfect unity. This binds the audience closer to the characters, causing us to identify with them, and it allows us to buy into their journey, to become stakeholders in it.

This wouldn't work if the special effects weren't really just that good. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are breathtaking in how real they look. It's been decades and they still look staggeringly real, more real even than the dinosaurs in some of the more modern installments in the franchise. This movie really is as close as most of us will ever get to that childhood dream of seeing real dinosaurs. And Spielberg sells it. He sells it hard, with sweeping visuals, John Williams's soaring score, and every cinematic trick in his arsenal that I don't know nearly enough about to describe. And he sells it not only because this is what the audience paid the price of admission for, but also because it does bind us to that character experience, and critically, it gets us to buy into the hubris at the center of the story. Yes we know the dinosaurs will end up eating people and it will all end in terror and tears, but aren't they cool?

They really really are.

And because we the audience buys into the hubris, there is a sense of betrayal when it all goes wrong. And this emotional gut reaction is in spite of the fact that the entire audience knows this is coming. It's the other thing we paid admission for, not just to see dinosaurs, but to see them eating people, to be thrilled and scared. The audience is given the shock of the hubris coming back to bite everyone. We experience through the story the theme of the story. And this is done so deftly it's hard to realize it's happening.

And that is why Jurassic Park is a shining example of storytelling craft, and why I love this movie.

[theirwolfbicanthrope]

Have any recommended autumn/spooky reads?

Oh man, not as many as I would like? But! I do have a few!

Final Girls and The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager - now, TLTIL is technically more of a summer read, but it’s such a good, quick thriller that I really, really enjoyed so I’m rec’ing both. Final Girls is more on the mystery/suspense end than horror, but it does play around with that trope somewhat. Both books were really quick reads for me that I loved, but I think the second book is - overall - a better book? I like both equally because Final Girls played with things that I am super into, but TLTIL threw me for several loops. Both books ultimately deal with traumatized women with guilty secrets who have to come to terms with their past that’s also coming back to haunt them, literally. (there are some potentially triggering/squicky scenes and subject matter in both, so if you’re interested in warnings I’d be happy to provide warnings for all I can remember. :))

There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins - this one is actually set around Halloween! This book also has a young girl who has a guilty secret but is much more of a slasher tale. And the author does a really good job making it an engaging slasher while keeping it also an interesting YA novel - with representation! There are some gory deaths that can get quite upsetting, so let me know if you’d like detailed warnings.

Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alexander - a ghost story where the main character is the ghost. This was a lovely and upsetting story that managed to be scary even after the mc died and became a ghost (this is put in the summary so it’s not a spoiler, the actual plot of the book is what happens after the mc dies). It does however deal with ableism and asylum abuse and has some parts in it that might be triggering for those who’ve dealt with suicidal thoughts?

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake - I’m going to be upfront and say this book is trashy and ends slightly open/on a cliffhanger and I won’t read the sequel cause I found out the ending and it bothered me and this book has some racist, racist cliches and stereotypes, but also ghost hunter boy meets monster ghost girl who does awful things but they bond despite it and it’s creepy and got an interesting vibe if being a little trashy and feeling like the author watches too much SPN.

My Frankenstein by Michael Lee - do you want a cheesy steampunk retelling of Frankenstein that removes the female characters in it, makes Viktor a charismatic but complete douche, Adam a sensitive mystery guy, and plop a clichely named heroine in a love triangle between them? Then give this book a try because it’s actually kind of ridiculous fun. This one is only available as an e-Book though.

I was going to try to read another book that I have to see if I’d add to this list but I wasn’t able to get myself to do it, lol, so this is my list for now - I might post a longer list midway through October, cause I’m planning to start reading some spooky stories this week :)))

[lushscreamqueen]

THE EVIL MIND on The Schlocky Horror Picture Show

July 27, 2008

OPENING: Hello, good evening and welcome to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show, I'm your host, Nigel Honeybone. but of course, you already knew I was going to say that. I know what you're thinking, there just aren't enough great British horror films of the 1930s concerning clairvoyants, right? Well, prepare to be enlightened, as the diminutive but very visible Claude Rains plays a con-artist clairvoyant who gains the power to actually predict the future, yet is unable to prevent it from happening. The Clairvoyant also happens to be the alternate title to tonight's atmospheric classic, The Evil Mind, but you knew I was going to say that, too... BREAK: Atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife! But they don't like to give me anything sharp, you know...anyway, we'll be right back with The Schlocky Horror Picture Show after these community annoyances... MIDDLE: Welcome back to the Schlocky Horror Picture Show, and me, Nigel Honeybone. Don't worry, I'm not going to carry on with the clairvoyance jokes, but of course you knew I was going to say that...I'm sorry, I just can't seem to stop... Anyway, what drew audiences to The Evil Mind, a Gainsborough Picture, was it's stars. So, who is really the greatest Scream Queen of all time? Is it Barbara Steele or Ingrid Pitt, who starred in many classic horror movies of the sixties? Or could it be the lovely Elsa Lancaster who portrayed the ultimate female fantastic creation in Bride of Frankenstein, or screamers like Carolyn Munroe, Leanna Quigley, or Sybil Danning? Who can claim so many horror projects in their busiest years? Well, all these women are worthy names to toss around, but for many the individual to remember for real Queen status remains a Canadian actress from Alberta named Fay Wray. In 1933, Fay Wray was being threatened on movie screens by more than just King Kong. Next in The Vampire Bat by, surprisingly enough, a bat, and then in The Mystery Of The Wax Museum, threatened by...um, wax...and so on...as she faultlessly played hapless heroines in horrendous hazards. For the second and third time, she also had to endure Lionel Atwill's formidable villainy. Consequently, the year 1933 was to be Fay's busiest, as eleven different movies took to the screen with her name in the cast. Fay Wray died in her Manhattan apartment in 2004 from natural causes, close to a month before celebrating her 97th birthday, and she's looking well. The immortal paramour of the apes, Fay Wray had been approached by director Peter Jackson about appearing in his remake of King Kong, but declined with an unarguable finality. Some actors will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid working in New Zealand. Claude Rains returned to his homeland after his recent success in Hollywood with The Invisible Man. I've always enjoyed the great acting of Claude Rains, and found his over-acting most amusing. It wasn't until after this film that Rains went on to become a great dramatic actor, appearing in Casablanca, and many greater starring roles. Rains never needed cue cards, he always remembered his many long lines to perfection, something considered a remarkable feat in Hollywood of today. I'm not even going mention his zillions of early television appearances. No... Other pleasing appearances include a relatively unknown cast of now recognisable character actors including Donald Clathrop, Jack Raine, and Frank Cellier. Ronald Shiner can be glimpsed during a crowd scene, D.J. Williams is a member of the jury and a fifteen year old Graham Moffatt appears as a page. Moffatt later found fame as a prominent stock company member of the Will Hay comedies as Albert. And of course Athole Stewart, who seemed to play nothing but lords, knights, squires, captains, colonels, governers. He seemed to be the ultimate authority figure of his time. Sir Michael Elias Balcon was a British film producer known for his work with Ealing Studios. When he was invited to head Ealing in 1938, he readily agreed. Under his benevolent leadership and surrounded by a reliable team of directors, writers, technicians and actors,

Ealing became the most famous British studio in the world, despite turning out no more than six feature films a year. Quality over quantity seems to be a tradition. The great anthology film Dead Of Night, Went The Day Well, and of course the Ealing comedies were released during his time there. In over 230 films he worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Basil Dearden, Michael Relph, me, and many other British greats of the film world. He was made a Knight Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire Of The yada yada yada in 1948. After World War Two, his style of 'nice' films were on the way out, so Ealing Studios started going down the tubes during the 1950s, and Balcon's creative control at other companies waned considerably. The last film on which he worked as executive producer was Tom Jones in 1963, after which he continued to encourage young directors, funding low-budget experimental work, in other words, pretentious rubbish. I shouldn't really say that, but I mean, he is dead after all, and it's not like any of those up-and-coming directors are ever going to give me a job, are they? Anyway, enough of my complaining (it's not as if anyone listens, do they?), let's just get back to the future with The Clairvoyant...I mean, The Evil Mind, the first film to give away it's own plot, on purpose! CLOSING: Now that didn't hurt much, did it? If nothing else, this certainly was...a...film. It's not clairvoyance so much as, say, Deju Vu in reverse. No, wait. that would be Uv Ujed...Uvu Jed? Uh, oh, I think I've invoked the name of an ancient one, and I think I'd like to leave before he gets here... So please join me next week when I have the opportunity to sterilize you with fear during another terror-filled excursion to the dark side of the Public Domain on...The Schlocky Horror Picture Show. Toodles!

by Lushscreamqueen

[ryanmoody]

Scream Factory **NEW TITLE ANNOUNCEMENTS**

Rec Collection

The popular found-footage horror franchise REC is coming to Blu-ray for the first time in the U.S. along with its sequels in one complete collection! Release date is planned for September 25th.

- In the first film, [REC], a TV reporter and her crew are asked to cover a crew of firemen on duty. What seems like a routine story about a night at the fire station soon turns into a nightmare. Trapped inside a quarantined building, the crew must try to survive the terror that rages inside.

- [REC] 2 picks up minutes after the end of [REC]. The authorities have lost contact with the people trapped inside the quarantined building and chaos reigns. A Special Operations Unit has been tasked with entering the premises ... only to discover that this is anything but a straightforward mission.

- [REC] 3: GENESIS leaves the confines of the quarantined building to follow the wedding of Koldo and Clara. Everything appears to be running smoothly and the bride and groom are enjoying a wonderful day ... until some of the guests start showing signs of a strange illness and unleash a torrent of violence.

- [REC] 4: APOCALYPSE returns focus to Ángela Vidal, the young reporter who has managed to make it out of the building alive. But she hasn't made it out of the building alone as she carries the seed of the strange infection. She is taken to a provisional quarantine facility: the perfect location for the virus to be reborn.

This is a 4-disc set with each film receiving its own single Blu-ray case. All four will all be housed in a rigid slipcase. Extras are in progress and will be announced on a later date.

Pre-order directly from us we'll ship it out two weeks early! https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/the-rec-collection…

BRAIN DEAD (1990)

1990’s BRAIN DEAD featuring a “double Bill” – Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton – is coming to Blu-ray for the first time this September! The cast also includes  Bud Cort (Harold and Maude) and George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke).

The Eunice Corporation is on the ground floor of an exciting growth industry, utilizing a memory re-sculpting technique pioneered by eccentric neurosurgeon Rex Martin (Bill Pullman, Independence Day, The Grudge). It envisions nationwide clinics where anyone can lose the hang-ups of an unhappy childhood, a failed romance or a botched career. At Eunice's "New You" outlets, a simple operation will give customers peace of mind. Or it might leave them brain dead. But when Martin refuses to cooperate with Eunice, he soon finds himself plunged into a surreal existence that intertwines dreams and reality. Has Martin slipped over the edge into madness? Or have corporate profit mongers given him a push, making him the guinea pig in his own experiment? To know the answer is to know true terror!   Directed by Adam Simon (TV's Salem) with a story by TV's The Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont.

Extras are in progress and will be announced on a later date.  

National release date is September 11th but if you pre-order directly from us we'll ship it out two weeks early! https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/brain-dead…

The Evil (1978)

The often-requested 70s haunted house film THE EVIL is finally coming to Blu-ray for the first time!  

A psychologist (Richard Crenna) and his wife (Joanna Pettet) buy a dilapidated historical mansion with a dark past in this terrifying chiller. Hoping to restore the estate and turn it into a drug rehabilitation clinic, he accepts the help of some of his students and current patients. But when a secret door in the basement of the house is opened, the malevolent presence within is unleashed, trapping everyone inside. One by one, they are picked off by the unspeakable terror that has awoken ... and the doctor learns that even though his name is on the deed, the house belongs soul-ly to The Evil. Victor Buono, Andrew Prine, and Cassie Yates also star.

Extras will be ported over from the prior DVD release. And we’ll be doing a new 2K high-definition film transfer taken from the only surviving archival print.

National street date is September 18th but if you pre-order directly from us we'll ship it out two weeks early! https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/the-evil…

The Seventh Sign (1988)

Demi Moore, Michael Biehn and Jürgen Prochnow face the end-of-days in the riveting 1988 thriller THE SEVENTH SIGN—which is coming to the Blu-ray from us in September!  

Moore stars as Abby Quinn, a young woman who discovers that she and her unborn child play a terrifying part in the chain of events destined to end the world. Already troubled with a difficult pregnancy, Abby grows more distraught once she and her husband (Biehn, The Terminator, Aliens, The Fan) rent their studio apartment to David (Prochnow, In The Mouth Of Madness), an enigmatic drifter. As Abby becomes ensnared in a series of otherworldly experiences, it becomes apparent that David is carrying out the mythical prophecies of Judgment Day ... and that she has been chosen as the instrument of the Seventh Sign. But can Abby — or anyone — stand between the wrath of God and the future of humanity?

Extras are in progress and will be announced on a later date. National street date is September 11th but if you pre-order directly from us we'll ship it out two weeks early! https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/the-seventh-sign…

The Bride (1985)

Here comes THE BRIDE! The 1985 lavish remake of The Bride of Frankenstein is coming to the Blu-ray for the first time on September 25th. Frankenstein builds the perfect woman — and lives to regret it — in this tantalizing marriage of horror, romance, and unbridled passion! Rock legend Sting plays the cunning scientist and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance) lends her dramatic presence as his supreme, sublime creation. This gothic tale, inspired by the indelible themes and characters originally brought to life by Mary Shelley, follows Frankenstein's creations as they search for their place in the world — the gorgeous Eva by declaring her independence, and her grotesque intended mate Viktor (Clancy Brown, Highlander) by learning self-worth from a compassionate circus dwarf (David Rappaport, Time Bandits). Can Dr. Frankenstein survive when the monster returns to claim his intended? Extras are in progress and will be announced on a later date. Pre-order THE BRIDE now directly from us for two weeks early shipping @ https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/the-bride?product_id=6835

[aion-rsa]

Clarice Review (Spoiler Free): No Hannibal, No Problem

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Clarice review is based on the first three episodes and contains no spoilers.

CBS’s new federal cop procedural Clarice is a little bit grittier than the majority of crime shows on network TV. It also flips the perspective on the mainly male POV of the genre. Both of these innovations can be attributed to the source material. The series is a sequel to the story told in Jonathan Demme’s psychological horror classic The Silence of the Lambs. It distinguishes itself from the film and the original book in two ways. The first is the crimes which are being investigated. There is no traditional serial killer. Oh, there are people who fit the legal definition, that’s part of the setup, but Clarice is playing a longer game. The VICAP Fly Team, the exclusive unit on the series, is after something far more insidious.

Clarice is set in 1993, about a year after the Jame Gumb, aka “Buffalo Bill,” case. Rebecca Breeds, best known for her role in Pretty Little Liars, plays FBI Agent Clarice Starling. The newly tapped agent made quite a name for herself, saving the now-Attorney General Ruth Martin’s (Jayne Atkinson) daughter after almost becoming a victim of the very madman she was chasing. She’s also made quite the mess of herself, which no one really seems to appreciate as Clarice is yanked out of therapy before the opening credits of the first episode are done rolling.

Besides the usual challenges of a pioneering woman professional working in a man’s world, Clarice also faces the toxicity of the bruised male ego. She hit a home run the first time at bat, when she was only a designated hitter to begin with, and was voted most valuable player. The general consensus among her immediate superiors, like Deputy Assistant Attorney General Paul Krendler (Michael Cudlitz), is it had to be luck, or help from someone one the inside. Of course, no one can ever speak about the inside man. Clarice can’t mention his name on stakeouts, hearings, the water fountain, or late night at a bar. She can’t even mouth it during therapy.

This is the second way Clarice differentiates itself from the original film and author Thomas Harris’ book. Hannibal Lector has nothing to do with this series. The rights to the characters are split between MGM and the Dino De Laurentiis Company. Clarice gets Hannibal’s leftovers. As far as we know, the not-so humble humanitarian is still at large, but it’s like they’re serving up a bloodless vegetarian meal.

The gore is pretty amazing. The makeup and effects team are highly skilled at getting just the right bite marks, and it shows. There is a disturbingly cool effect with human hands coming out of a monarch butterfly in episode 3. Clarice borrows some of the film’s modus operandi, such as making note of dumping bodies in water to destroy any trace of evidence. While the series subliminally evokes Silence of the Lambs, it stops far short of copying the distinctive look Demme got for the film.

This doesn’t stop the series from capturing some peculiarly dark angles. Pulling bodies from a river is never pretty, and some of the settings are pretty grim. During the first episode, one of the agents takes Clarice into one of the dingiest of drug dens in search of a next of kin. In the real world, the 1993 timeframe sets the series shortly after the FBI raids on Waco and Ruby Ridge, and the first World Trade Center bombing. The federal bureau was very much a man’s club back then, as Demme pointed out by framing scenes from Starling’s perspective.

In the film and book, Starling was leered at, drooled over, dismissed, and well, far worse, if you include the trauma she shared with Catherine Martin (Marnee Carpenter), the Buffalo Bill victim who was told to “put the lotion in the basket.” Catherine gets Buffalo Bill’s poodle Precious as a consolation prize. Clarice’s best confidante is Ardelia Mapp Ardelia Mapp (Devyn Tyler). She’s stuck logging evidence in the Cold Files department, a hard enough place to distinguish yourself besides being both a black woman in a white male office environment and a friend in the department who “is famous all over the world.”

Clarice has a reputation for catching monsters, and Attorney General Martin tells her it’s time she owned that reputation. But street cred is hard to come by. Like all too many procedurals, the main cop is at odds with the rest of the team. The conditions are exceedingly weighted against Clarice from the very beginning. Besides the general feeling everyone thinks she was just lucky, she is immediately labeled “not a team player” by her fellow officers. She’s pegged as a loose cannon, a sore loser, and a publicity hound by the first half of the first episode, and a rogue cop by the end. We get it. By episode 2, the audience just wants people to leave her alone and get on with her work.

In one episode, she’s the only agent the perpetrator will talk to. That doesn’t raise her esteem in the eyes of her peers, who already see power plays everywhere. Clarice tells a fellow officer she’s been called worse. Clarice has been known as the Bride of Frankenstein, Igor and Rapunzel, and says she’s on her way to a verified classification as a West Virginia granny witch. By episode 2 we wouldn’t be surprised if it somehow turns out Clarice really is one of those backwoods’ hag magicians. In one sequence, she just happens to hide in the same place an evasive child is hiding. Clarice also just happens to be able to reach a suspected shooter and get him to run to a command post unharmed. It doesn’t turn out like she plans, of course, but the coincidences are spectacular.

Breeds brings a great sense of control to Clarice, while still letting it slip that she’s on the edge of losing it. While she pulls off an artistic ambiguity, her eyes still telegraph clues so graphically you wonder why the other agents in the room don’t get it. It is certainly elusive to her department-appointed therapist, confrontationally played by Shawn Doyle. We learn more about Clarice from what she tells the killers than what she admits in therapy. One charismatic desperado learns Clarice was raised in West Virginia. Her father, a marshal, was shot on night duty when responding to a robbery. Clarice’s shrink gets sidelong glances and faraway stares, also one eye-roll, very subtle.

Clarice, like Evil, are good examples of how CBS is attempting to subvert genres for unexpected twists.  The series comes from executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet, who are also developing Blackbird: Lena Horne and America for Showtime. Silence of the Lambs was a very original film and it’s a little sad to see it so easily turned to formula. As a procedural on a network, it is an interesting ride, but the first three installments haven’t evoked a rollercoaster. Every episode ends on an almost spiritually uplifting note. It feels like it’s time, however, for the relative comfort to be stripped. Clarice gets a confession on tape which exposes a dire conspiracy. It’s only a matter of time before it hits home.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Clarice premieres Feb. 11 on CBS.

The post Clarice Review (Spoiler Free): No Hannibal, No Problem appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/36Qvv8X

[ssimagines]

Reid’s Monster: Epilogue|| Spencer Reid

NOT MY GIF

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: 1651

Summary:  Epilogue. The rest of their lives

Warnings: Halloween Oriented triggers, Frankenstein triggers, HALLOWEEN THEMES, scar, FLUFFFFFFFFFFFF

Long Note:  Just so you know I know halloween can be triggering, please don’t read if you have a problem with halloween or scars. Thought these are necessarily very ready triggers at this point they can still be triggering.

This is sorta based off an imagine series for Andy Biersack that I read two years ago and I would like to credit the author so thank you No-love-for-the-sick. This is a variation on your idea, but I am trying to put my own spin on it.

I look how good I did about posting!!

I know in the gif it says it’s a boy and their baby is a girl, but Spencer with Baby was too precious to pass up. 

Last part! give the rest of the parts some love if you haven’t. I will taking requests again. I might even do a 3 part mini series for the Christmas holiday depending on the response I get! let me know!

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3    Part 4    Part 5     Part 6    Part 7

Masterlist

You laid in the hospital bed tired beyond belief. You had fallen asleep shortly after you gave birth to your baby, but it hadn’t lasted long nor had it really helped you all that much. You opened your heavy eyelids to be greeted by the sight of your boyfriend holding your baby girl in his arms.

When Spencer saw your eyes open, he smiled at you brightly. He titled the head of your infant daughter up so you could see her beautiful potato like face. A lazy drug riddled smile graced your lips as you looked at the baby in front of you.

“Say hi to mommy,” Spencer said. The little girl in his arms was wrapped snuggly in the baby blue blanket that Penelope had knitted for her. Her head was the only thing that peaked out of the blanket and a tuft of brown hair peaked out around the hat that JJ had bought for her.

You reached out to Spencer and your daughter beaconing him to bring her closer to you. Spencer brought her and set her in your arms. You scooted over on the bed so that Spencer could join you. He laid down on his side beside you and let an arm wrap around your shoulder. You leaned your head against his chest and looked down lovingly at the small child in your arms.

“How long have it been asleep?” you asked.

“Only about two hours,” Spencer said. He brought an arm to rest against your arms around your child. He held you while you held her.

“Has the team come by?” you asked.

You had gone into labor in the middle of the night last night. You remember Spencer calling JJ in the middle of the night. You were in the early stages of labor all through the rest of the night. When morning came, Spencer had to call into work alerting the rest of the team of your baby’s birth.

“At least one of them has been here since this morning,” Spencer said. “They’ve been coming in shifts. I think Rossi is here now, but I haven’t left our little girl’s side since she was born.”

“You’re a good father, Spencer,” you whispered softly.

The newborn in your arms yawned opening her small mouth wide. You smiled at the baby in your arms.

“I think I know what we should name her,” you said softly as the baby started to open her eyes.

“And what’s should her name be?” Spencer asked.

“Rosaline Diana Reid,” your voice was soft as you ran a finger gently down the side of the child’s face. “After JJ’s sister and your mother. We could call her Rosie like we talked about,

“I like it,” Spencer said smiling. “Hi Rosie, your mommy and I love you.”

You looked to your boyfriend with a wide smile and placed a kiss on his lips. Your family was whole now.

It had been a year since Spencer and your daughter was born. You were sitting down waiting to give your daughter her first birthday cake. You had seen a video on the internet where a mother on her child’s first birthday gave them a cake to destroy, and you had to decide to do the same. JJ thought it was a great idea, and now you were in the middle of waiting for Spencer with the cake.

“Spencer,” you called.

“Coming, Coming,” Spencer called back as he slowly made his way into the dinning room carrying the purple cake that you had made earlier that day. You smiled at the goofy man as your daughter banged her hands happily on the tray of her high chair. She had seen her father and that had caused your sweet girl to fill with excitement.

All at once everyone in the room started to singing happy birthday. You looked around the room as you sang a smile on your face. A little over two years ago, you were nothing you were spare parts of dead people as weird as that sounds. You had come a long way since them. Now you were celebrating your daughter’s first birthday with the man that you loved and a family that you had made. It all seemed so unreal.

“Happy Birthday dear Rosie,” everyone sang. Spencer put the cake down in front of your child. The little brunette girl wasted no time grabbing on to the cake as the song finished.

Everyone watched for a moment as she started to flip cake all over. Eventually, they all returned to their conversations. Spencer came and sat on the other side of your daughter’s high chair.

“Can you believe we made this,” you said in awe of the child. Spencer chuckled.

“Honestly, no,” he responded. “I would have never guessed this would be my life three years ago, but I could not be happier with the way that it has turned out.”

You looked lovingly at your boyfriend. He was still looking at the little girl who was engrossed with the mess of cake. Your eyes drifted to the baby. She had already gotten a good chunk of it in her hair. She had figured out it tasted good as she was now showing her hand in her mouth greedily.

“Y/N,” Spencer said. You turned back to see him in front of you down on one knee. Your hand shot up to your mouth. You knew what this was. The room had fallen silent as everyone watched. Spencer took a small velvet box out of his pocket and opened it up for you to see. It was a simple solitaire diamond. It was plain, but you loved it.

“Y/F/N, you are the best thing that happened to me. When you came into my life two years ago, I knew that you were the love of my life. Now we have the most beautiful little girl who is just my whole world. I love you so much for this life that you’ve given me, so will you marry me?”

“Yes Spencer of course,” you wasted no time responding throwing your arms around his neck. There was clapping from the people in attendance, but you didn’t hear them. You were to caught up in the man you loved. Spencer put the ring on your finger and was about to kiss you when cake hit both of your face.

There was a small giggle from the little girl as both her parents turned to look at her.

“Mama,” she said laughing. A large smile spread across both your faces.

You and Spencer had opted for a long engagement. You liked the idea of being engaged, and it had been amazing to have the time to adjust to the idea.

Now you were standing in the bridal room of the small venue looking at your dress in the mirror. You looked beautiful, but something was keeping you in the small room.

JJ walked in carrying Rosie in her arms. Rosie was now a little over two and was carrying the basket with rose petals in it. She was your flower girl and looked so cute in the satin pink dress. JJ was wearing a matching colored dress that looked really good on her.

“Are you ready?” JJ said. You looked at her reflection not knowing how to respond.

“Mommy marry Daddy now,” Rosie said with a large smile. Her baby teeth on full view. You smiled at your little girl and took a deep breath.

“Ready,” you said turning to the girls.

“Then let’s go before Reid gets scared that you aren’t coming,” JJ said.

You laughed at her joke and followed he out of the dressing room. Garcia handed you and JJ your bouquets and got Rosie ready for her entrance. Rossi offered you his arm which you gladly took.

You had asked him to walk you down the aisle. The tears in his eyes at that moment answered your question. Now you were grateful that the man you considered a father was here next to you. Rosie started down the aisle followed by Garcia and then JJ leaving just you and Rossi.

“You look beautiful,” Rossi whispered into your ear.

“Thank you,” you said. “for everything.”

“Of course,” he said patting your hand that was wrapped around his arm. Together you started your walk down the aisle.

Spencer was dancing with Rosie on the dance floor as you sipped some water. You were exhausted and your feet hurt, but you were having so much fun with all the people you loved by your side.

“Mommy join,” Rosie called from her father’s arms. JJ was beside them dancing with Henry and Will was dancing with Michael. Garcia was also on the dance floor just having a ball. You smiled and went over to join your family.

Together the three of your danced happily to some song that was apparently popular now. Spencer would spin Rosie every once and a while causing her to let out joyful laughter.

When the song slowed down, Luke requested to dance with Rosie. She gladly accepted the offer from her favorite uncle. She had a small crush on him and you couldn’t blame her. Both you and Spencer had agreed that Luke Alvez was one handsome man.

“Can I have this dance, Mrs. Reid?” Spencer said offering you his hand.

“Of course, Dr. Reid,” you said taking his hand. Spencer pulled you into him as you moved slowly together to the music. You rested your head on your husband’s shoulder with a smile that stretched from ear to ear.  

You looked around the room at all the people who were here with you from Diana to JJ to your daughter. This was it. This was your family. You might not have been brought into this world a conventional way, but you wouldn’t trade a second of your life for anything.

TAGGED: @ultrarebelheart

[delfinamaggiousa]

13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s

As much as it tries to root itself in the past, Michter’s is actually a brand to pay attention to going forward. It’s investing it all — from millions of dollars to highly skilled palates — into becoming as authentically “Kentucky” as possible. Not to mention, Michter’s is not afraid of investing in serious aging, or experimenting with new processes and flavor profiles.

Here are 13 things you need to know about the brand that’s kind of dying to impress you (let them).

Michter’s isn’t bourbon or rye.

Well, it’s not just bourbon, nor rye. At its baseline, Michter’s is straight bourbon and straight rye. This means that the booze is aged at least two years, or in this case, over four (more on that below). There are other aspects to bourbon and rye, of course, but the main thing to know for Michter’s is the rye is spicier, and the bourbon is just a bit smoother.

It’s a Kentucky brand that started with locally grown Pennsylvania rye.

We all know bourbon doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky, right? Well, the distillery that became the Kentucky-identifying Michter’s actually began in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Around 1753, Swiss Mennonite brothers Johann and Michael Shenk started the distillery that would become Michter’s, producing one of the earliest local American whiskeys with rye from its own grain fields in Schaefferstown in eastern Pennsylvania.

Washington used it to booze up his troops.

George Washington is rumored to have purchased whiskey from Shenk in the winter of 1778 to warm his troops stationed at Valley Forge. In truth, the connection between modern day Michter’s and that O.G. Pennsylvania Mennonite distillery is tenuous at best. Basically, the people who founded Michter’s bought the rights to the lapsed trademark from Shenk’s distilling efforts. So, no, drinking modern-day Michter’s doesn’t qualify as a decent substitute for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

It wasn’t called Michter’s until the 1950s.

Over the course of the Pennsylvania distillery’s existence, it was called many things — Bomberger’s, mostly, and later Pennco — and finally, Michter’s for a very sentimental but also very savvy marketing reason.

The name is made up — and also adorable.

Michter’s always sounded like an Irish cola brand to us, or maybe one of the trillion failed diagnoses in an episode of “House” (right up there with sarcoidosis). It’s actually a made-up word, and the creation of mid-20th century distillery owner Louis Forman, who co-owned the Pennsylvania distillery with Charles Everett Beam — yes, of that family. After Forman took over, he named the first pot-still sour mash whiskey “Michter’s” after his sons Michael and Peter, making Michter’s like the Kimye of American whiskeys.

Michter’s is a bit of a Frankenstein brand.

Sure, it tries to be all historic and old timey-looking — see the 1753 on the label? — but Michter’s is kind of a bourbon Frankenstein, or really Dr. Frankenstein’s bourbon monster: It’s patched together from a bunch of different elements and given life by people who believe (at times maniacally) in the brand. It can claim a tie-in to the historic Shenk distillery because that location briefly became Michter’s in the 1950s. But it also asserts itself as part of Whiskey Row in Downtown Louisville — literally on Main Street — trying to graft Kentucky authenticity onto its jumbled infrastructural past. But questions as to where the bourbon’s been made abound. Whiskey reviewers, and even whiskey guru and author Chuck Cowdery, can’t trace the source of Michter’s actual bourbon with total transparency from the brand itself. Short answer: Like many bourbons, Michter’s distilling has been outsourced, but with the development of its own farm and even a micro-distillery in Louisville, it’s trying to bring things in-house.

Michter’s is basically born-again Kentucky whiskey.

Michter’s began in Pennsylvania, and died there, too, with the brand declaring bankruptcy in 1989. It was forced to close its doors on Valentine’s Day of the following year, and we can only assume the employees drank a bunch of Michter’s and cried in the tub. But the name was revived thanks to the joint efforts of bourbon lovers Joe Magliocco and Dick Newman of Chatham Imports, who bought the brand name in 1997. It would take some years and cash to establish a presence in Kentucky, which today includes a 145-acre grain farm in Springfield purchased in 2018.

Michter’s started doing its own distilling in Kentucky proper in 2015. Previously, in the early 2000s, Michter’s had whiskeys being made to its specifications by other Kentucky distilleries, and began experimenting at its own place in Shively in 2014. It finally produced Kentucky-made Michter’s in 2015.

Reborn Michter’s owes its depth to female palates.

When she stepped up to replace the legendary Willie Pratt as Michter’s master distiller in 2016, Pam Heilmann became the first female master distiller at a Kentucky Distillers’ Association distillery since Prohibition. And while she recently handed over the reins to Dan McKee — whom she basically brought over to Michter’s with her — and took on the more flexible role of Master Distiller Emeritus, female palates continue to pervade the Michter’s brand. In fact, Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson is still running the barrel side of things, and with an obsession with barrel science and a Kentucky moonshiner grandfather, Wilson’s resume surely adds to Michter’s credibility.

Michter’s is both ageless and aged.

In its roster of products, Michter’s has Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye; both are labeled “no age statement,” meaning they’re at least four years old, and some 10- and even quarter-century-old variants are out there. But it also makes something completely different: Michter’s US*1 Unblended American Whiskey, a product that, it says, is “aged in a way that utilizes whiskey-soaked barrels to achieve a rich and unique flavor profile.” Unique is a keyword there — though divisive might work, too, as some reviews describe it as ultra-smooth, over-vanilla-ed, lacking depth, Werther’s-proximate, and more.

Michter’s makes rye that’s as old as Halsey.

You know, the singer who made line dancing both scary and sexy? Michter’s seems to want to dig deep into bourbon street cred, which is mostly earned with time, i.e., history or actual aging. By definition, since they’re designated “straight,” Michter’s Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye are aged at least two years — and since they have no age statements, they’re definitely aged at least four years. Yes, American whiskey gets squirrely about admitting its real age, but Michter’s isn’t’ afraid of admitting how old some of its whiskies are: It distills some significantly aged whiskies, like a 25-year Kentucky Straight Rye that’s incredibly difficult to come by but, per one happy customer, was “incredibly rich and spicy” and “drank well with an upside down pineapple cake.”

Michter’s toasts its bourbon.

Less in a hearty cheers sense, and more in a marshmallow sense: In addition to aging some of its whiskey in special pre-whiskey-soaked barrels, Michter’s likes to play with the toast aspect of classic bourbon (all bourbon must be made in charred new American white oak barrels). In 2014, it began making “Toasted Barrel” expressions of both its Straight Rye and Straight Bourbon. To make its Toasted Barrel expressions, Michter’s ages both its rye and bourbon for an extra 18 months in a barrel that, rather than being charred per usual standards, is gently toasted. The idea is to impart those caramel, woody, toasty notes and create another layer of interaction between the bourbon and browned oak.

Its Louisville distillery took eight years and $8 million to build.

The historic 1890 Fort Nelson building that Michter’s originally chose for its Kentucky-authenticity-bestowing Downtown Louisville micro-distillery actually turned out to be, well, super dangerous. So much so that the brand couldn’t move in when it first bought the building back in 2011. Instead, Michter’s had to wait about eight years and spend close to $8 million to get the building back into shape, which it did. It helps that Maglicco is an architecture lover, and that the building, much like the Michter’s bourbon brand, had good bones.

You can get Michter’s for $40, or $4,000.

Michter’s Straight Kentucky Bourbon sells for around $40, and some reviewers say that’s a bit high for the relative simplicity of the product. But Michter’s can get more complex, and more expensive: In 2013, it created Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey, a blend of its 30- and 20-year aged Straight Bourbon and Rye bottled at 112.3 proof and sold for about 4K. Per Michter’s president Joe Magliocco, the whiskey is packed with flavors like caramel, tobacco, and coffee — like smoking a Marlboro outside of Starbucks, but way more deliciously (and expensively). Michter’s did it again in 2016 and 2019, with a rye-heavy offering that clocks in at 115 proof and costs around $6,500 to $7,000.

The article 13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/michters-guide/

source https://vinology1.wordpress.com/2020/07/17/13-things-you-should-know-about-michters/

[wineanddinosaur]

13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s

As much as it tries to root itself in the past, Michter’s is actually a brand to pay attention to going forward. It’s investing it all — from millions of dollars to highly skilled palates — into becoming as authentically “Kentucky” as possible. Not to mention, Michter’s is not afraid of investing in serious aging, or experimenting with new processes and flavor profiles.

Here are 13 things you need to know about the brand that’s kind of dying to impress you (let them).

Michter’s isn’t bourbon or rye.

Well, it’s not just bourbon, nor rye. At its baseline, Michter’s is straight bourbon and straight rye. This means that the booze is aged at least two years, or in this case, over four (more on that below). There are other aspects to bourbon and rye, of course, but the main thing to know for Michter’s is the rye is spicier, and the bourbon is just a bit smoother.

It’s a Kentucky brand that started with locally grown Pennsylvania rye.

We all know bourbon doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky, right? Well, the distillery that became the Kentucky-identifying Michter’s actually began in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Around 1753, Swiss Mennonite brothers Johann and Michael Shenk started the distillery that would become Michter’s, producing one of the earliest local American whiskeys with rye from its own grain fields in Schaefferstown in eastern Pennsylvania.

Washington used it to booze up his troops.

George Washington is rumored to have purchased whiskey from Shenk in the winter of 1778 to warm his troops stationed at Valley Forge. In truth, the connection between modern day Michter’s and that O.G. Pennsylvania Mennonite distillery is tenuous at best. Basically, the people who founded Michter’s bought the rights to the lapsed trademark from Shenk’s distilling efforts. So, no, drinking modern-day Michter’s doesn’t qualify as a decent substitute for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

It wasn’t called Michter’s until the 1950s.

Over the course of the Pennsylvania distillery’s existence, it was called many things — Bomberger’s, mostly, and later Pennco — and finally, Michter’s for a very sentimental but also very savvy marketing reason.

The name is made up — and also adorable.

Michter’s always sounded like an Irish cola brand to us, or maybe one of the trillion failed diagnoses in an episode of “House” (right up there with sarcoidosis). It’s actually a made-up word, and the creation of mid-20th century distillery owner Louis Forman, who co-owned the Pennsylvania distillery with Charles Everett Beam — yes, of that family. After Forman took over, he named the first pot-still sour mash whiskey “Michter’s” after his sons Michael and Peter, making Michter’s like the Kimye of American whiskeys.

Michter’s is a bit of a Frankenstein brand.

Sure, it tries to be all historic and old timey-looking — see the 1753 on the label? — but Michter’s is kind of a bourbon Frankenstein, or really Dr. Frankenstein’s bourbon monster: It’s patched together from a bunch of different elements and given life by people who believe (at times maniacally) in the brand. It can claim a tie-in to the historic Shenk distillery because that location briefly became Michter’s in the 1950s. But it also asserts itself as part of Whiskey Row in Downtown Louisville — literally on Main Street — trying to graft Kentucky authenticity onto its jumbled infrastructural past. But questions as to where the bourbon’s been made abound. Whiskey reviewers, and even whiskey guru and author Chuck Cowdery, can’t trace the source of Michter’s actual bourbon with total transparency from the brand itself. Short answer: Like many bourbons, Michter’s distilling has been outsourced, but with the development of its own farm and even a micro-distillery in Louisville, it’s trying to bring things in-house.

Michter’s is basically born-again Kentucky whiskey.

Michter’s began in Pennsylvania, and died there, too, with the brand declaring bankruptcy in 1989. It was forced to close its doors on Valentine’s Day of the following year, and we can only assume the employees drank a bunch of Michter’s and cried in the tub. But the name was revived thanks to the joint efforts of bourbon lovers Joe Magliocco and Dick Newman of Chatham Imports, who bought the brand name in 1997. It would take some years and cash to establish a presence in Kentucky, which today includes a 145-acre grain farm in Springfield purchased in 2018.

Michter’s started doing its own distilling in Kentucky proper in 2015. Previously, in the early 2000s, Michter’s had whiskeys being made to its specifications by other Kentucky distilleries, and began experimenting at its own place in Shively in 2014. It finally produced Kentucky-made Michter’s in 2015.

Reborn Michter’s owes its depth to female palates.

When she stepped up to replace the legendary Willie Pratt as Michter’s master distiller in 2016, Pam Heilmann became the first female master distiller at a Kentucky Distillers’ Association distillery since Prohibition. And while she recently handed over the reins to Dan McKee — whom she basically brought over to Michter’s with her — and took on the more flexible role of Master Distiller Emeritus, female palates continue to pervade the Michter’s brand. In fact, Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson is still running the barrel side of things, and with an obsession with barrel science and a Kentucky moonshiner grandfather, Wilson’s resume surely adds to Michter’s credibility.

Michter’s is both ageless and aged.

In its roster of products, Michter’s has Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye; both are labeled “no age statement,” meaning they’re at least four years old, and some 10- and even quarter-century-old variants are out there. But it also makes something completely different: Michter’s US*1 Unblended American Whiskey, a product that, it says, is “aged in a way that utilizes whiskey-soaked barrels to achieve a rich and unique flavor profile.” Unique is a keyword there — though divisive might work, too, as some reviews describe it as ultra-smooth, over-vanilla-ed, lacking depth, Werther’s-proximate, and more.

Michter’s makes rye that’s as old as Halsey.

You know, the singer who made line dancing both scary and sexy? Michter’s seems to want to dig deep into bourbon street cred, which is mostly earned with time, i.e., history or actual aging. By definition, since they’re designated “straight,” Michter’s Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye are aged at least two years — and since they have no age statements, they’re definitely aged at least four years. Yes, American whiskey gets squirrely about admitting its real age, but Michter’s isn’t’ afraid of admitting how old some of its whiskies are: It distills some significantly aged whiskies, like a 25-year Kentucky Straight Rye that’s incredibly difficult to come by but, per one happy customer, was “incredibly rich and spicy” and “drank well with an upside down pineapple cake.”

Michter’s toasts its bourbon.

Less in a hearty cheers sense, and more in a marshmallow sense: In addition to aging some of its whiskey in special pre-whiskey-soaked barrels, Michter’s likes to play with the toast aspect of classic bourbon (all bourbon must be made in charred new American white oak barrels). In 2014, it began making ���Toasted Barrel” expressions of both its Straight Rye and Straight Bourbon. To make its Toasted Barrel expressions, Michter’s ages both its rye and bourbon for an extra 18 months in a barrel that, rather than being charred per usual standards, is gently toasted. The idea is to impart those caramel, woody, toasty notes and create another layer of interaction between the bourbon and browned oak.

Its Louisville distillery took eight years and $8 million to build.

The historic 1890 Fort Nelson building that Michter’s originally chose for its Kentucky-authenticity-bestowing Downtown Louisville micro-distillery actually turned out to be, well, super dangerous. So much so that the brand couldn’t move in when it first bought the building back in 2011. Instead, Michter’s had to wait about eight years and spend close to $8 million to get the building back into shape, which it did. It helps that Maglicco is an architecture lover, and that the building, much like the Michter’s bourbon brand, had good bones.

You can get Michter’s for $40, or $4,000.

Michter’s Straight Kentucky Bourbon sells for around $40, and some reviewers say that’s a bit high for the relative simplicity of the product. But Michter’s can get more complex, and more expensive: In 2013, it created Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey, a blend of its 30- and 20-year aged Straight Bourbon and Rye bottled at 112.3 proof and sold for about 4K. Per Michter’s president Joe Magliocco, the whiskey is packed with flavors like caramel, tobacco, and coffee — like smoking a Marlboro outside of Starbucks, but way more deliciously (and expensively). Michter’s did it again in 2016 and 2019, with a rye-heavy offering that clocks in at 115 proof and costs around $6,500 to $7,000.

The article 13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/michters-guide/

[johnboothus]

13 Things You Should Know About Michters

As much as it tries to root itself in the past, Michter’s is actually a brand to pay attention to going forward. It’s investing it all — from millions of dollars to highly skilled palates — into becoming as authentically “Kentucky” as possible. Not to mention, Michter’s is not afraid of investing in serious aging, or experimenting with new processes and flavor profiles.

Here are 13 things you need to know about the brand that’s kind of dying to impress you (let them).

Michter’s isn’t bourbon or rye.

Well, it’s not just bourbon, nor rye. At its baseline, Michter’s is straight bourbon and straight rye. This means that the booze is aged at least two years, or in this case, over four (more on that below). There are other aspects to bourbon and rye, of course, but the main thing to know for Michter’s is the rye is spicier, and the bourbon is just a bit smoother.

It’s a Kentucky brand that started with locally grown Pennsylvania rye.

We all know bourbon doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky, right? Well, the distillery that became the Kentucky-identifying Michter’s actually began in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Around 1753, Swiss Mennonite brothers Johann and Michael Shenk started the distillery that would become Michter’s, producing one of the earliest local American whiskeys with rye from its own grain fields in Schaefferstown in eastern Pennsylvania.

Washington used it to booze up his troops.

George Washington is rumored to have purchased whiskey from Shenk in the winter of 1778 to warm his troops stationed at Valley Forge. In truth, the connection between modern day Michter’s and that O.G. Pennsylvania Mennonite distillery is tenuous at best. Basically, the people who founded Michter’s bought the rights to the lapsed trademark from Shenk’s distilling efforts. So, no, drinking modern-day Michter’s doesn’t qualify as a decent substitute for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

It wasn’t called Michter’s until the 1950s.

Over the course of the Pennsylvania distillery’s existence, it was called many things — Bomberger’s, mostly, and later Pennco — and finally, Michter’s for a very sentimental but also very savvy marketing reason.

The name is made up — and also adorable.

Michter’s always sounded like an Irish cola brand to us, or maybe one of the trillion failed diagnoses in an episode of “House” (right up there with sarcoidosis). It’s actually a made-up word, and the creation of mid-20th century distillery owner Louis Forman, who co-owned the Pennsylvania distillery with Charles Everett Beam — yes, of that family. After Forman took over, he named the first pot-still sour mash whiskey “Michter’s” after his sons Michael and Peter, making Michter’s like the Kimye of American whiskeys.

Michter’s is a bit of a Frankenstein brand.

Sure, it tries to be all historic and old timey-looking — see the 1753 on the label? — but Michter’s is kind of a bourbon Frankenstein, or really Dr. Frankenstein’s bourbon monster: It’s patched together from a bunch of different elements and given life by people who believe (at times maniacally) in the brand. It can claim a tie-in to the historic Shenk distillery because that location briefly became Michter’s in the 1950s. But it also asserts itself as part of Whiskey Row in Downtown Louisville — literally on Main Street — trying to graft Kentucky authenticity onto its jumbled infrastructural past. But questions as to where the bourbon’s been made abound. Whiskey reviewers, and even whiskey guru and author Chuck Cowdery, can’t trace the source of Michter’s actual bourbon with total transparency from the brand itself. Short answer: Like many bourbons, Michter’s distilling has been outsourced, but with the development of its own farm and even a micro-distillery in Louisville, it’s trying to bring things in-house.

Michter’s is basically born-again Kentucky whiskey.

Michter’s began in Pennsylvania, and died there, too, with the brand declaring bankruptcy in 1989. It was forced to close its doors on Valentine’s Day of the following year, and we can only assume the employees drank a bunch of Michter’s and cried in the tub. But the name was revived thanks to the joint efforts of bourbon lovers Joe Magliocco and Dick Newman of Chatham Imports, who bought the brand name in 1997. It would take some years and cash to establish a presence in Kentucky, which today includes a 145-acre grain farm in Springfield purchased in 2018.

Michter’s started doing its own distilling in Kentucky proper in 2015. Previously, in the early 2000s, Michter’s had whiskeys being made to its specifications by other Kentucky distilleries, and began experimenting at its own place in Shively in 2014. It finally produced Kentucky-made Michter’s in 2015.

Reborn Michter’s owes its depth to female palates.

When she stepped up to replace the legendary Willie Pratt as Michter’s master distiller in 2016, Pam Heilmann became the first female master distiller at a Kentucky Distillers’ Association distillery since Prohibition. And while she recently handed over the reins to Dan McKee — whom she basically brought over to Michter’s with her — and took on the more flexible role of Master Distiller Emeritus, female palates continue to pervade the Michter’s brand. In fact, Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson is still running the barrel side of things, and with an obsession with barrel science and a Kentucky moonshiner grandfather, Wilson’s resume surely adds to Michter’s credibility.

Michter’s is both ageless and aged.

In its roster of products, Michter’s has Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye; both are labeled “no age statement,” meaning they’re at least four years old, and some 10- and even quarter-century-old variants are out there. But it also makes something completely different: Michter’s US*1 Unblended American Whiskey, a product that, it says, is “aged in a way that utilizes whiskey-soaked barrels to achieve a rich and unique flavor profile.” Unique is a keyword there — though divisive might work, too, as some reviews describe it as ultra-smooth, over-vanilla-ed, lacking depth, Werther’s-proximate, and more.

Michter’s makes rye that’s as old as Halsey.

You know, the singer who made line dancing both scary and sexy? Michter’s seems to want to dig deep into bourbon street cred, which is mostly earned with time, i.e., history or actual aging. By definition, since they’re designated “straight,” Michter’s Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye are aged at least two years — and since they have no age statements, they’re definitely aged at least four years. Yes, American whiskey gets squirrely about admitting its real age, but Michter’s isn’t’ afraid of admitting how old some of its whiskies are: It distills some significantly aged whiskies, like a 25-year Kentucky Straight Rye that’s incredibly difficult to come by but, per one happy customer, was “incredibly rich and spicy” and “drank well with an upside down pineapple cake.”

Michter’s toasts its bourbon.

Less in a hearty cheers sense, and more in a marshmallow sense: In addition to aging some of its whiskey in special pre-whiskey-soaked barrels, Michter’s likes to play with the toast aspect of classic bourbon (all bourbon must be made in charred new American white oak barrels). In 2014, it began making “Toasted Barrel” expressions of both its Straight Rye and Straight Bourbon. To make its Toasted Barrel expressions, Michter’s ages both its rye and bourbon for an extra 18 months in a barrel that, rather than being charred per usual standards, is gently toasted. The idea is to impart those caramel, woody, toasty notes and create another layer of interaction between the bourbon and browned oak.

Its Louisville distillery took eight years and $8 million to build.

The historic 1890 Fort Nelson building that Michter’s originally chose for its Kentucky-authenticity-bestowing Downtown Louisville micro-distillery actually turned out to be, well, super dangerous. So much so that the brand couldn’t move in when it first bought the building back in 2011. Instead, Michter’s had to wait about eight years and spend close to $8 million to get the building back into shape, which it did. It helps that Maglicco is an architecture lover, and that the building, much like the Michter’s bourbon brand, had good bones.

You can get Michter’s for $40, or $4,000.

Michter’s Straight Kentucky Bourbon sells for around $40, and some reviewers say that’s a bit high for the relative simplicity of the product. But Michter’s can get more complex, and more expensive: In 2013, it created Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey, a blend of its 30- and 20-year aged Straight Bourbon and Rye bottled at 112.3 proof and sold for about 4K. Per Michter’s president Joe Magliocco, the whiskey is packed with flavors like caramel, tobacco, and coffee — like smoking a Marlboro outside of Starbucks, but way more deliciously (and expensively). Michter’s did it again in 2016 and 2019, with a rye-heavy offering that clocks in at 115 proof and costs around $6,500 to $7,000.

The article 13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/michters-guide/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/13-things-you-should-know-about-michters

[isaiahrippinus]

13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s

As much as it tries to root itself in the past, Michter’s is actually a brand to pay attention to going forward. It’s investing it all — from millions of dollars to highly skilled palates — into becoming as authentically “Kentucky” as possible. Not to mention, Michter’s is not afraid of investing in serious aging, or experimenting with new processes and flavor profiles.

Here are 13 things you need to know about the brand that’s kind of dying to impress you (let them).

Michter’s isn’t bourbon or rye.

Well, it’s not just bourbon, nor rye. At its baseline, Michter’s is straight bourbon and straight rye. This means that the booze is aged at least two years, or in this case, over four (more on that below). There are other aspects to bourbon and rye, of course, but the main thing to know for Michter’s is the rye is spicier, and the bourbon is just a bit smoother.

It’s a Kentucky brand that started with locally grown Pennsylvania rye.

We all know bourbon doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky, right? Well, the distillery that became the Kentucky-identifying Michter’s actually began in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Around 1753, Swiss Mennonite brothers Johann and Michael Shenk started the distillery that would become Michter’s, producing one of the earliest local American whiskeys with rye from its own grain fields in Schaefferstown in eastern Pennsylvania.

Washington used it to booze up his troops.

George Washington is rumored to have purchased whiskey from Shenk in the winter of 1778 to warm his troops stationed at Valley Forge. In truth, the connection between modern day Michter’s and that O.G. Pennsylvania Mennonite distillery is tenuous at best. Basically, the people who founded Michter’s bought the rights to the lapsed trademark from Shenk’s distilling efforts. So, no, drinking modern-day Michter’s doesn’t qualify as a decent substitute for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

It wasn’t called Michter’s until the 1950s.

Over the course of the Pennsylvania distillery’s existence, it was called many things — Bomberger’s, mostly, and later Pennco — and finally, Michter’s for a very sentimental but also very savvy marketing reason.

The name is made up — and also adorable.

Michter’s always sounded like an Irish cola brand to us, or maybe one of the trillion failed diagnoses in an episode of “House” (right up there with sarcoidosis). It’s actually a made-up word, and the creation of mid-20th century distillery owner Louis Forman, who co-owned the Pennsylvania distillery with Charles Everett Beam — yes, of that family. After Forman took over, he named the first pot-still sour mash whiskey “Michter’s” after his sons Michael and Peter, making Michter’s like the Kimye of American whiskeys.

Michter’s is a bit of a Frankenstein brand.

Sure, it tries to be all historic and old timey-looking — see the 1753 on the label? — but Michter’s is kind of a bourbon Frankenstein, or really Dr. Frankenstein’s bourbon monster: It’s patched together from a bunch of different elements and given life by people who believe (at times maniacally) in the brand. It can claim a tie-in to the historic Shenk distillery because that location briefly became Michter’s in the 1950s. But it also asserts itself as part of Whiskey Row in Downtown Louisville — literally on Main Street — trying to graft Kentucky authenticity onto its jumbled infrastructural past. But questions as to where the bourbon’s been made abound. Whiskey reviewers, and even whiskey guru and author Chuck Cowdery, can’t trace the source of Michter’s actual bourbon with total transparency from the brand itself. Short answer: Like many bourbons, Michter’s distilling has been outsourced, but with the development of its own farm and even a micro-distillery in Louisville, it’s trying to bring things in-house.

Michter’s is basically born-again Kentucky whiskey.

Michter’s began in Pennsylvania, and died there, too, with the brand declaring bankruptcy in 1989. It was forced to close its doors on Valentine’s Day of the following year, and we can only assume the employees drank a bunch of Michter’s and cried in the tub. But the name was revived thanks to the joint efforts of bourbon lovers Joe Magliocco and Dick Newman of Chatham Imports, who bought the brand name in 1997. It would take some years and cash to establish a presence in Kentucky, which today includes a 145-acre grain farm in Springfield purchased in 2018.

Michter’s started doing its own distilling in Kentucky proper in 2015. Previously, in the early 2000s, Michter’s had whiskeys being made to its specifications by other Kentucky distilleries, and began experimenting at its own place in Shively in 2014. It finally produced Kentucky-made Michter’s in 2015.

Reborn Michter’s owes its depth to female palates.

When she stepped up to replace the legendary Willie Pratt as Michter’s master distiller in 2016, Pam Heilmann became the first female master distiller at a Kentucky Distillers’ Association distillery since Prohibition. And while she recently handed over the reins to Dan McKee — whom she basically brought over to Michter’s with her — and took on the more flexible role of Master Distiller Emeritus, female palates continue to pervade the Michter’s brand. In fact, Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson is still running the barrel side of things, and with an obsession with barrel science and a Kentucky moonshiner grandfather, Wilson’s resume surely adds to Michter’s credibility.

Michter’s is both ageless and aged.

In its roster of products, Michter’s has Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye; both are labeled “no age statement,” meaning they’re at least four years old, and some 10- and even quarter-century-old variants are out there. But it also makes something completely different: Michter’s US*1 Unblended American Whiskey, a product that, it says, is “aged in a way that utilizes whiskey-soaked barrels to achieve a rich and unique flavor profile.” Unique is a keyword there — though divisive might work, too, as some reviews describe it as ultra-smooth, over-vanilla-ed, lacking depth, Werther’s-proximate, and more.

Michter’s makes rye that’s as old as Halsey.

You know, the singer who made line dancing both scary and sexy? Michter’s seems to want to dig deep into bourbon street cred, which is mostly earned with time, i.e., history or actual aging. By definition, since they’re designated “straight,” Michter’s Straight Bourbon and Straight Rye are aged at least two years — and since they have no age statements, they’re definitely aged at least four years. Yes, American whiskey gets squirrely about admitting its real age, but Michter’s isn’t’ afraid of admitting how old some of its whiskies are: It distills some significantly aged whiskies, like a 25-year Kentucky Straight Rye that’s incredibly difficult to come by but, per one happy customer, was “incredibly rich and spicy” and “drank well with an upside down pineapple cake.”

Michter’s toasts its bourbon.

Less in a hearty cheers sense, and more in a marshmallow sense: In addition to aging some of its whiskey in special pre-whiskey-soaked barrels, Michter’s likes to play with the toast aspect of classic bourbon (all bourbon must be made in charred new American white oak barrels). In 2014, it began making “Toasted Barrel” expressions of both its Straight Rye and Straight Bourbon. To make its Toasted Barrel expressions, Michter’s ages both its rye and bourbon for an extra 18 months in a barrel that, rather than being charred per usual standards, is gently toasted. The idea is to impart those caramel, woody, toasty notes and create another layer of interaction between the bourbon and browned oak.

Its Louisville distillery took eight years and $8 million to build.

The historic 1890 Fort Nelson building that Michter’s originally chose for its Kentucky-authenticity-bestowing Downtown Louisville micro-distillery actually turned out to be, well, super dangerous. So much so that the brand couldn’t move in when it first bought the building back in 2011. Instead, Michter’s had to wait about eight years and spend close to $8 million to get the building back into shape, which it did. It helps that Maglicco is an architecture lover, and that the building, much like the Michter’s bourbon brand, had good bones.

You can get Michter’s for $40, or $4,000.

Michter’s Straight Kentucky Bourbon sells for around $40, and some reviewers say that’s a bit high for the relative simplicity of the product. But Michter’s can get more complex, and more expensive: In 2013, it created Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash Whiskey, a blend of its 30- and 20-year aged Straight Bourbon and Rye bottled at 112.3 proof and sold for about 4K. Per Michter’s president Joe Magliocco, the whiskey is packed with flavors like caramel, tobacco, and coffee — like smoking a Marlboro outside of Starbucks, but way more deliciously (and expensively). Michter’s did it again in 2016 and 2019, with a rye-heavy offering that clocks in at 115 proof and costs around $6,500 to $7,000.

The article 13 Things You Should Know About Michter’s appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/michters-guide/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/623899838709415937

[scifihorroradventure]

FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND (1990)

The year is 2031. Completing his work on a new particle beam weapon for the government, scientist Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) assures that the atmospheric "time slips" appearing in the skies are harmless and totally reversible. Unfortunately, as he returns home that day, a time slip appears above his house and sucks him in, sending him through time and space to Geneva in 1817. As he attempts to piece the situation together, Joe encounters none other than Doctor Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia). An innocent girl (Catherine Corman) is currently on trial for the death of Victor's brother William, but Joe soon discovers that the culprit is none other than Victor's own Monster (Nick Brimble). Despite Joe's pleading for Victor to come forth with the truth, the girl is executed for the murder. Having met her at the girl's trial, Joe spends time with Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda), the author of the "Frankenstein" novel, though at this point she has yet to write it. When Victor refuses to give in to the Monster's demands to create a mate for him, the Monster lashes out and kills Victor's fiance Elizabeth (Catherine Rabett). Desperate, Victor forces Joe into helping resurrect her as a second monster. Realizing he has to stop Victor and the Monster before they cause any more harm, Joe uses a newly constructed version of his particle beam to teleport them all into a frozen wasteland of a future. Victor and Elizabeth are killed and Joe hunts the Monster down to finish him once and for all.

A downright bizarre film, Frankenstein Unbound is an oddly captivating experience. Its premise is completely insane and yet somehow it works far better than it has any right to. Based on Brian Aldiss' novel of the same name, Unbound was the first film Roger Corman had directed in nearly twenty years (the last one being Von Richthofen and Brown in 1971). Part of why the film works so well is that, despite all the time travel and dystopian framework, once Joe ends up in 1817, the movie mostly forgets about all that and turns into a pretty decent Frankenstein movie. The relationship between Victor and the Monster is portrayed rather well, with the latter much more humanized than most incarnations. Wisely, the film skips the more well known parts of the Frankenstein story - Victor creating the Monster - picking up well after the Monster has escaped out into the world, allowing the story to venture into new territory right off the bat (or at least new territory for most film adaptations). The movie looks very nice, filmed in some very pretty sets and locations. The special effects in the future at the start of the film are serviceable, most notably the purple space-like time slip that opens and absorbs Joe throughout the movie, which is a really striking visual.

What really makes the film work, though, is its cast. John Hurt makes for a great lead as Joe Buchanan, a well-meaning man who is nonetheless blind to his own creation's side effects, even as giant portals begin to open in the sky. Luckily, Joe proves to be a likeable hero who lets common sense prevail more often than not when he could've easily been a jackass know-it-all type. If there's anything about Joe that could be legitimately complained about, it's that there are times where it doesn't feel like he has very much to do other than stand around and watch the story of Frankenstein unfold around him. This, of course, changes by the explosive finale, where he takes a very active role in things. But while John Hurt may be the hero of the story, Raul Julia steals the show as the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Julia is such an odd casting choice for the doctor, but like the over the top premise of the movie, somehow it just works. Julia's Victor is a clearly unstable man, having reached a peak of frustration and fury with the Monster, not caring for much else. While he views the Monster as a threat that must be destroyed, he otherwise sees nothing wrong with what he's done, even letting innocent Justine hang so that he can be allowed to carry on with his work. By the time Elizabeth is killed, he has completely lost it, vowing to not let her pay for his mistakes even as he turns her into an even more hideous creature than the Monster. Bridget Fonda plays Mary Shelley and honestly doesn't have very much to do. She acts mainly as a love interest for Joe, but all she really accomplishes is muddling the line between fiction and reality for no real reason. This is supposed to be "real life," yet Victor and the Monster actually exist, and nothing is really said about it either way, not even by Joe. Later, Joe shows Mary a completed version of "Frankenstein," but apparently isn't worried about what possible effect this will have on history. While Fonda plays the character well enough, she's an overall strange addition that doesn't really do anything but raise several questions that otherwise wouldn't have been there.

As the titular Monster, Nick Brimble plays the character less like a hulking beast and more as the lost and confused being that he is in the original story, resorting to violence when his anger with Victor reaches its peak - which is frequent. Brimble is far more talkative and coherent than most screen incarnations of the Monster, though he still has trouble comprehending concepts such as what murder truly means, even after killing Victor's brother William. He also can't seem to understand that Victor didn't make everyone else in the world (he asks Victor why he didn't "make William stronger" and later asks Joe if Victor made him or not), which is odd considering the whole "I am all alone and I want you to make me a mate so I can no longer be alone" thing. While not one of the most iconic incarnations of the Frankenstein Monster, Brimble makes for a good one, his stretched out face prostheses effectively grotesque yet striking in a way completely different from the traditional look most people associate the Monster with. If there's one oddity about the Monster's role in the film, it's not because of Brimble, but rather the film itself. Throughout the film, the Monster is portrayed as an admittedly violent, but still ultimately sympathetic, misunderstood, and tragic character, as he usually is. Which is why it's so disturbing when the film goes full on Jason Voorhees on him during the climactic fight with Joe in the futuristic laboratory. We have to watch him get shot multiple times, impaled, his arm torn off, and then finally slowly, slowly burned to death, screaming in agony and confusion all the while. Yes, the Monster had to be dealt with by the end of the film, but the way they went about it was just so drawn out and needlessly cruel, it's rather uncomfortable to watch.

Upon first glance, one might be inclined to dismiss Frankenstein Unbound. Roger Corman's involvement, the initially odd casting of Raul Julia, the futuristic, dystopian, and time travel elements, when all rolled together, might make one think that this will be a bad, over the top film that does no justice to the Frankenstein story. And while it certainly is over the top and cheesy, it's done in such a serious manner that one can't help but find themselves drawn in by it. At the very least, the performances by the cast alone make this movie worth a watch.

Rating: ★★★★

Cast: John Hurt ... Dr. Joe Buchanan Raul Julia ... Dr. Victor Frankenstein Nick Brimble ... The Monster Bridget Fonda ... Mary Shelley Catherine Rabett ... Elizabeth Terri Treas ... Computer Voice Jason Patric ... Lord Byron Michael Hutchence ... Percy Shelley Catherine Corman ... Justine Moritz

Director: Roger Corman. Producer: Jay Cassidy (associate producer), Roger Corman, Kobi Jaeger, Laura J. Medina (associate producer), and Thom Mount. Writer: Brian Aldiss (original "Frankenstein Unbound" novel), Roger Corman (screenplay), F.X. Feeney (screenplay), and Mary Shelley (original "Frankenstein" novel). Music: Carl Davis. Special Effects: Nick Dudman (special makeup effects), Suzy Evans (prosthetic makeup assistant), Suzanne Reynolds (prosthetic makeup), Renato Agostini (set special effects), Reza Karim (foam latex supervisor), Betzy Bromberg (optical supervisor), Syd Dutton (matte artist), Bruno George (optical effects), Rhonda C. Gunner (computer animation and displays), Richard E. Hollander (computer animation and displays), John Huneck (visual effects camera), Adam Kowalski (special rigging), Lynn Ledgerwood (special engineering), Gregory L. McMurry (computer animation and displays), Bret Mixon (rotoscoping supervisor), Gary Rhodaback (modelmaker), Mark Sawicki (matte photography), Robert Stromberg (matte artist), Catherine Sudolcan (production manager: visual effects), Bill Taylor (visual effects camera), Gene Warren Jr. (visual effects supervisor), Christopher Warren (visual effects assistant), John C. Wash (computer animation and displays), and David S. Williams Jr. (optical effects).

[gibsongirlselections]

What if Trump Won’t Leave The White House?

I’ve got a list of bookmarks as long as a CVS receipt declaring threats to the republic and democracy and the arrival of dictatorship. When I turn on cable news, the end of America as we know it—the literal end, as in North Korean-style lives for everyone—is a regular feature alongside weather and sports (back when we had sports). I’ve tried to make a career out of debunking that fear mongering. But now I’m scared too.

Joe Biden has announced his own fears. Biden (who despite appearances is the Democratic candidate for president) said he is “absolutely convinced” the military may have to remove President Trump from the White House if he refuses to leave after losing November’s election. Joe warned, “This president is going to try to steal this election…. It’s my greatest concern.” Asked whether he’d thought about what would happen if he wins but Trump decides not to leave, Biden responded: “Yes I have.” After mentioning the high-ranking former military officers who spoke out about Trump’s response to Black Lives Matter protests, he went on: “I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House.”

Biden has been saying this for months.

It’s one thing when goofy Michael Moore, Donny Deutsch, or Bill Maher muses about this for clicks, or an op-ed worries Trump will unleash a diversionary war in some Strangelovian bid to stay in office. Nearly everyone on Autonomous Free Twitter knows the voting will be rigged. Some knucklehead wrote a book about it based on a fan fiction reading of the 12th Amendment. Democrats have also voiced “concerns” that Trump might use the coronavirus crisis to delay or delegitimize the election.

But this is Joe Biden saying Trump will attempt some sort of unconstitutional coup. Joe Biden, who was vice president twice. Joe Biden, Lion of the Senate, and for several centuries the gray representative of the credit card industry. Joe Biden, who is not stupid, naive, or dramatic. Joe Biden, who is, however, just a pawn in the game. They’re setting it up, aren’t they?

The New York Times, as is its role, has already fired several signal flares. They characterized Trump as a cornered despot, capable of anything to avoid losing. In another article, the Times announced, “Trump Sows Doubt on Voting. It Keeps Some People Up at Night,” which quotes a Georgetown University law professor saying that “reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know, that could happen.’” 

The professor even convened a group to brainstorm how Trump might disrupt the election and think about ways to prevent it. They speculated that Trump could declare a state of emergency, maybe COVID-related, banning polling places in battleground states from opening. Or Attorney General Barr could Comey-like announce a criminal investigation into Biden.

The online comment responses to the Times articles are amazing. People are ready for this. They are convinced Trump is defunding the post office so no one can mail in absentee ballots (the left imagines they’ll all be for Biden), and that Trump is sending out coded signals to his militias to take to the streets if it looks like he is losing. More than a few claim that what happens in November “will depend on where the military’s loyalty lies.” Many think the Supreme Court is a tool in all this, with Kavanaugh a lickspittle linchpin to enable the November coup through some sort of judicial invalidation of the election.

That Americans think this way is scary enough. But here’s my nightmare. After a long October of rumors from sources about some surprise (war with Iran, martial law in Seattle) fails to produce a surge in Never Trump voters, the media pivots to the cheating narrative. Trump is doing something with mail-in ballots, black people can’t get to the polls in Georgia, the attorney general in Kentucky will undercount urban areas. The media will explode like a ripe zit, splattering fake news, exaggerations, and experts, all with a single point to make: the results on Election Day will not be valid if Trump wins. Academics will fan the flames, bleating on about the importance of the popular vote and rehashing old arguments from 2016 about the invalidity of the Electoral College.

All will be forgotten faster than Robert-What’s-His-Name-Mueller if Biden wins. But if by pre-2016 standards Trump is the winner, boom! The media will refuse to concede. The Dems will issue strident local court challenges, demands for recounts, and emergency hearings in the House. They will want not a conclusion, but a crisis.

Trump will fulfill his role as his own worst enemy and hold rallies to re-declare victory over and over again. But the story everywhere else will be that he isn’t the president-elect, that the election was not legitimate, and that orange bad man’s presence in the White House after January 20 will be a Konstitutional Krisis. Privately the Democratic power brokers will whisper to their wealthy funders that something remarkably undemocratic has to be done to save our democracy.

What happens next is beyond guessing. A best case scenario is that some old school party graybeards get through to an exhausted and befuddled Biden and talk him out of it. A bad scenario has Obama emerging under the guise of being a neutral party to negotiate a (Democratic Party) conclusion. A very bad scenario has the same third-party actors who whipped Black Lives Matter protesters into a looting mob repeat the performance. By that point, nearly everyone will demand that the military step in, albeit for different reasons. A very, very bad scenario will have a real-world event intervene, like an enemy abroad taking advantage of the chaos. The need to act expeditiously will slip a “temporary” military government into place faster than CNN can play the breaking news music.

Paperback thriller material, right? But consider whether you thought Trump was a Russian sleeper agent before you call me paranoid. Since 2016, learned scholars have tested legal theories saying the Electoral College was invalid and created a constitutional Frankenstein based on the national popular vote. The idea that the election was invalid due to foreign influence still sullies discussion today. One political writer even continues to place an asterisk next to “President Trump*” to denote his questionable claim to the title.

For nearly four years, the same forces that may declare 2020 invalid tried very hard to convince us 2016 already was. There are plenty of Hillary people (including Hillary) who have not accepted 2016. Has Stacey Abrams really accepted her defeat yet? Think back to everything that happened during the last election, the gaming by Comey and the FBI to influence results. Remember how the intelligence community manipulated Russiagate. Why wait for November 2020 to have a coup? We’ve been in what Matt Taibbi calls a permanent coup for years. They’ve been practicing.

Any of the those things would have been considered crazy talk only a few years ago. None would have ever passed into the mainstream. Compare Russiagate to the Great Obama Birth Certificate kerfuffle. The idea that Obama was ineligible for office festered on right-wing talk radio. It was dismissed as fact-less by just about everyone else. Fast forward to 2016+ and America’s paper of record is happy to front a story claiming the president is subject to a foreign enemy’s blackmail based on nothing but desperate hope that it might be true.

The critical tool for the ending of democracy is people’s conditioned readiness to believe almost anything. The media tells the world what’s important using a very narrow range of truth, or just makes things up if truth is not around to be manipulated.

We are exhausted, neck-deep in cynicism, decline, and distrust. And scared. There are no facts anymore, only what people can be made to believe. That power was not well understood in 2016 and was clumsily applied. Today it is ripe for exploitation, far beyond generating clicks and ad revenue. I don’t think Trump will try to stay in office if he loses. But there are people who will tell us that to manipulate our fears and steal this election. That’s why I am finally scared.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People,Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent.

The post What if Trump Won’t Leave The White House? appeared first on The American Conservative.

[silverscreenclassics2016]

by Paul Batters

Classic film lovers are passionate about the films they love and all share a special feeling for those films with others. The classic film community is one bound by that love for classic film and it is a romance that will not die. If love forever after ever exists, you will certainly find it amongst those who love it and also write about it.

This article will be the first of two parts which will celebrate the films which brought people to love classic film. A number of people have shared how they came to love classic film as well as the film or films which began that journey for them.

John Greco 

Blog – John Greco Author/Photographer

I can’t name just one movie. Each film I watched was like a piece of a puzzle with the right ones fitting the overall picture. It was an assembly of films and filmmakers that gave me inspiration and a love of cinema.

Many noir and crime films were early influences of both my love of movies and in my fiction writing. The first gangster films I remember seeing were “Al Capone” and “Baby Face Nelson.” On television, I discovered “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Roaring Twenties,” “The Public Enemy,” and many others. A bit later, I discovered Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest,” and many others. After Hitchcock, I started following the careers of film directors, and it was works like Polanski’s “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” John Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Seven Days in May,” Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” “Some Like it Hot,” “Ace in the Hole” that cemented my love of celluloid. There were plenty of others, Wyler’s “The Collector,” Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde,” Lumet’s “The Pawnbroker,” Brooks’ “The Professionals,” Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” and Hiller’s “The Americanization of Emily” were and are influences and all still rank high in my admiration.

Kellee Pratt

Blog: Outspoken And Freckled    Twitter: @IrishJayhawk66

For me, my love for old movies came to me as a child when we lived in Taos, New Mexico. The local art center would screen slapsticks on Saturday mornings such as the hilarious Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, and Mack Sennett. My maternal grandmother had a love for classic film and considered it a vital part of my education. I recall an early memory of her introducing a certain film being broadcast on tv, “Pay close attention, Kellee. This is an important film.” She was right, I still love WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION to this day and I included it in a film course I taught. Classic comedies were an early love in particular. For many of us fans, old movies, especially comedy, is a form of escapism. Some of the other films my grandmother brought into my life: “ THE GREAT RACE,” “IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD,” and “THE QUIET MAN.” That last film mentioned, a John Ford classic, was not just a silly film to her, it was propped up as the family how-to manual in our Irish Catholic family. These films are more than simply entertainment, they actually helped to shape my identity.

Michael W Denney

Blog – ManiacsAndMonsters.com   Twitter: @ManiacsMonsters

As a horror movie fan, I have a deep admiration for the classic films from Universal Pictures:  Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Dracula, et al.  And yet, they were not the gateway to my love of classic film.  Growing up, I regularly watched The Little Rascals, Laurel & Hardy, and The Three Stooges and I am certain that those short films planted the initial seed.  I am also a long-time aficionado and collector of shorts and memorabilia from the golden age of animation and in particular the Warner Bros. cartoons.  Those cartoons further developed an appreciation for the aesthetics, humour, and timing of classic film.  But if I have to designate a single feature film that cemented my love for the classics, I would have to choose the Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races.  The first time I saw it, I was immediately enthralled by both the slapstick and the clever word play.  The frantic nonsense in the last act as the Marx Brothers do everything in their power to delay the steeplechase and then help jittery Hi-Hat win the race made me a devotee of that era of film making.

Patricia (Paddy Lee) Nolan-Hall 

Blog: https://www.caftanwoman.com/    Twitter: @CaftanWoman

Shane is the movie that made me love movies. I first saw Shane on a theatrical re-release in the mid-1960s when I was around 10 years old.

The enlightening experience began with Victor Young’s score. The music had such power and melancholy that it pulled me into the story. Years later when I read Shane I realized that I lived the movie the way the character of the young boy lived those weeks with Shane – observing, sensing, and understanding. I had laughed and cried at movies before, but never had the emotions felt so crystallized.

Strangely, the experience of Shane wasn’t purely an emotional response. One part of my brain was buzzing with the revelation that movies didn’t just happen. Movies had a how and a why to them. That must be why my dad always made us read credits. A switch was flipped and the whole movie experience became alive. I understood why the music moved me, why Shane was often framed away from the other characters, and so much more. It was all too thrilling. Every movie was better after Shane, but it still stands alone as the movie that made me truly love movies.

Toni Ruberto

Blog – watchingforever.wordpress.com    Twitter: @toniruberto 

My love for classic movies can’t be traced to one film but to an entire genre: horror movies. As a kid, I watched the “old movies” (as we called them) on TV with my dad: Universal Monsters, the giant bugs of the 1950s B-movies, the fantastical creatures of Ray Harryhausen. “Them,” “The Thing” “Tarantula” and are among those we watched over and over again – and still do to this day. I never tire of hearing that screechy sound of the big ants in “Them” or seeing the fight against the giant crab in “Mysterious Island.”

Classic horror movies bring back wonderful memories of sitting on the floor by my dad’s chair as we watched them together. I love to hear similar stories from others who share they also were introduced to the classics by a family member. Because of my comfort in watching the old horror movies, it never bothered me to watch a film in “black and white” like it did my friends. So I kept watching. Thanks to dad and all the creatures who helped me discover my life-long love of classic movies.

Blog – The Classic Movie Muse  Twitter: @classymoviemuse

I fell in love with classic movies before I knew it was happening to me. As a one year old (I’m told) I would watch The Wizard of Oz (1939) repeatedly. It seems that I had a penchant for musicals. When my parents visited a family friend who owned Show Boat (1951), that became my go-to while the adults chatted.

In our home we owned a few Gene Kelly musicals that introduced me to the dancing man and some MGM stars: Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), Anchors Aweigh (1945), and Singin’ in the Rain (1952). I also remember watching The King and I (1956) and The Sound of Music (1965) frequently in my adolescence.

In my teenage years I was introduced to Gone With the Wind (1939) and my life changed. I had to know more about this movie, the actors, and how in the world did they make something so grand in 1939? Thus began my endless journey of research and love of this golden era of film.

Jill -Administrator of The Vintage Classics Facebook Page and Group and Instagram.

The films that got me into Classic films were “East of Eden” & “Rebel Without a Cause.” I owe that to my Dad. James Dean played a huge part. My love for classic films has grown so much over the years. I love so many. I prefer the classics to the films of today.

A poster for Nicholas Ray’s 1955 drama ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ starring James Dean. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Zoe K

Blog – Hollywood Genes

My dad and I were very close when I was growing up. He loved old movies and used to tape a few (remember VHS?) off of TCM for us to watch. The incredibly fun Bringing Up Baby filled with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant’s madcap antics was a favorite. Desk Set was another. I would sit at the coffee table while I watched with my dad’s work stationary and the giant pink Electronic Dream Phone (from the Milton Bradley game) in front of me. I mimicked Joan Blondell and her fellow ladies in the research department as I blew the minds of callers with my vast array of know-how.

My dad died when I was 11, but those tapes bearing labels with his handwriting remained on the shelf. I think I clung to them as a way to keep us connected. Though I’ve seen many more classic films since then, Bringing Up Baby and Desk Set remain two of my favorites. Good memories make all of the difference.

  A huge thank you to our contributors for sharing the films that started their journey with classic film. Hopefully we are all inspired by their words to remember the films that also start our own love for classic film.

Tomorrow, we will continue with Part Two of The Films That Brought Us To Love Classic Film.

Paul Batters teaches secondary school History in the Illawarra region and also lectures at the University Of Wollongong. In a previous life, he was involved in community radio and independent publications. Looking to a career in writing, Paul also has a passion for film history.

The Films That Brought Us To Love Classic Film – Part One by Paul Batters Classic film lovers are passionate about the films they love and all share a special feeling for those films with others.