#char: clarence taylor

[bobby-hockey]

CHERRY TREE

arc: gongshow (arc introduction here) tws: vehicle accident, death.  length: 2k. summary: in which i incontrovertibly hurt the capitals. also, sasha “ghost” molchalin gets an unwilling new roommate. taglist: @kidsarentallwrite

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Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Nov. 4 They may be from Washington DC, but this is the City of Brotherly Love! Bring it on, Capitals! 

Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Nov. 4 Mitty, Martin, and Molchalin start tonight. Retweet for a chance to win five gallons of Flyers-themed M&M(&M)s!

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Clarence Taylor. Even the mention of his name is enough to make Sasha break out in annoyed hives—no defenseman has ever been able to read Sasha like Taylor does, and it’s literally the most aggravating thing. Like—yes, okay, Taylor is the captain of the Washington Capitals, was the first overall pick in 2012, got the Calder his rookie year and the Norris last year, has been to the All-Stars more times than Sasha cares to count. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to jump on Taylor’s dick. The guy is fucking irritating. 

“Calm down,” Marty says during warm-ups, spotting the look on Sasha’s face when Taylor skates by with a snide little comment lobbed in Sasha’s direction. “I can see your blood pressure rising.” 

“He’s a bastard,” Sasha says. He wants to snap his stick in half and maybe use the pointy ends to commit a homicide. Marty’d scruff him like a little cat and Sasha wouldn’t get more than a few strides before his feet cartoonishly skated out from underneath him. But it’s the thought that counts.

“You’re giving him exactly the reaction he wants,” Marty says. “And you’re not special, Ghost, he does that to everyone.” 

Sasha does not snap his stick in half, but it takes a Herculean effort. “Don’t bother trying your hippie elementary school teacher horseshit on me,” he says. “I hate him.” 

Marty sighs. “Just don’t let him get in your head,” he says, sounding resigned. 

Too late. Sasha takes a wild shot at the empty goal and misses—the puck ricochets off the crossbar. Goddammit. 

The Washington Capitals are a well-oiled machine: a steady, productive offense backstopped by a tenacious, elite defense and an almost jaw-droppingly good goaltender, and Sasha hates playing against them, mostly because they never fall for Mitty and Marty’s fakeouts. By second intermission they’re still deadlocked at 0-0, and the game—already ugly—is starting to get nasty. While there haven’t been any fights yet, Sasha can feel the tension in the air, a heavy weight like a storm brewing on the horizon. 

So maybe Sasha curses at Taylor a little more thoroughly than is strictly warranted when he shoves Sasha into the boards. Sasha hates the guy. It’s been a hard, awful game. He’s allowed.

“Your mother must be so ashamed of you,” Taylor says as the referee whistles the first play of the third period dead, black mouth-guard half-hanging out of his mouth. He’s Canadian, Taylor is, and so is Marty, and while they have the same kind of soft, shallow vowels, Marty is fun and easy to listen to but Taylor’s voice grates against Sasha’s nerves. Sasha’s not a fighter—why would he be, when Marty is 6’10” and impossible to take down—but a single word out of Taylor’s mouth makes Sasha want to drop his gloves and start swinging.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sasha says, scowling. 

Taylor grins and, in a bad imitation of Sasha’s Russian accent and a worse imitation of Sasha’s voice, says “Go fuck yourself,” all mocking like. “Come on, Molchalin, what’re you gonna do? Frown at me some more? Y’know your face could get stuck like that.” 

Sasha sneers. His shift is up and he’s supposed to be getting off ice—Hartsy’s half over the boards, looking at him expectantly—and Taylor’s heading back to the Capitals bench, this grin on his face like he’s pleased with himself at getting the last word. Sasha doesn’t care for it. At all. 

He drops his shoulder and half-checks Taylor as he leaves the ice, sending the defenseman reeling, and when Taylor regains his footing and turns around the grin’s gone, replaced by an annoyed stare. 

“Three months and four days,” Sasha says, although if asked he wouldn’t be able to say why: the number just pops into his head, trips off his tongue. “Keep an eye out.” 

“What the fuck, Molchalin?” Taylor shouts after him. 

Hah, Sasha thinks, and skates back to the Flyers bench. 

The Flyers lose—one of the Capitals manages a nasty goal forty seconds before the final buzzer, and the Flyers make an ignominious retreat into the locker room. But that’s fine. Sasha doesn’t mind. It wasn’t Taylor who scored the goal, and Sasha played well. That’s all that he cares about.

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Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 8 Just try to beat us at home, @PSSkimmers. 

Port Sterling Skimmers @PSSkimmers - Feb. 8 We’re setting sail for Washington DC… time to tackle the Capital! 

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 8 Team bus has been involved in a collision on the I-50E returning from Delaware. Updates will be posted as they come in.

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Of course, Sasha thinks to himself, staring up at the floating, incorporeal form of Clarence Taylor hovering over him, Taylor always did have a way to make him regret literally every decision he’d ever made in his life.

“What the fuck,” Taylor howls in his face. “Three months and four days. That’s what you said. You motherfucker. What, you some fucking psychic or something? What kind of sick freak does that and doesn’t give any context? Jesus Christ. You’re an asshole.” 

Literally five seconds ago Sasha was sleeping. Why is this happening. He’s not awake enough for this.

“What?” Sasha says, when Taylor seems to break off, and then he remembers their last meeting, back in November: Taylor’s shocked green eyes peering at him over the Capitals bench, blond eyebrows furrowed as he gaped at Sasha. He rubs his eyes, sits up, and then, around a yawn, says “You were counting?” 

“Wh—Of course I was counting,” Taylor says, floating backwards. Maybe he’d think it weirder, Clarence Taylor literally floating in Sasha’s bedroom wearing a Capitals shirt and sweatpants, but then again, Sasha’s seen weird, and this is not that. No offense to Mitty, but Mitty kind of breaks the scale of weird shit all on his own. “You mean to tell me that if some asshole came at you with some ominously specific date you’d just, I don’t know, write it off, or whatever? Of course not! I thought you were just gonna play some, some stupid prank on me or something, some bullshit like that, and then—” 

His form flickers out, the space he had been occupying suddenly empty. Sasha blinks. 

“And then what?” Sasha says. Silence. “For the record, I would definitely ignore it, because it would be bullshit and wouldn’t matter anyways.” 

Except Taylor clearly hadn’t let it go. 

There’s no response. Sasha reaches for his phone on his bedside table, and blinks again when he turns it on and it starts buzzing almost incessantly with incoming texts. They’d just finished a long roadie through Canada, and they didn’t have anything except practice later today, so the fact that the group chat is absolutely lighting up is something of a surprise. 

Sasha scrolls through quickly, not bothering to try and decipher most of the texts, but he more or less gets the gist of it: some shit happened with the Capitals. Something big. Maybe Taylor did something stupid. 

He rolls out of bed. Shuffles into his living room, scratching his stomach. Light slants in through the window, and Sasha squints at the sun peeking in through the blinds—it’s earlier than he thought it was. Fumbles for the remote, turns on the TV, switches it to the news—

“Oh, fuck,” Sasha says, suddenly wide awake. His stomach churns. 

It wasn’t Taylor doing something stupid. Not even close. They’re playing footage: a nighttime aerial shot of a charter bus, a tipped-over semi-truck plowed into the side like a beached whale. Streetlights and ambulance strobes and spotlights from helicopters illuminate firefighters and EMTs carting out hockey player after hockey player and bundling them into ambulances. 

“It looks better like this,” Taylor says, his detached, oddly clinical voice coming from somewhere over Sasha’s shoulder, and Sasha almost trips over his coffee table and goes headfirst into his TV. “Not as much blood.” 

God. That’s a horrifying thought. Sasha lets out a string of foul curses, running a hand through his hair. If they had heard, all of the generations of women who came before him would have either given him an ass beating into next year or washed his mouth out with soap. Since he’s in America and they’re buried in Russia, they’ll have to settle for turning in their graves. 

“I only caught about three words of whatever you just said,” Taylor says, “but yeah. That.”  

Sasha looks at him—properly looks at him. Taylor looks mostly exactly like how Sasha saw him last, back in December: blond hair spiked up, red Capitals long-sleeved shirt, sweatpants from some brand Sasha doesn’t recognize, a pair of Ugg boots because apparently Taylor is a teenage girl. He’s dressed down, and he’s see-through, but other than that he looks pretty much like Sasha would expect Taylor to look, even if he wasn’t anticipating the boots.

“You’re dead,” he says, almost a question.

“I think so,” Taylor says. His voice is odd, too, echoing and faintly staticky, like he’s standing in an empty room and Sasha is hearing his voice over the phone from far away. 

Clarence Taylor, dead. It doesn’t seem possible. Sits wrong. Sasha presses his mouth into a thin line to avoid admitting that, because he would never. “And you’re stuck with me.” 

Taylor almost laughs. His chest expands and deflates like he’s actually breathing. Do ghosts breathe? Sasha’s nickname might be ‘Ghost,’ but somehow he doesn’t think he’s an authority on whether spirits need lungs or not. “You think that if I could be anywhere in the world, I’d be hanging out with you?” 

“Nope,” Sasha says, “which means you’re definitely stuck with me.”

“Just what I always wanted,” Taylor mutters, in a way that means this is absolutely not what he wanted, in any sort of way, at all. 

Sasha would agree, but that would mean agreeing with Clarence fucking Taylor, and he has absolutely no urge to do so at any costs. “You don’t have to sound so thrilled about it,” Sasha says. 

“Trust me, I’m not,” Taylor says, and then he fades out of existence, like he was never there to begin with. 

If Clarence Taylor simply didn’t exist, Sasha’s life would have been so much easier. 

But now the guy’s dead, and Sasha doesn’t know what to think.

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Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 9 We’ve received word that several players have passed away, including associate captain RJ Radulov and Jean-Sebastien Fontaine. We ask that you keep their families in mind during this trying time. Stay strong.

Philadelphia Flyers @NHLFlyers - Feb. 9 Our hearts go out to our friends the @Capitals, their families, and everyone affected by the I-50E tragedy. We’re here for you. #CapsStrong

Washington Capitals @Capitals - Feb. 9 Capitals captain Clarence Taylor remains in critical condition at Pennsylvania Hospital.

[blackboxoffice]

We’re in a golden age of black horror films

by Robin R. Means Coleman, Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity; Professor, Department of Communication, Texas A&M University

In the horror genre, black is definitely back.

The movie “Ma,” which premieres on May 31, will star Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer as Sue Ann, a lonely middle-age woman who clings to a group of teens to the point of obsession.

“Ma” comes on the heels of Jordan Peele’s critically acclaimed “Us,” which is also led by an Academy Award winner, Lupita Nyong'o. And let’s not forget that Peele’s previous film, “Get Out,” won the Academy Award for best screenplay last year.

Black actors have always had a role in horror films. But something different is taking place today: the re-emergence of true black horror films.

Rather than simply including black characters, many of these films are created by blacks, star blacks or focus on black life and culture.

Objects of violence and ridicule

For most of film history, black actors have appeared in horror films in supporting roles. Many were deeply problematic.

In my 2011 book, “Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present,” I describe some of these tropes.

In the early 20th century, many films – horror or not – had white actors appearing in blackface. The characters could find themselves on the receiving end of especially horrific violence. For example, in 1904’s “A Nigger in the Woodpile,” a black couple’s home is firebombed and the pair staggers out, charred.

In the 1930s, there was a spate of horror films that took place in jungles, where blacks were depicted as primitive – sometimes indistinguishable from apes. A decade later, black characters started appearing in horror films as objects of ridicule. Actors like Willie Best and Mantan Moreland appeared as comic relief – characters for audiences to dismissively mock.

Above: Willie Best plays Clarence in the 1941 film ‘The Smiling Ghost.’ John D. Kisch/Separate Cinema Archive

To be sure, there were some instances in which black actors assumed leading roles. The 1934 film “Chloe, Love is Calling You” starred black actress Georgette Harvey as the vengeful Mandy. In 1957, Joel Fluellen portrayed the smart and reliable Arobi in “Monster from Green Hell.”

However, often these characters existed to support the survival of their white counterparts.

From placeholders to full participants

For a brief period, in the 1960s and 1970s, horror films began to treat blacks as whole and full subjects.

Many of these narratives centered on black culture and experiences. More often than not, blacks played the role of hero. For example, the 1972 film “Blacula” begins in 1780 and is an indictment of the slave trade and its lingering effects. In the 1974 film “Sugar Hill,” a black female protagonist named Sugar, with the help of her black zombie army, lays waste to a murderous white crime boss and his cronies.

Then there was Bill Gunn’s 1973 art-house horror film, “Ganja & Hess.” A gorgeous and deliberative treatise on race, class, mental illness and addiction, it won the Critics’ Choice prize at the Cannes Film Festival. However, no Hollywood studio was willing to distribute the film.

The classic of the era is George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead,” which stars Duane Jones as Ben, a strong, complex black character who leads a group of whites during a zombie apocalypse. Confounding the clichéd trope of “the black guy dies first,” Ben is the lone survivor of the terrifying battle.

Above: Duane Jones as Ben in ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ Wikimedia Commons

In a turn of realism, he emerges triumphant – only to be summarily shot down by a militia of white police and civilians. Ben’s death, which comes at the movie’s conclusion, is as unexpected as it is powerful. The scene demands that audiences consider who among us is truly monstrous.

Sadly, these glimpses of blackness faded as many horror films in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s reverted to well-worn tropes. In some, like “The Shining” and “Annabelle,” black characters operate as the “sacrificial Negro” who dies to save a white character’s life. Then there are the dozens of films, like 1987’s “Angel Heart” and 1988’s “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” in which black characters appear as wicked Voodoo practitioners.

Black is back

Jordan Peele’s films should be thought of as an homage to “Night of the Living Dead” and “Ganja & Hess” – films that have strong, complex black protagonists. In fact, Peele has noted that Ben’s fate in “Night of the Living Dead,” which was released as the U.S. mourned the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., weighed heavily on him when he wrote the ending of “Get Out.”

Peele’s character – unlike Ben – survives.

While Peele has shown that the genre can be a daring, unflinching examination of politics, class and race, the black horror renaissance has been brewing for some years.

Over the past two decades, Ernest Dickerson – who directed “The Purge,” “Bones,” “Demon Knight” and episodes of “The Walking Dead” – and Rusty Cundieff, the director of “Tales from the Hood” and “Tales from the Hood 2,” have been stalwarts of the genre. They’ve paved the way for Peele, as well as newcomers such as Meosha Bean, Nikyatu Jusu and Deon Taylor.

The horror genre is maturing and becoming more imaginative and inclusive – in who can play hero and antihero, and who gets to be the monster and savior. The emergence of black horror films is just one chapter in a story that includes women taking on more prominent roles in horror films, too.

It’s about time. As Jordan Peele noted in an interview in the documentary film “Horror Noire,” the fact that there had been “such a small handful of films led by black people” was, to him, “the horror itself.”

[bobby-hockey]

tswift

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