#but also i watched the video yesterday and i was thinking yeah i know vince is gonna gif this

[ashintheairlikesnow]

i'm fucking losing it about that most recent post and i cannot get coherent words out about it because i get too excited about the possibilities and it is extremely hard to type while flapping but !!! oh my god!!!! oh my godd!!!!!!!!!

CW: Opening to what is definitely going to be a severe trauma response in the next piece, brief victim-blaming language

Jake watches the video, and Laken can't read his expression at all. It's grim, maybe - his jaw is set, and his blue eyes don't leave the laptop screen.

Youtube starts with a stupid fucking State Farm car insurance ad, and Jake is quiet and thoughtful before the ad even ends. He didn't argue with Laken, or suggest disbelief. He only texted come to the house and show me while C is at rehearsal, and Laken had hopped on two buses and walked half a mile, but here they are, now, only a little sweaty for their efforts.

Laken hunches over next to him, their hands over their mouth, thick wavy black hair falling over their eyes. They'd re-shaved the sides yesterday and the air moved over the shorn-short spaces as the fan turned overhead.

They don't speak. They just watch Jake watch Tristan Higgs dance. They watch Antoni, Chris's other brother, sit quietly on Jake's other side, his own dark eyes equally fixed on the screen. When the video ends, Jake hits the replay button and watches it again.

And again.

"This video is from eight years ago," He finally says. His voice is a deep rumble, barely a sound human ears can hear. “I mean, the dancing is from eight years ago.”

Laken swallows and nods. "Um, y-yeah. So he would be-"

"Fifteen," Jake finishes for them. "Give or take. If he's as old as I think he is. And this guy seems pretty fucking sure that Tristan Higgs is dead."

"Right." Laken swallows, uncomfortable. "So, Ben-... You remember Ben. He's, um. Been looking stuff up, and... He sent me some links to, like, old news articles, and... Um..."

"What is in the articles?" Where Jake's voice is rough-edged, struggling for control, Antoni's voice is soft, hazy with his accent, sliding over consonants and coasting the vowels. "What is he sending?"

"So, um, like... This double-... Uh, double-murder and stuff. These people that were killed and just, like, their kid survived, Tristan Higgs. Except then he disappears-... just drops off the face of the earth. But no obit or anything.”

Jake and Antoni look at each other, the men sharing an expression that communicates a wealth of information Laken isn't privy to. But the one thing they don't show is any surprise.

"-and... Ben's been messaging the guy that posted the video, and-... They're gonna meet, um, in a couple days. At, you know where La Mode is? The ice cream place where they filmed that bit in that old Vince Shield movie-"

"I know where La Mode is, yeah," Jake says, watching Laken carefully. He hasn't looked at them like this in a long time, since he first met them - calculating and slightly cold, considering the risk they pose to Chris and to everyone else in his house.

"I also am knowing that place," Antoni says with a nod, putting a hand on Jake's arm. Jake is tense - Laken didn't realize it until he suddenly relaxes, consciously, now. "Why is Ben wanting to talk to this man?"

"I, I don't know. He kind of, he's really intense about this stuff. You know, when he found out Chris was, um, was... a pet..." The word is ash on their tongue, gums up around their teeth, makes their stomach flip in disgust. "... He kind of lost his shit once we got Chris calm about it. I think he thought-... Uh, you know, people like Chris, they get targeted, and... so he's been thinking about that.”

“This isn’t his business, Laken,” Jake says, weary, closing his eyes.

“No, I know, but he's got a little brother who's the same age Chris was when-... this video must have been made. Who’s a lot like him. So I think he's... I don't know. Maybe thinking, you know, if it was his brother, he’d want someone to do all this... if-... if someone took his brother away."

"Yeah, I get it." Jake swallows, sitting up slowly, rubbing at his face. He's got a day-old stubble along his jaw, the kind that made Laken grin a little when they saw the rubbed-red, irritated jawline of the guy with black hair who answered the door, Chris's other brother kind of.

The one that Laken met the night Dylan told Ben and them where Chris really came from. Except... not this. Dylan hadn't known this.

"So, we need to get Chris ready-"

"Get me ready for, for, for what? Laken, why, why are you here?"

Laken closes their eyes and lets out a slow, soft sigh. Of course - the one night they needed Chris's rehearsal to run full-length is the one night he comes back early. They turn to look at Chris and give him a slight smile. "Hey, querido, we just, um-... So, there's..."

The video has still been playing in the background, forgotten, and the music kicks into the crescendo where the second gymnast steps up, catching Chris's attention. "What's, what's that? Is, is, is, is is is it-"

He goes silent as Tristan Higgs steps into place, shoots his bright smile towards Akio Nakamura, and does his first set of flips and spins.

The three of them watch Chris watching Tristan Higgs. They watch his backpack slide off his shoulder and thump to the ground. They watch his eyes - the perfect match to the eyes of the boy on the screen - follow Tristan and Akio dancing briefly back to back, his laughter as he drops his head onto Akio's shoulder.

Something in the line of his shoulders tightens. His skin is pale under the freckles, his hair suddenly seems too garishly bright against the rest of him. There are shadows under his eyes Laken has never seen before. He looks younger... and haunted.

They hold their breath until it ends, the two boys hugging and laughing, Tristan bouncing and rocking and flapping ecstatically when the routine went off without a hitch.

The video cycles to the next one, a different set of Nakamura's. Chris blinks and then looks at the three of them, eyes moving from one to the next. "Why... are you watching... that?"

His voice shifts, change, slips into a drip-drop of words, a slowly leaking faucet language that Laken barely understands when compared to his usual mile-a-minute. He stands perfectly still.

Once again, Jake and Antoni aren't surprised.

"Chrisha," Antoni says, gently. Jake's jaw works, maybe fighting for words that don't come. "That is you, we think. You were... are Tristan Higgs."

Chris's eyes move to Antoni. Then back to Jake. "No," He says, simply. "I'm... not."

"Chris?" Laken feels a wash of uncertainty. "Are you okay? We're pretty sure this is you."

Chris stares right through Laken, eyes empty, full of a kind of fog all their love can't break through. "No, I, I'm not. I'm... not him."

Jake is the one to push himself to his feet first, taking Chris gently by the arm to walk him back towards the doorway. "Chris-"

"I'm... not, not him," Chris says, looking up at Jake, up and up and up. "I'm... not, Jake."

Chris, Laken's sunshine boy, their love and light and life, is a dull bit of broken rock, sodden earth after too much rain, the sooty stumps of trees in an empty wildfire-wrecked field.

"I know it's hard," Jake says, folding Chris into his arms, and Laken watches with a twist of something that isn't quite jealousy, but isn't that far off. Chris will always turn to Jake, first. They can't compete with that - they don't want to, even, they just sort of wish they could. "I know, Chris. But Laken's right, this kid... I think that might really be you."

"No," Chris whispers, burying his head into Jake's chest. "No, no, no. I'm... not. I, I make myself, I made Chris, I don't want to, to, to to to-to be anyone else anymore..."

"You're still Chris," Jake murmurs, and holds him close. "You're still my brother. This just tells us maybe a little bit about what happened before I met you, that's all. That's it, Chris. Nothing has to change."

"Everything changed," Chris whispers, pulling slowly back. "Because I, I did it wrong. I, I, I moved, wasn't... I was, was supposed to hide... and, and be so quiet..." His hands move, one finger up to his lips, as though shushing himself. The empty look in his eyes is cracking open to a well of pain that Laken, for all the times they've held him after nightmares and all the meltdowns they've seen... They've never seen it quite like this. 

He pulls away from Jake, and slowly picks his backpack up from the floor.

"Chris?" Laken shifts forward, but the look on his face when he glances back at them makes them stop short. "Baby, I-"

"Go... home, Laken," Chris says, and turns away from them. "Tris, Tristan Higgs is, is, is, is dead. He, he, he... he he-... he, k-... killed people, and he’s, he’s, he’s dead.” 

He's gone, his feet heavy on the stairs, before Laken can say another word.

Jake and Antoni glance at each other - another immense conversation contained in a single shared look - and then Jake sighs. "Come in, Laken. I'll drive you back to campus. Ant, if you'll-"

"Watch the house and speak to Chrisha. Got it." Antoni gives Laken a soft, sympathetic smile. "These things are not easy," He says, softly. "You cannot pick yourself back up again, simple as that, start a story where you were left off. I will speak with him."

"But, I should-"

"You'll make it worse," Jake says, rough-edged again.

"Harder," Antoni gently corrects. "He will need us, who know what it is they do to our minds, tonight."

"Wh-what do they do?” Laken looks from one of the men to the other. “I, I know memory loss, I get that, and he was clearly-... hurt, so much, but-”

“They take a frightened man-... or, child,” Antoni says, voice gentle as always. “And they teach us that the person we were before was so terrible that the person we are now exists only to suffer.”

“But he’s just a kid, there, in that video,” Laken says, a token protest, voice weak. Antoni’s smile widens, slightly, in its sympathy for them. “There’s no kid on earth who could possibly deserve that. He doesn’t even remember what happened!”

“You do not have to remember a crime to be told you are responsible for it.”

“But-”

Antoni takes their hands in his, looking them right in the eyes. “When you are alone, and frightened, and desperate to survive... you will believe anything that gives you the slightest chance for a way out.”

Laken swallows, hard, thinking of Chris whispering after a nightmare one night, they made me a Romantic pet because I was a slut who wanted it all the time - their sunshine boy, who never ever does, effortlessly believing a lie, repeating back the names they called him, acting unbothered and like he barely noticed his own words.

Laken swallows back a flip of disgust at the idea of a teenager being taught to hate himself that way. 

“Wh-what happens if he remembers everything they made him forget?” Laken’s voice is a whisper.

“If we’re lucky,” Jake says gruffly, “He doesn’t remember it all at once. If we’re not-”

A wail shatters their conversation, a low keening cry from upstairs, muffled by distance and closed doors, a sound of wild screaming wordless grief. All three of them flinch as there’s a resounding crash and a slammed door.

“If we not, that happens,” Jake says, and he’s on his feet and up the stairs before Laken can remind him that he’d said he would take them home. They move to stand, but Antoni lays a hand on their arm.

“Jake, first,” He says softly. “It is easy to be overwhelmed, in these moments. Jake first, and then you.”

What they feel now is definitely a little bit jealousy.

And guilt.

Chris’s screaming, his misery and pain, seems to go on forever, twist itself into the walls of the house and burrow in. Antoni leaves to comfort frightened people who stick their heads out of doors and ask what’s going on, people Laken doesn’t know and has never been introduced to. They look at Laken, consider them, and Antoni speaks to them with soft reassurance while Laken feels helpless, and hopeless, and pointless in this house full of hurting people, while their own hurting person finds comfort in his brother, not in them.

They turn back to look at Jake’s laptop, sitting alone and watching a group of gymnasts hugging after getting their scores, laughing.

The title dates it as a year after the dancing video.

By the time this one was filmed, Tristan Higgs was already gone.

---

Tagging: @burtlederp  , @finder-of-rings  , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure  , @slaintetowhump  , @astrobly  @newandfiguringitout  , @doveotions  , @pretty-face-breaker  , @boxboysandotherwhump  , @oops-its-whump  @moose-teeth  , @cubeswhump  , @cupcakes-and-pain  @whump-tr0pes  @whumpiary  @orchidscript

[talix18]

November 21

Yesterday Katelyn called to see if I wanted to hang out. Katelyn is the almost 22-year-old who I call my adopted niece but she’s something more than that. I lived with K and her mom from the time K was 18 months old until she was four-and-a-half so I was her de facto other mom. I know it’s just the slightest approximation of what parenting must feel like but I treasure the memory of her being satisfied with coming to me if Mom wasn’t available. Three-year-old K running towards me when I showed up to pick her up from daycare. The memory of the Christmas when all K wanted from Santa was to see her father and her mother and I couldn’t make that happen – talk about powerlessness. Watching her sing at her high school variety show remembering how I’d been too terrified to sing in front of people…

She inherited some things from me – her opinions and eagerness to share them is probably the big one, but she also, somehow, has come to love Def Leppard (I suspect that’s her boyfriend’s influence). You already know how Def Leppard introduced me to my first boyfriend. I can tell you exactly where I was and who I was with when I heard about the car accident that ultimately took Rick Allen’s arm. I remember that someone who worked at a music store called me to tell me Steve Clarke had died. Def Leppard was my third concert (1st: Asia; 2nd: Stray Cats) – I still can’t believe Mom let me go with Allen and some of his friends at 15. Some people have made-up imaginary friends – mine were real people.

I went up to see K at her mom’s place after work (Kate’s mom and her husband of a year and a week are still on their delayed honeymoon in Tennessee) and we talked about all kinds of things. She said something about Def Leppard touring with Motley Crue, which led me to the Crue documentary I just watched on Netflix over the weekend. I was a fan – saw them open for Ozzy once; had a poster on my ceiling for a while – but the milestones in their lives were vague memories. Of course Tommy was married to Heather Locklear and Vince committed vehicular manslaughter, but that was most of what I knew.

The documentary is an unflinching portrait of the toll drugs took on the band – specifically Nikki Sixx – but that’s not the part that really got to me. I know how addiction works. I had to stop the movie to Google what happened to Vince Neil’s daughter after her cancer diagnosis, which paid off as the next scene opened on her dead four-year-old body laying in the hospital bed. So now I’m having feelings about poor Vince losing his daughter after killing his friend how many years after the fact?

On the way home, after playing a Def Leppard song, the DJ mentioned the tour with Crue and I had to call Katelyn. We are definitely going, I assured her, now that I have even more emotions tied up with these people. I am definitely not thinking about the fact that “Crue called their friends in Def Leppard” to arrange the tour because I assume that means the Leps were also hard partiers and I’d rather not consider all the sordid debauchery that follows along. (Poison is also on the bill, and we’re all down with Bret since Rock of Love. Don’t threaten me with a good time!)

K and I also watched Mean Girls, which I had never seen, and I’m always happy to patch up a hole in my cultural reference knowledge. “Her hair is so big because it’s full of secrets” is everything. Feel free to welcome me to fifteen years ago.

I have to believe the increased meds dosage is making a difference. Tuesday alone I scheduled a doctor’s appointment (colorectal), an ultrasound (thyroid), a dinner/movie date with a friend, a massage, an eye exam, and a dentist’s appointment AND I enrolled for supplemental vision insurance. It seems like a reasonable amount to accomplish in one day, but I’d been putting off some of these appointments for months. Why is it so hard to pick up the phone and call someone? I will never be able to explain it. Trust me – I wish I could help people understand! The best I can do is recognize that I’m functioning more effectively and keep track of what I’m doing that’s different.

Yesterday I committed to flying to Boston to see a friend get married on New Year’s Eve. “Black tie optional”? Hell yeah I want to go hang out in that hotel and see that venue that my amazing friend and her intended are having a black-tie optional shin-dig in! I can’t imagine my lifestyle ever affording me such luxurious splurges on the regular so I need to take advantage of the opportunities when they manifest. Besides, I already have a dress that I got for a black-tie New Year’s Even anniversary party a few years ago; wearing it a second time makes it an even better value! (We don’t discuss how much money I ultimately spend on a wrap and statement earrings.) (Ack! I need to make an appointment with Katelyn for my hair!)

I haven’t seen Karen (the friend getting married) in FIVE years, which seems impossible, but there it is. Karen is one of my original gang of Webpeeps – Webpepes 1.0! Most of us met on a news aggregate website, got to know each other in the forum (4um elites represent), and created a new bulletin board to hang out in. At our peak we had about 150 members but the core group was about 40, and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at least 30 of us in meatspace.

The first time I met Karen (GreenBeans/GB) was at her then husband’s 30TH (?) birthday party. Rider (PsiDefect), Tim (GasMasher), and I drove my car up to Boston from Philly (Tim and I drove up from MD) to surprise this dude we’d never met, and that cemented my friendship with both Karen and Ted (Law). Their marriage broke up some time ago, which I learned the weekend she and I got together in Orlando with Catrina (CatWritr) and CJ (Hajen). Which was somehow five full years ago.

The first time I met ANY of these nerds was…I don’t even know how long ago at the original Farkoasterfest. I lived with Katelyn and Vanessa at the time and V straight up took pictures of Rider and his license plate when he pulled up to scoop me and head out to Sandusky, OH. I do know I was working at SSA and it was relatively early in my tenure, so early-2000s? It was also probably the first time I spent an entire weekend with people not in recovery since I’d gotten clean. Several hundred miles away with nearly perfect strangers – who thought that was a good idea?

It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Some of the people I met that weekend and after are straight up some of my closest friends. It was my first experience making friends as an adult, which is startlingly difficult to do. My first group of friends that didn’t start in our hometown or on campus or in recovery – people I connected with in a realm where all we had was the words on the screen and our wit.

Places I’ve since hung out with these people include Seattle twice, Cedar Point one or two more times, Northern VA, DC, PA, and Toledo. I’ve seen at least three couples wed and have almost ten kids between them. I dated the guy in Toledo for a few years. I flew out to Seattle for Andrea (BigOrangeCat/TheOtherAndrea)’s 40th birthday party and to visit her in the hospital before she died. We helped Amy (Hisey) mourn the loss of her nearly full-term daughter. We helped Joe (ThedNeedles) deal with his ex keeping his son away from him – some of his helped him with legal aid. We watched each other’s kids grow up and have kids of their own. Norm (Zorgon) just emailed to let me know he was in town (-ish –northern DC suburb) and wanted to connect but was laden with germs – we get together for a meal very few years when work brings him this way. Never let anyone tell you your online friends don’t count.

(Logging back in to the old bulletin board to count heads gifted me with a video of Mike (BitZero) (father of FarKoasterFest) smashing up some obsolete Fark hardware. Good times!)

I reached out to CJ and Cat to see if either one was planning on coming to the wedding to offer the other side of the king-sized bed I’ll be sleeping in in Boston and I’m glad I did. CJ’s got a handful of kids so money is always a concern and I’m paying for the room whether I’m alone or with someone else. We’ll be FaceTiming Cat at midnight and maybe during the ceremony too.

In fact, I’ve been suspiciously functional this week. Monday was meh, but since then I’ve had three good, productive days in a row. I have no specific plans tonight so I could go to a meeting, or I could go home and see if any of this momentum can be channeled into house projects. Coming up with a fictional framing device has given me the opportunity to figuratively walk myself through the necessary steps to get started. So whatever comes of this writing exercise, it’s been worth doing.

[daleisgreat]

The Fast and the Furious

Yesterday I caught the latest film in the worldwide hit Fast & Furious franchise, The Fate of the Furious. To get a little a little bit it in the right mindset for it, I went and watched the original 2001 film, The Fast and the Furious (trailer) a couple days prior. I own all of the films, but the second installment which I detest, and as luck would have it all but the last couple were still in my backlog. I may as well cover them all(minus 2Fast) for the blog, and I think I will try and knock out a couple of the earlier movies right away before revisiting the later films down the line. Additionally, since I always kind of embraced these films in a lighthearted ridiculous kind of way, I will be a little looser with my entries for these films and will run down my highlights from each film in a bulleted list kind of way. -Quick plot synopsis for those unfamiliar with the first film: The late Paul Walker portrays undercover cop Brian Connor. There is a street car gang stealing hot ticket Apex DVD players from trucks, so Connor goes undercover and joins Dominic Torreto’s (Vin Diesel) gang that also consists of his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), his tough-as-nails girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) computer hacker whiz Jesse (Chad Lindberg) and lifetime meathead bro Vince (Matt Shulze).

-I vividly recall my sister treating me to this film at the theater for a graduation present since it hit theaters a Friday or two after I graduated way back in 2001! Initial memories of the film were that it seemed like the coolest thing ever with all the crazy special engine closeup/NOS turbo special effects and all the bedazzling of the street cars with neon and underglow. -I also specifically remember thinking coming out of this thinking that Vin Diesel was the coolest dude ever with him having the silent, deadly charisma and perfect chilling delivery of classic lines such as “It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winnings’s winning!” and the quintessential “quarter mile at a time” speech of the film which transpired in my favorite scene in the picture. Those thoughts quickly changed when Diesel skipped out on the sequel in favor of duds like The Pacifier. I also recall Paul Walker’s BS wavy hair and as the ultimate cornball with his epic so-bad-its-good delivery of classic lines such as “I need two cans of NOS…tonight!” He gets much better in later films thankfully. This is also the only film series I can tolerate Michelle Rodriguez in since she goes on to play the same badass stereotype in all the other films she is in and is insufferable as a result. This was the first time I was exposed to her here however and she is the perfect complement to Vin Diesel’s character.

-Johnny Tran (Rick Yune) is the stereotypical Asian gangster for the film. He has history with the Toretto gang and it all comes to a head in the film’s last act after some deadly fallout after a race that transpires at the Race Wars event. He is actually a pretty compelling villain and one of my favorite antagonists from the series. Speaking of races, if you have not seen the earlier Fast films, than I have to be the one to break it to you that the earlier films primarily revolved around the underground street race scene and it was not until Fast Five when the films fully evolved into “best drivers in the world pulling off insanely unbelievable heists.” -The truck heists were only a small backdrop to the street racing in the film, but the final truck heist scene features a lot of great stunt work and practical effects. Watching the extra feature interviews it was cool to see that a lot of the street racing and truck scenes were primarily shot with practical effects and very little CG work. Obviously that would flip with the latter films in the series.

-I got a good feeling the younger crowds are going to scoff at the soundtrack for this film, but for me this film hit during my coming of age years and thus a lot of it resonates with me still today. Reliving it does have a really good blend of (then) modern rap, hip/hop and metal. Fans of Ja Rule, Saliva and Limp Bizkit will not be disappointed! The SWAT montage scene being accompanied by Dope’s “Debonaire” is another favorite scene in the film of mine, which has a great culmination of Tran’s father giving the ever-dreaded “disappointed parent hand-slap of doom!” -I forgot to mention I am reliving these films with a special commentary track. Giant Bomb is my favorite videogame website and they occasionally do movie commentaries. Longtime readers here may recall that is how I re-watched Rocky IV. Experiencing this film again with the Giant Bomb crew was an ideal experience for me, since they re-watched all seven films over the past few months leading up to F8. Host Alex Navarro is the well-versed lore-master of the Fast franchise and provides plenty of wisdom for casual Fast fan Vinny Carravella Fast-newbie Dan Ryckert. Dan bombards Alex with too many questions, but Alex wisely knows what to clue him into as the movie progresses. Also experiencing Dan state why he avoided the movies all these years only to make a complete 180 and end up loving this film about an hour in was very entertaining to listen in on. As always the GB guys are a riot and have plenty of wise cracks along the way that made rewatching this a lot of fun. If you want to give their commentary a listen then head here to download the track. -The BluRay is jacked with a ton of extras. Most of them are carried over from the DVD release but there are a couple new HD extras too. Dom’s Charger is a quick four minute look at Dom’s ride and how they found that model for the film. Quarter Mile at a Time is a 10 minute-eye opener on the origins of drag/street racing and how it lead to NASCAR/F1 and modern street racing. That is all for new extras. There is a little over an hour worth of assorted extra features carried over. Of them I would suggest checking out the deleted scenes, as there are a few good ones that director Rob Cohen justified why they did not make the final cut. Making of Fast and Furious is a thorough breakdown of the cars, races and cast for the film and provides a lot of detail on what I referenced earlier on how the stunts were done. Make sure to check out the six minute short film, Turbo Charged Prelude which has no dialogue and is essentially Connor going rogue from the cops and travelling across the country to Miami to setup for the sequel, 2Fast, 2Furious. Finally, Rob Cohen is on hand for a solo director’s commentary, but as I previously mentioned I opted for the Giant Bomb commentary instead.

-I highly recommend watching the original film whether you have seen it or not. It was awesome experiencing it again and seeing how far the series has evolved over the past 16(!) years. Even if you prefer sticking with the newer films, if you are one to pay attention to all the nitty gritty details you will likely pick up on a few references and characters that stay dormant until the later movies that will give you a new look into their origins with the franchise. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, check out this incredible guide from The Ringer that ranks the Fast films along with several supplemental rankings of vital elements of the films such as “Best rapper cameos” and “Best Dom one-liners.” Very thorough, but is well worth your time to take in. Now if you pardon me, I am going to go off to a corner in my room and jam out to Saliva and Limp Bizkit. Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Creed Dirty Work Faster Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Hercules: Reborn Hitman Ink Interstellar Jobs Man of Steel Marine 3 & 4 Mortal Kombat The Replacements Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Wild The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

[junker-town]

Shohei Ohtani is pretty good, Andrew McCutchen is a delight, and Tim Tebow is in this headline for SEO purposes

Welcome to Monday, baseball fans. Here’s some baseball.

Can you follow everything that happens in baseball every week? Man, I sure can’t. So every week, I dig back through the archives and tweets and videos and recaps and look for interesting baseball things to share with you on Monday. The best part is that I’ll miss a whole bunch, which is definitely a feature, not a bug. It wouldn’t be baseball if a week’s worth of action could be explained in a few hundred words.

But there are some baseball things that are impossible to miss. Here, then, are those baseball things. While the categories and sections will rotate from week to week, the first one will be an absolute constant. This first section will always posit that ...

Baseball is good, actually

Baseball friends, I promise you that this section will not be a secret way of sneaking Giants-related content into this weekly recap. There were not a lot of times that I watched the Giants last year and thought, “Yes, baseball is good, actually.”

While I’m anticipating a much better season, it’s likely that they are the sixth- or seventh-best team in the National League if everything goes right. This section almost certainly will not feature the Giants very often.

But, sweet Njörðr, look at this at-bat from Andrew McCutchen in the bottom of the 14th inning:

I’ve been hard on MLB Advanced Media in the past because of how they’ve intentionally limited how some of their videos can be shared. Looking for something older than two years ago can be a nightmare. Basically, they never think about me, the baseball writer who needs to lazily embed something whenever he needs it.

But this video is exactly what you need to understand that baseball is good, actually. Someone in charge took this entire 12-pitch at-bat and presented it unedited, allowing you to drink in the mounting tension and expectations, and it was a brilliant decision. It’s not just that McCutchen hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 14th; it’s that he directed the whole thing like Kubrick, piece by piece, setting up the reveal at the end.

I’m a sucker for a lot of baseball things, but I’m really a sucker for two very specific baseball things:

Andrew McCutchen

At-bats where the hitter keeps fouling pitches off again and again and again and again and again

This at-bat had it all, really. It started with a muffed strike call, and it quickly went against McCutchen after Wilmer Font fuzzed him with a wicked fastball running in on his hands. If he popped up the next pitch, nobody would have blamed him. Instead, he turned into a living Rocky IV montage, fouling pitches off again and again and ...

One thing that I love about baseball is the idea that all of those foul balls are examples of the hitter failing. Font’s job was to make the hitter not do what he wanted with the ball. McCutchen’s job was to hit the ball somewhere where it couldn’t be caught. Framed like that, Font won. He got McCutchen to do something he wasn’t trying to do.

Instead, it ended with McCutchen hitting a dinger and reacting with a broken water main of emotion that had been building pressure since the first pitch. It was mostly perfect.

And maybe — maybe — the fact that it was against the Dodgers in the 14th inning will color my judgment just a little bit. But I’d like to think that if McCutchen were on the Twins, and he did this against the Rays, it would be just as notable.

Because look at that museum-quality at-bat. Carve pictographs of that at-bat into the side of an interstellar probe and let alien civilizations learn about baseball.

What Shohei Did

Well, this section sure feels a lot different this week.

Last week, it was still okay to be cautiously optimistic about Shohei Ohtani. He had one quality start under his belt, albeit with a ton of strikeouts. He was 1-for-5. This all came after a rough spring. So you’ll forgive me if prudence was the better part of valor in this case.

And then Ohtani started firing lighting bolts out of his eyes and demanding our fealty. Yes, yes, we cried. We are yours to do with as you wish. We’re so sorry, Shohei. How could we have been so blind?

The Shohei-o-meter just seven days ago was stuck on “timid,” and we spent an hour on the phone with tech support trying to get it unstuck.

Shohei-o-meter: half-Luis Castillo, half-Gregor Blanco

See, he was a wild, unproven fireballer with a .200 average, so I thought ... look, forget it. I was wrong.

Let’s update that Shohei-o-meter:

Shohei-o-meter: half-Tim Lincecum in his prime, half-Bryce Harper

THIS IS WHAT WE WERE PROMISED.

Deep breaths. Stay with me. But it’s completely okay to freak out.

This doesn’t mean that we’ll keep getting it all year. He could be half-Vince Velasquez, half-Eric Thames, where the early returns are drowned by a tidal wave of baseball being extremely hard.

Still, if you can’t get excited about this fastball-splitter combination, you hate baseball and are already googling “2019 Oscar frontrunners.” Look at this marvelous baseball player:

That is peak Tim Lincecum. I saw it. I lived it. I breathed it. He doesn’t know exactly where the ball is going, but he knows two things: The fastball goes fast and the splitter goes prrrowwwwww down into the abyss. If those two things can hold steady, he isn’t just a Rookie of the Year candidate. He’s a Cy Young candidate.

Maybe we should see him against another team that isn’t the A’s before getting nutty, but it’s worth pointing out that the Athletics are stuffed with solid hitters. It’s possible that they’re especially susceptible to splitters that go prrrowwwwww down into the abyss. All of this still might be a mirage.

Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler if it weren’t, though? Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler if he were a Cy Young candidate every year with a 900 OPS?

It would. It absolutely would.

The best part is that I don’t even have to mention the three home runs in three consecutive games to make you impressed about Shohei Ohtani. Because peak Tim Lincecum was just about the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen, so if he’s already that, he’s a baseball legend.

Ohtani hitting dinger after dinger, though, is the kind of thing that’s going to melt our hearts and follow this story wherever it goes. He’s even better than advertised right now. That’s probably not going to last, but what if it does?

John Sterling calls a famous home run throughout history

It is high! It is far! It is gone!

Sho-hei can you see? By the ball’s distant flight!

What so proudly we hailed, at that pitch’s last gleaming!

it’s so cold in here, is anyone else cold, i’m freezing, i’m not proud of this, please get me a blanket, why is it so cold

THIS WEEK IN “AW, RASPBERRIES”

Good things can happen when you put the ball in play. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#walkoff pic.twitter.com/wKJRkLrM7i

— MLB (@MLB) April 8, 2018

aw raspberries

A grown man bought this baseball card on purpose

This was $1 plus shipping, and I bought it for a couple reasons. The first is Ted Williams. The second is that Ted Williams is about to hit Mike Epstein with a bat because of his sideburns.

Is it possible that Williams had such incredible bat control that he could can hit someone with a bat and make it hurt, but not incapacitate them or cause lingering damage? Is it possible that he could hit someone with a bat just hard enough to make their sideburns fall off but cause no other injuries?

No, it is not possible. It is absolutely guaranteed. He could hit you with a bat on the back of your ankle and make you sterile for exactly eight years if you wanted. He was just that good. And if you think that’s hyperbole, look what popped up when I was looking for the above image on my computer:

When you opened that box, Ted Williams would pop out and hit you with a bat until you were temporarily sterile. And you were fine with it. This is how things were done back then.

Also, I think it’s fine and normal to have a file called “Ted Williams condoms.jpeg” on your computer and not remember that it exists. It is absolutely fine and normal.

This week in McGwire/Sosa

It’s the 20th anniversary of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa transfixing the country with their historic chase. It’s also the 20th anniversary of:

McGwire: 21 AB, 0 HR (4 total), .333/.438/.429 Sosa: 27 AB, 1 HR (2 total), .400/.444/.600

The race is still nothing at this point. Sosa had a hot week, but he had seven singles and two doubles mixed in. McGwire was hitting like an especially focused Chone Figgins.

Later in this season, enough baseball things would happen to make someone decide to make a Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa diecast semi-truck.

At this point in the 1998 season, though, they’re just a couple of baseball players, doing normal things. Sometimes they hit the ball, and sometimes they don’t. That’s how you play this wacky game, ha ha. No big deal.

Also, because of this stupid article, I finally bought one of those trucks on eBay. I hope you’re happy.

Let us study this baseball thing

The U.S. Olympic men’s curling team got to throw out the first pitch for the Twins’ Opening Day. That’s incredibly regional and exciting and regionally exciting. It’s also exciting for the rest of the country because, heck yeah, gold medal curlers. It’s an honor for them, and it’s an honor for us.

What could possibly go wrong?

I can't stop watching the gif of the gold medal-winning US Olympic curling team throwing out the first pitches at the Twins home opener. It's the most inspiring thing I've ever seen. I'd read an oral history about this. pic.twitter.com/7FWhRZ6wO9

— ℳatt (@matttomic) April 6, 2018

Oh, noooooooooooo.

The crowd reaction to USA men's curling team first pitches in MN yesterday pic.twitter.com/5WZarp0GNE

— That Dude (@cjzer0) April 6, 2018

nooooooooooooooo

The good news it that we get to study this baseball thing. For it started with such hope and optimism.

Anyone can throw a first pitch in a baseball game. But it takes a special person (or group of people) to get the enter-from-center-field-to-throw-a-first-pitch treatment. Gold medal winners get that treatment. The downside, though, is that expectations are incredibly unfair. This isn’t something that’s blurting out of the loudspeaker while people are finding their seats. This is something that’s supposed to be watched.

If you watch the video, at 2:17, the guy in the middle, Tyler George, turns to his teammate and says, “Ready?” He’s fired up.

EDUARDO ESCOBAR: [record scratch] Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

You can see how it’s George who screws this all up. He throws the ball first, and he almost kills Tyler Kinley, there only because of the Byzantine red tape of the Rule 5 Draft. Because Kinley has to protect his face, the second-from-left pitcher looks much worse than he otherwise might have, though it’s not like he did himself any favors. The guy on the right throws a gull-killer that almost leaves orbit, too. It’s an incredible mess.

For my money, though, I’m most impressed by the commitment of the fellow who decided to “curl” the baseball and roll it to his catcher. If they had all done this, it would have been funny! Whimsical! And I’ll bet that idea was floated, but I’ll bet George was like, oh, heck no, I get one first pitch in my life, and I’m gonna chuck it.

Because there was exactly one guy rolling the ball to home plate, though, it looked bizarre beyond words. It looked like he was screwing up almost as much as everyone else, even though he’s just doing a bit.

Please acknowledge the calm, collected first pitch of John Shuster, the captain of the medal-winning team. He’s the one on the left, and he threw a perfect pitch that absolutely no one will remember.

“What the crap was that?”, he asks. You’ll notice that there are only four curlers in this picture. That’s because George is already off screen, apologizing profusely for winning a gold medal for screwing up a first pitch.

But I saw you, John. You did well. Proud of you on several levels. Thank you for representing our country. Thank you for knowing how to throw a baseball.

This week in baseball spoonerisms

If I can be an 11th-grader giving a presentation in front of the class for a moment, according to Wikipedia, “a spoonerism is an error in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched between two words in a phrase.” So instead of “Joe Maddon,” for example, you would say, “Moe Jaddon” and laugh for some reason.

On baseball Twitter, they are very popular and obnoxious but also popular. Every week, I would like to share a baseball spoonerism with you.

But if I’m going to start doing this, I need to start with a bang. I can’t just give you a B-minus spoonerism that I’ve been sitting on for a couple months. I need something big.

Allow me to present ...

I think the important thing to remember is that a cat pooper isn’t a cat that poops. You wouldn’t need to single out a cat for pooping by calling it a cat pooper. They all do it. It’s their thing, man.

A cat pooper has to be, by definition, someone who consumes cats and ... well, you know.

Anyway, the important part to remember is that this section has started out incredibly stupid, and I promise you that every week is only downhill from here.

Internet Christmas for Baseball Nerds

Used to be that I would spend a lot of time digging through the bowels of the internet looking for stuff to put on on Baseball Nation under the heading of “Internet Christmas for Baseball Nerds.” It was just baseball esoterica from throughout the history of the sport, no big deal. Like this book from Johnny Evers from 100 years ago, in which he basically invented modern defensive statistics.

Anyway, this installment comes to you by way of the Library of Congress, which decided to publish a treasure trove of Branch Rickey papers. If you’re a true nerd, you’ll enjoy idly leafing through them, like me. But if you want a hot sample, I’m partial to this one:

Man.

If there’s a happy ending to this story, it’s that Joe Adcock had a 133 OPS+ over the next three seasons, even as he was older and injury-plagued.

Still, that scouting report haunts me. One day, someone will write “not desirable as a gift” about me, and they’ll be absolutely right. I’ll have earned it.

Baseball picture of the week

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

I’m not sure what happened to make Travis Shaw accost veteran umpire Biff Tannen with such venom that someone in an Old Navy hoodie had to come get him, but that’s okay. I don’t want to know. I’m satisfied with the image of an umpire living his best life in the face of a baseball player who is very, very upset for whatever reason.

BRIAN O’NORA: That’s right. Fleetwood Mac’s best album is Tusk.

TRAVIS SHAW: oy, mate, what’d you say?

I don’t think Travis Shaw is from Sunderland, but we can’t rule it out. Anyway, I’m in love with this baseball picture. Look at the disdain on O’Nora’s face! It’s absolutely withering. He does not care what Shaw has to say, and that is probably the best default position for an umpire to take.

Baseball picture of the week (runner-up)

Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images

See, it’s not just that Yoshihisa Hirano is sharing his baseball butt with the world. It’s the Getty-supplied caption that accompanies the picture:

PHOENIX, AZ - APRIL 03: Yoshihisa Hirano #66 of the Arizona Diamondbacks delivers an eighth inning pitch against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Chase Field

[lowers sunglasses until they slide off the tip of my nose]

Man oh man, I gotta see this guy pitch.

Tim Tebow is the Shohei Ohtani of baseball players who can run a power-read option instead of pitch

First at-bat in Double-A where he probably doesn’t belong and it’s a dinger. You might be impressed by Tebow’s incredibly respectful run around the bases. For my money, though, I can’t get enough of the pitcher checking a nonexistent runner at second base twice before he throws the pitch.

Minor league baseball: where everyone is still trying to figure this crap out. Put it on a t-shirt, and send me three of them, please.

Man, this is a weird one to end on. We’re not really going to spend all season following Tim Tebow in Double-A, are we?

No. Because at some point, we’ll have to follow him in the majors.

Until next week!