#crusty crusty giovanni

[water-pokemon-appreciator]

MORS SAID NOT TO MAKE A GIOVANNI CALLOUT POST AND CAINE INSTINCT KICKED IN. ALSO ARCHIE TOLD ME TO.

GIOVANNI IS A CHILD ABANDONER!!!!!

IM PROBABLY TALLER THAN HIM!!!!!!

HE LOOKS CRUSTY!!!!!!!!!!!

HE MAY HAVE GOTTEN BITCHES ONCE, BUT NEVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!

ALSO WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT ORANGE. OK NEXT THING

THESE GUYS CARRY YOUR TEAM FR!!!!!!!

ok bye <3

taskforce distortion giovanni you are exempt because you are very cool

[writedisaster]

[art by @neonjawbone!]

If you took all the best metaphorical traits of a shark, a weasel, and a pit bull, rolled 'em together, and put the resulting abomination through the best law school in the country, you'd have something that would probably still lose an argument to Giuliana "Jules" Guzzo, Esq.

A one-time real estate specialist who's since branched out into criminal defense law, securities law, and anything else the boss needs from her, Guzzo is as versatile as she is formidable. The fact that her business connections aren't all entirely on the up-and-up is an open secret in the courthouse halls and at family gatherings. Less well-known is the fact that she primarily works for vampires.

As a ghoul for a branch of the Giovanni family working in NYC, Jules enjoys some unusual job perks. Like sorta-cursed semi-immortality, remarkably thorough dental insurance, and, ahem, the opportunity to work in a thrilling and fast-paced environment with a dynamic and goal-oriented organization! Just... don't ask about the opportunities for advancement. Or the work-life balance.

When not at work, she likes home cooking, poker, and spending time with her crusty little white dog, Principessa (pictured). She's single and loves to have fun, but she isn't looking for anything serious. Don't even bother if you're not okay with waking up to find Principessa staring at you from across the room with her beady little eyes.

[vtmgremlin]

Can I ask you to gush/rant/rave about your most favorite, and then your least favorite clans? Just totally go off. I live for it.

Oh!! Omg hello (sorry for the wait)

Gosh I wish I had more energy to answer this properly but I shall try lol (Read more to not clog mutuals dashes!)

I favorite has to be the Hecata (Specifically the Cappadocians, Harbingers, etc.) Love me the clan of death (save for....the Giovannis...looks at them from afar).

I just think their whole deal is so much more interesting (personally!) than most others. The fact that y'all are traversing past the shroud and can interact with the shadowlands and just...idk I find it so much more amazing than the board room meetings of the Ventrue's.

That being said my next top three are Ventrue, Lasombra and Gangrel LMFAO

Love the Ventrue because they are just the equivalent of wolves being domesticated into those little crusty white dogs. Fantastic, really. (Also they are awful in so many ways but so much of it is looked over because they are so BORING about it !!!! which is so slay honestly). Personally, to me, they are the more Yaoi Clan.

Lasombra because like come on ya know? Shadow Lords of the highest fuckery. You're telling me these guys get Oblivion (Obentenbration), Dominate, AND Potence???? So i'm just supposed to sit here and get my shit rocked, a'ight. (Also fully believe that the Oceans are a mirror of the Abyss, which is why they were saliors ye old ages ago. Something Something, they were called back to the sea....hmmm...)

GANGREL! I didn't care much about them before until I made my son Blake, and there is a good reason because they really got the fuckin' full fist : ( Like it feels as though everyone forgets about them, even their lore stated that they were meant for a greater purpose but...we shall never truly know. Not only that but in V5....? really?? you're going to make a beast man vampire and NOT give them the ability to use Shape of the Beast's Wrath??? Jail for a thousand years. Love them because a bit of bias now for sure, but also the way they view everything so so refreshing as well (Like the Hecata), so removed from the politics (in some cases). It feels like they see a bigger picture here, and yet they are called "cowards" for not getting involved. Like shit man, would you want to go help when an ANTEDILUVIAN is fully awake and going on a murder rampage?

Yeah, I really wouldn't either, honestly.

Least favorite...hmm...IDK! I truly do like all the clans for their own reason, I guess least though would maybe be Brujah? But that might also be a case like the Gangrel where they (writers) lost the plot a long time ago. Like the True Brujah, hell yeah, now we're talking. But Normmie Brujah are very one note and I think thats sad :,/

Personally, think that this could all be fixed if we BROUGHT BACK BLOODLINES INTO V5 but thats a talk for another time.....//flops around

Anyways, thank you again for the ask!!!! Very sweet of you ;; w;;)/ Hope that this suffices TT u TT

[cartridgeconverter]

Made a post like yesterday about how I wanted to draw theatre characters without them being associated with any specific actor, so I've drawn some of The Girls without using any reference. These don't really match my view of the characters in my head, but it was a fun exercise.

Zerlina:

I've seen a few Asian Zerlina/Black Masetto pairs, (Met 2023 with Ying Fang, the Peter Sellars gangster Giovanni with Ai Lan Zhu) and while I don't particularly like the stereotypical implications of the submissive/promiscuous Asian girl and the jealous, violent Black guy, Ying Fang Zerlina like rearranged my braincells, so I kind of had to

I keep on thinking this character looks more Japanese than Chinese, which wasn't my intention (I based part of the features on myself, and I am Chinese), but what can you do

Shoutout to the Aix-en-Provence 2017 production and tumblr user @/leporellian for their objectively correct flower crown Zerlinas. Perfect, no notes.

I didn't do a full crown but this is a plum blossom, which is a common flower depicted in East Asian art and according to Wikipedia represents purity? I have never heard that, but I am also not super well-versed in East Asian cultures other than my own. So.

Every time I try and draw characters from this show it always starts with Zerlina. I love her she's so silly

Elvira:

Yeah I'll admit this isn't really my best work

The lines are pretty crusty but at a certain point I didn't feel like cleaning it up anymore

Anyway enough excuses this is both not very clean and not a particularly inspired design

The green-ish eyes are from when I got really bored and came up with eye color headcanons for all the characters? Green eyes obviously represent jealousy but I also just like the vibes

Man I dunno. I haven't thought enough about Elvira I gotta think more and then maybe I'll redo this one

This is the one that I feel least resembles the way I see the character in my head, as I feel like she'd be on the older side - around 10-15 years older than Zerlina and Masetto and 5-10 years older than Anna and Ottavio

Anna:

MY FAVORITE GIRL.

I said no references but I did look at one (1) picture of Federica Lombardi, I'm really sorry guys

Not sure how I feel about this drawing either, I like the expression and the shading but there's nothing particularly interesting about this design

Every time I think about giving Anna different colors I think about that one Rachel Willis Sorensen in-character post where she's like "but do you have this in black?" So. Black.

[tumblestones-archive]

“giovanni’s crusty.”

[funkymanfunkytown]

my school drama cuz i need to type and copy paste it x2

and I wanna get this off my chest

OKAY SO

since the start of the year me and ashlynn were bestie boo girlie pops!! i gave this bitch ruben a note saying "your a dingus" and i got in trouble L + ratio. anyways i liked angel. so. bad. like simping so hard. ashlynn had a sex dream of him! she called ME the man stealer??? anyways angel himself was guessing my crush. he said EVERY PERSON IN THE GRADE HAFsggshgfsGDVGS and he said at lunch,, "OMG WHO IS IT?!?!?!?!!" and i YELLED infRont OF ALL OF MY GRADE,, "IT'S YOU!!!!" my bully, jaime was across from me, he told everyone. and uh. anyways i stopped liking him. i liked luis g. somehow everyone found out??? idk people call me crazy. then i dated melissa 😜. but we broke up and she dated ashlynn. thEN I DATED GIOVANNI THE FUCKING CLASS CLOWN IDIOT THAT ASHLYNN HAD A CRUSH ON 💀💀💀💀 AND THEN I CHEATED BECAUSE GIOVANNI WAS A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG AND I DATED ASHLEY. THEN ASHLEY GAVE ME A NOTE SAYING NOBODY LIKES ME AND SHE CALLED ME A FAG 😭😭😭😭

AND THEN. ERNEST WAS BEING WEIRD AND TOUCHED RAELYN WITH HIS BONER IN A CLASS THAT WASN'T MINE, SO THEY WERE SEPARATED, AND RAELYN WAS IN MY CLASS AND I LIKED HER. SGGJSVJGSVVGSHGFVGGVH AND SHE DOESN'T LIKE ME SHE LIKES THIS HOTDOG MILK

ASS BITCH IORI THAT IS MY BULLY ASWELL AS JAIME AND THEN

RUBEN, JAIMES BOYFRIEND OR SMTH IS A TOTAL DOUCHEBAG AND ASHLYNN FALLS FOR HIM

ASHLYNN BREAKS UP WITH MELISSA AND I STOP LIKING RAELYN AND I START LIKING EMO BOY NOEL AND OH BOY HERE IT COMES,,,,

ASHLYNN WRITES A NOTE SAYING THIS

"Ashley the bitch, Ruben the motherfucker, Jaime the trianglehead, Baldo the bitch" AND MORE.

ANGEL STEALS THE FUCKING PAPER AND TELLS EVERYONE AND ASHLEY CRIES AND THE SUB FUCKING SCOLDS ASHLYNN AND SHE COMES IN, HAVING A FAKE ASS PANIC ATTACK, APOLOGIZING IN THE MOST HALF ASSED WAY EVER HFDJHSGJHS

AND I STILL LIKE NOEL, I TELL HIM MY FEELINGS.

HE SAYS HE ONLY LIKES LATINA GIRLS AND I'M A CRACKER 😭

THEN HE GIVES ME A NOTE A WEEK LATER THAT SAYS "i love you." AND UHM WHAT THE FUCK??? NOELS STORY ENDS THERE BECAUSE HE STILL STARES AT ME IN CLASS SO IDK

ANYWAYS SO ASHLYNN IS FAILING HAHA L

SHE BECOMES A FUCKING JERK, AND I FAKE LIKING HER HAHA

AND UUM I AM SINGLE AND LIKE NOEL OKAY GO OFF IG

FOR A REALLY LONG TIME IT'S JUST "i like noel hshshhs"

AND THEN AFTER LIKE 3 MONTHS

DYLAN THINKS I LIKE HIM BUT HE A CRUSTY ROACH

BUT THEN

I LIKE AJ ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

AND EVERYBODY FUCKING KNOWS LIKE EVEN HIM.

AND JAYDA, THE BITCH SHE IS SAYS "oh we were dating he likes me yknow 🙄"

AND I SAY STFU DUMB BITCH NO

HE STARES. SO MUCH.

ANYWAYS I GIVE HIM A VALENTINE ❤❤❤❤

HE SAYS SURE I LIKE YOU BACK DON'T TELL

AAAAA

SO YEAH AND AT CHOICE P.E HE TALKS TO ME AND ASHLYNN, BEING A FUCKING DUMBASS RUINS IT, MAKING ME FEEL LIKE SHIT BECAUSE HE NEVER SAID WHAT HE WANTED TO SAY BECAUSE

ASHLYNN CALLED HIM DADDY AND NOW HE THINKS IM CRAZY AND OBSESSED AND STUPID

ANYWAYS SO YEAH HE STARES LIKE IM FUCKING INSANE

AND RAELYN FUCKING HATES MY GUTS BECAUSE SHE THINKS I LIKE HER HOTDOG WATER ASS CRUSH IORI WHEN I FUCKING DON'T HE SUCKS HE IS A FUCKING SLIDE WHISTLE

BALDO COMES OUT AS BISEXUAL POGGERS NGL

AND THE ASHLYNN AJ THING WAS TODAY BTW

AND LATER, I'M JUST DANCING AT LUNCH FOR NO REASON

AND I DO THIS

✊↔

BY ACCIDENT. AND IORI SAYS "OMG AJ LOOK SHE DID THIS *inappropriate motion*" AND SO I GET PISSED OFF AND SAY NO THE FUCK???? AND A TEACHER YELLS AT ME AND I TELL HER WHY IM PISSED OFF AND IORI GETS IN TROUBLE AND AJ SMILES AT ME

HE SMILES. AT. MEEEE. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤👹👹❤👹❤👹❤👹❤👹❤👹

AND HE FINDS IT COOL THAT WHEN WE ARE GOING TO OUR SEPARATE BUSES HE SMILES AND SAYS "you got iori in trouble :)"

AND I FUCKING BLUSH SO HARD AND CAN'T STOP SMILING VSGGSJHSGHG

ps giovanni moved away ig idk

anyways im gonna go eat cheese straight out the container 😀😃

[lockeblogs]

@mylarpmess

look when you’re 440 years old you end up with a lot of jewellery and alvise is 100% pretentious enough to wear them all at once!! a lot of them are ‘‘death bling’‘ for giovanni parties to show off his wraiths, asides from stuff that’s literally just Gold With A Giovanni G Stamped Somewhere ( which he owns.. a lot of also);; 

[filmnoirsbian]

What love stories feel like warm butter on a pancake to you?

The half of it, psyche and eros, ari and dante, "the whistler" by mary oliver, charlotte's web, moonlight, and then we danced, "our house" by crosby stills nash & young, the lord of the rings, teen wolf, practical magic, lilo and stitch, "pink in the night" by mitski, giovanni's room, bruce springsteen talking about clarence clemons, "my cat is terrified of what's under my parents' fridge", "having a coke with you" by frank o'hara, james schuyler's letters to john button, vita sackville-west's letters to virginia woolf, "closeness lines over time", "after midnight" by blink 182, heart-shaped meadow created by farmer in tribute to his late wife, "you made crusty bread rolls" by gary johnson, "great things have happened" by alden nowlan, "the orange" by wendy cope, bend it like beckham

[vivalavillain]

Your muse has to share something that’s hard for them to talk about. What is the biggest thing they don’t want to say aloud/admit? What makes it hard for them to say it?

What does kindness look like, to your muse?

Can they leave their work at the door (disconnect from ‘work mode’ and enter ‘home mode’) or do they carry it with them wherever they go?

What’s something your muse has done, in canon or in a thread, that just makes you Love ThemTM?

Archer!

Headcanon/Development Questions || Accepting

--Your muse has to share something that’s hard for them to talk about. What is the biggest thing they don’t want to say aloud/admit? What makes it hard for them to say it?

{It would probably be a toss-up between how difficult it's been to run Rocket since Giovanni's departure or how hurt he was by his superior's decision to leave.

Archer is not an emotive man, he doesn't sympathize or empathize with the feelings of others, but that doesn't mean he is entirely incapable of feeling his own emotions. Things hurt him, things upset him, things wear him down. Yet he can't show any of that on the surface. He has to be neutral-- cool and collected-- or else he risks showing weakness. Now is not a time for weakness, not with so much at stake, and now is not a time to trust the people around him to be able to handle him expressing these foreign feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy. He's never had to face these kinds of things before so everything about it uncharted territory. Part of it makes him better understand Giovanni's decision to leave, which just makes him seethe all the more.}

--What does kindness look like, to your muse?

{Anything done selflessly with no intention or desire for reciprocation. He doesn't really understand the notion because for him, all things-- even kindness-- are done with some ulterior motive in mind, even if it's something as simply as "make this person believe I'm a better human being than I really am." So to him, when someone acts purely out of the desire to do good for someone else, that epitomizes true kindness. For him (or rather, from him), mercy is the closest thing to kindness he has to offer.}

--Can they leave their work at the door (disconnect from ‘work mode’ and enter ‘home mode’) or do they carry it with them wherever they go?

{-Cue the Cinema Sin's laugh.- Not at all.

Archer is never not working. He eats, breathes, and sleeps (or doesn't) in dedication to Rocket. Because he came into the organization at such a relatively young age, he considers it something like his life's work. Rocket allows him to operate as himself rather than as some facsimile of a normal human being. It gives him a cover to pursue his dreams and unleash his baser desires without having to worry about judgment or punishment. So long as he keeps Rocket going, there's a place for him to exist as his true self and for that purpose, everything he does is in service of Rocket, even when he's not on base.}

--What’s something your muse has done, in canon or in a thread, that just makes you Love ThemTM?

{Honestly everything he does makes me love him, but his speech patterns/dialogue in every iteration of him has to be number one. He has such a specific way of talking that, honestly, reminds me quite a bit of my own somewhat stiff and crusty-sounding mannerisms. He isn't without that villainous flirtatious flair, either. I can't read his lines in Stadium 2 without feeling the grin in his voice and it never ceases to make me fall in love with him all over again.}

[treetownconfessions]

“i find giovanni the most handsome out of the villains”

Blocked/j

Bro this man is crusty as fuck you think he’s handsome????

Mod are you okay/gen

sorry for your bad taste also he loves cats

[dustedmagazine]

Another Year of Pissed-off and (Mostly) Charged-up Music: Jonathan Shaw’s 2019 in review

Cloudrat (photo by Adam De Grosse)

Impeachment as media spectacle? Drone strikes and U.S. boots on the ground in Yemen and Somalia (and lots of other beautiful, exotic locales)? White nationalism ascendant? Soul-crushing economic exploitation and rapacious disregard for the health of the Earthball? 2019 had it all! And things ain’t gettin’ any better!  

For some folks, music is balm or an escape route into aesthetically transcendent spaces of wonder. I understand both of those notions, and have made use of those musical functions during this difficult, upsetting, infuriating, exhausting year. But precisely because I have found this year to be so very, very difficult, upsetting, infuriating and exhausting, I have more often tuned in to music that matches my grim moods. Hence this list.  

As ever, I make no claims for the “greatness” or “best-ness” of the music. These are the records that I spun most often this year, the ones that fought for rotation with all of the other records I should have been listening to (always another six or seven reviews I should have been writing and dozens of records I should have given more attention to…), and won. If pressed, I would call Venom Prison’s Samsara and Cloud Rat’s Pollinator the records of the year. But that’s just one listener’s opinion. You figure it out. Aside from those two, the records on the list below appear in alphabetical order. I’d say “enjoy,” but that’s not really the point.

Cloud Rat—Pollinator (Artoffact)

Pollinator by Cloud Rat

They call their music “grindpunk,” which is sort of useful as a framing device. But there’s so much more going on throughout Pollinator: crusty passages, feral noiserock, post-whatever. Somehow, Cloud Rat’s synthesis of all of those elements feels completely seamless. And the songs are terrific. 

 Venom Prison—Samsara (Prosthetic)

Samsara by Venom Prison

Relentless, remorseless deathgrind from Wales. Political, militantly feminist, sonically and psychologically violent. Nuff said.

 Acrylics—Sinking In (Iron Lung)

Sinking In LP (LUNGS-145) by ACRYLICS

I can’t stop listening to this one. A bit of hardcore burl, a bunch of post-punk angularity and some crazy good guitar tone. These Santa Rosa punks have only been at it for a few years, but youth is a real attribute here. Their snottiness—tempered just enough by a canny musical sensibility—feels authentically lived in, rather than posed. Best punk record I’ve heard all year.

 Depressor—Hell Storms over Earth (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)  

Hell Storms Over Earth by Depressor

A much-needed archival release that collects hyper-obscure tapes and 7-inches and a few previously unavailable tunes from this thoroughly underappreciated industrial-crust band. It sounds like shit. It’s supposed to. It’s really, really good.

 Epectase—Astres (I, Voidhanger)

Astres by EPECTASE

If Cloud Rat synthesizes, Epectase gives you whiplash as their songs shift from one mode of metal music to another: from black metal to emo (I know…) to stadium-rock soloing to atmospheric, mannerly prog. The confounding thing is that it works. Adventurous stuff.

 Lightning Bolt—Sonic Citadel (Thrill Jockey)

Sonic Citadel by Lightning Bolt

Twenty-five years? Seriously? And the Brians still find ways to make their singular variety of noise-punk interesting and exciting. A couple songs do more than flirt with tunefulness this time around: they strut with it, finding the rock’n’roll that curls its lip somewhere in the midst of all the band’s brightly hued chaos.

 Moor Mother—Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes (Don Giovanni) 

Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes by Moor Mother

Camae Ayewa, who records as Moor Mother, is a poet, and she fuses her powerful vocal performances with an ambivalent futurist embrace of the machine, a primitivist engagement with the body and a twisted hip hop sensibility. The most harrowing record you will hear this year.

 Sheer Mag—A Distant Call (Wilsuns RC)

A Distant Call by SHEER MAG

The Philly band continues its unrestrained (and winning) worship of radio-friendly hard rock, circa 1979. But the record is a lot more than a pleasantly polished surface or nostalgia act. Listen close. You’ll hear a coherent lefty politics and a dose of hopeful working-class soul. Music for stained denim and a soft-pack of smokes.

 Uniform & the Body—Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back (Sacred Bones)

Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back by Uniform & The Body

Unpleasant and endlessly listenable—trust the Body, collaborating here for the second time with noise act Uniform, to figure out how to make that work. Electronics spark from Clubland’s druggy depths through the lizard brain’s neural pathways to your nightmare’s brightly flickering fluorescent tubing. Yikes. Play it again.  

Special shout-out to I, Voidhanger Records for continuously pushing the boundaries of metal music with their brazenly nutso and unflaggingly interesting releases throughout the year.  

And fuck you, Stephen Miller.  

Jonathan Shaw

[annieandjakemovies]

Gangster Squad

Great production design, props, and locations can only get you so far in a period piece, and even with a stellar group of talent in front of the camera, Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad is a empty and tonally inconsistent film that may be the most dumbed-down gangster movie ever made. The film loves its R-rating, showcasing ridiculous violence every chance it gets, but it's a shame that the only audience that would likely fall for the movie's gags - 15-year-old boys - are too young to legally see this in theaters.

Gangster Squad Director: Ruben Fleischer Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie

It's the late 1940s, and transplanted gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is slowly taking over Los Angeles. World War II may be over, but the war against organized crime in L.A. is just getting started, and the city's crusty police chief (Nick Nolte) essentially gives bruiser cop John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) carte blanche to get Cohen and his drug-running thugs out of town. Despite initial protestations from his wife, O'Mara rounds up a motley crew of cops who speak his language, including the slick-talking charmer Wooters (Ryan Gosling), technical guru Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), gruff sharpshooter Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his sidekick Ramirez (Michael Pena), and the rough and tumble Washington (Anthony Mackie), to bring Cohen to justice using their very particular set of skills. It's a solid premise, and one that's been mined in dozens of gangster movies before this one. (Most recently, though, this territory has been covered in the video game L.A. Noire, which hits on all the story beats that appear in this film in a much more satisfying way. Since directly comparing a video game to a film isn't quite fair, I'll leave it at that.) Just because the topic has been covered before doesn't automatically mean this film couldn't stand among the classics in the genre, but from the opening moments, it became clear that Will Beall's infantile screenplay wasn't going to allow that to happen. This is Beall's first produced feature screenplay, and as a former LAPD cop, you'd think there would be a hint of intelligence under the surface of his swagger-filled, guns-blazing detective story. Sadly, that's not the case. The dialogue tries so hard to be smooth and cool, especially from Gosling's womanizer character ("Who's the tomato?" he asks in regard to his redheaded co-star Emma Stone), but even though the leads look dashing in their tailored suits and fedoras, they can't make this nonsense sound good. There is no subtlety here. Penn's evil gangster delivers insanely cheesy one-liners with all the personality of a brick wall, and savage violence flies in and out of the movie like a haphazard tornado lost in the multiplex, occasionally wandering into your theater every few minutes before abruptly leaving. (Don't you hate those?) "You know the drill," Penn says to his henchman, immediately before said henchman drills a man to death. It's that kind of surface level stuff that I would have absolutely loved when I was 15, and if I hadn't seen The Untouchables, L.A. Confidential, or any other respectable gangster noir film, my fifteen-year-old self might have proclaimed it one of my favorites of the year. (Although to be fair I must give props to the best line of the movie: "The whole town's underwater, and you're grabbing a bucket instead of a bathing suit.")

As with many stories set in this time period, the shadow of the war looms large over the male psyches here. But though the end of the war is directly addressed multiple times - the chief asks O'Mara to fight in "occupied territory" yet again, O'Mara's wife continually has to remind him that the war is over, and O'Mara even uses it as an inspirational point in a speech to his men - the movie never actually takes the time to dig in and explore what that means in the context of these different characters. All of them essentially act the same, busting into every situation ill-prepared and with guns at the ready, but when Gosling asks Brolin if he "wants to win or die trying," it isn't a meaningful character moment. It's just another thing that sort of sounds cool. There's no emotion behind the delivery or the response; despite the surface differences between characters (the smart guy, the sharpshooter, etc.), these men are all soldiers that are constantly pulling triggers even when they don't have guns in their hands.

Along with a lack of satisfying character development, grown men often behave like children here, refusing to learn from their mistakes even after they admit to making them. The gangster squad bursts into place after place, roughing up Cohen's thugs and getting into close calls without ever having a solid plan, and at one point I started hoping that one of them would die quickly just so it would give the rest of them their cliched newfound resolve to finish the case and avenge their fallen brother. There's a simplified wire tapping story shoehorned in, but after watching HBO's "The Wire," it makes these supposedly professional characters look like total morons. At times the movie is a live action cartoon (complete with a comical jailbreak straight out of a Looney Tunes episode), but then it becomes gravely serious, and then switches again to a sort of pop-infused fun, soaking up the glitz and glamour of the era. It never finds its footing, and as a result the whole film feels like it's treading water for the whole of its runtime.

Ruben Fleischer, who earned some geek cred with his work on Zombieland, makes some pretty baffling choices when it comes to the action sequences. A night car chase midway through the film was especially disappointing, with poorly established spacial relationships rendering it almost completely unintelligible. Speed ramping (ala Zack Snyder) is employed often, and whether it's Mickey Cohen's bulging vein swinging at a punching bag or a series of Christmas decorations systematically destroyed in a hotel shootout, there is nothing interesting about the effect on display here. Whatever novelty it once had has long worn off, and it's going to take some sort of monumental shift in usage to convince me that it should ever be used again by anyone.

As for the cast, Brolin is stoic and hard-jawed enough to pull off the one-dimensional lead character. Gosling is good (even with a strange affectation), but his schtick gets old by the halfway point. Emma Stone is fine as a piece of eye candy, but third act attempts to turn her into something more than that are laughable. Ribisi is the movie's moral center, a nice change of pace from weasels and weirdos he's been portraying over the past few years, and Mackie's talents are totally wasted here. (He randomly throws knives at people. That's about it.) Penn clearly put some effort into his portrayal of Cohen (complete with what appeared to be flesh-colored Play-Doh attached to his face, his visage channeling the villains of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy), but again, he can only do so much with comically bad dialogue.

So I'll leave you with this awesome joke I just came up with: Gangster Squad? More like Gangster Squandering A Great Premise, am I right? But seriously folks...for a film with so much talent on the screen, it's a shame that this script was so abysmal. And with writer Will Beall having already taken a crack at the screenplay for Warner Bros. upcoming superhero teamup Justice League, something tells me that Marvel is going to continue its cinematic dominance for years to come. Until next time...

[shutupdia]

i want................................. the new pokemon game already......... damnit.......... i want to beat giovanni’s old, crusty, pokemon abusing ass again,

[sharamq]

Ghetsis is fuckin crusty. Now, Giovanni,,,,, there's a real Pussy Popper

ngl id fuck him

[adultswinmoved-archive]

GIOVANNI HATE BUDS!!! MY JAMES SIDEBLOG USED TO BE DEDICATED TO GIOVANNI HATE. he is so crusty

DUDE THATS SO GOOD IM SO PROUDI HATE GIOVANNI SO SO MUCH HES SO UGLY!!!

[letterstoocean]

my ocean, 

more re writes of our story....

“You never told me why you always chew on rose stems.”

“I thought I had.”

“Nope. The last time you started we were interrupted; and every time you tried to pick the conversation back up you were cut off.  It was kind of funny.  Remember?  You were drunk and walked outside mumbling about how conversation was a dying art?”  

“Oh yeah.  Conversation is a dying art, by the way. Let me get a new drink then I’ll try to tell it. That story tends to choke me up so I’m not telling it without one.”

“You gather your thoughts.  I’ll grab the drink.”

“And shots!” I yell as she walks in the kitchen.

She returns with a fresh cocktail and two shot glasses full of red absinthe.  We drink the shots and I sit back.

“Okay, where to begin.  Hey, write this down or record it.  I don’t think I want to tell this story more than once.”

She hits record on the tape recorder and sits back, legs tucked under her for warmth.

“Where to begin?  Where to begin?  Actually, I should begin with two very nice old ladies that ran a small bodega in Pearland, Texas…”

Rose Stems and the Black Queen

The only time I ate was at school.  So if I skipped school I didn’t eat. Didn’t stop me from skipping school, I just had to find different ways to get food.

I was walking to school when I ran into a group of bullies that had been tormenting me since I arrived in Pearland.  Bullies always have a leader and as I walked closer to them he smiled in anticipation of either chasing or catching me.  I saw him mouth to his buddies, “look who it is.”   So I ducked into the first door I saw.  They stood outside and waited; all good bullies know not to start anything in a building. Grownups always break it up or inform their parents.

I turned around, saw that I was in a small grocery store and looked around while waiting for them to leave.  Eventually, one lady came out from behind the counter and asked if I needed any help. I’m not sure why but I pretended to be deaf and dumb. The lady gave me a sincere smile, grabbed a pen and paper and wrote the question down again.  I wrote back that I was hungry but not sure what I wanted.

She wrote back, TAKE WHAT YOU WANT SWEETIE.

I grabbed one of the homemade sandwiches from the cooler and fumbled around in my pockets pretending to look for money that wasn’t there.  

DON’T WORRY ABOUT MONEY.  YOU COME BACK WHENEVER YOU ARE HUNGRY.

Every day after school I would stop and write a poem for them or give them a drawing and they would feed me.  All the while I pretended that I was deaf and dumb.  I wasn’t mean to the ladies.  I never took more than they offered but I did feel guilty about what I was doing.  It didn’t stop me from doing it.  I was hungry; and the bullies would never follow me into the bodega.

One day before school, the bullies were chasing me and I was nowhere near the bodega or the school so I ran into a Safeway grocery store to hide and to wait them out.  I decided to make myself a sandwich while I was in the store and as I opened a bag of Wonder Bread to get a couple of slices I heard a woman behind me yell “hey!”  Startled, I jumped and spun around expecting an employee to pounce on me. Instead it was one of the ladies from the bodega.  “Oh shit!” Then I realized that I had jumped when she yelled. I ran out of the store and through the group of kids waiting for me, knocking two of them on their asses as I did.  

I honestly believe that I ran faster from that lady than I ever ran from the kids.  I really did hate lying to her and now I was caught. I didn’t want to face that fact.  It wasn’t like the lady was going to chase me out of the store.  

I ran in the opposite direction of school; since the bell would ring soon the bullies broke off their pursuit.  I slowed down enough to walk into a barbershop to hide.

Never run through a doorway.

Always walk in with some sort of confidence.

Confidence is a damn good weapon to have.

Running through a doorway into someones world lets them know you are scared and don’t care if they know it.

That’s a secret you can’t afford to let out.

The lessons that Gary: The Convict Next Door (another story for another time) taught me rang in my head and I stood in the doorway and smiled.  

“Have a seat, yard ape.” Said a leathery old man sharpening a straight razor on a white belt attached to the barber’s chair.

Sitting in the chair was an old black man with a mess of white hair and matching sideburns.  He had a black pipe clenched between his teeth and white smoke drifted from between them.

Next to the big bay window that looked out on to the street, two men sat at a table staring at the pieces on a chess board. One of them looked exactly like the man sitting in the barber chair.  The other man was white; he wore a black suit with a string tie like the jazz musicians wore in New Orleans.  He was very tan with long black hair that was showing some gray.  He had it tied back with a leather cord.  A small stick stuck out of his mouth and twitched from one side to the other as he stared at the chess board.

I looked at the door thinking maybe it was better to run after all; but after a moment, I decided old smoky men were safer than young angry bullies and walked over to the bench.

“Relax, we’re all friends here.”  Said the black man as he moved one of the chess pieces and then sat back and lit his pipe.  “So what brings you to the barber shop?  Since you should be in school?”

I began to elaborate one of the many lies that just seemed to roll off my tongue; instead I shrugged my shoulders and looked at my feet.

“I’m going to guess it was those other yard apes chasing you up and down the street all the time.”  Said the long haired chess player.

“Yes sir.”  

“Well,” said the man moving a chess piece and sitting back, “You’re safe here.”

The barber stopped shaving the man and took a long look at me.  “Is that him?”  he asked going back to his task at hand.

“That’s the little artist. Not a very good actor though.” Said the white guy.  He looked at me, the small stick held between his teeth. “The ladies know you aren’t deaf.  Felt sorry for you.  I can see why. Seen you wearing those same clothes for a month now.”

The barber brushed the seat off, put a smooth white board across the arms and smacked it.

“Have a seat, get that mop cut.  Name’s Clive.  What’s yours?”

“Christophe, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have any money.”

“Didn’t ask for any.  Now hop up here.”

As Clive worked his way through hair that hadn’t been cut in two years I watched the two men play chess.

“The black man is Anthony.  His twin over there is Timothy; call him Tim.” They both nodded at me. “The crusty Italian is Giovanni.”  Clive said as the scissors snipped away.

“What are you chewing on?”  I asked Giovanni.

“Don’t be a yard ape and maybe I will tell you.”

“What’s a yard ape?” I asked through pursed lips as Clive cut my bangs and little hairs fell on my lips.

“You are.” He replied.

“All done.” Said Clive pulling the cape away with a swoosh and brushing the hair off my neck with a very stiff brush.  He brought a jar full of Dum-Dum suckers down from the shelf, opened it and offered me one. I took a green one, said thank you and returned to the bench.

I quietly sat watching men come and go.  Some received haircuts; others sat on the bench chatting with me.  Around noon a large woman stopped by with a gigantic pot of spaghetti and meatballs.  She set the pot down on a TV tray that was stored in the back room.  She counted the number of men and got as many plates.  She scooped out lunch and passed it around.  

Then she looked over at me above the rim of her glasses.  Sniffed, scooped some spaghetti out, looked me up and down and scooped some more.  She thrust the plate under my chin, “someone should have been feeding this boy.  Look how skinny he is.”

The plate had to weigh five pounds as I set it on my lap and dug in. Halfway through my meal my stomach felt like it was going to burst. The other men were taking their empty plates to the large woman to be cleaned.  I looked around for some help and no one looked me in the eye.  The woman shook a finger at the plate and I kept going.

Somehow, I finished it all and wound up falling asleep on the bench.  I didn’t hear the woman leave; I didn’t hear people come and go.  I couldn’t remember the last time I slept that well.

I felt a hand shake me awake as a voice laughed.

“Wake up, yard ape.  Time to close shop.”

I sat up rubbed sleep from my eyes and looked around.  The lights were out and Clive stood at the front door with keys in hand.  Giovanni stood over me smiling.  

“My sister’s pasta has killed men.  If it didn’t kill them it made them meet their god.  Never seen a yard ape finish a plate the first time.  You stick around and she will kill you or make you strong enough to take care of those that chase you.  But for today it’s time to head home.  Where do you live and I will give you a ride.”

I automatically began to lie.  I never told anyone where I lived in case they wanted to talk to my mom.  Since she was never home they may put two and two together and wind up putting me in a foster home or worse.  I stopped myself and told him I could walk home.  

“I need to walk the food off.”

“I don’t believe you.  Tell me where you live or I’ll let Tressa feed you another plate.”

I told him.

For the next week I hung out at the barber shop.  I didn’t have to worry about school calling home because we didn’t own a phone and I didn’t know where mom was so there was no worry there.  They never asked about school.  They never asked about home.  They fed me; they let me read what I wanted.   They didn’t ask questions.  Every day at noon Tressa showed up with a pile of food.  Some days she would bring a jug of wine that had orange peels in it.  It had to be the sweetest best tasting thing I had ever had in my life.

I didn’t think about school or the bullies.  One day before Giovanni arrived Clive told me that they knew one of the kids parents and Giovanni had one of his talks with them.  

“His talks can be very persuasive.  I don’t think you have to worry about those kids anymore.”

Giovanni began to teach me how to play chess.  He was very patient as he taught me; usually allowing me to make the mistake, taking my piece, and then explaining how I messed up.  He reminded me a lot of my Uncle Robin. One day when Giovanni and I were setting up the board. He paused, “Christophe, Tressa is here.  Help here bring in the food.  I’ll set your side up.”  That was the first time he didn’t call me yard ape.  

Clive and the Giovanni were the only people in the barber shop that day.  I don’t think a single person came through the door until Tressa showed up. She greeted me with a big wet kiss on the cheek and then shoved a box that smelled like Italian heaven into my arms.  She followed behind me with a small plate covered with a silver dome.  

She grabbed one plate; Giovanni coughed and held up two fingers.  Tressa raised an eyebrow but said nothing and made the second plate.  We ate in silence, I felt I shouldn’t say anything until an adult did and the adults said nothing.  Clive left with Tressa and it was just Giovanni and me sitting at the chess board.

“Never interrupt a respectable elder when they are telling a good story.” He put the stick back between his teeth. “Remember that.  Now then, you are not family.  But you are an old dying soul in a very young dirty body.  I’m dying and perhaps it is this fact that lets me tell you this story.”

He tapped the table with his hand, staring at the chess board; gathering his thoughts before he spoke.  He did this all the time.  

“We all fall in love.” He held up a finger. “Once.”  He took the stick out and held it between his fingers.  “My love was Canda.  We met in Italy as teenagers.  We fell in love, we danced and we married.  We were going to grow old together.”

He grabbed the black queen off the board and turned it slowly in his fingers.

“I took over the family business.  We moved to America.  We became rich. Every day of our lives together when I came home from the killing and corruption, I would pledge my love for her and give her a rose.”

He grew silent and kept turning the queen around in his fingers.

“She died, didn’t she?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Yes, yes, of course she did.  All good love stories have a death in them or they would not be good love stories.”

He passed the black queen over to me and gently slid the rest of the pieces off of the board.

“You win.”  Then with a deep sigh he said, “I chew on these because on her death bed she told me our love would not die even after she did.” He pulled the stem from his lips and held it just like he held the black queen.

“I chew on rose stems to remind me of Canda and that love doesn’t die. That love is always there on the lips to be said, or shared.”

I tell M—to stop the recorder.  I sit and stare at the floor.  I stare at the ceiling.  I stare at m—trying to come up with words that make the story sound beautiful.  To make it a writers story. But I find I can’t speak for awhile and for some reason I have to stop myself from crying.

“He died.  He died before we moved. A couple of days after that dinner. That day was his wife’s birthday, by the way.  I went to the barber shop and Clive told me Giovanni was shot in his home the night before.  ‘Revenge for what he had done in his youth.”

“On my way home, I stopped in the same Safeway and opened a chess set. I stole the black queen out of it and went home; trying not to cry for fear that mom’s roommate would see me and do something horrible.”

“Whenever I had the chance, I would buy or cut a rose out of someone’s garden, dry it out and hold it between my teeth.  I was trying to let Giovanni’s ghost know that his love would never die as long as I was around to remember it.  Now I don’t feel right unless I have a rose stem close to me, in my pocket or clenched between my teeth. Maybe its how I keep love near me.”

She heard him crying and slowly walked into the room.  He had pushed the laptop off the desk, onto the floor and had his head buried in his arms, the sobs coming hard.

She walked behind him, put her hand on his back, “Shhhh.”

“I. I. I. Can't do this.” He said sitting up. “I just can't!” he sobbed wrapping his arms around her waist and crying into her chest.

She embraced him, stroked his hair and whispered, “Shhhh. I am here my river. I am here.”

After several minutes of silence she asked, “Want me to read it?”

He laughed, wiped the tears from his eyes and replied, “Of course, you have to tell me if is any good or not.  You know, famous writer and shit!!  Gotta make sure it is good.” he laughed again.  

She grabbed his chin and raised it up so he could see her face.

“God, you are so beautiful.” he said with more tears falling from his eyes.

“Hey? Listen.”

He smiled.

“This is not about publishing this right now.  This is about getting it out.  Getting it all out.  You hear me.”

He smiled, nodded and stood up.

“The story is yours now.” he said.

Laughing, she picked up the laptop off the floor. “If this still works that is.”

“Willow is on the porch.  Go.  I will come get you when I am done.”  

As he was walking out the door she stopped him.

“Hey.  Don't go downstairs and try to write about us. I know you want to. Just sit on the porch and breathe.”

She was smiling, but the stern voice was there. He called it her Powerhouse Thunder Goddess voice.  He smiled, “when you say it like that, love, I don't have an option. But have you met me?  You know I am going to”

“I know. I love you my river.”

He came back over, put his fingertips to her cheeks, kissed her head, nose, lips and put his head on hers. “I love you, my ocean.”

He left the room and left her with the story.