#bert mcdowell

[barelyevenwriting]

Day 5 Here’s What I Remember

Here’s what I remember

After all the things you left me:

    Memories branded into softened clay.

    There is a certain cadence to silence,

Timing steps with exhales

And curling arms into elbows

And too gentle ribs.

    There is an art to the madness,

Words bursting through windows and walls,

Hands that grip too tight,

Leaving marks for too long.

    Your steps are always leaving,

Dragging sadness and nausea away

Back out into halls that I swore

I would never again visit.

    There is a pattern to the lonely,

To the pulling of strings and hairs

And pushing down in imagined misbehavior.

    These are lessons I know,

Step forward then backward,

Always to the side,

Be heard but not listened to.

    There is a madness to words

Flowing in and out of conversation,

Lessons taught in concrete silences.

    There is more of the lesser parts of me,

That I wish I’d never learnt to understand,

To recognize among the chaos.

    You always leaving

And me coming back into silences.

    There was a beauty to pain,

That never lasted beyond the first lesson

Before it dragged us back into the light

Where glass and nails made forgiveness

Their only weapon.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Easy A (2010)

Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and John Hughes’s filmography, Easy A takes familiar story elements and makes them its own. Thanks largely to the enormously charismatic Emma Stone, this teenage romantic comedy by Will Gluck offers a lot of laughs while slyly delivering an important message tailored for the modern era.

17-year-old Olive Penderghast (Stone) lies to her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) about her weekend. She says she lost her virginity to a college boy she went out with. When her story is overheard by the judgmental and prudish Marianne (Amanda Bynes), it spreads around school like wildfire.

Easy A is set in a fantasy world where Emma Stone and Penn Badgley are average teenagers - in fact, Olive says she wasn’t turning any heads before the big lie -, and parents are all delightfully quirky or weird. In its defense, it’s consistent all the way through, and as a high school fantasy, it’s delightful. We could’ve cast someone plainer than Emma Stone (and in recent years, we have, in films like Booksmart) but then we wouldn’t have seen her belting her lungs, singing along with a greeting card, and we wouldn’t have gotten Penn Badgley in a laughably bad woodchuck costume trying in vain to rally up his classmates. As Olive’s parents, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci are hilarious - you can see where their daughter got her wit from - and the other adults paint this picture of a high school where even when things get bad, they never become THAT bad… until Olive’s lie starts to get so big no one could handle it.

For the most part, Easy A is a light comedy. I wouldn’t say that any scene will have you falling out of your seat but you’ll chuckle a lot and that smile you start wearing just a few minutes in? It only goes away when the film starts to get a little heavier. When I say heavier, I mean heavier for a film that’s perfectly suited for high-schoolers and their slightly cool parents. Now branded as a harlot, Olive decides to use her reputation to help Brandon (Dan Byrd), a classmate who is bullied for being gay. While attending a party, they pretend to have sex. He’s congratulated by his former tormentors. Her reputation is tarnished a bit more… but it’s not like it was squeaky clean anymore, so what’s the harm? You can see how things will escalate from there but it still hurts to see Olive get bullied and endure heartbreaks. It doesn’t matter that a lot of it comes from her own doing because you so easily relate to her situation. Who hasn't wanted to be cool? How many of us lost track of ourselves while trying to be liked? It’s that, combined with that time in 2011 (so 1 year after this movie) when 17-year-old Gaby Rodriguez performed a social experiment at her school by pretending to be pregnant for six months.

If your grandma is a stick in the mud, you probably don’t want to show her this one, and the little kids would have a lot of questions afterward but for everyone else, there’s so much to like about Easy A that its flaws hardly matter. It’s funny and the right amount of insightful without being too heavy. As a bonus, it's got great re-watch value, which means you'll have plenty of opportunities to memorize the snappy dialogue by Bert V. Royal. (On Blu-ray, October 14, 2021)

[abs0luteb4stard]

w A t c h i n g

I avoided this movie for over 10 years because my CPTSD is really closely linked to rumors/gossip and extreme bullying.

It makes me pretty heavy, but it also fun and clever and enjoyable.

But I've had those moments of teachers "who are they going to believe the troublemaker kid or the adult" too. Different situations but the similarity of being outcasted and treated like shit is not lost on me.

[hclib]

A Kiss

July 6 is international kissing day. Our Digital Collections are full of this sign of affection. From hellos to goodbyes, and every occasion between.

Pictured top to bottom:

Mr. and Mrs. Ed LaPointe Kiss Goodbye in 1941

An unidentified couple tie the knot in the 1940s

An unidentified couple kiss at the Elliot Recreation Center Valentine's Dance in 1985

Adrian McInnis kisses his daughter Darlene, who is held by her mother, Orienne, in 1940

Private Richard W. Anderson gives his mother, Mrs. F. R. Anderson, a big kiss upon their reunion in 1945

Bert and June McDowell kiss after a victory at the Western Junior Golf Tournament at the University of Minnesota in 1940

An unidentified couple kiss at a party in the 1940s

All photos from the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections

[michigandrifter]

The Dawn Rider 1935

[extxsisrev]

Easy A (2010)

Plot:

After a little white lie about losing her virginity gets out, a clean cut high school girl sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne's in "The Scarlet Letter," which she is currently studying in school - until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing. (IMBd)

Review:

Once again, one of my favorite movies, and which I would recommend to essentially anyone! Although the title and trailer might scare people off, or make them discard it as a teen flick made for horny adolescents in the style of American Pie or others, it is certainly not. The story is quite relatable and sends a powerful message concerning what can happen when a (fake) rumor starts to spread, and moreover, the implications this will have if it involves a (teenage) girl and sexual relations.

Easy A is about a girl, who claims she has lost her virginity to a college guy, just to get out of going with her best friend and her weird parents on a camping trip, although it’s a lie. For this or any other reason, most people have lied at some point in order to impress someone or seem “cooler”. It also portrays how people are never what you expect Amanda Bynes who plays Marie Anne, a Jesus freak, hears her and her best friend talking about how she lost her virginity and spreads the rumor to the whole school. 

I’m very fond of Emma Stone’s interpretation of this role, and think that she is well suited for it, as I see her as a strong woman, who reinforces the message this movie wants to send out. Emma is a talented and skillful young actress, and in my opinion one of the best actresses in her field. 

It also features well-picked songs and singing scenes, like their memorable “Pocketful of Sunshine”.

Recommendation:

I would recommend this movie specially to teens, because it accurately portraits our society’s fears and obligations. It is a clear critique of how all of us are too prone to jump to conclusions and fake assumptions on people because it’s so easy to do. It sends out an empowering and though-evoking message, while still being funny and entertaining. An older public will appreciate it too, but it is not suitable for younger kids, as they will not understand it, and there are inappropriate scenes and language.

[unknown-songs]

BLACK LIVES MATTER

A list with black artists who have a song in the Unknown Songs That Should Be Known-playlist (Can be a black artist in a band or just solo-artist) (no specific genre)

Bull’s Eye - Blacknuss, Prince Prime - Funk Aftershow - Joe Fox - Alternative Hip-hop Strangers in the Night - Ben L’Oncle Soul - Soul Explore - Mack Wilds - R&B Something To Do - IGBO - Funk

Down With The Trumpets - Rizzle Kicks - Pop Dans ta ville - Dub Inc. - Reggae Dance or Die - Brooklyn Funk Essentials - Funk FACELESS - The PLAYlist, Glenn Lewis - R&B Tell Me Father - Jeangu Macrooy - Soul

Southern Boy - John The Conquerer - Blues Hard Rock Savannah Grass - Kes - Dancehall Dr. Funk - The Main Squeeze - Funk Seems I’m Never Tired of Loving You - Lizz Wright - Jazz Out of My Hands - TheColorGrey, Oddisee - Hip-Hop/Pop

Raised Up in Arkansas - Michael Burks - Blues Black Times - Sean Kuti, Egypt 80, Carlos Santana - Afrobeat Cornerstone - Benjamin Clementine - Indie Shine On - R.I.O., Madcon - Electronic Pop Bass On The Line - Bernie Worrell - Funk

When We Love - Jhené Aiko - R&B Need Your Love - Curtis Harding - Soul Too Dry to Cry - Willis Earl Beal - Folk Your House - Steel Pulse - Reggae Power - Moon Boots, Black Gatsby - Deep House

Vinyl Is My Bible - Brother Strut - Funk Diamond - Izzy Biu - R&B Elusive - blackwave., David Ngyah - Hip-hop Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down - Heritage Blues Orchestra - Blues Sastanàqqàm - Tinariwen - Psychedelic Rock

Disco To Go - Brides of Funkenstein - Funk/Soul Circles - Durand Jones & The Indications - Retro Pop Cheesin’ - Cautious Clay, Remi Wolf, sophie meiers - R&B Changes - Charles Bradley - Soul The Sweetest Sin - RAEVE - House

Gyae Su - Pat Thomas, Kwashibu Area Band - Funk What Am I to Do - Ezra Collective, Loyle Carner - Hip-hop Get Your Groove On - Cedric Burnside - Blues Old Enough To Know Better - Steffen Morrisson - Soul Wassiye - Habib Koité - Khassonke musique

Dance Floor - Zapp - Funk Wake Up - Brass Against, Sophia Urista - Brass Hard-Rock BIG LOVE - Black Eyed Peas - Pop The Greatest - Raleigh Ritchie - R&B DYSFUNCTIONAL - KAYTRANADA, VanJess - Soul

See You Leave - RJD2, STS, Khari Mateen - Hip-hop Sing A Simple Song - Maceo Parker - Jazz/Funk Have Mercy - Eryn Allen Kane - Soul Homenage - Brownout - Latin Funk Can’t Sleep - Gary Clark Jr. - Blues Rock

Toast - Koffee - Dancehall Freedom - Ester Dean - R&B Iskaba - Wande Coal, DJ Tunez - Afropop High Road - Anthony Riley - Alternative Christian Sunny Days - Sabrina Starke - Soul

The Talking Fish - Ibibio Sound Machine - Funk Paralyzed - KWAYE - Indie Purple Heart Blvd - Sebastian Kole - Pop WORSHIP - The Knocks, MNEK - Deep House BMO - Ari Lennox - R&B

Promises - Myles Sanko - Soul .img - Brother Theodore - Funk Singing the Blues - Ruthie Foster, Meshell Ndegeocello - Blues Nobody Like You - Amartey, SBMG, The Livingtons - Hip-hop Starship - Afriquoi, Shabaka Hutchings, Moussa Dembele - Deep House

Lay My Troubles Down - Aaron Taylor - Funk  Bloodstream - Tokio Myers - Classic Sticky - Ravyn Lenae - R&B Why I Try - Jalen N’Gonda - Soul Motivation - Benjamin Booker - Folk

quand c’est - Stromae - Pop Let Me Down (Shy FX Remix) - Jorja Smith, Stormzy, SHY FX - Reggae Funny - Gerald Levert - R&B Salt in my Wounds - Shemekia Copeland - Blues Our Love - Samm Henshaw - Soul

Make You Feel That Way - Blackalicious - Jazz Hip-hop Knock Me Out - Vintage Trouble - Funk Take the Time - Ronald Bruner, Jr., Thundercat - Alternative Thru The Night - Phonte, Eric Roberson - R&B Keep Marchin’ - Raphael Saadiq - Soul

Shake Me In Your Arms - Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’ - Blues Meet Me In The Middle - Jodie Abascus - Pop Raise Hell - Sir the Baptist, ChurchPpl - Gospel Pop Mogoya - Oumou Sangaré - Wassoulou Where’s Yesterday - Slakah The Beatchild - Hip-hop

Lose My Cool - Amber Mark - R&B New Funk - Big Sam’s Funky Nation - Funk I Got Love - Nate Dogg - Hip-hop Nothing’s Real But Love - Rebecca Ferguson - Soul Crazy Race - The RH Factor - Jazz

Spies Are Watching Me - Voilaaa, Sir Jean - Funk The Leaders - Boka de Banjul - Afrobeat Fast Lane - Rationale - House Conundrum - Hak Baker - Folk Don’t Make It Harder On Me - Chloe x Halle - R&B

Plastic Hamburgers - Fantastic Negrito - Hardrock Beyond - Leon Bridges - Pop God Knows - Dornik - Soul Soleil de volt - Baloji - Afrofunk Do You Remember - Darryl Williams, Michael Lington - Jazz Get Back - McClenney - Alternative Three Words - Aaron Marcellus - Soul

Spotify playlist 

In memory of:

Aaron Bailey Adam Addie Mae Collins Ahmaud Arbery Aiyana Stanley Jones Akai Gurley Alberta Odell Jones Alexia Christian Alfonso Ferguson Alteria Woods Alton Sterling Amadou Diallo Amos Miller Anarcha Westcott Anton de Kom Anthony Hill Antonio Martin Antronie Scott Antwon Rose Jr. Arthur St. Clair Atatiana Jefferson Aubrey Pollard Aura Rosser Bennie Simons Berry Washington Bert Dennis Bettie Jones Betsey Billy Ray Davis Bobby Russ Botham Jean Brandon Jones Breffu Brendon Glenn Breonna Taylor Bud Johnson Bussa

Calin Roquemore Calvin McDowell Calvin Mike and his family Carl Cooper Carlos Carson Carlotta Lucumi Carol Denise McNair Carol Jenkins Carole Robertson Charles Curry Charles Ferguson Charles Lewis Charles Wright Charly Leundeu Keunang Chime Riley Christian Taylor Christopher Sheels Claude Neal Clementa Pickney Clifford Glover Clifton Walker Clinton Briggs Clinton R. Allen Cordella Stevenson Corey Carter Corey Jones Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd Cynthia Wesley

Daniel L. Simmons Danny Bryant Darius Randell Robinson Darius Tarver Darrien Hunt Darrius Stewart David Felix David Joseph David McAtee David Walker and his family Deandre Brunston Deborah Danner Delano Herman Middleton Demarcus Semer Demetrius DuBose Depayne Middleton-Doctor Dion Johnson Dominique Clayton Dontre Hamilton Dred Scott

Edmund Scott Ejaz Choudry Elbert Williams Eleanor Bumpurs Elias Clayton Elijah McClain Eliza Woods Elizabeth Lawrence Elliot Brooks Ellis Hudson Elmer Jackson Elmore Bolling Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. Emmett Till Eric Garner Eric Harris Eric Reason Ernest Lacy Ernest Thomas Ervin Jones Eugene Rice Eugene Williams Ethel Lee Lance Ezell Ford

Felix Kumi Frank Livingston Frank Morris Frank Smart Frazier B. Baker Fred Hampton Fred Rochelle Fred Temple Freddie Carlos Gray Jr.

George Floyd George Grant George Junius Stinney Jr. George Meadows George Waddell George Washington Lee Gregory Gunn

Harriette Vyda Simms Moore Harry Tyson Moore Hazel “Hayes” Turner Henry Ezekial Smith Henry Lowery Henry Ruffin Henry Scott Hosea W. Allen

India Kager Isaac McGhie Isadore Banks Italia Marie Kelly

Jack Turner Jamar Clark Jamel Floyd James Byrd Jr. James Craig Anderson James Earl Chaney James Powell James Ramseur James Tolliver James T. Scott Janet Wilson Jason Harrison Javier Ambler J.C. Farmer Jemel Roberson Jerame Reid Jesse Thornton Jessie Jefferson Jim Eastman Joe Nathan Roberts John Cecil Jones John Crawford III John J. Gilbert John Ruffin John Taylor Johnny Robinson Jonathan Ferrell Jonathan Sanders Jordan Edwards Joseph Mann Julia Baker Julius Jones July Perry Junior Prosper

Kalief Browder Karvas Gamble Jr. Keith Childress, Jr. Kelly Gist Kelso Benjamin Cochrane Kendrick Johnson Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. Kenny Long Kevin Hicks Kevin Matthews Kiwane Albert Carrington

Lacy Mitchell Lamar Smith Laquan McDonald Laura Nelson Laura Wood L.B. Reed L.D. Nelson Lemuel Penn Lemuel Walters Leonard Deadwyler Leroy Foley Levi Harrington Lila Bella Carter Lloyd Clay Louis Allen Lucy

M.A. Santa Cruz Maceo Snipes Malcom X Malice Green Malissa Williams Manuel Ellis Marcus Deon Smith Marcus Foster Marielle Franco Mark Clark Maria Martin Lee Anderson Martin Luther King Jr. Matthew Avery Mary Dennis Mary Turner Matthew Ajibade May Noyes Mckenzie Adams Medgar Wiley Evers Michael Brown Michael Donald Michael Griffith Michael Lee Marshall Michael Lorenzo Dean Michael Noel Michael Sabbie Michael Stewart Michelle Cusseaux Miles Hall Moses Green Mya Hall Myra Thompson

Nathaniel Harris Pickett Jr. Natasha McKenna Nicey Brown Nicholas Heyward Jr.

O’Day Short family Orion Anderson Oscar Grant III Otis Newsom

Pamela Turner Paterson Brown Jr. Patrick Dorismond Philando Castile Phillip Pannell Phillip White Phinizee Summerour

Quaco

Ramarley Graham Randy Nelson Raymond Couser Raymond Gunn Regis Korchinski-Paquet Rekia Boyd Renisha McBride Riah Milton Robert Hicks Robert Mallard Robert Truett Rodney King Roe Nathan Roberts Roger Malcolm and his wife Roger Owensby Jr. Ronell Foster Roy Cyril Brooks Rumain Brisbon Ryan Matthew Smith

Sam Carter Sam McFadden Samuel DuBose Samuel Ephesians Hammond Jr. Samuel Hammond Jr. Samuel Leamon Younge Jr. Sandra Bland Sean Bell Shali Tilson Sharonda Coleman-Singleton Shukri Abdi Simon Schuman Slab Pitts Stella Young Stephon Clark Susie Jackson

T.A. Allen Tamir Rice Tamla Horsford Tanisha Anderson Timothy Caughman Timothy Hood Timothy Russell Timothy Stansbury Jr. Timothy Thomas Terrence Crutcher Terrill Thomas Tom Jones Tom Moss Tony McDade Tony Terrell Robinson Jr. Trayvon Martin Troy Hodge Troy Robinson Tula Tyler Gerth Tyre King Tywanza Sanders

Victor Duffy Jr. Victor White III

Walter Lamar Scott Wayne Arnold Jones Wesley Thomas Wilbert Cohen Wilbur Bundley Will Brown Will Head Will Stanley Will Stewart Will Thompson Willie James Howard Willie Johnson Willie McCoy Willie Palmer Willie Turks William Brooks William Butler William Daniels William Fambro William Green William L. Chapman II William Miller William Pittman Wyatt Outlaw

Yusef Kirriem Hawkins

The victims of LaLaurie (1830s) The black victims of the Opelousas massacre (1868) The black victims of the Thibodaux massacre (1887) The black victims of the Wilmington insurrection (1898) The black victims of the Johnson-Jeffries riots (1910) The black victims of the Red summer (1919) The black victims of the Elaine massacre (1919) The black victims of the Ocoee massacre (1920) The victims of the MOVE bombing (1985)

All the people who died during the Atlantic slave trade, be it due to abuse or disease.

All the unnamed victims of mass-incarceration, who were put into jail without the committing of a crime and died while in jail or died after due to mental illness. 

All the unnamed victims of racial violence and discrimination. 

...

My apologies for all the people missing on this list. Feel free to add more names and stories. 

Listen, learn and read about discrimination, racism and black history: (feel free to add more)  Documentaries: 13th (Netflix) The Innocence Files (Netflix) Who Killed Malcolm X? (Netflix) Time: The Kalief Browder Story (Netflix) I Am Not Your Negro

YouTube videos: We Cannot Stay Silent about George Floyd Waarom ook Nederlanders de straat op gaan tegen racisme (Dutch) Wit is ook een kleur (Dutch) (documentaire)

Books: Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt Don’t Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis How To Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery White Fragility by Robin Deangelo Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge Woman, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Websites: https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/ https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati/page/n11/mode/2up https://lab.nos.nl/projects/slavernij/index-english.html https://blacklivesmatter.com/ https://www.zinnedproject.org/

[blackkudos]

Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany (born April 1, 1942), Chip Delany to his friends, is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society.

His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight books of essays. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. From January 1975 until his retirement in May 2015, he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, and Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1997 he won the Kessler Award, and in 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013.

Early life

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. was born on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany (1916–1995), was a clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany Sr. (1906–1960), ran the Levy & Delany Funeral Home on 7th Avenue in Harlem, from 1938 until his death in 1960. The civil rights pioneers Sadie and Bessie Delany were his aunts. He used their adventures as the basis for Elsie and Corry in "Atlantis: Model 1924", the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collection Atlantis: Three Tales. His grandfather, Henry Beard Delany, was the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The family lived in the top two floors of a three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany envied children with nicknames and took one for himself on the first day of a new summer camp, Camp Woodland, at about the age of 12, by answering "Everybody calls me Chip" when asked his name. Decades later, Frederik Pohl called him "a person who is never addressed by his friends as Sam, Samuel or any other variant of the name his parents gave him."

Delany attended the Dalton School and from 1951 through 1956, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York, followed by the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program.

Delany has identified as gay since adolescence, though his complicated marriage with Marilyn Hacker (who was aware of Delany's orientation and has identified as a lesbian since their divorce) has led some authors to classify him as bisexual.

Upon the death of Delany's father from lung cancer in October, 1960 and his marriage in August 1961, he and Hacker settled in New York's East Village neighborhood at 629 East 5th Street. Hacker's intervention (while employed as an assistant editor at Ace Books), helped Delany become a published science fiction author by the age of 20, though he actually finished writing that first novel (The Jewels of Aptor) while at 19, shortly after dropping out of the City College of New York after one semester.

Career

He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as two prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and later in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). In 1966, with Hacker remaining in New York, Delany took a five-month trip to Europe, writing The Einstein Intersection while in France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. These locales found their way into several pieces of his work at that time, including the novel Nova and the short stories "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net".

Weeks after returning, Delany and Hacker began to live separately; Delany played and lived communally for five months on the Lower East Side with the Heavenly Breakfast, a folk-rock band, one of whose members, Bert Lee, was later a founding member of the Central Park Sheiks (the other two members of the quartet were Susan Schweers and Steven Greenbaum [aka Wiseman]); a memoir of his experiences with the band and communal life was eventually published as Heavenly Breakfast (1979). After a very brief time together again, Hacker moved to San Francisco and then England. Delany published his first eight novels with Ace Books from 1962 to 1967, culminating in Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, and Nova, which were consecutively recognized as the year's best novel by the Science Fiction Writers of America (Nebula Awards). Calling him a genius and poet, Algis Budrys listed Delany with J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and Roger Zelazny as "an earthshaking new kind" of writer,and Judith Merril labelling him "TNT (The New Thing)."

Delany's first short story was published by Pohl in the February 1967 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and he placed three more in other magazines that year. After four short stories (including the critically lauded "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones") and Nova were published to wide acclaim (the latter by Doubleday, marking Delany's departure from Ace) in 1968 alone, an extended interregnum in publication commenced until the release of Dhalgren (1975), abated only by two short stories, two comic book scripts, and an erotic novel, The Tides of Lust (1973), reissued in 1994 under Delany's preferred title, Equinox.

On New Year's Eve in 1968, Delany moved to San Francisco to join Hacker, who was already there, and again to London in the interim, before Delany returned to New York in the summer of 1971 as a resident of the Albert Hotel in Greenwich Village. In 1972, Delany directed a short film entitled The Orchid (originally titled The Science Fiction Film in the Latter Twentieth Century, produced by Barbara Wise. Shot in 16mm with color and sound, the production also employed David Wise, Adolfas Mekas, and was scored by John Herbert McDowell. In November 1972, Delany was a visiting writer at Wesleyan University's Center for the Humanities. From December 1972 to December 1974, Delany and Hacker lived in Marylebone, London. During this period, he began working with sexual themes in earnest and wrote two pornographic works, one of which (Hogg) was unpublishable due to its transgressive content. Twenty years later, it found print.

Delany wrote two issues of the comic book Wonder Woman in 1972, during a controversial period in the publication's history when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent. Delany scripted issues #202 and #203 of the series. He was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc that would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but the story arc was canceled after Gloria Steinem complained that Wonder Woman was no longer wearing her traditional costume, a change predating Delany's involvement. Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management.

Delany's eleventh and most popular novel, the million-plus-selling Dhalgren, was published in 1975 to both literary acclaim (from both inside and outside the science fiction community) and derision (mostly from within the community). Upon its publication, Delany returned to the United States at the behest of Leslie Fiedler to teach at the University at Buffalo as Butler Professor of English in the spring of 1975, preceding his return to New York City that summer. Though he wrote two more major science fiction novels (Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand) in the decade following Dhalgren, Delany began to work in fantasy and science fiction criticism for several years. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was Return to Nevèrÿon, the overall title of the four-volume series and also the title of the fourth and final book. Following the publication of Return to Nevèrÿon, Delany published one more fantasy novel. Released in 1993, They Fly at Çiron is a re-written and expanded version of an unpublished short story Delany wrote in 1962. This would be Delany's last novel in either the science fiction or fantasy genres for many years. Among the works that appeared during this time was his novel The Mad Man and a number of his essay collections.

Delany became a professor in 1988. Following visiting fellowships at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1977), the University at Albany (1978) and Cornell University (1987), he spent 11 years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo, then, after an invited stay at Yaddo, moved to the English Department of Temple University in January 2001, where he taught until his retirement in April 2015. He served as Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2014.

Beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977), a collection of critical essays that applied then-nascent literary theory to science fiction studies, he published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In the memoir Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), Delany drew on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men in New York City.

He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1993.

In 2007, his novel Dark Reflections was a winner of the Stonewall Book Award. That same year Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, directed by Fred Barney Taylor. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. The following year, 2008, it tied for Jury Award for Best Documentary at the International Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Also in 2007, Delany was the April "calendar boy" in the "Legends of the Village" calendar put out by Village Care of New York.

In 2010, Delany was one of the five judges (along with Andrei Codrescu, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott and Carolyn See) for the National Book Awards fiction category. In 2015, the Caribbean Philosophical Association named Delany the recipient of its Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013 he received the Brudner Award from Yale University, for his contributions to gay literature. Since 2018, his archive has been housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale where it is currently being organized. Till then, his papers were housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

In 1991, Delany entered a committed, nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor; their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoir Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artist Mia Wolff. After fourteen years, he retired from teaching at Temple University.

Delany is an atheist.

Themes

Recurring themes in Delany's work include mythology, memory, language, sexuality, and perception. Class, position in society, and the ability to move from one social stratum to another are motifs that were touched on in his earlier work and became more significant in his later fiction and non-fiction, both. Many of Delany's later (mid-1980s and beyond) works have bodies of water (mostly oceans and rivers) as a common theme, as mentioned by Delany in The Polymath. Though not a theme, coffee, more than any other beverage, is mentioned significantly and often in many of Delany's fictions.

Writing itself (both prose and poetry) is also a repeated theme: several of his characters — Geo in The Jewels of Aptor, Vol Nonik in The Fall of the Towers, Rydra Wong in Babel-17, Ni Ty Lee in Empire Star, Katin Crawford in Nova, the Kid, Ernest Newboy, and William in Dhalgren, Arnold Hawley in Dark Reflections, John Marr and Timothy Hasler in The Mad Man, and Osudh in Phallos – are writers or poets of some sort.

Delany also makes use of repeated imagery: several characters (Hogg, the Kid, and the sensory-syrynx player, the Mouse, in Nova; Roger in "We .. move on a rigorous line") are known for wearing only one shoe; and nail biting along with rough, calloused (and sometimes veiny) hands are characteristics given to individuals in a number of his fictions. Names are sometimes reused: "Bellona" is the name of a city in both Dhalgren and Triton, "Denny" is a character in both Dhalgren and Hogg (which were written almost concurrently despite being published two decades apart; and there is a Danny in "We ... move on a rigorous line"), and the name "Hawk" is used for five different characters in four separate stories – Hogg, the story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" and the novella "The Einstein Intersection", and the short story "Cage of Brass", where a character called Pig also appears.

Jewels, reflection, and refraction – not just the imagery but reflection and refraction of text and concepts – are also strong themes and metaphors in Delany's work. Titles such as The Jewels of Aptor, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", Driftglass, and Dark Reflections, along with the optic chain of prisms, mirrors, and lenses worn by several characters in Dhalgren, are a few examples of this; as in "We (...) move on a rigorous line" a ring is nearly obsessively described at every twist and turn of the plot. Reflection and refraction in narrative are explored in Dhalgren and take center stage in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.

Following the 1968 publication of Nova, there was not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, his published output virtually stopped until 1973), there was also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It was at this point that Delany began dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equaled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man, Hogg and, Phallos can be considered pornography, a label Delany himself endorses.

Novels such as Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series explored in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive – or, in Triton's case, futuristic – society.Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such as Atlantis: Three Tales, The Mad Man, and Hogg, Delany pursued these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York and other American cities, now in the Jazz Age, now in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, New York private schools in the 1950s, as well as Greece and Europe in the 1960s, and – in Hogg – generalized small-town America. Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island of Syracuse in the second-century reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and the writer's unrewarded life.

Writer and academic C. Riley Snorton has addressed Triton's thematic engagement with gender, sexual, and racial difference and how their accommodations are instrumentalized in the state and institutional maintenance of social relations. Despite the novel's infinite number subject positions and identities available through technological intervention, Snorton argues that Delany's proliferation of identities "take place within the context of increasing technologically determined biocentrism, where bodies are shaped into categories-cum-cartographies of (human) life, as determined by socially agreed-upon and scientifically mapped genetic routes." Triton questions social and political imperatives towards anti-normativity insofar that these projects do not challenge but actually reify the constrictive categories of the human. In his book Afro-Fabulations, Tavia Nyong'o makes a similar argument in his analysis of "The Einstein Intersection." Citing Delany as a queer theorist, Nyong'o highlights the novella's "extended study of the enduring power of norms, written during the precise moment—'the 1960s'—when antinormative, anti-systemic movements in the United States and worldwide were at their peak." Like Triton, "The Einstein Intersection" features characters that exist across a range of differences across gender, sexuality, and ability. This proliferation of identities "takes place within a concerted effort to sustain a gendered social order and to deliver a stable reproductive futurity through language" in the Lo society's caging of the non-functional "kages" who are denied language and care. Both Nyong'o and Snorton connect Delany's work with Sylvia Wynter's "genres of being human," underscoring Delany's sustained thematic engagement with difference, normativity, and their potential subversions or reifications, and placing him as an important interlocutor in the fields of queer theory and black studies.

The Mad Man, Phallos, and Dark Reflections are linked in minor ways. The beast mentioned at the beginning of The Mad Man graces the cover of Phallos.

Delany has also published seven books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and queer studies. He has commented that he believes that to omit the sexual practices that he portrays in his writing would limit the dialogue children and adults can have about it themselves, and that this lack of knowledge can kill people.

Works

FictionNovelsReturn to Nevèrÿon seriesShort storiesComics

Wonder Woman, 1972

Anthologies

Quark/1 (1970, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/2 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/3 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/4 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Nebula Winners 13 (1980, science fiction)

NonfictionCritical works

The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1977; Wesleyan University Press revised edition 2009, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1978; Wesleyan University Press 2014, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1984; Wesleyan University Press, 2012, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

Wagner/Artaud: A Play of 19th and 20th Century Critical Fictions (Ansatz Press, 1988) 0-945195-01-X

The Straits of Messina (1989), 0-934933-04-9

Silent Interviews (1995), 0-8195-6280-7

Longer Views (1996) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-8195-6293-9

Shorter Views (1999), 0-8195-6369-2

About Writing (2005), 0-8195-6716-7

Conversations with Samuel R. Delany (2009), edited by Carl Freedman, University of Mississippi Press.

"Racism and Science Fiction" (1998), New York Review of Science Fiction, Issue 120.

Memoirs and letters

Heavenly Breakfast (1979), a memoir of a New York City commune during the so-called Summer of Love, 0-553-12796-9

The Motion of Light in Water (1988), a memoir of his experiences as a young gay science fiction writer; winner of the Hugo Award, 0-87795-947-1

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999; 2019, 20th anniversary edition with foreword by Robert Reid-Pharr), a discussion of changes in social and sexual interaction in New York's Times Square, 0-8147-1919-8; 978-1-4798-2777-0

Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), an autobiographical comic drawn by Mia Wolff with an introduction by Alan Moore, 1-890451-02-9

1984: Selected Letters (2000) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-9665998-1-0

In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany. Volume 1, 1957-1969 (2017), edited and with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 978-0-8195-7089-5. 2018 Locus Award Finalist (non-fiction)

Letters from Amherst: Five Narrative Letters (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), with foreword by Nalo Hopkinson, 9780819578204

Introductions

The Adventures of Alyx, by Joanna Russ

We Who Are About To..., by Joanna Russ

Black Gay Man by Robert Reid-Pharr

Burning Sky, Selected Stories, by Rachel Pollack

Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 by Herukhuti

The Cosmic Rape, by Theodore Sturgeon

Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein

Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon

The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny, selected and introduced by Samuel R. Delany

Masters of the Pit, by Michael Moorcock

Nebula Winners 13, edited by Samuel R. Delany

A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, by Baird Searles, Martin Last, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin; foreword by Samuel R. Delany

The Sandman: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman

Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent, edited by Charles Rowell and Bruce Morrow

Interviews

Sci-Fi Legend Samuel R. Delany Doesn't Play Favorites (2017)

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Brad Dourif Gifs Masterlist

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Thomas Nash)

Thomas Nash

Chaindance/Common Bonds (Johnny Reynolds)

angry breathing

getting ready for a date

Making out

More making out

Critters 4 (Al Bert)

Captain Asshole

Fingers crossed

Al Bert (screencaps)

Cypress Edge (Colin McCammon)

Shooting guns

Wink

Lurking & flirting

Dead Scared/The Hazing (Prof. Kapps)

Evil spooky glasses boy

Evil book nerd

Stroking the professor’s staff bow chika bow wow

Jumpscare

You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?

Dune (Piter de Vries)

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion

It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion 

Bondage kink Piter

Screencaps

Costume reference screencaps

Eyes of Laura Mars (Tommy Ludlow)

Cut rope an’ shit

Graveyard Shift

Shaking hands while holding dead rat

Chewing

Dourif-Patented Scrunchy Face

Costume reference screencaps

Halloween (Sheriff Brackett)

Brad offers Malcolm McDowell a cappuccino 

Laurie, give me the gun

Laurie, give me the gun (small version)

Brad & McDowell behind the scenes

Horseplayer (Bud Cowan)

You’re mine now

Seducing Bud

If Looks Could Kill (Gene Hanson)

Gene Hanson

Hot tub scene

Law & Order: SVU (Dr. Iggy Drexel)

Not. Science!

Fire expert

Lock and Roll Forever (Zee)

Domo!

Millennium (Dennis Hoffman)

Screencaps

Mississippi Burning (Clinton Pell)

Get the door

Poke the belly

Psychopath eyes (screencaps)

Threatening shave (screencaps)

Clinton Pell sentenced (screencap)

Murder She Wrote

Angry pointing

Angry pointing (screencaps)

Priestly (screencaps)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Billy Bibbit)

You’ve got beautiful hair

Just Billy being cute

Phoenix (Reiger)

Do I look like I’m kidding?

You people make me sick

Brad on TV (screencap)

Priest (the Salesman)

Bottle shot out of his hand

Move outta the way!

Death scene

Santa Monica

Crying at a soup kitchen

Santa Monica (full video)

Santa Brad (screencaps)

Sinner (the Caddy)

Lighting a cigar

Toast with wine

Sworn to Justice

Psychic visions in the courtroom + Brad in a tie

Brad hugging a teddy

Tales of the Unexpected (the Hitchhiker)

Hitchhiking

Cackling

Handsome boy

Smoking + driving

Trauma (Dr. Lloyd)

A single tear

Terrible decapitation down an elevator shaft

Old photograph (screencaps)

Oh noes I decapitated a baby?! (screencaps)

Young Like Us (Scary Larry)

Shhh

Chucky poster + air kisses

Mysterious ways

Literally, the multiverse

Young Woman’s Blues

Brad singing

Brad dancing

Screencaps

Photos (screencaps)

Behind the scenes (screencaps)

Multiple sources: 

Brad Dourif in Glasses

Masterlists:

Alien Resurrection

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Body Parts

Chucky Series

Death and Cremation

Death Machine

End of the World

The Exorcist III

Fringe: The Day We Died

Hidden Agenda

Istanbul

Medium Rare

Progeny (Bert Clavell)

Ragtime

Star Trek Voyager

Sonny Boy

Tales From the Crypt

Urban Legend

Interviews, Q&As, Etc.

[allbestnet]

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set by Wizards RPG Team

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin

How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns

No More Mr Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover

Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition by Thomas H. Cormen

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe

Player’s Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons) by Wizards RPG Team

C Programming Language, 2nd Edition by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

Three Felonies A Day by Harvey Silverglate

Design Patterns by Erich Gamma

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared M. Diamond

Code Complete by Steve McConnell

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing by Taylor Larimore

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas

Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

The Demon Haunted World by

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

She Comes First by Ian Kerner

Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide by Eric Freeman

The Martian: A Novel by Andy Weir

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

How to Prove It by Daniel J. Velleman

The Flavor Bible by Karen Page, Andrew Dornenburg

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

C++ Primer (5th Edition) by Stanley B. Lippman

A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence M. Krauss

Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls (The New 52) by Scott Snyder

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert B. Cialdini

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay

A Random Walk down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig

Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski Ph.D.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong

The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Ender’s Game (The Ender Quintet) by Orson Scott Card

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by Don Jones, Jeffery Hicks

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, William D. Danko

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

The World Of Ice And Fire by George R. R. Martin

Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman

A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine

Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump, Tony Schwartz

Head First Java, 2nd Edition by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates

Effective Java (2nd Edition) by Joshua Bloch

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin

The Mind Illuminated by Ph.D.) Culadasa (John Yates

Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko

Ready Player One: A Novel by Ernest Cline

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondō

Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky

The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson

Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K Vaughan

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition by Thomas A. Limoncelli

A People’s History of The United States 1492- Present by Howard Zinn

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer

The Baby Owner’s Manual by Louis Borgenicht M.D., Joe Borgenicht

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee

Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) by George R.R. Martin

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi

What’s the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund Bourne PhD

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren

Ordinary Men by Christopher R. Browning

Elements of Style by William; White, E. B. Strunk

Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

On Killing by Dave Grossman

On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins

HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett

[bertmcdowell]

A catastrophic injury changes everything. In an instant, your life, your job, school, hobbies, and the time you spend with your friends and family is temporarily over. You can spend weeks or months in the hospital, dealing with your injuries. Normally, after hospitalization, a long time of rehabilitation follows. Whether you have suffered a catastrophic injury from a car, truck, or motorcycle accident, or even from medical malpractice, a personal injury attorney can help.

[barelyevenwriting]

Day 9 Paradox

Was I conditioned to hate you

The same way I was to love you?

    Inevitably,

Like sweet droplets of rain

On too warm windshields

Gathering in senseless rivers

Leading everywhere and nowhere.

    Unawares, perhaps

Incidental, maybe

By some happenstance

Of situational context.

    Were we made to cling to each other

Like pollen on dandelion seeds?

    Did you fall gently,

Or did you go too far

Out there out of reach

In peaceful quiet

Where nothing else would ever touch you

    Did we stray too far

Out of sunlight and anger

Until sweet words

And careless disposition

Dared to paint our walls a deeper green

In sadness.

    When did we fall out of love,

You think?

    Where and why?

    Was it simply the quiet?

    Or were we made to hate each other

The same way we were dragged into loving?

Awful, hopeful, terrible and quiet.

[culturalgutter]

We really should have had a mystery series featuring a sensible lesbian couple by now. Something like two Miss Marples sharing a sensible home and sensibly solving extremely–some might even say overly–complicated murders together. One wakes the other up when she turns on the nightstand lamp to do a crossword puzzle, her favorite occupation when she is trying to crack a case. It helps her think. There should have been something based on a series of books written in the 1920s and 1930s, just after the War–either one. It should have been written by female author with three names and set in a quaint village outside London, the kind of village with many corpses in the shrubbery. Or maybe set in the city, with someone like Miss Fisher, but including the women she has had affairs with. Her dressing table or mantle featuring suggestive photos of the detective on holiday in Malta or visiting Paris with Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, Djuna Barnes and even, possibly, Garbo herself. Our detective’s tux would be divinely tailored.

Yes, we could have them now, a retro 1930s correcting the oversights of the past. But we should have already had these drawing room mysteries long ago. They should have played on Masterpiece Theater, A&E and the various BBCs. They should be so prevalent that there are Sesame Street parodies teaching children how to count or the letter “L” or the word “sensible.” Old mystery and film fans should patronizingly explain to us that Zasu Pitts or Theresa Harris, Margaret Rutherford or Maude Eburne, in fact, performed in the first film versions of these films back in the day. “The earliest performance of this character dates back to Sarah Bernhard,” a random pedant would interject*.

The realized this terrible loss in the very same moment I saw it almost presented to me in Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate (1971) and its spin-off series, The Snoop Sisters. The Snoop Sisters ran as part of NBC’s Mystery Movie from 1972 to 1974. Though it stars two sisters, aunts to a police officer, I think it will get hard to read them as anything but a married couple in the future. I discovered The Snoop Sisters while watching old, made-for-tv mysteries and thrillers with the Gutter’s own Beth Watkins. We watched one where Barbara Stanwyck’s house is probably possessed and another where someone is trying to drive her mad. One where a theater troop re-enacts a murder to get a confession. One where Shelley Winters’ passion for Debbie Reynolds gets the best of her, demonstrating that there is something very much the matter with Helen. Another called, A Very Missing Person (1972) in which Eve Arden plays Hildegard Withers, a character who was variously played by ZaSu Pitts, Edna May Oliver and Helen Broderick in a series of 1930s films based on the novels of Stuart Palmer**. Ms. Withers is an ex-schoolteacher with an intriguing taste in hats and another good candidate for sensible lesbian detective. And we watched Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate. Helen Hayes, Mildred Natwick, Myrna Loy and Sylvia Sydney. They are retired women who occupy their time with luncheons, amazing outfits and creating the profile of a much younger woman for a computer dating service. Unfortunately for them, their profile attract a serial killer. Unfortunately for him, these ladies have moxie. Watching the movie, I realized that I would love to see these women solve a mystery every week. Apparently someone at NBC felt the same, because while the movie was not picked up as a series, it is somewhat reprised The Snoop Sisters, with Mildred Natwick taking on Myrna Loy’s role as Helen Hayes’ sister. It is the snazziest Mildred Natwick has ever been in a film, as she plays the fashionable Gwendolyn Snoop-Nicholson, “G.” for short. It is one of the only times I can think of that Mildred Natwick has outdressed nearly everyone else on the screen. Helen Hayes plays mystery novelist, Ernesta Snoop. And now both are instigators.

The Snoop Sisters has the things people like in 1970s made-for-tv mysteries—women in their 60s and 70s, magicians, Roddy McDowell, switcheroos and twists. The Snoops solve mysteries, scoop the police—led by their own nephew Lt. Steven Ostrowski—and charmingly prove what everyone thinks is happening is not what’s happening at all. Except, that yes, Alice Cooper is happening, and so is a fist fight between Vincent Price and Roddy McDowell. Also, classic film star Joan Blondell is a medium, Bernie Casey wears pants no one should be able to successfully look handsome in and Steve Allen hosts Ernesta Snoop on his television program. There are so many outfits—fantastically printed caftans and ties; wide lapels; loudly patterned suits; sweaters with ring pulls. And there is a lot of decor—including Gloria Hendry’s amazing octagonal waterbed.

Sadly, there were only five episodes produced, but fortunately they have been collected in a dvd set.In “The Female Instinct,” the Snoops solve the murder of an old Hollywood icon Norma Treet (Paulette Goddard) while Barney tries and fails to keep them out of trouble. There is a sweet screening of one of Goddard’s films, The Ghost Breakers (1940), presented as one of Treet’s. Their nephew***, police Lt. Steven Ostrowski (Lawrence Pressman) as their nephew, Lt. Ostrowski sets Barney, a retired cop played by Art Carney, to keep the ladies out of trouble. But no one, not even Art Carney—an Art Carney who does a stunt—can stop the Snoops from doing what they want to do. And they want to write mysteries, solve mysteries, meet amazing people, and disguise themselves as anything from “stuffed animal fluffers” to exterminators and a bowling team.

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And they wear amazing outfits. G.’s wardrobe is very much from the 1970s, including a beautiful coat I covet. Ernesta’s much more turn of the Twentieth Century. I will also note that Ernesta is butch, but hers is a butchness leaning towards Gertrude Stein but with a fondness for ridiculously feathered hats. It’s from a when wearing a certain cut of jacket was more meaningful in gender coding than wearing a skirt. In this case, most of Ernesta’s skirt suits are “mannish” in the parlance of the thirties and forties. And I am pretty sure she is straight up wearing men’s or boy’s gray striped flannel pajamas.

My favorite part is the peek into Ernesta’s creative process as she works on a book while G. takes dictation.

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We also get another glimpse of their home life as Ernesta works on her embroidery in bed and Mildred asks to borrow her liniment, after a close call with a potential assassin required that they both run.

By the second episode, “Corpse and Robbers,” there have been some changes. Now Bert Convy plays Steven. And rather than a retired cop, Barney is now a paroled convict doing the lieutenant a favor by watching his aunts. Played by Lou Antonio, Barney is also twenty or thirty years younger than the Snoops and too hobbled by his respect for their ladyness to come close to contending with them. In the episode, Ernesta tries to discover what happened to her dear old friend, and toy-making genius, Franklin Birdwell (Liam Dunn). Ernesta also hopes to prove that she is not imagining that he has called her. The Snoops disguise themselves as “stuffed animal fluffers” to infiltrate a toy factory that specializes in toy dogs that bark and wag their tails, Winnie the Pooh stuffies, and giant devil masks. I assume the factor is one of the Joker’s old hideouts and, in its off hours, the site of many a giallo murder.**** Ernesta and G. also go jogging in knit outfits.

Their activewear.

In “Death Is A Free Throw,” we discover many interesting things, such as that G. is a basketball fan and that their Lincoln limosine’s license plate just happens to be 473 FEM. Oh, and as Ernesta and G. defend a man who has come flying out of the green room for the Steve Allen show, “We warn you, Mr. Bates, we know kung fu.”

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Fortunately, fisticuffs prove unnecessary and the Snoops quickly befriend basketball great, Willie Bates (Bernie Casey). Willie wears some amazing outfits that only Bernie Casey could make it seem like a good idea for anyone else to wear. I mean, some other people could look handsome in them, but, seriously, don’t think you could because he could. Meanwhile, everyone has stomach trouble and G. becomes a suspect.

“The Devil Made Me Do It!” might contain the most wonders per hour. The Snoops find themselves the target of a Satanic coven that would very much like its ancient relic back, thank you. Classic film bombshell Joan Blondell appears as a medium, Madame Mimi. And Alice Cooper not only appears as a witch, but sings a song to a very interesting audience at the Frou Frou Club.

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But my favorite character is the Honorable Morlock (Cyril Ritchard), the proprietor of an occult shop who specializes in providing New York’s covens with human skulls, in any size and painted in any color you might like. He assures us that Henry Ford had the right idea in only offering one model of car in one color. He blames the government for the rapacious frog bone suppliers. He wears a wig, red eye shadow and stunning ritual magick robes. (The Honorable Morlock definitely spells magic with a K and probably deplores the confusion of stage magic with the Art). And he speaks in rhyming couplets whenever he can. When Barney asks how the Honorable Morlock knows he has a bad back, he declaims: “Lucifer, give me strength! Do you think you’re dealing with kids? Because I’m a pro—that’s how I know!”

He’s a pro!

And if The Snoop Sisters had to go out, at least it went out with an episode featuring both Roddy McDowell and Vincent Price. The episode begins gloriously with Ernesta and G. cosplaying that most romantic of classic horror couples, Frankenstein and the Bride****. Ernest is the creature, of course. And Mildred Natwick makes a remarkably elegant Bride. They are dressed up to attend the Michael Bastion Film Festival, a revival of classic horror films. We see among the attendees people dressed as vampires, a werewolf, the Metaluna Mutant and a mummy. That’s right, G. is a horror fan. She’s seen all of Bastion’s films and is excited to meet Bastion himself. Bastion and his wife arrive in an old hearse. His wife leaves from the passenger side. Muscle men in silver masks pull a coffin out of the hearse, lean it up and open it to reveal Bastion to his adoring fans*****. There is a fun movie-within-a-tv-movie starring Bastion, and, of course, a murder during the screening. Bastion is the accused and the Snoops investigate. Like Price himself, Bastion is a noted gourmet cook and G. distracts Bastion by taking him up on an offer of a gourmet luncheon. There is a very fine drunken-crepe making scene. And Ernesta wears an indescribable golfing outfit. I do not think I am spoiling anything but informing you that there is also a fistfight between Roddy McDowell and Vincent Price. This is obviously an enticement.

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While I willingly admit that the Snoop sisters are, in fact, sisters, no matter how queer coded the relationship and the show seems, The Snoop Sisters does satisfy some of my desire for weird old tv mysteries starring a lesbian couple. Sure we could do something retro now and that would be fun, but it isn’t the same. And it’s a reminder of how much we could have had without prejudices limiting art.

*One must take the good with the bad if one is truly sensible.

**A Very Missing Person also stars Julie Newmar and Pat Morita. Morita plays a hippie, which is so, so worthwhile.

***I will note the long tradition of couples who are coded gay having nieces and nephews. I also suppose that if Steven were Gwendolyn’s son, she would not be considered so free to gallivant around with Ernesta because she would be a Bad Mother somehow to the series perceived audience. Even if Steven’s all grown-up and a police lieutenant now.

***I have been thinking about gialli a lot while watching this made-for-tv mysteries with Beth.

****For my thoughts on calling the creature, “Frankenstein,” and on the poor Bride, please see “The Specter of Frankenstein.”

*****Bastion later arranges to meet someone in the men’s bathroom, but I am resisting the temptation to say anything about that.

Two other queer and queer-ish, made-for-tv movies: The Judge and Jake Wyler starring Bette Davis and Doub McLure; and, What’s The Matter With Helen? starring Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters.

 ~~~

If you need her, Carol Borden will be consulting with the Honorable Morlock.

Snooping Ladies Sensibly Solving Mysteries We really should have had a mystery series featuring a sensible lesbian couple by now. Something like two Miss Marples sharing a sensible home and sensibly solving extremely--some might even say…

[manualstogo]

For just $3.99 The Dawn Rider Released June 20, 1935: John searches for the man that killed his father and wounded him, and competes for the affections of his nurse. Directed by: Robert N. Bradbury Written by: Robert N. Bradbury from a story by Lloyd Nosler and Wellyn Totman. The Actors: John Wayne John Mason, Marion Burns Alice Gordon, Dennis Moore Rudd Gordon, Reed Howes Ben McClure, Joseph De Grasse Dad Mason, Yakima Canutt Saloon Owner, Earl Dwire Pete, expressman, Nelson McDowell Bates the undertaker, Chuck Baldra henchman, Bert Dillard Buck, Jack Evans barfly, Herman Hack henchman, Jack Jones henchman in the wagon, George Morrell card player, Tex Palmer henchman, Fred Parker the doctor, Tex Phelps henchman, Archie Ricks townsman, James Sheridan townsman. Runtime: 55 minutes *** This item will be supplied on a quality disc and will be sent in a sleeve that is designed for posting CD's DVDs *** This item will be sent by 1st class post for quick delivery. Should you not receive your item within 12 working days of making payment, please contact us as it is unusual for any item to take this long to be delivered. Note: All my products are either my own work, licensed to me directly or supplied to me under a GPL/GNU License. No Trademarks, copyrights or rules have been violated by this item. This product complies withs rules on compilations, international media and downloadable media. All items are supplied on CD or DVD.

[samyelbanette]

tagged by @homura-bakura

RULES: answer the questions in a new post and tag some blogs you would like to get to know better.

Nicknames:  Kelley, Kel, Kellz, Kell Bell

Star sign: Leo

Height: 5ft 6in

Time right now:  11:29 PM

Last thing googled: The Used - Meant To Die lyrics (I just listened to this band for the first time today and I reallllly like them so far)

Favorite music artists: MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE (no duh), Frank Iero & The Patience, Gerard Way, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, Green Day

Song stuck in your head: Under Pressure (not the Queen version tho - the cover that Gerard Way and Bert McCracken of The Used did)

Last movie watched: Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Last TV show watched: Kitchen Nightmares (my roommate likes that show a lot)

What are you wearing right now: a purple sweater and leggings with a pattern of purple roses on them 

When did you create your blog: December 2013

What kind of stuff do you post: mostly Yu-Gi-Oh and My Chemical Romance (my two biggest fandoms rn), along with occasional content regarding other anime and bands

Do you have any other blogs: I have askkiryukyosuke, where I RP as Kiryu from Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, but I haven’t gotten a lot of asks over there lately. I also have a cooking blog that I haven’t updated in a year and should probably delete, and.......one other blog......

Why did you choose your URL: its a reference to both Yu-Gi-Oh, and the My Chemical Romance song “Na Na Na”. The latter begins with the line, “One-oh -nine in the sky but the pigs won’t quit....”

Gender: female

Hogwarts house: Ravenclaw

Pokemon team: I don’t even play  the games for real, but some of my fave Pokemon are Skitty, Mismagius, Mimikkyu, and Sylpheon

Moral alignment: Neutral Good

Favorite color: Black, pink, and purple are my top three

Average hours of sleep: 9 if I’m working the closing shift, 5 if I’m opening the store in the morning

Lucky number: 13

Favorite character(s): Kiryu Kyosuke, Jounouchi Katsuya, Carly Nagisa, Party Poison, Dean Winchester, Evangeline McDowell

How many blankets do you sleep with:  Just my Yami Yugi blanket and my sheets......unless it gets really cold as balls, then I steal my roommate’s spare comforter. I still want to get that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge blanket to use instead.

Dream job: Journalist - I didn’t used to be sure what kind, but now I think working for a music magazine would be really cool. I live right near the publishing offices of Alternative Press (the magazine the majority of my wall of emo band posters are clipped from), after all. :) 

Following: 169 Tagging: @kintatsujo, @starship-nine, @cassiusthecorrupterofsouls, @itsthatoneagain, @tkbeatsdr, @baekuras

[pitchforkposts]

A History of Sun Devil Baseball Slogans

Arizona State’s baseball seasons have often been remembered for dramatic games and exceptional performances.

In the era of Head Coach Jim Brock (1972-94) they were also known for slogans.

Beginning in 1981, Brock coined a slogan for each season, usually a rhyme, but always with one goal in mind:

Omaha. It was either said out loud or strongly inferred.

Understandable, since the Devils made 13 trips to the College World Series in Brock’s 23 seasons in the ASU dugout.

“J.B. believed in stating goals right away,” says his widow, Pat Brock. “He always felt it wasn’t a good season unless we won the last game in Omaha”.

It began with “Omaha and Fun In ‘81”. ASU was in its third year in the Pac-10 Southern Division, and had yet to make the postseason in their new league. Brock boldly predicted before the season he had the makings of a championship squad, and decided it was time to publicly declare ASU’s intentions.

The ’81 squad backed up their coach’s confidence, winning the fifth CWS title in school history. With it, a tradition was born.

The following year, expectations were slightly lower. Pitcher Kevin Dukes, infielders Bert Martinez and Mike Sodders, outfielder Stan Holmes and catcher Ric Wilson, all major contributors to the National Championship squad, were gone. Brock wanted to remind his team, and anyone else paying attention, that HIS expectations hadn’t changed. His slogan for the year: “We’ll Surprise You In ‘82”.

Was there a slogan in 1983? Not one used publicly. That year was the 25th season of varsity baseball at Arizona State, and Coach Brock’s emphasis was on honoring the history of the program. The annual alumni game was moved to two weeks AFTER the season began, and included the unveiling of the Packard Stadium Wall of Fame, the retiring of Number 1 in honor of the program’s first varsity coach, Bobby Winkles, and a banquet after the game in which Brock uttered a line that could have easily been a slogan:

“In my way of thinking,” said Brock that night, “when you put on the uniform of the Sun Devils, you change as a person, and you are never the same again”.

From there, the yearly slogan was tied to what had happened the year before. When the 1983 Devils, a team that featured Barry Bonds and Oddibe McDowell in its starting outfield, finished third at the CWS, the following season’s slogan was “Omaha and More In ‘84”.

There was “The Tradition Is Alive in ‘85”, and “There Will Be Kicks in ‘86”.

The 1987 Sun Devils made a surprising run to the Series after being out of postseason play the previous two years. Their stay was brief, being eliminated in two games. So, the slogan for the following year? “Staying Late In ‘88”.

It wasn’t meant to be a sales pitch to the public. For one thing, attendance at ASU games at Packard Stadium was consistently among the nation’s best. NCAA Regionals were commonplace at ASU during Brock’s tenure, in part because of his team’s success, and because the NCAA knew the seats would get sold.

The slogans were designed to remind those in Maroon and Gold uniforms what was expected of them.        

Brock’s players also remember “Brockisms”, famous lines uttered by the coach that stayed in the memory bank for years.

Statements like “Heavenly Days”, “No Way In The World” and the classic “If That Was A Sun Devil Effort, Then I’m A Street Car” are still met with smiles and a few chuckles when Sun Devil baseball alumni gather to share stories.

Pat Brock also recalls one other unofficial slogan that began in the 1970’s, and was linked to one of the Devils’ greatest pitchers.

“There was a man who was friends with Floyd Bannister’s father,” Pat Brock says. “He came to a lot of our games, and would always shout ‘On To Omaha’. Everyone could hear him, and lot of people repeated it.”.

The 1980’s saw a great many innovations and accomplishments for Arizona State baseball, and in many ways, the yearly slogan set the tone. If indeed some viewed the slogans as a marketing endeavor, then it can be said Jim Brock’s Sun Devils had a lot of satisfied customers.