#but Hank Summers is a good one for keeping the rest of the story mostly the same while also affecting Buffy big time

[layer-of-slayers]

My main issue with Angelus as the Big Bad is that he was built up as one of the worst, scariest, most sadistic vampires in history and this whole Buffy and Drusilla parallel was set up with the way he stalked Drusilla and killed everyone she loved only for him to do stuff like... use his invite to Willow’s house to kill Willow’s fish, and use his access to Buffy’s house to leave her handdrawn portraits instead of trying to kill Joyce or attack Buffy in her sleep, and only go after Jenny Calendar when she found a way to re-ensoul him.

So: imagine if Angelus did start to go after Buffy’s loved ones and managed to kill at least one person, Imagine if Buffy and Joyce and the Scoobies had that to deal with when a re-ensouled Angel came back in season 3 (Giles was already dealing with that in canon because Angelus killed Jenny, but i wonder if Buffy.would have reacted differently to him in season 3 if it had been someone she was closer to and didn’t have mixed feelings about, considering she partially blamed Jenny for Angel losing his soul in the first place). 

Basically what i’m thinking is: AU where Angelus kills Hank Summers

[randomvarious]

The Sugarhill Gang - “Rapper’s Delight” The Best Rap Album of All Time Song released in 1979. Compilation released in 1999. Hip Hop

“Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang is the most important song in the history of hip hop music. Period. It was the genre’s first commercial record and it sold millions of copies around the world. It suddenly introduced white people and everyone outside of the tri-state area, as well as countless people in other countries, to a Bronx-born, organic subculture whose popularity had previously grown through mostly word-of-mouth. It’s not the first hip hop song ever recorded (that honor belongs to “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” by The Fatback Band), but historians unanimously agree that it is indeed the genre’s runner-up record. And without its commercial success, hip hop might have only become a late 70s-early 80s New York fad, only to be cherished by its small set of original participants and Pitchfork-reading hipster types who wax nostalgic about those halcyon CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City days where the city’s various strains of new wave, glam rock, punk, art punk, no wave, and the like all converged.

But I’m here to tell you that this iconic song, the one that made hip hop a viable commercial enterprise and enabled it to eventually become the biggest music genre on the planet, is actually a total fraud. And that’s for a couple reasons. Now, before you go all Rocko lavender hippo lady on me, let me just say that “Rapper’s Delight” is by no means a bad song. In fact, it’s one of the greatest songs ever made. But it was a total fucking cash grab, too; an absolute sellout record. And that’s ironic because, for a genre that’s had so many insufferable purists who bristle at the idea of inauthenticity (full disclosure: I was one of those people), they have no problem with calling this song an indispensable piece of “real” and “true” hip hop music.

Let me explain some hip hop history, first though.

Hip hop culture began in the south Bronx in the summer of 1973, about a full six years before “Rapper’s Delight” came out. It was started by a DJ from Jamaica named Kool Herc. Herc is the genius who figured out how to isolate the instrumental break on a record and extend it by having two copies of the record and lining up the second one to start after the break from the first one finished. This allowed people to dance to the same beat for extended periods of time, which gave birth to breakdancing and dance battles. Another thing the extension of the break enabled was rapping. Rapping came out of toasting, a Jamaican DJ tradition in which the DJ would bust out a nifty and rhythmic, spoken-word rhyme, often shouting out someone of note who was in attendance. But then that eventually morphed into an extended series of rhymes, which gave way to the MC.

Rapping at that point was largely a poetic, improvised stream-of-consciousness. MCs would rap for minutes on end, displaying their mental dexterity as they would do their best to keep on beat and try to make sense while rhyming the last word of each line with the next.

That’s where Sylvia Robinson comes into this story. Robinson was an R&B / soul / funk / disco artist and producer who had appeared plenty of times on the R&B charts and landed a top-three national hit with “Pillow Talk” in 1973. In 1979, she started her own label, Sugar Hill Records, which would become the most important hip hop label in the early part of the next decade. Robinson’s first interaction with rapping didn’t come inside a Bronx club or at a Bronx block party though. It was instead at her niece’s birthday party in Harlem, where DJ Lovebug Starski was doing a bit of call-and-response with his audience. 

From The Independent:

"The DJ [was talking] over the music, and the kids were going crazy. He would say something like, 'Throw your hands [up in] the air' and they'd do it," she recalled. "All of a sudden, something said [to me]: 'Put something like that on a record, and it will be the biggest thing you ever had'. I didn't even know you called it rap."

At first, Robinson had no takers. No rapper or DJ she approached thought making a hip hop record was a good idea. It was just a fun thing people did at parties. It wasn’t something that would ever end up being profitable. According to cultural critic Harry Allen, when Chuck D of Public Enemy first heard that rap was going to be put on records, he asked, “'How are you going to put three hours on a record?' Because that's the way MCs used to rhyme. They'd just rhyme and rhyme and rhyme for hours."

But Robinson would eventually find some people to rap on a record. It’s unclear whether or not it was her son or her herself who initially found the first member of her rap group, but it happened at a pizza shop in Englewood, New Jersey, where Big Bank Hank was spotted rapping while working his shift. Robinson then brought Hank out in front of the parlor to audition. The next member, Master Gee, would then audition in her car, followed by Wonder Mike. Robinson couldn’t decide which rapper she liked most, so she decided to sign all of them. And thus, the Sugarhill Gang was born.

However, it should be noted that Big Bank Hank, Master Gee, and Wonder Mike were absolute nobodies at the time. They weren’t serious MCs or DJs. The guys who had been putting it down since hip hop’s inception like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kool DJ AJ had never had these guys rap on their stages before. They were total amateurs.

But Robinson didn’t care and not long after she signed them, “Rapper’s Delight” came to fruition. The #1 song in the country at the time happened to be Chic’s “Good Times,” and coincidentally, it was also a superb beat for rapping over. Robinson probably thought that using an uber popular instrumental for her rap record would move units, too, and ultimately, she would be proven right. She enlisted a funk band called Positive Force to recreate the “Good Times” instrumental, and,  incredibly, they and the Sugarhill Gang pumped out “Rapper’s Delight” in a single nineteen-minute take. There were no lyrical flubs and no mistakes by any of the players. It was an amazingly efficient use of studio time.

That nineteen minutes was then pared down to 14:30 and the recording was pressed to wax and then went to sale. However, “Rapper’s Delight” failed to catch on at first. Radio DJs were reticent to play such a ridiculously long song and hip hop party DJs had no idea who the Sugarhill Gang was. But once a radio version was cut, which is the version I’ve posted today, the record got radio play, which then translated to immense record sales. It made the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #36, while hitting #4 on the R&B chart. And it became an even bigger hit outside of the U.S., reaching the top-five all across Europe, Canada, and South Africa. It also sold literally millions of records. The second hip hop song to ever be recorded for commercial purposes was a suddenly and completely unexpected global phenomenon. Hip hop had hit the big time.

But outside of the fact that this monstrous song was clearly a mere ploy to make money and was actually not an organic piece of Bronx-bred hip hop culture, there was even more fraudulence to it. Big Bank Hank, the second MC to grace the track, actually stole all of his verses from another rapper, the legend Grandmaster Caz. Caz was a member of a foundational hip hop group called The Cold Crush Brothers, who were known to rap at parties in the Bronx. Hank offered to become Caz’s manager and took out a loan to upgrade Cold Crush’s soundsystem. Then, to pay off that loan, he got a job at the pizza shop that he was eventually discovered in. But when he was seen rapping while working and was quickly auditioned afterwards, he used Caz’s lyrics. So, when Hank introduces himself on “Rapper’s Delight” with, “I’m the C-A-S-A, the N-O-V-A, and the rest is F-L-Y,” know he is spelling out one of Grandmaster Caz’s nicknames, and without his permission. And to this day, Caz hasn’t seen a single dime from “Rapper’s Delight”’s sales. Criminal shit.

But in the grand scheme of things, despite that bad sleight on Caz and the ultimate motive to record the song, “Rapper’s Delight” is still, by absolute happenstance, a masterpiece. It’s not just one of the first hip hop records, but it’s just so infectiously fun. But because of how fun it is, another thing that apparently pissed off other rappers at the time was that the song wasn’t about anything important. A lot of rappers were angry at the conditions in which they lived and they thought it was lame that a bunch of outsiders had cashed in on their artform while not even channeling any of the south Bronx’s inner rage. But a few years later, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five would release hip hop’s second unmitigated classic, “The Message,” a socially conscious-painted picture of the South Bronx. And it was released on, funnily enough, Sugar Hill Records.

There’s a moral or something to this story somewhere. Without the selling out and without Big Bank Hank’s lyrical theft, who knows where hip hop culture would be today? “Rapper’s Delight” sure wasn’t made for the purest of reasons, but it exposed hip hop music, and then eventually the actual authentic Bronx culture, to the entire world. Had Sylvia Robinson not seen dollar signs in this fun and unique party gimmick, would Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five or Afrika Bambaataa or Kurtis Blow become household names? Would hip hop ever be sold commercially? Would the following, more lyrical Def Jam wave with acts like Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J ever happen? And then would N.W.A happen or the Native Tongues posse with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Queen Latifah, and Black Sheep? I could go on, but you get the picture.

[popculturebuffet]

Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle: The Mighty Elves (Comissoned by WeirdKev27)

Well well boys, we’re back to Jingle Belle with another kevmission, though per his request i’ll be getting back to Life and Times Of Scrooge McDuck at long last. I also have some other stuff planned and all that, but for now, let’s focus on everyones faviorite elfen hellion as we dive back into Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle. 

I covered most of the behind the scene’s stuff last time so in short in case your just joining us, since this one’s got a bit more stuff to tag: Jingle Belle is an indie comic book character created by animation god Paul Dini, the daughter of Santa Claus and the Queen of Elves who acts like a standard rebellious teenager sterotype and causes trouble for her dad.  Last time I touched on the character a good two days ago, we looked at her first appearance, where she sent her family to Family Therapy. At the time I’d ONLY read that story, and hadn’t gotten that far into Jing’s world just yet. As you probably guessed despite plugging a decent amount of time into re-reading the rest of Scott Pilgrim (shout out to my good friend Mike for the early christmas present), on digital and in color and into the Switch port of the first Fire Emblem, I still got 2/3 of the way through the omnibus Kev gifted me of almost all her stories up to 2018′s The Handmade’s Tale.  Honestly not a lot has changed from the pilot.. while Jing’s designs changed a bit, she’s still more of a rebellious hellion, and while Santa’s no longer a slut shaming jackass, he’s still hard on her while her mom tries to keep the peace, The humor’s still edgy, if toned down enough to support returning whenever Dini felt like it but it’s largely the same for better or worse.  Overall the stories haven’t been bad but have been a bit reptitive to read in one giant omnibus. This really is down to the format they were made in: These were one off stories spread months apart meant to be picked up off the shelf with no real ongoing stories or character development and only some slight worldbuilding here and there. In short not bad stuff, just clearly not built to be collected in a huge omnibus like it was and not the first comic collection i’ve encountered with this problem and definitely not the last. 

That being said the stories are creative and still well put together. It is Paul Dini and he has wrote pretty much every story collected here with few exceptions, so it’s still good stuff, just as I said clearly not meant to be read all in one block like i’ve been doing. And today’s story happens to be one of my faviorites so far, breaking the formula up a bit by having Jing do something a bit diffrent and also involving hockey, a sport this story made me realized might actually intrest me on some level.. if in part due to letterkenny. 

God bless those two handsome idiots. So let’s ice up or skates, get those letterkenny refrences at the ready and see what the Mighty Elves have to offer. 

We start at Hockey Practice for Santa’s Hockey Team, The Elves, the kind of sentence that makes me really happy to type for money. Santa’s team is naturally for this kind of story and what the title references, are the last place in the bi-polar hockey league their in.. presumably ran by commissioner bi-polar bear. 

Again, I really love this job and that i’m actually getting paid for this this go round. Anyway, Santa’s team isn’t all that agressive because.. well i’ts a team coached by Santa, why would they be? But Santa’s still proud of his boys... as for his girl on the otherhand he gets a call and we soon find out via mugshots Jing dragged her two friends, up from just one in previous stories, to an air force base, somehow got arrested for hitting on enlisted men, not a crime, and stealing and crashing a helicopter, very much a crime.  Naturally Santa isn’t pleased, so we cut to a few days later where he’s letting her friends off making robo kitties, damn I want one of those now, while leaving Jing to do the packaging, though like most stern but fair dad’s he admits he dosen’t like punishing her and is right in saying there’s more to do with her summer vacation than you know, piss off the military. Santa needs his flight clerance dammit. Jing complains there isn’t much to do but feed the reindeer and make toys to which I say.. really santa? You haven’t set up anything else for your eleves to do? Making toys is their job. Build a fucking movie theater. And at the very least if not for them than for your bored and rebellious daughter to distract her from doing crimes. She’s still likely got a few hundred years of teenagering left, give her something else to do other than piss you off.  Santa does have a least a little something: Hockey! Which Jing’s cousin Rusty has taken up. Rusty showed up in the first story but I kind of glossed over him, he’s basically Jing’s Dorky cousin she frequently abuses. Not really much more or less to him. Jing isn’t on board mostly because their team always looses, to the other teams: The Penguins, the Polar Bears, The Snow Leopards and the Eskimos because they don’t really have killer instinct, which yeah is kind of necessary for hockey. To her..

But during her rant she does show Santa she’s got genuine talent for the sport, so he makes her a deal: Do a little favor for him, and she’ll swap that for making toys.. it’s a deal.. one she soon regrets but hey. 

Jing naturally makes an ass of herself pretty quickly beating the shit out of Rusty with her dad repremanding her and threatning to throw her off the team if she has another outburst like. That is until she runs into the Huskies Coach, Stan. 

I mean i’ts a hairy old man who makes a side bet with Santa Claus despite it technically being against commission rules, might as well be. So Santa tells Jing screw it, as long as it’s the opposing team violence is a-okay.  And naturally our first target is the world famous hockey player, aka snoopy aka a snoopy stand in. And being a big fan of peanuts i’m a sucker for a good peantus parody. Doubly so since Dini did his homework, and as I’d remembered and a quick google confirmed “The World Famous Hockey Player” was indeed one of snoopy’s many personas.

 Not that it was much of a stretch: just about any time snoopy played a sport he was “the world famous X player”, but still it’s a nice little nod. Not so nice is Jing within seconds slamming him into the air and under a Zamboni and getting sent to the box for it naturally. So clearly she’s the shorsey of this team, all chirps and ultra violence. 

Snoopy is thankfully still alive, if barely, though he’s off course been through much worse.

But while in the Box jing helps advise the team and a presumed combination of her beating the shit out of the other team’s best players and her team now not only having something to inspire them but a strategy means the Elves win for once! Santa and Jing share a hug, though Santa advises her not to go for his wallet, it’s still a sweet moment as she’s genuinely invested now.  So we cut to..

Okay Hank Ribbon seal is genuinely one of the best things humanity has made but as for Quiki I just... wow that joke is mildly racist at worst, confusing and unfunny at best. I mean... it really just makes no sense on any level and that’s with me not knowing a lot about hockey, but knowing just enough to know Kathy Lee Gifford existed. Just.. what even was that? I know Paul can do better than this.. because as my first review outlined he wrote a LOTTTT of Tiny Tune Adventures including my favorite episode. He also wrote most of the best Joker episodes for BTAS, so it’s not like the guy CAN’T be funny.. so I have no idea how he could fail so hard with this. Just.. what is this. Who thought this was funny? what was the joke? 

That.. utter bafflement aside, this newscast is used to push things ahead as the elves are on a winning streak, having also beaten the Polar Bears and the Penguins.. though weirdly we DON’T get a cameo by this guy despite having already had Snoopy show up. 

That’s my boy. But yeah there’s only two teams left with this, the Eskimos and tonight’s matchup the Snow Leopards, aka snow catgirls lead by Tashi Ounce, who Jing met at the winter games last year and lost too and thus has a whole rivlary thing going. In a really nice moment Santa stops to make sure Jing is okay going into the game. 

It’s part of why I REALLY like this story: Santa instead of just being disapointed in his daughter genuinely bonds over her over something and Jing shows she has a softer side to her. It’s some good character stuff, helps shake up the normal formula nicely. Back to the usual though she and Tashi naturally go at it, phrasing, and fight the whole damn time, with Belle eventually scoring the winning goal. Though noticably while Tashi is just as competiive as belle and lost this time.. she’s fine with it, knowing she’ll win next time and congradulating the opponent.  But before she can leave the rink, Tashi is approached by a mysterious figure with an offer and we cut to said figure’s lair... it’s THE BLIZZARD WIZARD! dun dun dun!.... yeah I haven’t introduced him the Blizzard Wizard is.. well exactly what he sounds like, as well as the former ruler of the North Pole. He enslaved everyone there to do his bidding and was essentially, a butt till Santa showed up, united all the various animals and kicked his ass. Since then he’s been reduced to basically a rankin bass villian, lurking near bye and scheming to get petty revenge on Santa for it. So essentially....

Minus the tragic backstory. He offers them a deal: The championship cup for him defeating the elves. As he puts it the cup symbolizes hard work, respect and team work.. i.e the things their throwing out to get payback. Tashi wants none of it, but the blizzard wizard has his slush minons capture her and with the rest willing to sell out, he gets to work. 

Bliz snows out the eskimos, and brings up accusations of Santa gambling, which he gets away from by.. having his wife donate the money real quick don’t ask just go. But he has a waiver signed by the other coaches so their playing his goons. But Jing isn’t phased and Santa asks her to give the lockeroom some inspiring words. 

10/10 no notes. But naturally Bliz has a sneaky trick up his sleeves.. to win.. specifically a hot french canadian player which.. makes jing fall to pieces flirting with him and makes her entirely ineffective. Okay time out.... huh so this is the timeless void known only to zack morris, that girl from the reboot I haven’t watched, and Regis Filbin. But yeah while I wouldn’t expect Jing to slaughter the guy it feels out of character for all she’d do is to giggle like an idiot instead of making a move. She’s been established as forward and knowing what she wants. I’m not against her being distracted by this it’s just the how that feels off especially since the opening reinforces this. She hit on air force guys. She’s not going to just be giggly and awkward. Jing may not be the most complex charcter but she’s better than this. Aside from the baffling Kathy Lee Gifford gag, this is the only thing I really don’t like abotu the story, and it lasts two pages before it’s resolved and in a 22 or so page story, that’s a good chunk of it spent on something that isn’t funny and that’s out of character even within story. That being said it dosen’t drag the story down entirely, still a good story. Just a bit uneven is all. 

But unsurprisingly Tashi escapes her earlier imprisonment offscreen to let Jing know not only the full extent of Bliz Whiz’s machenations, i.e. that the other coaches are in on it, but that the hockey player is really just one of Bliz’s minons uner a glamour. WIth that knowledge Jing asks why she’d help and Tashi shows her inner honor beneath the whole rival deal, pointing out she wants to win from a GOOD team next year. With the jig up Jing pulvirzes her former crush, claims to have been under a spell (no one byes it) and the elves clean house and win. Super fuckin shooter. As for Bliz Whiz he tries to steal the trophy but instead gets booted into the snow leopards box, phrasing... it doesn’t end well for him. 

And yeah while he comes back eventually, some how, apparently, for most of the stories after this he’s just.. dead. He was killed and then his remains eaten. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

But Jing admits she had fun, she and her dad bond and we get one last gag as he assumes she learned not to showboat only for her to block everyone else in the team photo. Falalallal we’re out. 

Final Thoughts: As I said, one of my faviorites. It’s really well paced, has a good premise and only one part drags at all and only that part and one gag really don’t land. The rest of it is really funny, nice and touching, and overall a nice shakeup from these stories usual pattern of “Jing getting into hyjinks”. While she DOES here, her and her dad are literally and figuartvely on the same team, and she does show a sweeter side genuinely bonding with her dad and it’s nice to see them actually enjoy each other’s company for once. It’s a nice change of pace and one I wish more of the stories had. I’m not saying they all have to be holly jolly but i’d be nice if more of them had a bit of heart to them is all. Tis the season and all that. Still for what it is, it’s a fun ride and I highly recommend it. We’ll probably see her again sometime this season but that’s a bit off.  For now coming up I have some ducktales to tell, a chapter in a man’s life story that’s long overdue, a holiday mess I wish I didn’t have to clean up, and in the distant future.. an old friend to reconnect with. Until then if you liked this review reblog it, comment etc all that good stuff, and you can send me asks with suggestions fo ra review or direct message me, or ask for my discord, to comission a review yourself. Until then, happy holidays. 

[mycrazystrangeworld]

It has been a long hiatus, though to me it didn’t seem to be one. Time flies. June and July have flied by so fast, and I can’t keep up, shit things happening one after the other, and I’m still coping… But it’s a process. I’m functioning now enough to write and interact on this blog.

As I promised, this first post is a list of June releases (from June 3rd) and the reviews I found about them until now. You’re all welcome to let me know if you have a review that I forgot to add.

Since July is also over, I’m also sharing this month’s books and reviews.

As always, updating is constantly happening, if you know about a book or have a review, just let me know! 😉

Welcome back on Swift Coffee, everyone!

For the newbies (welcome 😘): if you don’t yet know what this is all about: I’m posting a list every Monday of the books that get released during the current week. I also include other people’s reviews about them! I try to do a blog hop from time to time and spread the word about this feature, but I obviously can’t find every review that’s related, so a sign that you have one would be very much appreciated! Every review is eligible that is written about a book published on the week in question, even if it was written before said week!

So… one question remains:

Would you like to join the ride?

It’s very easy!

These are the rules:

To be featured, you don’t have to do anything else, but to leave a comment below this post, or contact me by any other way, and let me know you have a review. A link to it makes it easier, but if you only say your review comes out on x day of the week, that’s okay as well, I’ll watch out for it! Following me is not a must, but I appreciate it very much, if you do! 🙂

I continuously update this post according to your infos/comments, and I share it again every time I’ve made an update.

The book you reviewed don’t have to be from the list here, if it’s not listed, but published this week, I’ll add the book, too!

You can also send me a review for next week, because these posts are scheduled! 😉

Books Published in June:

‘After the End’ by Clare Mackintosh mystery/thriller

‘All the Missing Girls’ by Megan Miranda mystery

‘A Merciful Promise’ by Kendra Elliot mystery/romantic suspense

‘A Nearly Normal Family’ by M.T. Edvardsson, Rachel Willson-Broyles (Translation) mystery/thriller

‘Ayesha at Last’ by Uzma Jalaluddin romance

‘Beyond Āsanas: The Myths and Legends behind Yogic Postures’ by Pragya Bhatt, Joel Koechlin (Photographer)

‘Bound to the Battle God’ by Ruby Dixon fantasy/romance

‘Briar and Rose and Jack’ by Katherine Coville middle grade

‘Bunny’ by Mona Awad horror

‘City of Girls’ by Elizabeth Gilbert historical fiction

‘Close to Home’ by Cate Ashwood M M romance

‘Dear Wife’ by Kimberly Belle mystery/thriller

‘Dissenter on the Bench: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life and Work’ by Victoria Ortiz non-fiction/middle grade

‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ by Taffy Brodesser-Akner contemporary

‘Five Midnights’ by Ann Dávila Cardinal horror

‘Fix Her Up’ by Tessa Bailey romance

‘Fixing the Fates: A Memoir’ by Diane Dewey non-fiction

‘Ghosts of the Shadow Market’ YA fantasy

‘Gun Island’ by Amitav Ghosh cultural/India/historical fiction

‘If Only’ by Melanie Murphy

‘Just One Bite’ by Jack Heath mystery/thriller

‘Like a Love Story’ by Abdi Nazemian YA/LGBT

‘Magic for Liars’ by Sarah Gailey fantasy/mystery

‘More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)’ by Elaine Welteroth non-fiction

‘Mrs. Everything’ by Jennifer Weiner historical fiction

‘Mostly Dead Things’ by Kristen Arnett contemporary/LGBT

‘Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune’ by Roselle Lim contemporary/romance

‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong poetry

‘Rapture’ by Lauren Kate YA fantasy

‘Recursion’ by Blake Crouch science fiction

‘Searching for Sylvie Lee’ by Jean Kwok mystery

‘Somewhere Close to Happy’ by Lia Louis romance

‘Sorcery of Thorns’ by Margaret Rogerson fantasy

‘Storm and Fury’ by Jennifer L. Armentrout fantasy

‘Summer of ’69’ by Elin Hilderbrand historical fiction

‘Sweet Tea and Secrets’ by Joy Avon cozy mystery

‘Teeth in the Mist’ by Dawn Kurtagich horror

‘The Accidental Girlfriend’ by Emma Hart romance

‘The Bookshop on the Shore’ by Jenny Colgan contemporary/women’s fiction

‘The First Mistake’ by Sandie Jones thriller

‘The Friends We Keep’ by Jane Green women’s fiction

‘The Friend Zone’ by Abby Jimenez contemporary/romance

‘The Girl in Red’ by Christina Henry fantasy/horror

‘The Haunted’ by Danielle Vega horror

‘The Holiday’ by T.M. Logan

‘The July Girls’ by Phoebe Locke mystery/thriller

‘The Last House Guest’ by Megan Miranda mystery/thriller

‘The Most Fun We Ever Had’ by Claire Lombardo contemporary/literary fiction

‘The New Achilles’ by Christian Cameron historical fiction

‘The Red Labyrinth’ by Meredith Tate fantasy

‘The Resurrectionists’ by Michael Patrick Hicks horror

‘The Rest of the Story’ by Sarah Dessen YA contemporary/romance

‘Ollie Oxley and the Ghost: The Search for Lost Gold’ by Lisa Schmid middle grade

‘The Space Between Time’ by Charlie Laidlaw

‘The Stationery Shop’ by Marjan Kamali historical fiction

‘The Summer Country’ by Lauren Willig historical fiction

‘They Called Me Wyatt’ by Natasha Tynes mystery

‘This Might Hurt a Bit’ by Doogie Horner YA

‘Time After Time’ by Lisa Grunwald historical/science fiction

‘Waiting for Tom Hanks’ by Kerry Winfrey contemporary/romance

‘We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir’ by Samra Habib non-fiction

‘We Were Killers Once’ by Becky Masterman mystery/thriller

‘Where The Story Starts’ by Imogen Clark women’s fiction

‘Wicked Fox’ by Kat Cho YA fantasy

‘Wild and Crooked’ by Leah Thomas YA contemporary/LGBT

‘Wolf Rain’ by Nalini Singh paranormal romance

Reviews:

‘Sorcery of Thorns’ by Stephanie at Between Folded Pages

‘The Rapture’ at Book Bound

‘The Resurrectionists’ by Jen at Shit Reviews of Books

‘The Haunted’ by Kris at Boston Book Reader

‘The Friends We Keep’ by Vicky at Women in Trouble Book Blog

‘This Might Hurt a Bit’ by Amanda at Between the Shelves

‘Wild and Crooked’ by Amanda at Between the Shelves

‘The Haunted’ by Mandy at Book Princess Reviews

‘We Were Killers Once’ by Vicky at Women in Trouble Book Blog

‘Five Midnights’ by Sian at Sci-fi & Scary

‘Wolf Rain’ by Corina at Book Twins Reviews

‘Just One Bite’ by Berit at Audio Killed the Bookmark

‘Where the Story Starts’ by Anjana at Superfluous Reading

‘The Red Labyrinth’ by Anjana at Superfluous Reading

‘Fixing the Fates’ by Anjana at Superfluous Reading

‘Gun Island’ by Anjana at Superfluous Reading

‘If Only’ by Anjana at Superfluous Reading

‘Sweet Tea and Secrets’ by Rekha at The Book Decoder

‘Storm and Fury’ by Claire at bookscoffeeandrepeat

‘The New Achilles’ by Zoé at Zooloo’s Book Diary

‘Time After Time’ by Ashley at Ashes Books and Bobs

‘Recursion’ by Lilyn G at Sci-fi & Scary

‘The Space Between Time’ by Rekha at The Book Decoder

‘The Rumor’ by Vicky at Women in Trouble Book Blog

‘The Search for the Lost Gold’ by Lilyn G at Sci-fi & Scary

‘They Call Me Wyatt’ by Jen at Shit Reviews of Books

‘After the End’ by Linda at Linda’s Book Bag

‘Beyond Asanas’ by Shashank at Wonder’s Book Blog

‘The July Girls’ by Nicola at Short Book and Scribes

‘We Have Always Been Here’ by Kristin at Kristin Kraves Books

‘Close to Home’ by T. J. Fox

‘Dissenter on the Bench’ by Taylor at Tays Infinite Thoughts

‘Bound to the Battle God’ by Corina at Book Twins Reviews

‘Briar and Rose and Jack’ by Briana at Pages Unbound

‘Teeth in the Mist’ at Lori’s Bookshelf Reads

‘All the Missing Girls’ by Celine at Celinelingg

‘The Holiday’ by Zoe at Zooloo’s Book Diary

‘The July Girls’ by Joanna at Over the Rainbow Book Blog

‘More Than Enough’ by Jessica at Jess Just Reads

‘Somewhere Close to Happy’ at Jess Just Reads

‘The Accidental Girlfriend’ by Tijuana at Book Twins Reviews

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Books Published in July:

‘Along the Broken Bay’ by Flora J. Solomon historical fiction

‘A Stranger on the Beach’ by Michele Campbell mystery/thriller

‘A Whisker In The Dark’ by Leighann Dobbs cozy mystery

‘Dark Age’ by Pierce Brown science fiction

‘Depraved’ by Trilina Pucci romance/erotica

‘Deserve to Die’ by Miranda Rijks thriller

‘Drummer Girl’ by Ginger Scott YA romance

‘False Step’ by Victoria Helen Stone mystery/thriller

‘Girls Like Us’ by Cristina Alger mystery/thriller

‘Gods of Jade and Shadow’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia fantasy/historical fiction

‘Good Guy’ by Kate Meader romance

‘Gore in the Garden’ by Colleen J. Shogan cozy mystery

‘How to Hack a Heartbreak’ by Kristin Rockaway romance

‘Last Summer’ by Kerry Lonsdale contemporary

‘Life Ruins’ by Danuta Kot audiobook/mystery

‘Lock Every Door’ by Riley Sager mystery/thriller

‘Maybe This Time’ by Kasie West contemporary

‘Never Have I Ever’ by Joshilyn Jackson mystery/thriller

‘Never Look Back’ by Alison Gaylin mystery/thriller

‘Nightingale Point’ by Luan Goldie

‘Reclaimed by Her Rebel Knight’ by Jenni Fletcher historical romance

‘Resist’ by K. Bromberg romance

‘Salvation Day’ by Kali Wallace science fiction

‘Season of the Witch’ by Sarah Rees Brennan YA fantasy

‘Sisters of Willow House’ by Susanne O’Leary

‘Spin the Dawn’ by Elizabeth Lim fantasy

‘That Long Lost Summer’ by Minna Howard

‘The Betrayed Wife’ by Kevin O’Brien mystery/thriller

‘The Bookish Life of Nina Hill’ by Abbi Waxman contemporary/romance

‘The Chain’ by Adrian McKinty thriller

‘The Gifted School’ by Bruce Holsinger contemporary fiction

‘The Golden Hour’ by Beatriz Williams historical fiction

‘The Guy on the Right’ by Kate Stewart NA romance

‘The Last Book Party’ by Karen Dukess historical fiction

‘The Marriage Trap’ by Sheryl Browne thriller

‘The Merciful Crow’ by Margaret Owen fantasy

‘The Miraculous’ by Jess Redman middle grade

‘The Need’ by Helen Phillips horror/thriller

‘The Nickel Boys’ by Colson Whitehead historical fiction

‘The Rogue King’ by Abigail Owen paranormal romance

‘The Seekers’ by Heather Graham mystery

‘The Silent Ones’ by K.L. Slater thriller

‘The Storm Crow’ by Kalyn Josephson fantasy

‘The Wedding Party’ by Jasmine Guillory romance

‘Three Women’ by Lisa Taddeo non-fiction/feminism

‘To Be Devoured’ by Sara Tantlinger horror

‘Truly Madly Royally’ by Debbie Rigaud YA romance

‘Under Currents’ by Nora Roberts romance

‘War’ by Laura Thalassa fantasy/romance

‘Whisper Network’ by Chandler Baker mystery/thriller

‘Wilder Girls’ by Rory Power YA horror/mystery

A fantastic review of…

‘Reclaimed by her Rebel Knight’ by Demetra at Demi Reads

‘The Merciful Crow’ by Clarissa at Clarissa Reads It All

‘The Bookish Life of Nina Hill’ at Flavia the Bibliophile

‘The Merciful Crow’ by Kaleena at Reader Voracious

‘The Guy On the Right’ by Astrid at The Bookish Sweet Tooth

‘False Step’ by Jordann at The Book Blog Life

‘The Guy On the Right’ by Angela at Reading Frenzy Book Blog

‘Reclaimed by Her Rebel Knight’ by Joules at Northern Reader

‘Depraved’ by Demetra at Demi Reads

‘Never Have I Ever’ by Steph AT Steph’s Book Blog

‘Reclaimed by Her Rebel Knight’ by Jennifer C. Wilson

‘That Long Lost Summer’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘Sisters of Willow House’ by Joanne at Portobello Book Blog

‘A Whisker in the Dark’ by Berit at Audio Killed the Bookmark

‘The Rouge King’ by Ashley at Falling Down the Book Hole

‘Good Guy’ by Astrid at The Bookish Sweet Tooth

‘Drummer Girl’ by Astrid at The Bookish Sweet Tooth

‘The Need’ by T. J. Fox

‘The Seekers’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘The Silent Ones’ by Steph at StefLoz Book Blog

‘Resist’ by Tijuana at Book Twins Reviews

‘Reclaimed by Her Rebel Knight’ by Jess Bookish Life

‘Sisters of Willow House’ by Joanna at Over the Rainbow Book Blog

‘How To Hack a Heartbreak’ by Corina at Book Twins Reviews

‘Somebody Else’s Baby’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘Life Ruins’ by Amanda at mybookishblogspot

‘The Miraculous’ by Chris at Plucked from the Stacks

‘The Betrayed Wife’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘Salvation Day’ by Lilyn G at Sci-fi & Scary

‘The Marriage Trap’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘The Chain’ at Jess Just Reads

‘To Be Devoured’ by Sam and Gracie at Sci-fi & Scary

‘Truly Madly Royally’ by Olivia at The Candid Cover

‘Season of the Witch’ by Jill at Jill’s Book Blog

‘Gore in the Garden’ by Rekha at The Book Decoder

‘Never Look Back’ by Berit at Audio Killed the Bookmark

‘Wilder Girls’ by Kathy at Pages Below the Vaulted Sky

‘Deserve to Die’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘Sisters of Willow House’ by Shalini at Shalini’s Books and Reviews

‘Sisters of Willow House’ by Berit at Audio Killed the Bookmark

‘Nightingale Point’ by Amanda at mybookishblogspot

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See these beautiful covers? *.*

Which are your favorites?

I’m so happy to be here with you bookish guys again!!

Don’t forget to let me know if you have a review!

Oh, and in the near future comes another post with the releases of the beginning of August! You can send me reviews for that post, as well.

Have a wonderful time!

Hugs 🙂

I’m back! – A Master List of Book Releases of June and July + Reviews! It has been a long hiatus, though to me it didn't seem to be one. Time flies.

[alphawave-writes]

Snow days

Hank loves winter. Gavin doesn't. But Gavin is here to visit his boyfriend for a date and he's hoping they'll spend this winter day getting intimate. Instead, he has to endure the freezing cold,  run away from men in white camo, and try not to think too much about Hank in a sexy santa costume.

It's by no means what Gavin expected, or even necessarily wanted, in a date, but as long as Hank's smiling and having fun, he's happy.

You guys ever wanna chat with me, hit me up on my discord server ‘Alphawave’s den’ for sneak peeks of my latest chapters and cool advice for anyone struggling with schoolwork or writing.

Everyone knew that Hank Anderson loved snow days. Countless stories dating all the way to his youth talked about how he played in the glittering white when school was cancelled, making snowmen, starting snowball fights with friends and strangers alike. If Hank could, he'd probably live in the snow, but unfortunately for him, he was only human and thus was limited to his exposure to the cold. Not that androids fared much better in the cold. It's one small advantage to humankind.

That being said, those who knew Gavin Reed knew that he was more of a summer person. Which meant that he hated winter with a vengeance. So it would be to the surprise of many when, on a crisp winter afternoon, Gavin Reed found himself outside of Hank's house to participate in one of Hank Anderson's patented Snow days™. Luckily, Gavin found that there was no one who knew he was in the neighbourhood—not even Connor, which was great, because just being here was humiliating enough. It's hard enough to pretend he hated Hank when he didn't. It's even harder to pretend he wasn't so fucking excited to be alone with Hank today. Much as he'd loathe admitting it, he had been eagerly awaiting today and the things they could do together, preferably within the confines of Hank's bedroom.

Gavin rung the doorbell and quickly shoved his hands into his coat in an effort to look cool and nonchalant. Hank opened the door with that smug old man smile that he simultaneously loved and hated.

"Took your time, didn't ya?" Hank chuckled warmly.

"Yeah yeah, you try and get here from my place," Gavin grumbled. He quelled the urge to smile when Hank leaned over and gave him a slobbery smooch to his right cheek. The urge to reciprocate overwhelmed him but he decided not to. Not now, while he's still at the front yard where he could be seen by anyone.

"You've got an awful amount of lip who willingly came here," Hank smirked. "Miss me that much?"

"Yeah, with a bullet, but my aim's getting better."

Hank only laughed at that, silently ushering Gavin into his home. Gavin stood by the doorway shaking the snowflakes embedded onto his hair and clothes while Hank went into his bedroom. Sumo, sensing the presence of a guest, ran toward Gavin and nearly tackled him over.

"F-fucking hell, you're gonna give me a heart attack," Gavin yelped. He put his hand towards Sumo. "Down, boy. Down."

But Sumo did not speak English, nor did he have the necessary training to understand anything more than the word "food" and "walkies". He continued his assault on Gavin, raining slobbery kisses all over Gavin's face. Gavin's futile protests quickly dissolved into weak giggles. Sumo's kisses were only slightly wetter than Hank's, and with far more tongue too. At this rate, Sumo was more likely to french kiss Gavin than Hank today.

Hank finally emerged with his trademark jacket and sighed wistfully. "Come on, Sumo, get."

Sumo whined.

"Seriously, leave Gav alone, it's my time to pester him."

Sumo let out one final whimper before dragging himself to his bed.

At the sight of Hank putting on his coat, the number of activies Gavin thought possible was drastically reduced. Gavin let out a quiet, disappointed sigh, hiding it with an excessive shake of his head. "Is this what this is? Pestering?" He smiled.

"You agreed to get pestered as soon as you came here," Hank smirked. "Now come on, daylight's wastin'."

Gavin found that he could not say anything to refuse the old man, least of all when he was smiling.

From Hank's house was a 15-minute walk to a small park covered in snow. Deciduous trees were topped with glistening white, and the whole park seemed to shimmer in the light of the sun, snow crystals transforming into diamonds that glitter and glisten with glee. At that moment, Hank embraced his inner child and ran straight into a snow bank with little regard for himself, his reputation, and the cold. Gavin giggled quietly, watching what used to be the most depressed man in the DPD turn into a five-year-old at the sight of what was essentially frozen water.

"Come on, Gavin, join me," Hank called out to him from behind the snowbank.

"It's fucking freezing. I'm not built like a bear like you are."

Hank popped his head up. "Did you just call me a bear?"

"Not that kind of bear. I meant it literally." Gavin let out a huff, trying not to let that mental image creep into his head and tint his cheeks. "And you call me the perverted one," he mumbled.

"I mean, I suppose I am but…I mean, do I count? Do I have to get some kinda experience with this, or am I just…" Hank paused and turned to Gavin with a slightly more serious expression. "Do you…think I'm a bear in the, er…other way?"

Hank blushed crimson, and his rosy cheeks conjured up an image in Gavin's mind of Hank in a Santa costume smiling sweetly as he awkwardly shuffled out of the clothes. Gavin wasn't sure what to make of that mental image. If he was able to convince Hank to wear a Santa costume to the bedroom, he's not sure he's ever gonna look at jolly Kris Kringle the same way again.

At this rate however, he'd settle for just getting Hank into the bedroom in the first place.

"F-fuck no," Gavin mumbled. His cheeks burn as he quickly wiped the image away from his mind before the rest of his body got the cue. The one good thing about embarrassment was that it made Gavin feel a little bit warmer. At the same time however he wished it didn't make him feel this warm. Winding his scarf closer to his neck, he went around the snowbank and approached Hank, who was in the process of packing up snow into crude little columns.

Gavin crossed his arms, more because he was still fucking cold than to make a point. "Please tell me we're not doing what I think you're doing."

"What's so wrong about building a snowman?" Hank asked.

"I don't know, the fact that it's childish?" Gavin glanced around the park nervously. "What would happen if someone sees us?"

"We're just two men making a snowman together. What the fuck's wrong with that?"

"An adult making a snowman with his kid is normal. Two grown men making one is just weird."

"If you think people are gonna presume we're gay, newsflash, but we are."

"You're bisexual," Gavin corrected.

"A bisexual man who's currently in a very gay relationship with another gay man." Hank gestured to the snowman. "Now are you going to help me with this or not?"

Gavin took another cursory glance around the park. He didn't know if Hank chose this time because he was being considerate, but it really was deserted. The only people he could see were a couple kids but they were at the opposite end taking turns on a swing set. No adults in sight, no one that he recognized.

He took another glance at Hank who was kneeling down, trying to keep the crumbling base of his snowman together. Gavin repressed a sigh and crouched down, bundling up snow in his hands into a ball. "Hank, you gotta compact the snow so it sticks together."

"I knew that," Hank said quickly.

"Did you really?" Gavin smirked knowingly.

"…Maybe not," Hank admitted.

Gavin chuckled, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to Hank's cold lips. "What would you fucking do without me?"

"I'd certainly have much less to complain about in my weekly therapy sessions," Hank remarked, trying to hide the smile creeping up his cheeks.

Gavin rolled his eyes, grabbing snow from the snowbank to compact. He'd never made a snowman before, not even as a kid. It was rather difficult to make one when you used to live in California and it's perpetually warm and sunny. He had no idea if he even had to compact snow to create a snowman, or if there was a better method out there than whatever the hell he was doing, but just the simple process of creating something was strangely meditative. Dare he say it, he might actually be having fun?

He took another glance at Hank who was smiling serenely into the snow. His eyes trail downward to Hank's cold hands, almost blue from the cold. He forgot his mitts again. Fucking idiot, he thought fondly. He considered giving his own mitts to Hank, but it was only out of the principle of self-preservation (as well as the fact it was cold as fuck) that Gavin kept his on. That didn't stop him from grabbing Hank's hands in his own and heating them up.

"So you don't get fucking frostbite," Gavin said.

Hank just raised his eyebrows and smiled knowingly. "Sure that's the only reason, Gav. Sure."

They worked as a team in relative silence. Not a good team, but a team regardless, and eventually their pile of snow began to roughly look like a ball. The snow pile that they were using as ammunition was running low, so Gavin moved onto the next closest pile of snow beside the only evergreen tree in the park. It's a tedious process, mostly involving shovelling snow behind himself into Hank's general direction, but it's fine because he'd rather let Hank work on the artistic side of things. Heaven knew he was a shit artist.

The pile is nearly depleted, and Gavin was about to find another pile of snow for Hank to work his latent artistic skills on when he felt something buried in the snow. It felt like a plastic bag filled with something. Against his better judgment, he grabbed the bag and brought it out into the light.

It's a bag of red ice, and a full one too. He quickly dropped it in surprise.

…Did he just accidentally find a drug stache? Here?

"Er…Hank? Can you come over here?"

From far away, the sound of a slightly annoyed huff could be heard. "I'm kinda busy, Gav."

"Hank, seriously..."

"Give me a minute, I almost got the second snowball up on this goddamn snowman."

"Seriously, Hank, not to sound like an even bigger asshole than normal, but you need to get your ass here right now."

There's another loud sigh as Hank finally plodded his way over. "OK, what the fuck did you want me to…oh." Hank's eyes widen slightly. "Oh shit."

"'Oh shit', is that all you have to say?" Gavin wildly gestured at the bag. "Fuck, Hank, what are we going to do with a random ass bag of red ice?"

Hank narrowed his eyes. "You've done drug busts before, haven't ya?"

"Yeah, when I expect to find drugs. Not in the middle of a goddamn snowy park." Gavin rubbed the back of his head. What the fuck was happening?

"Look, let's all calm down and take a deep breath." A gentle, soothing smile eased out of Hank's lips. It quelled Gavin's racing mind, gave him something to focus on. Hank continued, "Treat it like a case, Gav."

Gavin closed his eyes and exhaled, not because it was sound advice but because it was Hank who was saying this. Whether he hated him or liked him, the result was the same. He couldn't help but obey Hank Anderson on an instinctual level.

"Did ya touch the bag?" Hank asked.

"No. Not even with the mitts." Gavin wiggled his fingers to make his point, not that it told Hank much.

Hank nodded. "Does the bag look like something a user might leave?"

Gavin carefully observed his surroundings. The bag was left right next to the only evergreen tree. There were cameras in the park except for this blind spot. And the sheer amount of red ice here. This wasn't something a person would just forget about. Someone left it here. "It's a drop," Gavin uttered.

"Seems like it," Hank shrugged.

Gavin crossed his arms. He should probably know the street value of red ice by now, but the number of drug busts he'd done was pitifully small in his long career in the force, and he was content on sticking with his usual homicide cases.

Still...he did need to ask. "Hank, er...how much—"

"200,000 dollars."

"Er…what?"

"That's 200,000 dollars worth of drugs in there."

Gavin was about to ask more when he saw in the corner of his eye a couple of people slowly approaching. They were all wearing white, clothing that perfectly allowed them to blend into the snow. Gavin looked back at the hole he made where the bag was and saw something glitter faintly, just beneath the red ice, a small black object no bigger than a watermelon seed.

An audio device.

"Phck," Gavin muttered.

He grabbed the bag and hugged it close to his body, urging Hank with his other hand to run, run, run. The people in the distance began running too until it's a chase away from the park. Hank's not slow, thank god, and the chasers were wearing clothing specifically designed for stealth and not speed, also thank god. The entire time Hank and Gavin don't stop running, not even to see where those chasers were, just mindlessly heading towards Hank's house. By the time they're there, as Hank quickly enters his car in one smooth move (something told Gavin Hank had practised that particular move before), the pursuers were nowhere in sight.

Hank started the car and began driving down the streets, nervously checking his mirrors every couple of seconds for signs of a pursuit but there was nothing. Gavin finally took the time to look at the bag sitting on his lap.

"Phck," he muttered again.

"Don't start snortin' it up, Gavin. Wouldn't want to see you more irritable than normal," Hank joked.

"I'm not that bad," Gavin said, knowing full well he was very much an easily irritated person by nature.

Hank pointed out, "The last time you stayed over at my place, you were grumpy as all fuck."

"You called me over to 'Netflix and chill'," Gavin said pointedly.

"So? We watched a movie on Netflix. We chilled at my place."

Gavin scratched the bridge of his nose. "You really don't fucking know what 'Netflix and chill' means, do you?"

"Well, then what the fuck does it mean?"

The traffic light turned red and the car stopped. Hank glanced over to Gavin just in time for him to see Gavin repeatedly poke his index finger in and out of a hole made with his other hand. Hank's blush returned as he turned his attention back to the road. "O-Oh. T-that…."

Gavin let out a puff of air as the light turned green and the car lurched forward once again. He glanced at Hank and saw the old gears turning ever so slowly in his brain. A part of Gavin regretted the crude way in which he talked to Hank lately. It wasn't the old fuck's fault he was so far behind the times he was practically last century…well, OK, maybe it was his fault, but it was also his choice to remain in blissful ignorance. He'd invited Gavin to his place to watch a movie with the nicest of intents. He'd invited him to hang out today, the first time in what felt like forever when they both had an off day. Hank meant well, even if he clearly was not picking up the signals Gavin had been projecting for months now. He shouldn't be so pissy when he's sexually frustrated.

Gavin waited a minute before he finally spoke again. "You know, I was sorta hoping when you invited me on this date that we'd…you know, take the next step further. Third base, or home base, I don't fucking know. Just…you know…something more than a couple of kisses every now and then."

Hank was silent. Gavin decided to continue.

"Look, I get it. You haven't been with anyone since your wife, I haven't been through it but I understand. And if you wanna take it slow, I'm OK with that, but for the love of god, you gotta tell me so we don't end up in sticky scenarios like this." Gavin gestured at the bag of red ice before him.

Hank chuckled weakly. "I don't think our sex lives could have ever determined whether we find a bag of red ice in the middle of the fucking park or not."

"If we'd gone all the way, we wouldn't be at the park, Hank," Gavin leaned towards Hank and stared meaningfully into his eyes. "We'd be doing something warmer and more fun than making a snowman, I can tell you."

Hank's embarrassment got the better of him, and he stayed silent, unable to comment. After a minute waiting for Hank to speak, Gavin turned, propped his head up with his hand, and stared at the busy Detroit streets that passed him by.

It's not long before they found themselves back in the DPD. The heated room was a saving grace as Gavin hefted himself out of his coat. He let out an annoyed sigh. The one time both he and Hank had an off-day and they both end up having to return to the office anyways for the craziest, shittiest reason ever. Just their luck.

Before Gavin could bemoan his misfortune verbally, Fowler is already out of his office after catching sight of them. His eyes flickered from Hank, to Gavin, then to the bag cradled in Gavin's grasp.

"You fucking didn't," he groaned.

"Jeffrey, I know this sounds ridiculous, but we just found a bag of red ice literally in the park," Hank said. "And I think this could be related to some of the gangs of that local area. If we could just analyse this, we might have a break." Fowler didn't look convinced. It didn't stop Hank. "Jeffrey, seriously, I—"

"Let me just stop you right there," Fowler sighed. "You're telling me you just found a bag of red ice? Just now?"

"Er…yeah?"

"Were you approached by three people wearing snow camo?"

"Yeah?"

Fowler slapped his palm forcibly into his forehead. "Hank, you fucking stumbled yourself onto one of the SWAT team exercises."

"Wait…what?" Gavin said.

"I just got a call minutes ago from Captain Allen saying two lunatics stumbled onto them in the park managed to accidentally dig up the fake drugs they had buried in the snow and ran away with it before they could do anything! And now you come here to me with it?!"

"I mean…it was hidden quite well," Hank chuckled nervously. "Cut me some slack, it looks like the real thing."

"Hank," Fowler said, "you're holding a bag of pop rocks."

Gavin peered into the bag and opened it. It sure didn't smell like red ice. He took a small bit of it and placed it on his tongue. "H-hey hey hey! What the fuck are you doing?!" Hank yelled.

Gavin's eyebrows furrowed. "It is fucking pop rocks." He smacked his lips experimentally. "Strawberry flavoured?"

With a groan, Fowler swiped the bag out of Gavin's hands. "I swear to god, I'm gonna get a migraine from you two." He shook his head incredulously. "What the fuck were you two even doing in a park anyway?"

Hank turned to Gavin. Gavin turned to Hank. The two men stared at each other, desperately hoping they had progressed into that stage of the relationship that they could telepathically communicate to each other because they were both sending the same signal. Shit shit shit shit, they mentally told one another. Whether it was out of ignorance or because of the lack of fucks in his possession, Fowler let out one last sigh before returning to his office, the bag of pop rocks in his hand.

That left Hank and Gavin awkwardly staring at each other in the middle of the precinct. Gavin glanced around, trying to see if he spotted any familiar faces but there were none aside from Fowler. Tina and Connor weren't around for some reason. A case, a really late lunch break together, or the earliest of Christmas miracles, Gavin didn't know but he fucking did appreciate it. He didn't know how the fuck he'd have to explain this.

Hank coughed loudly into his hand. "You, um…wanna…get out of here?"

"Fuck yes," Gavin said, quickly putting his coat back on.

They go outside into the cold, Gavin almost immediately shivering. The combined time they spent in the precinct and car had made Gavin acclimatized to the heater, so of course, winter had to give him a middle finger by making the wind pick up its pace, which had the effect of lowering the perceived temperature by about five degrees. That was ten degrees colder than Gavin could tolerate. He fucking hates winter.

He'd further curse winter's name if he could, but a warm arm wrapped around his shoulders, and suddenly he was pulled close to Hank. He whipped his head to Hank, who was very conveniently looking in the other direction. The sight of Hank's ruddy cheeks ignited a small chuckle out of Gavin's lips, warm and soft like the sun. The corners of Hank's lips peek upward.

"Well, this incident pretty much ruined any chance of us of us enjoying the snow today," Hank sighed.

Gavin could only shrug. Yeah, today's outing was ruined, but he wasn't so hung up about it. He was never all that crazy about being out in the cold. Making the snowman wasn't that bad though. Not that he'd say it out loud.

"A-about today. You…you thought me inviting you to hang out in the snow was another euphemism, right?" Hank asked nervously.

"Yeah," Gavin admitted. "But I kinda got the message of what you actually wanted to do when you began talking about things we could do. I got the idea you were being sincere when you started talking about fucking ice skating of all things a couple days ago."

It's Hank's turn to chuckle. "Still can't believe you can't ice skate."

"Well, what do you expect? I never liked winter, and I've never seen snow till I came here. I haven't even made a snowman before, which, FYI, is incredibly dumb and only appropriate for children, Hank." Gavin pressed himself closer to Hank. It's partly for warmth, but also partly because it felt nice.

"If you don't like winter, and you didn't wanna fucking hang out in the snow, then why the fuck did you come anyway? Why not just tell me you wanted to stay inside?" Hank asked, a childish curiosity seeping into his voice.

"Isn't it obvious?" Gavin let out a rare, quiet smile. "I wanna hang out with my fucking boyfriend, that's what. And if I have to suffer in the freezing cold to see you smile for once, then fuck it, I'll do it."

Hank's eyes widen in surprise for a second, but it soon faded into a gentle smile. Gavin knew it was a smile from the heart because Hank's eyes light up like fireworks exploding in the night sky. "That's the nicest thing I've heard you say, Gavin. To, like…anyone, actually." Hank rubbed the back of his head bashfully. "I'm not so sure I'm, er, worth all that extra effort. Or the nice words."

"It doesn't matter if you are worth it or not, because I'm gonna fucking say them to you regardless," Gavin grinned up to Hank. "You're not the worst human being in the world."

Hank scoffed. "Is that supposed to make you feel better?"

"I'm Gavin 'asshole' Reed apparently. That's the best compliment you're gonna fish out of me."

"I don't know, that bit about me being a bear might've been up there," Hank teased.

"Oh, so now you decide to flirt with me."

"Look, Gavin, I'm trying to insinuate something." And Gavin began to turn his head away derisively but Hank gently grabbed his chin and forced him to look him in the eyes. Hank was probably trying to do his best bedroom eyes impression, but to Gavin, he only looked like he was half about to go to sleep.

A giggle broke out of Gavin despite himself. "What the fuck are you trying to insinuate?"

"You were the one who wanted to know where we take this relationship, well…" Hank grabbed one of Gavin's mitted hands with his own, "…I think I'm ready to take the next step. Wouldn't want you to get tired of me too quickly now."

Gavin entwined his hands with Hank's. He could already feel Hank's cold hands seep the heat from his mittens but still, Gavin felt a little bit warm. It didn't matter if Hank stole a bit of heat from him. Not if they were gonna be generating a whole lot in the next hour or so.

"OK, first of all, I don't have the necessary supplies."

"Supplies?" Hank creased his brows. "You're not talking about…condoms?"

"…You've never been with a guy, have you."

Hank smiled sheepishly. "I mean…I know lube is involved, right?"

"Yeah, but do you have some?"

"I do, actually." Hank's brows furrowed. "...wait, can lube expire?"

Gavin withheld a sigh as he pulled Hank towards the car. "Fucking hell, I really do have to teach you everything," he shook his head. "You're taking us to the fucking pharmacy to get some lube and condoms from this century, and then we're going back to your place."

"Gonna show me the ropes, Gavin?" Hank laughed.

"You bet your ass I do," Gavin paused before adding, "and before you say it, yes I meant that one literally."

Hank laughed again. "I think we're gonna have to discuss the details in the car before one of us gets our rocks off."

Gavin eagerly agreed. Once they got inside the car, they got into what was the most mundane conversation about sex ever. Not that Gavin minded. Tried as he might, he couldn't help the swell of excitement rise in him. Regardless of what Hank said, today wasn't ruined. In fact, with all the craziness of finding those fake drugs, Gavin was already having fun.

Given the circumstances however, he might wait until after their activities before he considers telling Hank that though.

[shemakesmusic-uk]

TRACK BY TRACK BREAKDOWN: Nowhere Sounds Lovely LP by Cristina Vane

The origins of American music are rife with sounds and styles from all reaches of the globe, but over the last century or so, the roles have somewhat reversed themselves with blues, jazz, and mountain music being re-dispersed and re-interpreted by musicians worldwide. Enter resonator-playing, foot-stomping Cristina Vane. Born in Italy to a Sicilian-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Vane grew up between England, France, and Italy, and was fluent in four languages by the time she moved to her fathers’ native United States to attend university at 18 years old. Unlike most of her contemporaries in the music industry, Vane has a taste for pre-war American blues from the likes of Skip James, Robert Johnson, and Blind Willie Johnson. Add a splash of slow western waltzes and haunting Appalachian melodies for good measure and she’s tapped in to the very well from which rock and roll sprung.

Vane’s debut full-length album, Nowhere Sounds Lovely, explores the depths of her new home’s musical history from her unique perspective without ever sounding like a re-hashing of old tricks. Out now, Nowhere Sounds Lovely flows naturally from the album-opening slow-burn blues of ‘Dreamboy’ to the clawhammer banjo driven lament of ‘Will I Ever Be Satisfied.’ Thw album ends with ‘Badlands,’–a haunting and visceral nod to the Dakota’s rocky, windy plains.

We asked Cristina to breakdown Nowhere Sounds Lovely track-by-track to give us more insight into what the songs on the LP are about. Read it below.

Blueberry Hill

Written the summer I first explored the United States more thoroughly-the Midwest and the South in particular-’Blueberry Hill’ is an ode to it’s namesake street in Taos, New Mexico. After staying in Louisiana a week or so, I made the trip through Texas to land in Taos. Between the spirits you can practically feel in New Orleans and the transcendent mystical energy in Taos, I was compelled to try and tie those times where it felt like I was dipping into another realm with the traveling experience; sleeping with spiders and the odd snake and critter, in new spaces and smells. While in Taos, I would walk up Blueberry Hill Road almost daily, and the wild sage hills of the mesa do still linger with me, truthfully speaking.They call New Mexico the land of enchantment and I hope some of that seeped into this song.

Travelin' Blues

I grew up moving around, and we travelled a lot in myfamily, but the feeling of living on the road rather than in a house for the first time is what sparked Travelin’ Blues. While I came to realize there is a fine line between running free and running from your problems, initially, travelling was the ultimate medicine for the existential woes I was going throughwhen I wrote this. I still had people I was missing, people I loved but didn’t loveme, and people who had left me or hurt me, but they felt further and further away from whatever new landscape I was awakening to. Sometimes, though, it felt like I was exploring all of this alone, and that it would have been nice to share it. So I wanted to write a happy blues, a song that admits that there are things that make you sad but ultimately just hops up and keeps moving forward.

Prayer for the Blind

This song is partly woven of a specific story I was told by a Nebraskan couple that I met out camping in Iowa. The woman told me about her mother, who was elderly and suffered from dementia. Apparently, her mother insisted that her husband was cheating on her with a woman with two peg legs, going out dancing and such, and was resolved to wring their necks. She related this story to me while laughing, and the contrast of the comedic aspect of such a heavy thing for a daughter to watch her mother go through hit me pretty hard. The lyrics touch on that story and on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, even as they relate to my own. I was also eager to write a modal banjo song, as I thought it set a good canvas for these difficult themes.

Badlands

This song was an exercise in trying to capture the energy of a place. Until this record, I seldom wrote about anything besides human emotion and relationships. My first cross-country tour lasted five months, and opened up my experiences to visions and sensations I had never seen or felt. Contemplating a place like the Badlands of South Dakota for the first time inspired me to write a song to do it justice. Out of the flat, wind-strewn setting of the prairie, the Badlands emanate and draw your attention to them immediately, much like the swallows that seemed drawn to my car as I drove through long stretches of the Dakotas (hence, “dead birds”). You are constantly seen, for there is nowhere to hide on the plains. The toughness of the weather and soil year around, paired with the menacing, jutting, mineral rocks are what give the Badlands their name, and they are what birthed this song.

Dreaming of Utah

I wrote this song not long after coming off my five months of travelling and having just moved to Nashville. I woke up having such a strong, almost tangible yearning for Utah-a place I had never seen until a few months prior-and in the cold of my first Tennessee winter, it reappeared to me in a vivid daydream. The majestic landscape of southern Utah is compelling enough to write several songs about, but I was trying to encompass the general sense of awe and magnificence that nature inspired in me that summer. It also briefly points to the way that nature can be comforting when it feels like I don’t have anyone else around me-lovers, or friends-at least I have the mountains. This song is one of those that poured out quite quickly onto the paper, and it also signals the summer I started listening to Hank Williams and country music for the first time, which I think you can hear a little bit.

What Remains

I wrote ‘What Remains’ when I got tired of trying to find love. I wanted to challenge the idea that love is worth the pain, because that’s how I felt at the time. I think it’s a very human trait to pick yourself up after heartbreak and learn to have hope again, but I was feeling very skeptical about it all when writing this. Is love worth the pain? I was sitting in a dispersed campsite in Utah, staring at alien looking green stone mounds that surrounded me, and I didn’t know what to do with all of this freedom that came with a side of loneliness. I don’t think there is an answer to this question, but this song tries to explain the walls that go up when you don’t want to get hurt again, and tries to expose the vulnerability and loneliness inside those walls (I also wanted to channel whatever JJ Cale energy I could find when we recorded this).

Heaven Bound Station

‘Heaven Bound Station’ was written when I was visiting Nashville for the first time and was feeling inspired by the musicianship around me. I was delving deep into fingerstyle guitar, and wanted to write a tune that had the sound of ragtime or piedmont finger picking, and with a classic theme to match. The idea of wanting to die so that you will be in a better place is so central so many genres close to my heart-delta blues, gospel, bluegrass, etc. Faith is a very inspiring feeling to observe in others, and I tried to channel what it must be like to have the confidence to paint your own picture of paradise. I attempted an answer to the questions: what does heaven look like, and how does one get there?

Dreamboy

The premise of this song came to me as a somewhat moody foil to the sometimes saccharine, clichéd lyrics of love songs in the 40s and 50s-I found myself almost wanting to poke fun at flowery terms like dream girl or loverboy that come up so often in that era of music. When I began writing, however, I wanted to see what it might be like re-imagine this trope in the present-who is my perfect, imaginary man-and this song is what came next. The lyrics are a mixture of the best parts of the people I have met and my hearts wildest desires. The result is a Dreamboy tailored perfectly to me, but this is marred by the fact that I’ll only ever see him in my dreams, as he is unlikely to exist.

Wishing Bone Blues

‘Wishing Bone Blues’ is one of the two songs on the record that I wrote while still living in California. I was running with a pretty colorful crowd for a minute when I lived in Venice, and this song was a reflection of some of the things that accompanied them. Addiction was present in my personal and love life, and though I never struggled with hard drugs, I address my own dependencies in the lyrics too. There is also a sense that onecan get lost in time out by the beach, stuck in a cycle of gratification and excitement. There is always something to do, someone to smoke you out, someone to sit with, until you realize that months have gone by and you haven’t done much. I wanted the music to match the drama of how it feels to watch yourself doing something that isn’t good for yourself, and also wanted to work in some inspiration from Chris Whitley, whose playing I had just discovered (and sadly struggled with demons himself). For a place where it’s always sunny, the energy can get very dark by the beach.

The Driving Song

I started driving way later than most people here. I grew up in European cities which mostly relied on public transportation, and didn’t get a license until I was out of college and living in Los Angeles. I’ve had many intimate moments in my car since then, as most of us do, and living in L.A. I had a lot of time to ponder in traffic too. The song was born on a specific drive home, late at night on the I-10, when I was overcome with a general sense of dissatisfaction. A mixture of loneliness, ineptitude, and general worry about where I was in my life was so strong that the opening verse came to me as I drove, and the rest, pretty soon after.I felt tired of trying to carry the weight of several loved ones struggling with addiction. Something about the way that distance, speed and mortality all balance each other every timeyou drive bred a lot of the feelings that are in that song too. 

Satisfied Soul

One of two waltzes on the record, ‘Satisfied Soul’ is partly an ode to traditional country music (which I was just discovering at the time), as well as the travelling I had done across the country. I grew up in Europe and moved to the U.S. for college at 18, so I had not seen anything inbetween the two coasts. Each region I discovered, down to the endless tiny towns I drove through for 5 months, was a new flavor. They were also a new lesson in the way people all do things differently, and yet are united by the same things too. Nature is one of those uniting factors, but was so drastically different in various places-from Montana down to Florida, Texas to Arizona, Washington to Iowa-I wanted to write a song in a ballad style that paid my respects to how all of these places had contributed to my satisfied soul.

Photo credit: Alex Skelton

[cassiecantyousee]

All I Really Need to Know I Learned on Summer Staff

If you can believe it, it’s been one month since Irma (it hit Barbuda on September 6th, and officially made landfall in the Keys the morning of September 10th). I’ve been back home for over two weeks, and things are nowhere near back to normal. So here’s another attempt at getting my thoughts down before too much time passes. Also, I spent two summers in college working on the ropes course at Saranac, a Young Life camp in the Adirondacks. That will become important later.

Just a heads up: I’m not going to post a lot of pictures, because I find it sort of weird. I’ll post some of my own house, but I felt uncomfortable sharing other people’s hardship. If you’re curious about the destruction in the Keys, there are a lot of photos and videos posted by or with the permission of the residents themselves. Feel free to do some Google searches, or you can message me privately and I can send you some links. Also, I’ve included some good donation links later, but they are not comprehensive! Feel free to find another organization you care about and donate there (but yes, there is a Mote link in there!). Okay, on with the show:

After quick stops in Orlando (to get my car) and Boca (to sleep!) I drove back into the Keys on the morning of Thursday, September 21st. The Keys had opened to residents on Sunday, and Wednesday had been the last day of the checkpoint so I could just drive right in. That in itself felt weird. It was one of those moments where I had trouble remembering that I am 26 years old and not 10; I kept waiting for someone to come to their senses and send me away. Clearly this unaccompanied child should not be allowed into a disaster zone! How irresponsible! Obviously that didn’t happen, because I AM 26, and a legal resident of the Keys, and therefore totally allowed to be there. So after that brief existential panic, the drive continued.

The first thing I noticed was the foliage: all the leaves were off the trees. It looked like New England in the winter (without the snow, obviously). Since there’s no foliage in the Keys that does this normally, it looked very odd. I could see into neighborhoods off the side of Route 1 that I had never been able to see before. There were also big piles of debris by the side of the road, but these were mostly vegetation. I know some places in Key Largo were hit very hard, and I don’t want to minimize that, but the beginning of the drive looked reasonably okay (part of this was also that Key Largo residents were allowed to return sooner, so they had already done a lot of clean-up).

As I continued south, things started to get worse. Entire trees were down, and more and more of the debris piles were made up of people’s personal belongings. Refrigerators, mattresses, shelves, coffee tables, and everything else were piled by the side of the road. In the upper Keys many of these piles had already started being consolidated, but as I drove they started spreading out. Every home and business had a similar pile, and the piles were often at least a full story tall.

When I hit Marathon, it started getting hard. The upper Keys I essentially just drive through, but Marathon I’ve actually spent a lot of time in. It was also the beginning of the worst of the destruction. Businesses that I’d been to in the past were completely flattened, telephone poles were snapped in half, and many side streets were completely impassable due to debris. But even that wasn’t as bad as when I hit Big Pine Key.

While I don’t live on Big Pine, I’m very close. It’s where I go to church, go to the library, shop for groceries, and pick up Chinese food. Many dear friends live on Big Pine, and it was decimated. There’s so much destruction it’s a bit hard to describe, but believe me when I say it’s hard to see. Entire streets were reduced to piles of rubble. The next few islands (including mine) looked much the same. My usual gas station had been literally knocked over. The entire roof that was over the pumps was bent over and lying on its side. By the time I was turning down my street, I thought there was no way my house could be in as good shape as my roommates said it was. I had seen all these newer, better quality homes completely destroyed, how could ours have survived? So I braced myself as I prepared to see how the Gulf side of Ramrod Key had fared.

As it turns out (and as you probably already saw on Facebook) hurricanes are extremely random and we live in a miracle house on a miracle street. Our house had a roof, all four walls, and had only gotten about a foot of water inside. The Atlantic side of Ramrod (where we used to live!) had seen multiple streets completely flattened. A house two blocks closer to the water than us got an eight-foot storm surge (we know because the owner stayed and took pictures). I think that part of what saved us is an extremely lucky location: between our street and the Gulf is the largest area of preserved hardwood hammock habitat in the Keys (our version of a climax forest), and that absorbed a lot of the surge. But we could just as easily have been hit by the pockets of extreme wind or tornados. We truly got very lucky. And since I didn’t get back until Thursday, I never even had to live without power, AC, and running water.

That being said, there’s a lot of work to do. When I first got back the entire lower Keys had a weird swampy smell from all of the flooding (TCI friends: it smelled like the salinas!). So being outside to do yard work wasn’t super pleasant. And while most of our house has cement walls and tile floors, we have to rip out anything that might be growing mold. This includes any and all drywall up to a certain height, the one room with wood flooring, all of our doors, and most of our living room furniture (those of you who have visited: we saved the tall bar chairs! I was so glad).  The dishwasher, microwave, and washer and dryer all work, but the stove is broken. Also somehow the grill, which was outside the whole time, is fine. Our sheds were largely reduced to kindling, and we lost most of the little fruit trees in our back yard. Personally, I had to throw out my futon mattress (old to begin with) and two empty bookshelves (very cheap from Kmart). So no huge losses there, and all of my actual personal stuff is fine. We’re making a lot of progress, and some wonderful friends have come to help us. I’m learning so many life skills!

But it’s been a couple weeks of this now, and the fatigue is starting to set in. I know people always say this, but it’s really true: surviving a disaster is one thing, recovering afterwards is entirely another. Every time we complete one task, there are suddenly five more that we hadn’t even thought of yet. Have you ever seen that Tom Hanks movie The Money Pit? It’s like that. I don’t think I’ll ever find that movie entertaining again. Our house is livable, but it’s not like it’s back to normal. One bedroom is completely under construction, our counters are still covered with hurricane rations, and we haven’t replaced the doors yet so they keep sliding across the floor in a manner that makes it sound like the house is haunted. Plus, after a few more torrential rainstorms, the roof started leaking. We’re getting one of those blue roofs from the Army Corps of Engineers, but they have a lot of houses to get to (don’t worry, we’ve patched it for now). And since it’s so hard to dispose of waste in the Keys (not a lot of land), there are still piles of debris everywhere. They’re starting to consolidate them, so there are these giant walls made up of essentially people’s entire lives lining the highway. They’re honestly about three stories tall.

The biggest thing though, is that we’re all just so TIRED. It’s hard to go to work all day, where you’re probably cleaning up from the hurricane, to then go back home and have to keep cleaning up from the hurricane until you go to bed. You can’t escape it. I catch myself getting irritable, and fed up, and impatient. You start feeling desperate for just one part of your life to be how it was before the storm, but that’s impossible. It’s not an exaggeration to say that people’s lives will never be the same. Some may argue that it’s just stuff, but that’s not really true. It’s your home. It’s where you made a life, made memories, maybe where you raised your family. For me, it’s the first place that felt like home after I graduated college. It’s been destroyed, and the work it’s going to take to fix it looks endless right now. Your emotional “home base” is gone, which is exhausting enough even before you factor in all the physical labor needed to bring it back. There is no home base anymore; there are only piles of trash and drywall. I just really want to stress how tired we all are, especially because we’re actually doing really well (I promise!). So if those of us who were comparatively lucky feel like this, imagine how everyone else feels. Imagine the tragedy in Puerto Rico. Donald Trump can go suck an egg, everyone is working their butts off.

To finally bring all of this back to the title of the post, I never thought two summers at camp would prove so useful years later. The skills I learned on Summer Staff have been invaluable. After safely seeing hundreds of teenagers through a high ropes course I feel pretty prepared for a variety of disasters. The obvious skills, like experience with landscaping and power tools (#ropescapenance4eva) have obviously been helpful, but also the ability to work long hours, keep a good attitude (hopefully), and work as a team with people I just met. Also, I’m pretty good at cleaning bathrooms. There hasn’t been any call for safe belaying techniques yet, but if that comes up I’ll be ready.

But the most important thing I learned is the result of one specific Bible study. Without getting too theological or technical, we were talking about the importance God gives rest and also about how in the Jewish tradition (so also in the Old Testament) the day starts at sundown. That means the day starts with rest, and ends with work. After some more Biblical digging, we finally crystallized an idea that changed how I think about rest forever: you should rest FOR your work, not FROM your work. In other words: rest first, work later. So often we use our rest time, be it actual sleep or something else, as a time to obsess about the previous day when what we SHOULD be using it for is storing up energy for the tasks that lie ahead tomorrow. Put yesterday behind you, rest up, and move forward. It’s purely a mental game; I’m not saying my sleep pattern changed drastically or something. But this shift in mentality (when I remember it) really helps me not get burnt out. To be honest, I had totally forgotten this little piece of wisdom until I came across a quote I had put in my planner a month earlier. It’s by Robert Louis Stevenson, and he said: “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.” So that’s all I’m really trying to say to my fellow hurricane people. Rest for the work ahead, and don’t worry, you’ve been planting a whole forest. We’ll see it grow eventually.

And there really are a lot of bright spots in all of this. Neighbors helping neighbors and so on. Various Facebook groups have actually done a great job distributing key recovery information, and even in returning personal property to their rightful owners. Despite some sensationalist reports (helped along by some paranoia), we’ve barely seen any looting. Volunteers have been coming down from the mainland, and we were sent so much bottled water and non-perishable food we now have too much. If you want to help, and you’re close, we can always use more work teams. If you want to help, and you’re farther away, find a local organization to support and just send money. They’ll get it to where it needs to go.

And please PLEASE help Puerto Rico. They are in much worse shape than we are, and the government didn’t move to help them nearly as quickly as it moved to help us. They are fellow Americans (which really shouldn’t be the point, but it needs to be said), and they need help. Send some.

Before I go: eternal thanks to everyone who has reached out, offered help, checked up on me, or even just sent me funny YouTube videos. Your support and compassion truly means the world to me. And ESPECIALLY thank you to the friends and family I stayed with throughout this whole ordeal! I will be forever grateful. Rest up, everybody.

[kimjauhiainen]

The Burbs (1989)

(Once again republishing my old writings. This time a review of one of my favorite films of all time. Originally published at thesupernaughts.com on Sep 8, 2016)

The Burbs (1989) Director: Joe Dante Writer: Dana Olsen

“Remember what you were saying about people in the ‘burbs, Art, people like Skip, people who mow their lawn for the 800th time, and then SNAP? WELL, THAT’S US. IT’S NOT THEM, THAT’S US. WE’RE the ones who are vaulting over the fences, and peeking in through people’s windows. We’re the ones who are THROWING GARBAGE IN THE STREET, AND LIGHTING FIRES. WE’RE THE ONES WHO ARE ACTING SUSPICIOUS AND PARANOID, ART. WE’RE THE LUNATICS. US. IT’S NOT THEM. It’s us.”

I have been ruminating a long time about which film I’d be making a retro-review next; there are simply so goddamn MANY to choose from!

Then, earlier this week I ended up watching Joe Dante‘s latest film – “Burying the Ex” from 2014 – and I was kinda dumbstruck of how little of Dante’s personality there was left in that one. I mean – aside from some nods to old classic horror movies and cult films and a Dick Miller-cameo, there was NONE of the visual flair I’ve come to associate with a film directed by Joe Dante. None. I was actually pretty shocked by this. I mean – it’s no secret that Dante has worked VERY sparsely in the 21st century; in fact the list of projects he has tried to get made but have fallen apart in the course of the last 16 years is probably as long as his filmography. If not even longer.

So with that in mind I thought “well, isn’t this the perfect time to blow off some dust from over what I believe is the man’s best movie?” Because I sincerely believe it IS. I’ll give my reasons why I believe so later on. First – let’s look at just how “The ‘burbs” came to be, and how it ended up in the hands of Dante in the first place.

“The ‘burbs” began it’s life as a script called “Life in the ‘Burbs“. Screenwriter Dana Olsen based a lot of it on his childhood experiences of living in a suburb not that different what ended up in the film itself; in fact the story of “Skip the Soda Guy” that the character Art tells in the film is very loosely based on a real story about an axe murder in the 30’s, which was still being passed on from generation to generation to the kids in Olsen’s neighborhood. And his neighborhood had “it’s share of psychos” as he says – the essence of some of them ended up in the script – and as he said “As a kid, it was fascinating to think that Mr. Flanagan down the street could turn out to be Jack the Ripper.” So Olsen wrote the script on spec and passed it around, and very quickly it got the interest of Imagine Entertainment – a fairly new company started by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard in 1986. And due to it’s combination of comedy and horror, Grazer thought the the perfect man to direct this would be Joe Dante.

And Dante responded very strongly to the script, as it presented great opportunities for him to use some of his very specific skills as a director; inserting outrageous elements into a realistic environment; much like in “Gremlins” where a peaceful little postcard town suddenly gets overrun by raving supernatural creatures. But “The ‘burbs” was an opportunity to make a more grounded story. Tom Hanks – who was at the time slowly moving away from his more plainly comedic roles into more serious character parts – was pretty much the only choice Dante and the producers had as Ray Peterson, the everyman lead. And Hanks was quickly drawn in as well, after some hesitation about playing a father for the first time on screen. The rest of the cast soon followed; Carrie Fisher, Bruce Dern, Rick DuCommun, Corey Feldman, Wendy Schaal, Henry Gibson as well as Dante’s regular stock company Robert Picardo and Dick Miller. The filming took place mostly in the Universal backlot street-set, which had previously been featured in many movies and TV-shows; in fact, the home of Ricky Butler(Corey Feldman) was the Munster Mansion from “The Munsters” – and the whole street would later be very prominently featured as Wisteria Lane in “Desperate Housewives“.

So, a short recap of the story of “The ‘burbs” in case someone is unfamiliar with the film:

Mayfield Place, a street in a fictional suburb of Hinkley Hills; Ray Peterson, a somewhat tight-wound father and suburbanite, wakes up in the middle of the night to strange noises. They come from the basement of his next door house, recently occupied by a family called the Klopeks. Along with the noises of some ungodly equipment, we also see unnaturally bright lights emerge from the basement windows. Something’s fishy in the neighborhood. We meet the various other neighbors on the street: Ray’s wife Carol(Carrie Fisher) and son Dave(Cory Danziger), Art Weingartner(Rick Ducommun) – a paranoid summer-widower, Lt. Mark Rumsfield(Bruce Dern) – a shady retired military man and his slightly ditzy wife Bonnie(Wendy Schaal), Ricky Butler – a metal-head teenager who’s charged with painting the house while his parents are apparently away for the summer and Walter Seznick(Gale Gordon) – an older gentleman who keeps his lawn in pristine condition while letting his dog take a crap on Rumsfield’s.

After Walter suddenly disappears, Ray – who is on vacation and massively bored – gets further and further entangled into Art’s and Rumsfield’s crazy conspiracy theory that the Klopeks; Werner(Henry Gibson), Hans(Courtney Gains) and Reuben(Brother Theodore) are in fact a family of serial killers moving from town to town. As the mass hysteria builds, the trio of “heroes” try to get to the bottom of the bizarre family’ life – and in their house – by any means necessary. And to find the body of the missing Walter. MUCH chaos ensues…

Now to get back to my initial claim on WHY “The ‘burbs” is Joe Dante’s best film I felt that it would be best to address it with a small list of points:

CLEVER SCRIPT, BALANCED DIRECTING

This is a big one. What comes fairly obvious when looking at Dante’s filmography is that he is a filmmaker who is clearly wearing his cinematic influences in his sleeve; at times he can go into this “throw in everything AND the kitchen sink too“-mode, which is probably the most evident in “Gremlins 2: the New Batch” and “Matinee“. I’m not saying those are bad films, not at all – they just feel slightly uneven when more dramatic scenes get outweighed by chaotic Looney Tunes-like set pieces. “The ‘burbs” is probably the most grounded of all the movies he has made. There is no science fiction. There is no supernatural horror(except in a few dream sequences). The protagonists are human – the antagonists are human. Although the brilliance of the script is that the line between who REALLY is the protagonist/antagonist is very thin – right up until the end of the final act. It’s actually a very clever story point: you can very well say that Ray, Art and Rumsfield are for the most part the villains of the movie, as they show some very clear nearly-psychopathic tendencies as they become more and more obsessed with these “weirdos” that have invaded their neighborhood. In a very clever way writer Olsen and Dante show just how evil humans can get and how easily they can turn on each other. I think that can all be transferred very easily into what’s going on in real life even as we speak, as almost every day the newsfeeds are filled with more and more news of man turning against the fellow man.

And Dante shows extraordinary restraint in his direction here as well. Sure, there are occasions where he goes into his more cartoony mode, but most of the time the story is told in very simple ways, like very long, sweeping camera shots going around the set and cover multiple characters doing their thing. I’d say Dante is paying a lot of homage to Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” in the way the neighborhood is constantly shown to go on with it’s life in the background of all this madness. And when it’s time to go crazy, Dante does not linger with his visual gags; for example in a scene where Art falls through the roof of a garden shed, you can see that he has left a human-shaped hole in the roof. THAT’S the Looney Tunes-Dante, but he does not linger on it; it’s there to be seen but it does not stay and wait for a studio-audience laughter. The same goes for a scene where Ray has momentarily given up on the conspiracy theory and just tries to relax on his yard and have a few beers. There’s a very long sequence where Ray and Art are speaking in the foreground and at the same time we can see Walter’s dog digging for something in the background…and the scene goes on for a LONG time until we are finally revealed that the dog has dug up a human femur bone. And only THEN does Dante go for broke again, as the camera starts snap-zooming while the characters scream in horror.

Like I said: balanced.

BRILLIANT CASTING

As said before, Tom Hanks was kinda moving away from the wacky comedy parts at this point. Which was definitely a good thing: I personally think that in his comedy performances of the early/mid-80’s  he was very quickly starting to repeat himself. I’ll give an example: I re-watched “Bachelor Party” a few years ago and; while it was quite fun to watch as a teenager, I think the “likeable manchild”-character that Hanks played in that one, as well as in most of his other movies of that era was ABSOLUTELY ANNOYING. So the character of Ray, who really is the plain everyman, is – and was – such a welcome departure. Sure, the character becomes more and more crazy during the course of the movie, but never over the top – and still remains very relate-able. The “over the top” is reserved for the two true MVP’s of the picture: Bruce Dern and Rick Ducommun.

Dern, who had already at this point had a long career playing dramatic parts and villains in more westerns than there’s time to list here, shows some unbelievable skills at comedy: both verbal and moreso, physical. Rumsfield(obviously an not-so-subtle homage to Donald Rumsfeld) basically treats the whole thing as a military operation, and has access to some pretty sophisticated surveillance equipment as well as weapons(there’s a small hint in the movie that he is in fact a weapons-dealer, and Olsen confirms this in his commentary), but he is also a clumsy idiot, and completely devoid of any real social skills. Meanwhile, Ducommun’s Art is just a stir-crazy conspiracy theorist who very clearly is watching too many sensationalist news-reports on TV. He is a guy you do NOT want to invite to your home, because you will never get rid of him after that. It’s almost impossible to decide who ends up stealing the movie: Dern or Ducommun – so I’ll just say both.

The Klopeks were without a doubt cast with physical attributes in mind, but the actors bring a lot to the table; be it Henry Gibson‘s sort of calm benevolence with some darkness appearing under the seams to Brother Theodore‘s blatant outrageousness to Courtney Gains‘ mostly non-verbal presence. Carrie Fisher probably has the most difficult part in the movie as the sole voice of reason, but her very clear chemistry with Hanks speaks volumes. Corey Feldman has probably the most one-dimensional part in the movie as the cliched “airhead loudmouth teenager“- it’s pretty much “Mouth” from “Goonies” a little bit older – but in a way he’s also representing the audience as he demonstrates that he doesn’t have to watch TV or go to the movies when all the excitement and action is right there outside his porch. The Dante-regulars Robert Picardo and Dick Miller have a very amusing walk-in as two garbage men – as a matter of fact, their short scene almost makes one wish they had made a sitcom of these two characters.

THE SCORE

I think I’ve said this before on an article about film scores; I think Jerry Goldsmith found a perfect cinematic partner in Joe Dante. The score he made for “The ‘burbs” gives him an exceptionally wide range of styles to play with: you have your mystery music to represent the Klopeks, you have your “happy neighborhood” music to represent the suburbian life, you have your dramatic music to represent the family tension as Ray gets deeper into his obsession, you have horror music for a nightmare satanic sacrificial sequence, you have the theme from “Patton” whenever Rumsfield is featured, and you have the sort of Looney Tunes-music when Art does something crazy. It really is chaotic masterpiece of film scoring and I can imagine the late composer just laughing like a schoolboy when he was writing this stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uies0Y-jjH0

CONCLUSION:

So, that’s why I feel this movie is Dante’s finest work. But don’t take my word for it; check it out yourself. There is a wonderful UK special edition Blu-Ray by Arrow Films out there, which includes a few alternate endings (the ending of the movie was apparently a bit of a problem for the filmmakers, as the original was too dark. And they filmed several versions until ending up with the one that is in it now. And after seeing the alternatives, I think they made the right call) as well as a Workprint version of the movie that has a few added scenes, some alternate scenes and a temporary music score which features a huge amount of spaghetti western-music – including the one track that’s actually left in the film, which can be heard when Hans Klopek makes his first appearance.

I’m not sure if Shout! Factory is planning a US release of this, but there’s a bare-bones Blu-Ray release out there as well. Just a friendly hint to any of you who might’ve missed this movie until now.

It really hasn’t aged at all, it’s a perfect mix of thriller and comedy, with some very clever satire on the ingrown living habitats and their effect on people – and it has something very poignant to say about the human nature even now.

Of course, the theatrical trailer at the time was just trying to sell it as another zany Tom Hanks-comedy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lfkZTwN00

[spryfilm]

“Kong: Skull Island” (2017)

Action

Running Time: 118 minutes

Directed by: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Featuring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell, John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry Notary, and John C. Reilly

Hank Marlow: “That’s Kong, he’s king around here. Kong’s a pretty good king. Keeps to himself mostly, but you don’t go into someone’s house and start dropping bombs unless you’re picking a fight.”

Here we have the second in a proposed meeting of the monsters movie series that will continue with “Godzilla 2” (2018) and then the hopeful “Godzilla vs Kong” at some later date. This is the reintroduction of King Kong and the Skull Island some may remember from the Peter Jackson directed “King Kong” (2005) which was a dream project from him that he was rewarded with after the “Lord of the Rings” (1999 – 2002) albeit from a different studio. What I liked about this film “Kong: Skull Island” (2017), is that it doesn’t necessarily ignore Jacksons film even though this Kong is much larger.

The movie is set in 1973, where a secretive organization known as Monarch finds an island that is shrouded in mystery and identified as the origin for new species. The resulting expedition to the island reveals that a giant monstrous ape named Kong is at the center of a battle for dominion over the island, against the apex predators, nicknamed “Skullcrawlers”, responsible for wiping out his kind. As the expedition crew makes plans to fight for survival against Kong and the other monsters on the island, some of them begin to see that Kong is worth saving.

Its hard to talk about this film without first acknowledging its stellar cast that starts with the always charismatic Tom Hiddleston, better know to international movie audiences as Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who is trying to branch out here in another A typical blockbuster movie. Brie Larson who is making her first appearance post her Best Actress Oscar win as a photographer trying to search for the truth is not bad either – she seems to be warming up for her next big screen role in the MCU. The always excellent John Goodman, John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson, who once again steal any films they appear in, round out the rest of the cast and here they all take turns in the spotlight.

This is a big dumb and most of all fun movie, that kicks off the Summer Movie Season early this year with a bang. The film has a lot of CGI in it as you would expect but part of it feels rushed with no real story for all the promises of the marketing and early trailers.

The one major let down for me was that there was no real plot that all the characters (and there are way too many( could hang on to. The one thing positive thing that both “King Kong” (2005) and “Godzilla” (2014) had going for them was at least a plot that had goals, which involved all the major characters. At some point I was wondering why did they even come to the island if there was no end goal – they didn’t have the equipment to get anything off the island so what was the point? There are clues in the names of the characters but i felt this was an afterthought as once again there was no payoff. Did they hire well known actors just to kill them off – which mostly happens off screen thanks to the PG rating.

One of my favorite things about this film is that it is set in 1973, just as the Nixon government was coming to an end in one of the most deplorable ways possible, and frightening ones as well. That this time in US and global politics reflects what we are now going through and that safeguards that existed in the 1970s seem to have all but disappeared in this new political climate shows just how much things have changed. In those heady days when it was the fifth estates job to hold a mirror up to those in power and hold them accountable we now see the hobbling of these same people by the government itself – something that will spread if we allow it.

It is actually quite canny of Larsen to play a reporter in this film and for her to be identified as someone who is looking for the truth amongst men and men who are focused on either destruction or taking advantage of something they don’t understand at all – as well as exploiting for evil the natural resources they don’t have any right interfering with. These kinds of issues will become all too real and relevant as we move through the next few years and see what kind of planet we are going to be left with after a Leftish government that will influence world affairs.

I recommend this for all people that love monster movies as well as action films that seem to be over the top and aim for a grand spectacle with little plot but a lot of scene stealing by CGI creatures that we will see again the next few years.

Film Review: “Kong: Skull Island” (2017) "Kong: Skull Island" (2017) Action Running Time: 118 minutes Directed by: Jordan Vogt-Roberts Featuring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L.