#its so funny everybody loves the ranchers

[sprinklesharkie]

i love sausage for this

[eerythingisshaka]

Manhattan’s Finest

First Part

[Dr. Manhattan x Black Reader]

Word Count: 2.4K

The crowd erupts after the final song from the play ‘It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane!  It’s Dr. Manhattan!’  Whistles and cheers fill the auditorium as the performers take a bow, receiving gifts from loved ones in the audience.  

You cheer along with them all, having enjoyed the play more than you expected to.  A friend of yours was supposed to come along but flaked out at the last minute.  It’s fine, at $95 a ticket, you would’ve loved to have used their ticket on dinner instead but life is shit.  

You wait for the auditorium to clear out before you get going yourself.  It is much better not walking over people and pushing into each other as much as possible.  When you make it outside, the muggy air makes you instantly miss the air conditioning inside the theater.  Another $95 for a cool breeze would be worth it.

“(y/n)”

You look to your left seeing a man in a suit with a blue mask.  His skin is also tinted blue, somewhere between winterfresh gum and blue raspberry jolly ranchers.

“Hi?  Oh, are you one of the performers?!”  you ask excitedly, running up to him, but being taken aback by how tall he is.  “You were awesome up there.  There were a couple Manhattans but were you the one that sang ‘Blue is the Blood that Runs Cold’?  Because man, I have never heard a vibrato like that.  It was very impressive.”

“I am not a performer in this production,”  he says flatly.

You cock your head to the side, observing his manner.  “But...then why all the blue?  And did I introduce myself, because I don’t remember telling you.”

“You do, later on in the evening.”

You blink a couple times.  “I’m going home to bed after your play.  How could I be talking to you?”

“As I said, I am not a performer or member of staff on this production.  And I am sorry that you cannot afford the dinner with your unrequited love tonight who is making love to his superior right now, but in time it will-”

“Whoa, what the hell did you just say?  His boss?  And what do you mean?  I don’t love him!”

Unshifting, he continues, “I believe love can exist even in one sided instances.  I am finding myself in that position right now by the end of the week.”

You take a step towards him and then to the side, watching him follow your movement.  “Ok, I just had to make sure you have eyes under there.  You’re stiff as hell.”

He gives a small chuckle that makes you laugh nervously.  “Heh, what’s funny?”

“That is what you say to me when we take the train back to your place.  You enjoy public displays of affection, both innocent and explicit.”

You groan with disgust.  “I haven’t done shit like that a day in my life.  How dare you!”

“You do not, because of fear and weak men.  You’ve gone all your life thus far picking unattainable partners because you do not see yourself worthy of the ones that truly excite you.”

You cross your arms, growing all the more impatient.  “Who are you?”

“I am Dr. Manhattan.”

“PFFFFF!  HAHAHA!”  You laugh out loud, causing passersby to stare.  “You are too much!”

He scoffs, making you question him again.  “If I tell you, you will become physical.”

“Try me, nothing is wilder than saying you are Dr. Manhattan.”

“That phrase you said ‘you are too much’, is something you say during the heat of passion as I penetrate you in the foyer of your home.”

Hearing this makes your blood boil, feeling disrespected is something you refuse to tolerate.  You push your hands against his chest hard; he barely flinches, instead lowering his head.

“You’re a perverted bastard is what you are!  Take that fucking mask off coward, so I know whose ass I’m finna beat.”

“I cannot remove my mask.  It would draw too much attention.”

“HA!  But telling a random woman that she’s gonna be stroking your dick by midnight isn’t attention seeking?”

“11:38 pm.”

“What?”  you ask exasperatedly.  

“11:38 pm, not midnight.  It is 10:15 now, with a 20 minute walk to the station and another 20 minute wait after just missing your train added to your travel time, it will be 11:38 pm.”

“I AM DONE HERE!  Have a shitty night!”  You walk away, looking back just once.  “And no one really likes Dr. Manhattan except for his huge dick which I am sure you are lacking!” Your heels clack down the sidewalk furiously with the snap of your heel.  Steam practically rises off of your body as you think back to the imbecile who couldn’t keep it in his pants.  You come up to an intersection and check your phone, which sparks the thought of how he knew about your name and your date bailing and if there was any truth to why he stood you up.

“Is it better for you that I prove myself to be Dr. Manhattan?”

You jump a little too close to the curb, steadying yourself on a nearby pole.  “You aren’t him, just shut up about it.”

“But you are curious, aren’t you?”

You look blankly at the road, running over what he said to you before  again.  “What’s his name?”

“Whose?”

You roll your eyes.  “If you are Dr. Manhattan, you would know who I am talking about.”

“I do, I just...need to hear you ask it,” he says.

The cross signal goes on and you begin to strut across.  “Oh, is there going to be a rip in the space time continuum if I don’t do things exactly as you predict?”

“They are not predictions but current events.  This is already the past.”

You look back at him walking next to you and it unnerves you how he is able to keep up with your hurried stride like a swan on water.  He doesn’t sound anxious or out of breath and his body has no bounce even when he steps.

You stop in a quiet part of the street, taking out your phone to turn on the flashlight, beaming it in his face.  “What is my date’s name?”

“Crawford.  You like that name very much, like Redford or Ashford.”

You pause for a second in silence.  “What does he do for a living?”

“Marketing, not unlike yourself.  He is up for a promotion but his relationship with his superior is making him feel insecure about his worthiness of moving up in his company however he is in love with her.”

Your heart caves in a little at the word love.  You didn’t think an office fling would come to that, so soon.  

“He shared many things with you, vulnerably.  They were truthful, so you should not regret those moments.  However, opening yourself up to him has only led to your heartbreak sooner.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  you ask softly, feeling tears swell up in your eyes.

He takes a beat before continuing.  “You took his vulnerability as a sign of trust and therefore evidence that he loves you but because of his strife, you thought it would take time.  However, he was only using you for his own gain.  You gave him advice that you thought would make him see you as the object of his affection but it instead pushed him further into her arms.”

You scoff, making a tear jump down your cheek.  You turn the phone light off, trying your best to hide your emotion.  “I still don’t believe you.”

You pull up your friend’s phone number and dial him.  The trill of the call ringing in your ear is painful, so you hang up and text him.

“That will be regrettable tomorrow.”

“Yeah I know.  Dr. Manhattan doesn’t have to tell me that for it to be true.”  You walk down the street at a slower pace, allowing him to walk next to you without resistance.  

“Ok.  Manhattan, huh?  I’m (y/n).”

“I know,” he says lightly.

“Of course you do.  So even though you aren’t from the play, you do know what the play is about right?  They didn’t say anything original that everybody doesn’t already think.”

“I find people’s fixation on my purpose to be distracting.  When the world has developed exponentially over the decades and yet resists change in its most basic forms should be infuriating enough to not dwell on me.”

You tweak your mouth, impressed by his analysis.  “I can’t fault you for that.  But a blue guy from space with powers is an interesting subject.  And you’re usually taller right?”

“I don’t need the attention from that,” he says.

“But blue skin isn’t distracting?”  you quip.

“I don’t choose forms on a whim.  There has to be purpose.”

“So what purpose do you have here with me?  Or am I a stepping stone to somewhere else, because that is a popular feature of mine,” you say deflated.

“You are a beacon of positive energy, which is attractive to most.  But not everyone deserves it.”

“So you are going to mentor me?”

“I am going to love you, and you will love me.  In time.”

You throw your hands in the air in frustration.  “How can you when you don’t know me!”

“But I do,”  he says, stopping at the entrance of the train station, to open the door for you.

“Fine.  Dog’s name.”

“Shrek.”

“Favorite movie?”

“The Color Purple.”

“Third grade teacher’s name?”

“Mr. Rideau, and I believe you had a crush on him.”

“NO!  I did not!”  You walk past him in a huff, completely embarrassed that he outed your interest in your teacher in public like that.  You trot down the stairs, expecting your train to arrive in a minute but instead you see that very train pulling off as your hop off the last step.  

“Dammit!”  You collect your composure and plop down on a bench to await the next arrival.  Dr. Manhattan slinks next to you.  

You check him out in your peripheral, looking behind your shoulder.  “You should really not be blue waiting on the train.  No one here knows about the show so you stick out like a sore thumb.”

Dr. Manhattan looks slowly at his hands, before turning to you.  “I could change, if you like.”

You sigh.  “If I had a dollar for every man who told me that.”  Looking straight into the black holes of his mask is unnerving to you, feeling a chill run down your spine makes you shiver.

“It’s probably for the best, because this is freaking me out.”

“What would you like for me to look like?”

You shrug.  “I can just build you piece by piece?”

He nods.  “Essentially.”

You look Manhattan up and down in a complete loss.  “I don’t have time for details.  When I think of a man I just want them tall, big pockets and a bigger dick.”  This sparks a thought in your mind, making you slide slightly closer to him.  “Ok, I know you not about that musical or rumors, but is it true about…”  You point toward his lap inconspicuously.

“That I am well endowed?  Ah well, those measures are up to the individual.  You may see for yourself if you like.” 

Your body rears back in surprise.  “That’s probably what you were looking for this whole time!  You’re ridiculous.”

Dr. Manhattan sits unphased.  “I won’t force you to, but I know you will.  I mentioned it before.  I know this is a fantasy of yours, despite my person being involved.”

“So I can just rub on your dick and it means nothing for you?  That’s almost disappointing...but this night has already been wild, so feeling up a stranger ain’t far off.”  You look around the practically empty station, taking your hand slowly up his thigh until you felt something solid and girthy.

“You’re stiff as hell!”  you exclaim, quickly taking your hand back.

“It is a normal state in which I remain in this form.”

“And it’s blue just like you huh?”

“Correct.”

You shake your head.  “I don’t think I have it in me to look, so I’ll take your word for it.”

An announcement comes on saying your train is arriving soon.  You check your phone; it’s 10:54pm.  

“Listen.  There’s no way I can sit with you blue on this damn train.  So what do you do, hocus pocus into a Black man?”

“It helps to have a reference in mind,” he says.

“You think for a beat before taking out your phone and looking through Instagram.  “If I show you a picture, will that do?”

“Of course.  I can emulate imagery.”

You look through your feed as quick as you can pulling up the profile, and your favorite picture.

“Him.   Can you change into him?”

His face leans into your phone for a moment.  In the time it takes for you to blink, a blue light flashes and before you is the man from your feed.  The rush of air from the train kicks particles in your eyes, and you rub them for relief and proof that this isn’t a dream.  But in front of you is the likeness.  

“This is dangerous,” you say, trying to pick your jaw off the ground.  He looks around and at his hands, adjusts his suit, then looks at you.

“Is this better?”  

You hold your mouth gasping.  “You even sound like him!  A little stiffer, but very much like him,”

His complexion in person is just as clear as his photos with deep brown hue that has nary a blemish.  Strong jaw cloaked in a close trimmed beard that frames the exterior of his wide, chunky lips.  He blinks at you with a gaze of innocence and naivete.

You remember to breathe and answer, “Yes.  It’s much much better.”  The ding of the train alerting its departure snaps you back to reality, grabbing his hand to make it through the closing doors just in time.  

You find two empty seats in the back, sitting next to the window.  You sit next to him nervously, playing with your hands as the train rumbles down the tracks.  You look out over the city passing you both and catch his reflection in the window staring at you.  His eyes look happy.

“What?”  you ask quietly, looking back at him.

[jasonfry]

More classic movies everyone’s seen but me!

They Live By Night (1948)

Bowie and Keechie are doomed young lovers in Nicholas Ray’s debut as a director. A lot of the tropes will be familiar to film noir fans -- you know Bowie and Keechie will never achieve the normal lives they want, and the movie’s ending feels as fixed and inevitable as Shakespearean tragedy, with avenues of escape closing off one by one. But a few elements set it apart. For one thing, there’s the Depression setting, which offers shabby cabins and dusty plains instead of L.A. clubs and streetscapes, and makes “economic anxiety” a real thing -- Bowie and Keechie’s wedding in particular is a tragicomic masterpiece, with the crooked justice of the peace subtracting elements based on the couple’s budget. The movies also draws power from the chemistry between Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, which feels natural in a very stylized film, sometimes to the point of feeling intimate bordering on uncomfortable. (Howard Da Silva is terrific in a supporting role as the terrifying hood Chicamaw.)

Ray was given free rein as director, and They Live By Night has an experimental air that would prove highly influential, from the tricky opening helicopter shot to an inside-the-car sequence whose legacy you can see in Gun Crazy. Then there’s its rather odd unveiling: The movie was shelved for two years after it was shot, but circulated through private showings in Hollywood and became a favorite, with Granger tapped by Alfred Hitchcock for Rope and Humphrey Bogart offering Ray a lifeline as a director. They Live By Night isn’t a great entry point for film noir newbies, but will be interesting for fans of the genre.

Robert Altman remade this movie as Thieves Like Us, returning to the title of the novel that Ray adapted; that version is also on my list. 

Under the Volcano (1984)

John Huston enjoyed tackling supposedly unfilmable projects late in life, following his adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood with this take on a 1947 novel by Malcolm Lowery. Albert Finney is wonderful as a drunken, self-destructive British diplomat, and there’s an undeniable pull to the movie -- I saw it a couple of weeks ago and can’t quite shake its suffocating mood of mild delirium. But it’s so, so bleak -- before you try it, make sure you’re up for two hours of unease and dread.

Silverado (1985)

I saw Silverado as a teenager, but came back to it recently because as a kid I’d barely seen any westerns and so had no idea what the movie was celebrating or looking to revisit. Seen through more experienced eyes, Silverado is most interesting because it isn’t revisionist at all -- with the exception of a couple of modern tweaks to racial attitudes, it could have been made in the same period as the movies writer/director Lawrence Kasdan is saluting.

Anyway, Kevin Kline and Linda Hunt are wonderful leads, as is Brian Dennehy as the sheriff who’s put his conscience aside, and virtually everybody you remember from mid-80s movies shows up at one point or another. It’s a lot of fun, at least until the movie runs out of steam in the second half and turns into a series of paint-by-numbers gunfights. The final running battle particularly annoyed me: Kasdan has had ample time to show us the layout of the town of Silverado, which would let us think alongside the heroes as they stalk and are stalked through its handful of streets, but his ending is random gags and shootouts, with no sense of place. Stuff just happens until we’re out of stuff.

Compare that with, say, Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers. Peter Jackson takes his time establishing everything from the geography of the fortress to the plan to defend it, and as a result we always know where we are during the battle and what each new development means for the heroes. That kind of planning might have made Silverado a modern classic instead of just a fun diversion. 

My Brilliant Career (1979)

Judy Davis stars (opposite an impossibly young Sam Neill) as Sybylla Melvyn, a young Australian woman determined to resist not just her family’s efforts to marry her off but also the inclinations of her own heart. Sybylla is a wonderful character, a luminous, frizzy-haired bull in a china shop of convention, and she’s riveting in every scene. (Neill’s job is to look alternately hapless and patient, which he does well enough -- a fate that’s perfectly fair given the generations upon generations of actresses who have been stuck with the same role.) Extra points for Gillian Armstrong’s direction, which consistently delivers establishing shots you want to linger on without being too showy about them, and for sticking with an ending that, Sybylla-style, bucks movie expectations.

(This is an adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 autobiographical novel, which I now want to read. Franklin also wrote a book called All That Swagger, which is such a great title that I’m happy just thinking about it.)

Red River (1948)

A friend recommended this movie -- the first collaboration between Howard Hawks and John Wayne -- after reading my take on Rio Bravo. And I’m glad he did: Wayne is terrific as Tom Dunson, a hard-driving rancher whose cattle drive to Missouri becomes an obsession that leads him into madness, and he’s evenly matched with Montgomery Clift, who’s his son in all but name. 

Dunson begins as the movie’s hero and gradually morphs into its villain, with Wayne letting us see his doubts and regrets and also his inability to acknowledge them and so steer himself back to reality. Clift, making his debut as Matt Garth, is solid in a more conventional role (he looks eerily like Tom Cruise), and Walter Brennan happily chews scenery as Wayne’s sidekick and nagging conscience.

And there’s a lot of scenery to chew -- it’s wonderful to watch the herd in motion, particularly in a shot from over Brennan’s shoulder as the cattle cross a river -- and Hawks brings a palpable sense of dread to the nighttime scenes as things start to go wrong.

I would have liked Red River more if I hadn’t already seen Rio Bravo, though. Brennan plays the exact same role in that movie as he does here, Clift’s character is very similar to Ricky Nelson’s, and Hawks even nicked a melody from Red River to reuse 11 years later. (Hawks was a serial recycler -- he essentially remade Rio Bravo twice.)

A more fundamental problem is that Red River falls apart when Hawks jams Tess Millay into the story. We’re introduced to Tess, played by Joanne Dru, when Clift intervenes to save a wagon train besieged by Apaches, and her nattering at Clift during a gunfight is so annoying that I was hoping an arrow would find its mark and silence her. (She is hit by an arrow, but it only makes her talk more.)

Tess then falls for Clift, who seems mostly befuddled by her interest but blandly acquiesces. This is funny for a number of reasons: Beyond some really dopey staging, Clift’s love interest is pretty clearly a cowboy played by John Ireland and given the unlikely name of Cherry Valance. Their relationship is a bit of gay subtext that wouldn’t need much of a nudge to become text. Tess goes on to annoy Wayne in an endless scene that exists to forklift in a klutzy parallel with the movie’s beginning, and then shows up at the end to derail the climax in an eye-rolling fashion that leaves everyone involved looking mildly embarrassed. (Dru does the best she can; none of this is her fault.) 

I was left wondering what on earth had happened, so I read up and discovered that -- a la Suspicion -- the ending was changed, destroying a logical and satisfying outcome penned by Borden Chase. Tess is a hand-wave to bring about that different ending, a bad idea executed so poorly that it wrecks the movie. Give me a few weeks and I’ll happily remember all the things Red River does right, from those soaring vistas to Wayne’s seething march through Abilene. But I’ll also remember how the last reel took an ax to everything that had been built with such care.

[mst3kproject]

1105: The Beast of Hollow Mountain

I have a personal fucking grudge against this movie.  When I was… I dunno, maybe six or seven, I went to an event at the city zoo that featured a talk by paleontologist Robert Bakker (I still have the Ornithomimus he drew for me) and a screening of an absolutely, non-ironically fantastic movie about cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico.  Since I was a child, I never bothered to remember the title of this film and so years later when I fondly remembered it, of course I couldn’t find it to watch it again. Until one day, flipping through banged-up VHS tapes at a flea market I happened across The Beast of Hollow Mountain… cowboys and dinosaurs in Mexico?  This had to be it!

I was wrong.  I was so, so wrong.  This movie has been on my Episodes that Never Were radar since the inception of this blog, and I was delighted that Season Eleven actually used it at the same time as being slightly annoyed that they used it first.  No matter.  It richly deserves everything Jonah and the bots threw at it.

There are these two guys, Jimmy and Felipe, who own a ranch. Jimmy keeps flirting with a woman named Sarita.  She’s supposed to be marrying this other guy called Enrique, who doesn’t like Jimmy and tries to undermine his ranching business so he’ll be forced to return to Texas, but of course Sarita secretly likes the smiling white guy better than the grumpy Latino. There’s also a comic relief drunk, Pancho, who might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that he’s a grieving widower raising a very young child, which kind of undercuts the joke.  We watch these people go about their lives for at least seventeen hours in which nothing much happens, and then suddenly holy shit motherfucking dinosaur out of nowhere.

The weird masked people in that one scene are chinelos dancers, which is interesting in that it gives us an exact location for this story: the little Mexican state of Morelos. This area is rather far south of the US-Mexico border and known more for its sugar cane than its cattle ranching, but it does appear to have mountains, so we’re on firmer geographical ground here than in Beginning of the End.  The masks and robes the dancers wear were originally designed to make fun of Europeans, so it’s kind of fitting that the whole display reduces Jonah, Kinga, and Max to terrified weeping.

If you only look at the first three quarters of the movie, The Beast of Hollow Mountain is an unremarkable, laid-back little western about an upstart rancher competing with the local cattle baron in both economics and love.  There are probably a lot of movies that have this as their only plot, and they do just fine for people who like westerns, I guess.  In this particular movie, however, it’s all just killing time. When I reviewed Avalanche a few weeks back I complained that all the effort getting us to invest in the characters is ultimately pointless because none of those stories will be resolved.  Beast of Hollow Mountain is slightly better, in that it does resolve the problems it has set up for the characters, but it does so via tyrannosaurus [r]ex machina.

The movie does make some attempt to hint at the existence of the dinosaur, but it’s pathetically ineffective.  There are superstitions that the mountain is haunted, and cattle are disappearing – but we see that Enrique is encouraging the rumors and possibly stealing the cows as he tries to force Jimmy to leave town.  Occam’s razor tells us that a jealous rival is a much more likely explanation than a dinosaur.  Actual evidence of the monster, such as footprints, cow bones in places cows could not possibly go, or never-believed eyewitness accounts from the local drunks, is completely lacking.

It’s pretty obvious that the reason the dinosaur never appears until the last few minutes of the film is because animation is expensive and that’s all they could afford.  That’s fine, but a lack of budget shouldn’t have gotten in the way of the foreshadowing!  You can make a respectable dinosaur footprint with a shovel and an eye for artistic detail.  Have a couple of prop guys drape a fake cow skeleton over a tree branch, and presto, instant mystery!  And if you need unlikely eyewitness accounts, you’ve already got a town drunk who could be laughed at for it, in the form of Pancho!   You could even do that stupid joke, as seen in god only knows how many other movies, where seeing the dinosaur makes him throw a bottle away and swear to never touch another drop!

It seems so obvious that a movie called The Beast of Hollow Mountain would want to include some clues to the nature of the titular beast before we actually see it, I can’t imagine why they didn’t.  Maybe they figured they were building suspense?  If so, all they actually accomplish is, as Jonah and the bots repeatedly note, making us doubt that there will be any beast in this movie at all.  By the time we get to its appearance, it seems completely wrong that there would suddenly be a dinosaur in what has so far been a story with no fantastical elements.

The other problem with only pulling the dinosaur out at the end of the movie is that, as I mentioned above, it’s a deus ex machina, an easy solution to the characters’ problems that doesn’t feel like part of the same world.  After we’ve watched the rivalry between Jimmy and Enrique for an hour, the satisfying way to end this story would be to have them resolve their differences, perhaps out of mutual love of Sarita and a desire to make her happy. You could even include the dinosaur in this, by having Enrique forgive Jimmy out of gratitude for saving his life. Instead, the dinosaur kills Enrique, leaving Jimmy free to do whatever he likes without having to address his own problems!  It’s as lazy as having him wake up at the end and discover that Enrique was only a bad dream.

When you refuse to foreshadow, you also leave the audience wondering why there is apparently one dinosaur wandering around in Mexico somewhere.  You can’t just pull one dinosaur out of the movie’s ass and not have some kind of explanation!  Eegah! had one caveman in the deserts outside Palm Springs but offered the backstory that he was the last of a clan whose lives had been greatly lengthened by the sulfur springs.  Other movies give us dinosaurs that come out of lost valleys or the centre of the earth or something.  Is that what ‘Hollow Mountain’ is supposed to be?  A portal to a lost land?  If so, I think that deserved at least a few seconds of screen time!

Outside of its lazy storytelling, I guess The Beast of Hollow Mountain really isn’t badly-made. The costumes, including those on the extras, are gorgeous, and between those and the chinelos dancers I suspect the film-makers just went to a town in Morelos and said, “who wants to be in a movie?”  The characters are all pretty one-note but the actors do their best. Mario Navarro as Panchito isn’t nearly as annoying as he was in The Black Scorpion, and Patricia Medina as Sarita does manage to seem like she’s struggling between her commitment to Enrique and her crush on Jimmy.  The worst performance in the movie is probably given by Jimmy himself, played by Guy Madison.  He does ‘smiling mellow cowpoke’ in every single scene, including those that really would have benefitted from some gravitas.

The dinosaur itself is… eh, it’s not that bad.  I feel like I’ve probably waited longer for worse dinosaurs (Lost Continent comes to mind).  I do like stop motion in general and I respect the effort that goes into creating it.  The problem in The Beast of Hollow Mountain isn’t so much the animation itself as what they chose to animate – why the emphasis on the dinosaur’s flailing tongue?  They also failed entirely to make it look as if the dinosaur is occupying the same space as the humans.  Either the puppet or the actors is always horribly out of focus, which might be an attempt to suggest depth.  If so, it doesn’t work.

Then for the closeups, they have dinosaur puppet arms and feet. These are simply terrible.  They don’t match the stop-motion creature in anatomy, movement, or implied size.

It’s pretty obvious what went wrong with this movie.  Somebody came up with a really cool idea for a popcorn flick – cowboys and dinosaurs, you guys!  Everybody else loved it, but as they tried to bring it to fruition, they realized it was also a really expensive idea, and tried to lower the cost by increasing the cowboy-to-dinosaur ratio.  By the time they got to something they could afford, there were only five minutes of dinosaur left.  As I observed in my review of Future War, sometimes movie-makers really need to just step back and say, “no, guys, this is just not gonna work.”

In this case, the ‘somebody’ with the great idea was stop motion pioneer Willis O’Brien, who wrote a script he called The Valley of Mists.  I’ve never read it but I know for a fact that The Beast of Hollow Mountain didn’t come anywhere near doing it justice – because thirteen years later, O’Brien’s protégé Ray Harryhausen did the animation for the remake, The Valley of Gwangi. You guessed it, that's the fucking awesome cowboys-and-dinosaurs movie I remembered from my youth!  If you were disappointed by The Beast of Hollow Mountain, I highly recommend giving The Valley of Gwangi a look.  It’s got action, adventure, romance, special effects so groundbreaking that the Jurassic Park franchise has actually paid homage to them more than once, and is the guaranteed cure for all your Beast-of-Hollow-Mountain-related blues!

[jayykesley]

8-10, 16-22 for ALL OF YOUR OCS FROM "THE APPRENTICES" (really the main ones: Carson, Lorelei, Derick, Rosalyn, Roswell, and a bonus OC of your choice)

8. What clothing style?

Lorelei: Very girly, so she wearsprimarily dresses and skirts and high heels. Kind of a sparkly-girly-librariantype of look? Pockets added to everything obviously, as well as tulle or lacetrim, just to make any outfit have that little extra SomethingTM.

Carson: His style is likecombination lumberjack-slash-fifties(?) look, like he’s got the rugged jeansand the white t-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up just below the shouldersand the red plaid overshirt. He prefers casual, loose-fitting clothes. Allabout comfort and mobility and wearing things until they fall apart.

Derick: Because of his childhood andthe culture he grew up in, Derick’s style consists mainly of dress pants andfitted button-ups w/ vests/suspenders/ties/etc. Not always particularlycomfortable, but he feels sorely underdressed and out-of-place in anythingless.

Rosalyn: If a piece of clothing fitsher larger frame, and can hide stains for at least a little while, Rosalyn willwear it. Mostly wears sleeveless shirts, or cuts the sleeves off, because shehas broad shoulders and large arms that don’t always fit comfortably in theshirts she finds. Has like one (1) pair of loose cargo pants that she’s beenwearing for literal years and refuses to get rid of. Neutral colors mostly soshe doesn’t have to think about matching stuff.

Roswell: I imagine him wearingregular old jeans, but with either comfy sweaters or fun graphic tees that hegets his hands on. He’s not picky about clothing, but he does like to have funso his shirts are always brightly colored with reds or yellows or purples.

Valentina/Violet (I can’t land on aname for her for some reason): Similar to Lorelei, in that she’s very girly,but definitely not “librarian chic”. Vibrant pinks, glitter, maybe some furoccasionally if she’s going out? Crop tops are a definite staple in her closet.

9. What is their favourite foodafter a break-up?

Lorelei: Her favorite comfort food,especially after getting her heart broken, would probably be frozen yogurt or agiant cinnamon bun glazed in icing. Something sweet and filling that you mightnot have on a daily basis.

Carson: Soft pretzels nachos, pasta,just something that is absolutely soggy in melted cheese.

Derick: Not so much food, but wineor some other alcoholic drink that would make him forget how bad he feels abouthimself

Rosalyn: Red meat, which is what sheeats a lot of to begin with, but just way way more stuff those badfeelings away

Roswell: Candy. He’d just shoveldown handfuls of jolly ranchers and licorice, ignoring how gross he feels veryquickly after doing this

V: Chocolate covered strawberriesand caramel apples and every sweet thing she shared with the boy because shedoesn’t need him to enjoy things she doesn’t miss him she never evencared that much about him to begin with--

10. Their favourite thing to doafter a break-up?

 Lorelei/V: Watch bad movies togetherand have a girls night: popcorn, ice cream, probably watch Legally Blonde. Oneis always right there ready to comfort the other when it seems like thingsmight go sorrow.

 Carson: He throws himself into a newproject, whether that’s working on Bonnie, his car, or crafting something outof wood. Carson gets attached and wears his heart on his sleeve, so no matterhow short the relationship was, he’s probably hurting quite a lot. When hefeels like he’s got a handle on the situation, then he can talk to Lorelei andwork on moving on.

 Derick: Just gets real depressed andsleeps/watches TV a lot. Leaves the house/showers/cleans even less than usual.Eventually he’ll get out of his funk, but it might take him a while.

Rosalyn: Probably trains to workthrough her emotions; first she’s angry because she feels like that personwasted her time, then she feels embarrassed for letting herself be hopeful likethat, then angry again... it’s a vicious cycle, and one she’s working on.

Roswell: Cry and talk to literallyanyone who will listen. Obviously everybody is more than happy to be hisshoulder to cry on, but Roswell bounces back about as quickly as he fell forthe girl in the first place.

 16. Their favourite comfort food?

Same as the break-up food, comfort food is really what I was thinking ofwhen I answered that question

17. What’s a food they hate?

Lorelei: Probably something likemeat loaf? It’s cheap, somewhat filling, and easy to make so it’s often whather mother used to make when she was a child. It wasn’t bad necessarily, buthaving multiple times a week for years has made her nauseous at the thought ofit

Carson: There really isn’t a lotCarson won’t eat. Originally Victor wasn’t a very good chef, so Carson wasresigned to eating either burnt/undercooked meals or microwave dinners for hischildhood. Maybe something like liver he might refuse.

Derick: He’ll eat meat, but he won’teat meat that still resembles the animal when it was alive -- fish that isn’tfried or in some way no longer resembles fish, he won’t eat. Doesn’t eatchicken legs or anything like that either.

Rosalyn: Bread. Specifically, whitebread. No one can figure out why, but Rosalyn absolutely positively will notconsume plain white bread. Everyone thinks its some big thing, but she swearsup and down it’s just that it grosses her out.

Roswell: Again, eats nearlyeverything. Maybe won’t eat oatmeal, because that’s just sloppy slime andRoswell can’t do that

V: Microwave meals that taste likemicrowave meals (which obvi is 99% of them). She swears she can taste theplastic film in the food.

18. Their music taste?

Lorelei/V: Love radio-pop. Ifeel like they’d both be huge fans of people like Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeranand people like that

Carson: He’s a sucker for 80′s and90′s rock and pop; Survivor, Billy Joel, Britney Spears, all that good stuff

Derick: Not really picky aboutmusic? Usually just listens to whatevers on. Probably a secret Emo Kid

Rosalyn: Really prefers classicalinstrumental music. She doesn’t zone out often, but instrumental music helpsher relax the few times she feels she’s allowed to.

Roswell: Would probably be reallyinto disco and/or Disney soundtracks?? Also a huge musical nerd, so Broadwaysoundtracks are his JAM

19.Is there a story behind their name/meaning?

Lorelei: I thought that “Lorelei”was a very pretty name and that it was a shame more characters weren’t calledthat. “Bullock” was a placeholder until I settled on her “real” last name, butBullock stuck so

Carson: Intended to remind me thathe would resemble Carswell Thorne in personality/serve as a place holder aswell (he’s changed a bit from his original design). “Davies” is the last nameof one of the original inspirations for the character Peter Pan, and was toserve as a reminder that Carson is a more relaxed, care-free person

Derick: No special meaning, justcame to me moments after I decided he was birthed from my mind-hole and thename has stuck ever since.

Rosalyn: Saw that picture that Ialways use as my face-claim for her, instantly decided she was either a“Rosalyn” or a “Rosalind”. I went with Rosalyn because, i dunno i just thoughtit fit her better.

Roswell: Originally he was going tobe called “Brandon” or something similar, but I came across the name “Roswell”and thought “oh yeah thatd be funny, Rosalyn and Roswell” and, well, as withevery character, the name just stuck

Violet/Valentina: Originally“Violet”, but I’ve since done some work on her character and feel that“Valentina” fits her better, but my mind is still latched onto “Violet”, soI’ve been calling her V for the time being.

20.Something they do that seems childish to others?

Lorelei/V: Not childish per se, butpeople might think them immature since they really like fashion and makeup andpretty things

Carson: Sings to himself constantly.

Derick: It might seem childish tosomeone who’s never owned a pet, but oh my gosh the flip-flopping betweenbaby-talking to Ragsy, and having a full-on real conversation with her

Rosalyn: Pinky promises. Not onlydoes she hold promises as Law, but pinky promises are the Highest Law

Roswell: His long run-on sentencesand tendency to speak rapidly in giant chunks. He can come off like an excitedlittle kid, but really he just hasn’t lost his sense of wonder for the world.

21.What is their all-time favourite TV show?

Lorelei: Great British Bake Off.I’ve never personally seen it, but it sounds like something she’d love XD

Carson: How It’s Made

Derick: Painting with Bob Ross

Rosalyn: Ancient Aliens

Roswell: I sat here for ten minutesand i genuinely cannot think of what his favorite show would be, so thanksHobbs XD

V: Catfish

22. What is their all-time favoritemovie?

Lorelei: 2005 Pride and Prejudice

Carson: HSM 2

Derick: All Dogs Go To Heaven/Aristocats

Rosalyn: National Treasure

Roswell: Jungle Book

V: Black Panther (because she’s real into Michael B. Jordan)

Sorry this is late, but I wanted to give real good answers. Thanks!

[firefly-hwufanficwriter-blog]

(Fanfic) Drake’s Poetry Lesson

July 24, 2017, Monday [#262]

My masterlists: [Fanfiction.] [Fan edits.]

Title: Drake’s Poetry Lesson (MC/Drake) (5,299 words)

Story summary: The royal suitors are given a new courtship task about Cordonian culture. Against his will, Drake helps Riley learn more about traditional Cordonian music, food... and poetry.

Drake's Poetry Lesson

[I.]

As per his usual habit when there was nothing that needed to be done, Drake was lying on a cold, stone floor, staring at a cold, stone ceiling.

After the events of the Apple Blossom Festival – he still didn't know whether to be happy that Riley had wanted everybody to celebrate his birthday with him; or annoyed that she had forced him to wear a jester's hat after she had been crowned Apple Queen – Drake definitely needed some time to himself, with nothing to remind him of the outside world.

“Hey, Drake!”

Of course, Riley would choose that moment to skip happily into the abandoned cold, stone room that, before her arrival, had been his sanctuary, and his alone.

Ever since he had accidentally fallen asleep in here during their conversation after the Regatta – he had had to endure her knowing smiles ever since – Riley had made a habit of looking for him in this very room whenever she wanted to speak to him.

And while he could find another secluded spot, he didn't want to. This was Drake's abandoned cold, stone room, not Riley's!

“Hey, LastName,” he drawled, teasing her by refusing to make eye contact with her at first, instead keeping his eyes on the grey blocks of stone that made up the room's boring ceiling. “What's up?”

Riley followed his gaze at the boring ceiling, but appeared to refrain from making the obvious joke in favor of discussing something else entirely. Instead, she replied happily, “I need your help for the culture event.”

Because the 'fox hunt' – all Cordonians knew where to put the air quotes – was delayed due to bad weather, it was announced that there would be an entirely spontaneous social season event to test Liam's suitors. At the end of the week, they were to make some sort of presentation or performance that showed their knowledge of and respect for Cordonian culture.

After pausing for a rejection but not receiving one, Riley continued. “I've been practicing singing the Cordonian national anthem in my room, but I haven't tried singing in front of anybody yet. I don't really want my first time to be at the event itself. Can you listen to me and tell me how I'm doing?”

That was a good choice. National anthems were intimately linked to their homelands, and Cordonia's national anthem was no different, telling the story of Queen Kenna's quest to unite the kingdoms and how every Cordonian should embody patriotism, compassion, and strength. Singing it in front of the king and queen would show that Riley was willing to embrace the country and all its history.

Finally meeting her eyes, he put his hands on the ground and lifted himself off the stone floor into a standing position, saying carelessly, “I'm all yours, LastName. Just don't melt my ears off with your singing.”

“Very funny,” she pouted, before smoothing out a sheet of paper Drake hadn't noticed earlier and looking at it closely. “Ready?”

“Ready as I'll ever be.” This ought to be entertaining, at least.

Giving him a cheerful grin, Riley exclaimed, “Great!” and started to sing.

[II.]

By the end of the first line, Drake's eyebrows had shot up as high as they could on his forehead.

By the end of the second line, his jaw had dropped open, not that Riley saw that because she was still focused on reading the lyrics from the sheet of paper she held in her hands.

By the end of the third line, he had begun to wonder if Liam's instructors had prepared him for this particular type of assassination attempt.

Riley's voice, which held a light, melodic quality whenever she spoke or laughed, seemed to lose all its pleasant features when her tongue attempted to mix words with music.

As she sang, she somehow lingered just a breath too long on certain syllables, while rushing others much too quickly, making Drake's head hurt as he, who had heard and sung the national anthem countless times in the past, began immediately mentally corrected her musical errors, and struggled because the headache-inducing mistakes just kept on coming.

As she reached the more musically dramatic part of the anthem – the part where a woman's voice would naturally go higher, while man's would go lower – the beautiful notes that were meant to convey the passion one ought to have for one's country changed.

Riley's voice turned the difficult musical notes into a peculiar, prolonged croak, sounding like a sickly frog at the very height of the national anthem, with her voice gradually regaining some human qualities as she brought the song to a close.

Finally, she stopped. Finally.

Setting down her sheet of lyrics with theatrical flourish, she beamed as she met his eyes once more.

“So?” she asked breathlessly. “How was it? Did I do okay? Do you think I'm ready?”

Normally, Drake wouldn't have hesitated in giving her a scathing remark that would express exactly how he felt. But Riley stood in front of him, with that eager smile, that hopeful twinkle in her eye, waiting for his approval, looking just like the baby deer he had told her she was in Olivia's wine cellar – and he couldn't do it.

Instead, he explained as gently – but as clearly – as he could that if she wanted to succeed at tomorrow's event, she would have to choose something that had absolutely nothing to do with singing.

And Riley, while obviously disappointed at his less than stellar feedback, thanked him for his help, saying that she knew she could trust him and that she would try something else. She exited the room, no doubt to look for ideas, as Drake rested his head in his palm, glad that the harrowing ordeal was finally over.

Drake's head was cloudy and he felt like he wanted to throw up.

He knew why. Riley was a terrible singer.

[III.]

It had taken longer than expected for Drake's headache to dissipate, but finally, he felt that he could move again without feeling like a blacksmith's hammer was happily pounding away, using his innocent mind as an anvil.

The ringing of Riley's pitiful attempt at singing had finally left his ears – he noted sourly that he had even told her beforehand to not melt his ears off! – and he was just about to leave the cold, stone room and go upstairs for lunch when he spotted Riley turn the corner and enter the room, holding a kitchen tray in her hands.

“Good, you're still here!” she said in relief. Seeing that there was no table in the room, she lowered herself to the floor and sat down, placing the tray before her as she indicated for him to join her.

Intrigued, Drake did as she wanted and sat down across from her on the floor. From experience, he knew that he wouldn't have to ask what it was because she was already about to tell him.

“I tried cooking this time!”

She enthusiastically gestured by holding both of her hands, palms up and at an angle, just above the steaming bowl of soup on the tray, as if presenting him with the Cordonian crown jewels.

“I found the ingredients in a book and it looked like this was an important part of Cordonian history, so I'm sure the king and queen are going to love it – and you get to try my cooking first!”

Riley sounded so happy and so confident that Drake couldn't help but regard her fondly – and hope that she didn't notice. It wasn't that long ago when they were almost-enemies in a crowded ballroom during the social season's opening ball, where rather than speak to her for another minute, he left her to the mercies of the other ladies of the court because he couldn't stand to speak to her anymore.

To think that they were now in their abandoned cold, stone room together, that she was seeking him out to ask for his help, trusting his advice, trusting that he wouldn't steer her wrong... it was nice.

It made Drake feel like he and Riley had a relationship, a friendship, outside of their shared connection to Liam, and it was with these almost-affectionate thoughts – he just hoped that she didn't notice – that he took the small bowl in one hand so that he could hold it up and see its contents.

Cooking a meal in front of the king and queen would show that Riley was willing to serve, not just be served. It was actually an excellent strategy – but Drake should probably eat the soup soon, as there was less steam now than moments ago.

The low temperature of the cold, stone room must have slightly cooled its contents. Inside the bowl was some sort of dark broth with herbs sliced into tiny little pieces, and, from the weight of the bowl, he knew that there had to be meat or vegetables that he couldn't see beyond the broth's surface.

The scent of the soup, though, was unfamiliar, which was strange because Drake had eaten just about every type of traditional Cordonian food that existed.

“Interesting. And you said that this was somehow connected to the history of Cordonia?”

“Yup!”

He was glad to hear that. Cordonian dishes were traditionally very hearty because in ancient times, the majority of the common folk had been farmers and ranchers, tending to the vast fields that could be found as far as the eye could see in southern and western Cordonia.

In fact, the 'fox hunt' also included a feast that resembled a Cordonian banquet from ages past. One of the soup dishes normally served was a beef and black bean soup that was prepared for Queen Kenna's wedding feast.

Actually, according to his history teacher, the recipe had originally been for a bacon and black bean soup, but Queen Kenna's talking wolf had made an alliance with a floating octopus to steal all the bacon from the palace kitchens, and with the wedding ceremony almost concluded and the feast almost underway, the kitchen staff had no choice but to use beef instead.

Not that Drake had actually believed his old teacher. A talking wolf? A floating octopus? Yeah, right.

Perhaps that was why the soup didn't smell familiar. Drake was used to the soup containing beef, and maybe the bacon, combined with the herbs he could see floating on top of the soup, was simply mixed in with the black beans to the point that the beans had masked the bacon's scent.

Well, whatever, he shrugged. Food was food. He dipped his spoon into the bowl, drawing out a big spoonful of soup that he scooped into his mouth, preparing himself to discern the flavors of Riley's cooking...

[IV.]

...only to choke in surprise at the extremely unpleasant taste of the innocent-looking soup. Not wanting to spit anything out – no matter how much he wanted to – he chewed whatever hard thing it was that was inside his mouth into small pieces that he could eventually swallow, trying not to gag at the metallic, earthy taste that seemed to cling to his tongue and to the roof of his mouth long after he had swallowed that single, incredibly disgusting spoonful of soup.

What was that?!

“So?” Riley asked, not seeming to recognize the horror Drake had just been through. “What do you think of my cooking? Does it taste the way it should? You've probably had a ton of traditional dishes, so...”

She trailed off when she realized that Drake was staring at the vile bowl of soup with wide eyes.

“Drake?”

Still not able to speak, he slowly raised his eyes to hers, silently asking her why she would attempt to take his life by serving him the most revolting soup he had ever tasted in his entire life.

Murder by soup. How undignified.

“You look pale... you must be really hungry. Just go ahead and finish the soup, I can make more for myself later, so don't worry about me,” Riley smiled, making a shooing, 'go on' gesture with her hand.

After taking several deep breaths to try to recover from the painful experience he had only just narrowly escaped with his life mostly intact, he said slowly, “Riley... where did you get this recipe?”

“I told you, from a book, see?” She took out a book that he saw had actually been under the kitchen tray the entire time, turned it to a folded page, and began to read.

“...And so Kenna Rys, under the cover of darkness, fled the castle of her ancestors, abandoning the ancient fortress to the rein of Luthor Nevrakis, self-styled King of Stormholt. Her first night in exile, though filled to the brim with danger and despair, only strengthened her resolve to someday reclaim her homeland, her throne.

“To seal her solemn vow, she took the soil of her ancestral home and the root of the apple tree under which she played as a young child, and with these and her bitter tears made a soup that would forever remind her of her love for her people, her vengeance for her family, and of her future victory to reclaim the throne of Stormholt-”

“WHAT!?”

“I said, to reclaim the future throne-”

“No, not that!” Drake pointed shakily at the bowl of soup, which was smugly sitting on the kitchen tray, with his spoon. “Riley,” he asked her incredulously, voice rising in alarm with each proceeding word, “did you just feed me dirt-and-root soup?!”

And at that, she actually looked offended. “Traditional dirt-and-root soup! Don't blame me for the weird things your ancestors ate!”

He had no idea why this woman somehow felt like she had the moral high ground, but, rather than shout at her – he wouldn't shout at her because Riley never backed down from a fight, and not because he was worried that his genuine ire might make her cry, because he certainly would never be worried about something stupid like that – he asked her how she had found the book.

Apparently, after his unenthusiastic response to the song she had been practicing for days, Riley had panicked because there wasn't a lot of time before the event began.

She had frantically taken an armful of books on traditional Cordonian history and scanned them as quickly as she could, looking for inspiration. And when she had seen the word 'soup,' she had honestly thought it was another one of their unusual Cordonian things, like their fox hunt that didn't have any foxes.

Drake didn't bother correcting her. She would know to put the air quotes once she married a Cordonian.

Married Liam.

He got a funny mental image of Riley trying to spoonfeed Liam her dirt-and-root soup, but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to laugh.

Maybe that disgusting soup sucked all the humor out of him. Some real food, made with real ingredients, would probably be good for Drake right now. And it would likely be in his best interests to leave before she got it in her head to perform traditional Cordonian archery or something.

He got another mental image, this time of Riley lightly tugging on his arm, cajoling him to let her put an apple on his head so she could practice archery – and that image made him smile.

Hmm. It looked like his humor was coming back.

Still, some food wouldn't be amiss. After accepting her sorrowful apology for the atrocious soup she had made, Drake was about to leave the cold, stone room when a thought occurred to him.

“Since you were really... accurate... when it came to the dirt and the roots... did you also add your own tears to the soup?”

“Huh? No, of course not, I used salt and water. Adding my tears to a bowl of soup would have just been weird.”

“Right,” Drake repeated flatly. “Weird.”

At that, he left their cold, stone room so that he could get himself a good lunch because he needed to wash the taste of dirt and roots out of his mouth... though after a grumble from his stomach, he hastily decided that for now, perhaps a glass of water would be a better choice.

Drake's stomach was cloudy and he felt like he wanted to throw up.

He knew why. Riley was a terrible cook.

[V.]

After having a delicious lunch and taking a refreshing nap, Drake was fairly sure that his stomach had settled, and he could now laugh at the situation. Looking back, it had been pretty funny that Riley had thought to feed him dirt and roots.

Maybe she was eccentric and totally crazy, but he was always sure to have an adventure when she was around, even if they were both just sitting inside a cold, stone room under a cold, stone ceiling.

He liked that.

Of course, another thing he liked was solitude, and he hadn't gotten enough of it today because Riley had dropped in on him in the morning with her song, and again in the afternoon with her... soup.

Now that it was almost time for sunset and she still had to think of an idea for the culture event, she was bound to be out of their abandoned cold, stone room, which meant that it was empty and waiting for him.

Finally.

After navigating the stairs with the careless ease of somebody who had been living in the palace for almost his whole life, he arrived at the right corridor and headed to the cold, stone room. But, as he drew closer, he could hear a voice coming from inside.

“Where was that page again? This poetry book is huge... Maybe I'll have to memorize it, but at least I won't accidentally poison anybody by doing a poetry reading... I hope Drake's okay... Oh, here it is!”

A poetry reading? Interesting idea. And a good one. If she chose the right poem, preferably something about the country's history, it would show her willingness to learn all she could about Cordonia, and that would make a good impression on the king and queen.

He felt a little silly standing in the corridor while she was inside, but he firmly reminded himself that he had thought earlier today that songs and soup were harmless, and look where that had gotten him.

Based on everything that had happened today, Drake was probably much safer out here in the corridor alone, than in there with here. While he didn't know what havoc she could wreak with dusty old poetry, he had no intention of finding out.

“My Beloved.”

Drake nodded to himself.

He knew that poem. Every Cordonian knew that poem. He wondered if she had chosen it herself, or if she had asked Liam or Maxwell for help – before he came to the conclusion that Liam probably wouldn't be allowed to help her about something connected to the event, and Maxwell didn't seem to be the type to recommend classic poetry.

And if she wasn't that familiar with the poem yet, Drake's presence might make her nervous. It was better to stay outside, close enough to listen, so that he could critique her later.

If only I

Could tell clouds to depart from that

Which is mine to protect

Command a world to awaken

Will I ever fathom the warmth

In you, my sun

My beloved

Would you let me fight for you?

Drake knew that the opening stanza of 'My Beloved' referred to the sun's power to change lives – to command an entire world to awaken, just as the poem said.

Savannah, when she had discussed it with him as part of her homework years and years ago, had remarked that it was a pity that the poem hadn't ended with referencing the moon, because that would have made the poem feel complete.

On the other hand, he had said that was too cliché – and got an apple custard tart thrown at the back of his head. But when he had turned around to frown at Savannah, she seemed unusually focused on her homework, as if she couldn't have possibly thrown an apple custard tart at her brother's head.

Riley's voice was tentative and soft when she read the first stanza. He didn't know if that was by design, or if she had judged that it was the best type of voice to use when reading the poem, but either way, Drake thought that it suited her just right.

It was rare for him to her her voice like this – normally, she was fiery and loud and making witty remarks in response to his own. Not that he would have her be any other way – but the gentle tone she was using right now... felt, right, too. Her gentle side was one he hadn't seen very often, but hearing it from a slight distance, as he was now, was pleasant, and he found himself liking the familiar poem.

If only I

Could paint a portrait of our

Pasts, kept safe in your heart and mine

Futures countless as the blades

Of verdant grass beneath my feet, yet still

Falling short of all the hope I see

In you, my haven

My beloved

Would you let me fight for you?

He supposed that Riley must have a gentle side. Waitresses would lose their jobs if they allowed themselves to lose their tempers at everybody they came across. Come to think of it, besides her being a waitress, she didn't seem to talk too much about her past – though she did tell him that she had managed to burn ice cream once.

Actually, how did she even manage to do that? As a waitress, he would have expected her to at least have some basic knowledge of how food was prepared. Drake really should have remembered that story of hers before trying her soup earlier today. The soup that she had claimed was traditionally Cordonian.

Instead of clinging to her American past, Drake observed, Riley had thrown herself completely into Cordonia. She might not understand why the Derby was important – honestly, Drake didn't either; but he did like the horses.

But she could find aspects of herself that she could show to the press to try and prove to them that she was worthy of being their queen. Yet even then, with her charming smiles and cryptic answers, the press had labeled her as 'The Mystery Woman.'

Women normally liked talking about themselves, but Riley, instead, preferred asking other people about themselves – and learning as much about Cordonia as she could.

It was as if she was forming roots here, already planning on building a life for herself here, and he didn't know if that spoke to her confidence about being chosen as Cordonia's queen, or simply to her growing esteem for a country in which she was determined to settle.

But then again, she had only seen the luxurious, glamorous side of Cordonia the whole time she had been here. What future did she see for herself here? If somebody else was chosen to be Cordonia's queen, would Riley be content to stay here anyway, but as a commoner, like Drake?

If only I

Could gather the scattered grains

Each a precious gift

Search blindly with my fingertips

Restore them to their place

Slow their treacherous fall

In you, my hourglass

My beloved

Would you let me fight for you?

This year's social season had gone by in a blink. It seemed that one moment, Maxwell was luring Riley to Cordonia, and the next moment, it was time for the 'fox hunt.' Time had passed – and passed too quickly.

Drake thought back to their walk back to the palace after eating cronuts. Riley had fallen into step beside him, and even that early on, she had already told him that with all his warnings about nobles and what the palace was like, it was difficult to get to know who he was.

How different would it have been, if Drake had know back then that Riley could be trusted? Drake wished that they had more time. He imagined longer conversations, more long talks and funny jokes and competitive races.

While ski races weren't an option in the palace, he could have told her about the game he had created with Liam, maze-tag, and had countless races to see who could reach the tree in the middle first.

Drake knew that she wouldn't think it was childish – she would laugh in the middle of his explanation, tag him, and run ahead, leaving him to stare, dumbfounded, for a second before he shouted a playful threat and chased after her.

They would play that game over again for hours and hours, one or the other always whining for a rematch to restore their maze-tag honor. And when they finally got tired, they would go to the tree in the middle of the maze.

They would lean against the trunk, breathing heavily from all the running and all the laughter, watching the sky in comfortable silence until the stars came out. He could tell Riley about the constellations Savannah had taught him, and hold back a smile as she tells him that what he said was a sea serpent looked more like a gummy worm to her.

How many starlit nights could Drake have spent with Riley in that maze?

But now, it was almost time for the 'fox hunt;' almost time for the final party of the social season at Maxwell and Bertrand's family estate; almost time for Liam's coronation. Almost time to find out if Riley was going to be somebody's wife. Liam's wife.

If only I

Could train flesh and blood and bone

To be of use, this shell, to see and shield you

Resist age and death, to spend eternity

In you, my home

My beloved

Would you let me fight for you?

The fourth stanza was a sad way to end the poem, speaking of a wish to do more and be more. The speaker clearly felt that whatever they had done, it wasn't enough. Devotion, at its very deepest, had its limits, but the poet clearly felt that endless, eternal devotion was the way things should be.

Drake disagreed. How pathetic would it be to be a shell, just lingering restlessly somewhere where they didn't belong, just waiting to be of use, having no purpose but to shield and protect? Drake found himself disliking the familiar poem.

How much time did somebody need to 'see and shield,' anyway? A lifetime was enough. Wishing for more time, for eternity, was just greedy, wasn't it?

[VI.]

Moments after reading the final line of the poem, Riley let out a small sigh. Because Drake couldn't see her, he didn't know what that sigh meant – and he didn't know why his own sigh followed shortly after, making Riley give a small squeak of surprise.

“Who's there?”

Drake opened his mouth to answer, but his throat felt slightly dry. And why did he feel so tired all of a sudden? He grasped the edge of the wall with his fingertips as he swallowed to moisten his throat, before finally giving a short, terse response.

“It's me.”

“Oh, Drake? Come on in! Why are you hiding out there?”

Noticing, even without wanting to, the fact that the wariness in Riley's first statement had given way to warm familiarity once she realized that it was Drake who had been there, he entered their cold, stone room with the cold, stone ceiling, only to see Riley getting up, smoothing the back of her blue dress with one hand as she held a book of poetry in the other.

“I finally found something I could do, Drake!” she said excitedly.

Waving the book in front of her, a finger marking the page she has just finished reading, she continued. “I chose a great traditional poem I could read to the court – I just hope they don't mind that I chose a romantic poem...” she finished with a slightly worried frown.

“Romantic?” he asked in surprise. “Riley, that's not a romantic poem. Every Cordonian knows that 'My Beloved' was commissioned by Queen Kenna Rys exactly one year after the defeat of Empress Azura. She told the poet to compose a poem, from the point-of-view of a patriotic soldier, that captured all the emotions of the Battle of Stormholt, so that younger generations would never forget.”

Drake pointed at a spot on the page.

“See that? The first three lines of the poem refer to Empress Azura – who was always called the Storm – and how the country united to defend the kingdom against her invasion. Our literature teacher told us that the poet had originally used the term, 'raging storm,' but Queen Kenna thought that it gave her too much power. So she had the poet use 'clouds' instead.”

Now it was Riley's turn to be surprised.

“But... but it sounds so romantic!”

Raising his eyebrow at her, he gently took the book from her hands to double-check that they were talking about the same poem, even though it wasn't necessary because, as he said, every Cordonian knew 'My Beloved.' And after confirming that it was the poem Drake had in mind, he started to explain the rest of it to her.

“See, the first stanza is about the whole country waking up to fight in the final battle... the second stanza is about the many possible futures Stormholt could have... the the third stanza is about the soldier saying that he wished he had more time to train so that he could be a better warrior for the country...”

He continued his way down the page.

“...and the last stanza is about him wanting to serve his country for eternity. Every stanza ends with the same line about being willing to go to war to defend Stormholt.” Drake snorted. “You must have a twisted mind to think – to think that such a historical poem as 'My Beloved' is about romance, of all things.”

It was silly of Riley. Just because something seemed like it could be romantic, like it should be romantic, didn't mean that it would be.

Would ever be.

“Drake? You're shaking.”

He looked down.

Why were his fingers trembling slightly?

Confused, Drake held them up in front of his face, and he blinked and blinked as he willed them to stop.

It worked almost completely. He shoved his hand into his pocket.

No need to see that.

“Oh, are you still feeling bad from the soup I made for you?” she asked, looking at him with wide, worried eyes. “I'll get you some dessert from the kitchens or something. That'll make you feel better. I'll be right back! And, don't worry,” she laughed, “I won't make it myself!”

With that, she rushed out of the room.

And after she was gone, he leaned against a cold, stone wall and wearily closed his eyes. Listening to a patriotic, historical poem about a soldier's love for his country shouldn't have drained all his energy from him, but somehow, it had.

Trembling fingers.

Shallow breaths.

Blinking eyes.

Drake's heart was cloudy and he felt like he wanted to throw up.

But this time, he had absolutely no idea why.

(The end.) (Word count: 5,299 words.)

First author’s note: I’ve had this idea for a while, so I’m happy I was finally able to write it 😊 I like the idea of Riley trusting Drake enough that he’s the one she goes to for help 😁 Also, it was not easy trying to write a poem that could sound romantic and patriotic at the same time 😂 I couldn’t use any classic romantic poetry techniques OR patriotic poetry techniques without giving everything away 😂 I think that this is the first sad Drake fanfic I’ve written, though 😢

Second author’s note: By the way, receiving 🦄🦄 comments 🦄🦄 on my fanfiction lets me know that YOU are interested in reading more… 😊😎 Nudge nudge, wink wink 😀😋

(Waiting for H.W.U. to come back, forever and always; 24/07/17.)

[ylwords]

ODE TO 2017.

Man… DON’T LOOK HERE FOR PROPER GRAMMAR OR NONE OF THAT OTHER SHIT. THAT WAS YOUR WARNING.

Alright 2017 you know I came into you not really knowing which was up to be honest…didn’t even know how I was really going to do the things I wanted to do and go to the places I wanted to go.

But… then life happens crazy shit. Opportunities come about and things look up and all that other shit feel me?. I was able to see the love of my life and breathe her air after a 6 year hiatus…GLAD BAG BUSS… I swear. BRO MAMA T LIVING LEGEND MET J’LISA WIFE/BABY MAMA. SHELLINGS.

WAIT LEMME STOP! HOW I FORGET THIS SHIT.

My dawg Obama had to leave bro….and bring in this disgusting piece of shit human being…and they really out here tryna call him PRESIDENT. Wild.

However moving past that….life was rolling and ting. Nothing crazy working and balling on a budget. Dealing with the last woman I’m giving my love to and crazy friends and they broke asses or whatever. Partying a bit……happy feet!

BUK UP INNA MI ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! SHELLINGS…..right? Fuck fi know…keep reading.

I went to St. Thomas again….loved it like the first time. Carnival was awesome. WHO THEY GOT PUTTING STONES ON A COSTUME IN THE MAS CAMP. YEA! ME!

But vibes and all….jolly rancher devil juice…rain….and beautiful views. HOLY FATHER IN LAW. Yea that was scary dread…….had to tell Avon to boss down likkle bit.

I WENT TO A JAM… LIKE IN ST.THOMAS. COULDN’T TELL ME SHIT!!!!! BRO KSB FOR LIFE! I WAS A FAN. KMT. #LLK

However….shoutout to the ferry and all its weak belly passengers. Bless Up.

NOW… right into BACCHANAL.

Welcome the friends into the living space. Vibes. Sweat Heat and ting however…cute or whatever. Time moving along more and more now….here we are on a plane again. Pride here we come to be loud and proud as we want to be. What a up and down weekend…

I mean like…VIBES but some moments had me like bruh not another issue.

Brought the loved one into the house that built me and saw my people….the fam and the GOOD AND LOYAL FRIENDS that decided to come holla at me…shit travel for me… AISHA AND JON. BLESS UP.

Sarah almost…died off a weed brownie…can’t even deal with her life. NEXT DAY…she STILL couldn’t catch herself. But anyways…. PRIDE was lit all in all. Got to walk around the city with the NYC LOVER… put her on to GYRO LIFE.

PAUSE I PUT HER ON TO SOME REAL SHIT - JAMAICAN KFC. JUICY BEEF CHEESE PATTY. GYROS. - but whos bragging? haha.

However….

Delayed OD.. but we touch back down.

Moving thru the months and things… parties and such.

Alot of preeing people and really seeing who fuck with you and what level that is….life bro.

I now have everything I have been wanting to get back in my life as far as equipment goes…..so 2018 I AM COMING.

My birthday came along….bitch I AM TWENTY FUCKING 6.

Yea….almost 30..

Anyways… birthday was good as always. Push down its DI OOMAN birthday… had to plan tings funny because my life is always on jokes time….

AC MARRIOTT — I AM HERE FOR YOU!

ALRIGHT….so things gonna get kinda real here for a minute so just chill.

WITH all this going on in my life…I was carrying such a burden of knowing I did something in 2016 that even I couldn’t recover from. I allowed myself to have a minute of weakness…and I lost my way for a quick second….enough to rock the foundation that I was now building with someone I wanted to be with forever. I did say anything for a year and I know I was wrong for that but I couldn’t lose everything… IT WASN’T THE SAME. I have messed up before but this was different…. I COULDN’T LOSE HER.

So…a year later I let the secret go and it rocked us but I didnt think of how hard because it was as if nothing happened for a while… tears and sadness but I thought we had it you know. I THOUGHT….

..this brings us Miami Carnival 2017….it was vibes and excitement for weeks and the weekend was here…then something happened as quick as the hype came….a misunderstanding which led to…..

ME……hurt. Cracked wide open….with my heart and soul falling out of me.

My Queen it would seem…decided to take life into her own hands and hurt me back in a way I have been hurt before….

Long story short…. A guy . Texts . Talking Dirty . Sex Implied .

BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

- I blinked and my Queen wasn’t my Queen anymore. Dawg that was the realist thing ever… like your face change or something…I don’t recognize you.

My heart bredren…..my heart!!!!!!!!!!! JESUS had to hold me where I stood.

Man… I had the worst thoughts. Like if I was even good enough…BUT I KNOW I AM AND IF ONE WOMAN DONT SEE IT THEN..THATS HOW LIFE BE.

Everybody makes mistakes… and everybody wants forgiveness and I get that but nothing like speaking highly of someone and wanting to give them the world and thinking they would never hurt you. Truly in love being free and trusting fully…

I broke my own rules and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

Some people will call it karma…I do . Some will say thats all? That I am being dramatic.

I don’t trust people to begin with…. I barely trust the people that brought me into this world. But I have learned to deal with people and not deal at the same time. It works for me.

BUT YEA….I was left King with no Queen.

The rest of 2017 was up and down…you know?

Holidays came and of course they were strange af… why wouldn’t they be.

Tried to keep the love alive regardless. Still had each others back in the strange situation that has become an everyday thing. LIFE.

BIG REST IN PEACE TO EVERY BODY LAID TO REST - FAMILY AND FRIENDS AND ALL. AND SERIOUS BIG UP TO THE ISLANDS AFTER THEM FUCK ASS HURRICANES. - BRO NONE OF THIS WAS HAPPENING WHEN OBAMA WAS AROUND. OKAY!!!

But yea I chose to write my ode…regardless. I mean tears and smiles and all the moments… amazing sex to stupid arguments…to good food and catching flights…….sigh

Even if I am sad af or broken af can a year can change alot I swear.

BUT…

Been thru a bit of every kind of feeling you could think of…..every fucking emoji…….BUT

I am here motherfucker…. 2018 ah guh get fuck up because it fuck wid everybody this year.

2017 MAN DOWN ! 2018 RISE UP !

[massmurdera]

Favorite Podcasts 2016

I have a data entry job in a lab processing bodily fluids. I hate the monotonous job, but one perk of the job is I get to listen to podcasts 40 hours/week,  time flies by, and I feel somewhat productive.

PERSONAL OPINIONS… -podcasts are best done between 2 people, preferably comedian friends. Sometimes, there can be too many cooks in the kitchen (Filmdrunk Frotcast, for instance, runs into this) -it’s usually best in person: you can sense that in some podcasts where they do it via Skype or on the phone -I avoid local sports talk radio like the plague—so you don’t get blowhards with hot takes/talking points where they have to have controversy to get ratings. Generally, everybody on podcasts gets along, it’s natural, funnier, and doesn’t fill hours. -while I don’t think some of these podcast comedians will ever become household names, they are doing some of the best work out there that’s ever been done comedically. It’s like Howard Stern and what Chris Rock said and I’m going to fuck this up: he might be the funniest person of all time if you compile what he did into a single hour. I feel like you could do these with a LOT of people. But they never will. -you listen long enough, it should feel like a friendship you are a part of. You know the people, get the inside jokes, and enjoy the banter. -best episodes tend to run 60 minutes or less—otherwise, it can get real bloated.

BEST EPISODES -End of World Election Night (Joe Rogan)—Bill Burr steals the live show from Stanhope, Rogan, Kreischer, etc—tour de force that came out the night of the Election while shit was going down. Burr is going for pure humor and some guests come on who have an issue with how he views things in a blunt, fair way where everything gets shit on and everything sucks: but, at the end of the day, his life is not going to be ruined. What I like about Burr is this: he will say awful things that you don’t agree with...but by the end you are on his side and laughing with him. -600 Dollar Podcast-‘Voyeur Motel’—Halpern reads out Gay Talese’s story of a guy who ran a hotel and had a secret viewing station set up above every guest’s bed and he would watch people have sex. It’s creepy, but here? Funny as hell. The ‘Back to the Future’ joke Halpern quickly gives almost made me crash on the Mass. Pike -Dollop/My Favorite Murder crossover-‘Otto in the Attic’ -Dollop does a murder w/ My Favorite Murder as guests. It is wild. -Dollop-‘Bundy 2: Oregon Takeover’ –one of the first Dollops was about Cliven Bundy, the anti-government rancher. This time, his kids took over Oregon—and, most recently, they went unpunished despite a takeover with guns. Just unreal. -Pardon My Take-‘Cat Killer Michael Rappaport’ (first part interview goes for 15 minutes or so) -Justin Halpern’s Papa Roach story on Frotcast—I was in tears at work listening to this. It helps to have been of age when Papa Roach was a thing in the late 90′s/early 2000s (Filmdrunk Frotcast; 3:30 mark on the ‘Best of 2016’: 90 second story basically)

BILL BURR’s Monday Morning Podcast (funniest comic alive mostly does a 1-man rant by himself) 2 episodes a week—1 of which is half throwback episodes

I don’t get how Burr does it: it should be impossible for Burr to carry a podcast each week by himself for an hour, but he does. He rambles for an hour, takes listener e-mail. He is THE only person I listen to advertisement readings for: he somehow makes that funny, shits on the ads who sometime remove them. But it’s like listening to a guy workshop some material and improve himself in small ways as a comic.

I will say this though: when somebody else enters the podcast, it becomes funnier. His wife, Nia. He can play ball with and you can sense him having an audience and naturally be funnier. 600 Dollar Podcast: a comedy podcast between 3 comedians/writers who talk about marriage & raising kids—but it’s totally not that at all and always goes AWOL 1 episode per week—but hasn’t been one in months Horrible title for a show—started off as ‘Wild’n’Out Without Nick Cannon’ but they got a cease and desist from Cannon’s lawyer.

Justin Halpern (Shit My Dad Says), Tommy Jonaghan (breakout guy of the show and a stand-up) and Patrick Monaghan (another TV writer)

This podcast has come the closest since Walking the Room to genuinely making me laugh out loud each week. Consistently. Great and funny stories of failure. Fucked up in the best way and goes FAR down the rabbit hole of topics.

BEST EPISODES…. #7-‘Voyeur Motel’ (Halpern’s Back to the Future joke) #11-‘It’s Called a Vagina’ (when Halpern loses his shit at the 10:15 mark) Dollop (two comedians: American history read to a friend who has no idea what the topic is about. Point is, you realize America has NEVER been great and it’s supremely and endlessly fucked up) Walking the Room is my favorite podcast ever. Laugh-out loud funny friendship and THE best and funniest take on unending failure and, like Patton Oswalt said, being a shit-magnet for people/things. They do live reunion ones once a year—and they generally suck and aren’t the same but I’ll take what I can get. Anyways, that podcast is over—and the Dollop, a history, took over as Dave Anthony’s main thing (He’ll do conversations with Wil Anderson on TOFOP/FOFOP that are fun and closest to Walking the Room, but it’s not the same: he’s much more relaxed/normal whereas Dave was putting on a face as someone who hated his goofy friend, Greg, part of the time and was angrier than he was—and if you follow him on Twitter, he is comically angry and outspoken)

Sometimes, the Dollop can be hit-or-miss and I tune out a bit. Within first couple minutes, I can tell if it’s going to be amazing. Gareth can improv too much at times—but when it’s on, it’s on. They’re incredibly quick and it never tires how incredulous Gareth can get to the stories to Dave’s sarcastic, nonchalant storytelling while EVERYTHING that is happening is fucked up.

I think if they could make a lot of these Dollops into movies, they would be amazing. Some Mel Brooks-ian shit. I would rather see the Dollop’s version of Hugh Glass than Leonardo DiCaprio’s version in ‘the Revenant’. The show got a nod of the head in the ‘Tickled’ documentary.

But my jaw drops at American history I didn’t know about—or to its extent—and then laugh hard. Some of it is minimal characters/events that are just funny—others are wildly serious or show parallels to today.

BEST EPISODES… -‘Otto in the Attic’ (crossover live w/ My Favorite Murder) -‘Bundy 2: Oregon Takeover’ (anything involving Cliven Bundy’s family and their anti-government militia) -Black Panther Fred Hampton’ (not a funny one—but a guy I never heard of who should have been up there with MLK/Malcolm X had he not been assassinated by the FBI/American government) -‘Girl Watchers’ -‘Domino’s Pizza Story’ -‘Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo’ (pre-Trump guy) -‘Boston Busing ’74 & ’75 PT 1 & 2’

All-Time? ‘the Rube’ is the best in a runaway or me. ‘Purity Ring’, Tickled, Hugh Glass, some of the earlier ones are great.

IF YOU LIKE THIS: history’; Drunk History comedy…My Favorite Murder My Favorite Murder (true crime—one comic and her affable friend read 1 true crime murder to each other) 1 episode per week; 90 minutes-ish

True crime is all the rage—so it makes sense as to why this podcast has become insanely popular. It might be easy to shit on, in a morbid way, to go over murders in a ‘fan’ way: but it’s the same way movies/TV shows/news each night centers around murders. The show might glorify people—but there’s a common bent/theme around certain killers and their upbringings—or possible life-saving life mottos (‘fuck politeness’). I can see the show doing more positive things, giving $ to rape kits being tested (how the fuck was that NOT a thing?!?!)

I was aware of Karen Kilgarif because Dave Anthony dated her and she was a guest on Walking the Room. But it’s AMAZING when people you are vaguely aware of find their own avenue. And become stars in their own right—and people you look forward to hearing each week.

Her friend, Georgina, is just as easily likable. DEFINITELY comes across like a gossiping girly-girl (I heard that criticism), but she’s so damn cool, genuinely funny, and cute (even before I saw how pretty she was—there’s no way to describe it and you can sense it with how Karen adores/views her). It could be a really dour show OR droning in the wrong hands, but they make the topic rightfully serious but fun simultaneously in the best way. It is respectful to the victims.

But yeah, they read Wikipedia entries to each other and bring in a heavily-informed obsession to the podcast. But it’s the humor and chemistry that helps saves the show in tone. It’s not as heavily-researched as the Dollop or formatted in a natural storytelling bent, but it’s successful.

KEY EPISODES…. -Live from LA Podfest (crossover with Dave Anthony of the Dollop) -Chicago Podfest (changing point for the show: you realize that they are massive in this episode in ways they didn’t expect—with a rabid fanbase) IF YOU LIKE THIS: you’ll like the Dollop

PARDON MY TAKE (sports podcasts) 3 episodes per week; 60 minutes each I want to slap myself in the face listening to this—because these are the two best young, likable stars in comedy/sports. IT IS HARD TO DO SPORTS COMEDY DONE SUCCESSFULLY BECAUSE PEOPLE TAKE IT TO SERIOUSLY! Big Cat comes across like Jimmy Kimmel; PFTCommenter, however, steals the show—and he’s incomparable (maybe Stephen Colbert for being able to stay in character?): basically he’s born out of ‘hot-take’ culture and mocking it. There’s a format to the show, some interviews, segments.

Yes, it’s part of the Barstool Sports empire—run by douchebags (a friend of mine is cousins with Portnoy—tried getting an autograph for her boyfriend who loved Barstool Sports, he refused), but forget that.

LAUGH OUT LOUD… -Stingray Steve calls the fall of the Berlin Wall (a southern college football fan—they get him to announce each week’s big plays; when they FINALLY get him to call a key moment in history, I lost my shit at work) -Jimbo of the Week (mailbag fails from readers) -Monday Mornings after NFL games where they mimic Chris Berman’s recaps of the games

BEST EPISODE… -Catkiller Michael Rapaport (Rapaport is an actor/personality easy to shit on—but he comes across great as a podcast guest on Bill Simmons, Bill Burr, Pardon My Take: he’s game)—September 6th -Marlins Man/Foul Ball Fan (July 6th) -Martin Shkreli –when they shit on him; it’s interesting to hear them be affable/likable/funny with people they clearly hate. Marlins Man & this episode are pretty great interviews to hear how naturally funny they are, easy to get along with, even while still getting jokes in at people they hate. It’s not easy.

TOFOP & FOFOP (Australian comedian and funny actor friend poke at mostly American pop culture) -Charlie Clausen is the co-host on TOFOP -FOFOP gets its name from the show ‘Fringe’: it’s ‘Faux-TOFOP’, typically with American comedians. Dave Anthony is the best guest for FOFOP.

Wil Anderson is an Australian comic—he’s ridiculously affable, charming, and naturally funny. This is my closest substitute for Walking the Room, in a way, with its chemistry between two comics. It doesn’t come close, but that’s fine. I don’t get all the Australian references (rugby, pop culture, politics), but I don’t need to as an American—because America dominates just about every episode.

Clausen, on TOFOP, is damn likable. I can’t say enough about how naturally great Anderson/Clausen are on podcasts. It’s not just the accents that do it.

BEST EPISODES… -#263-‘Should I Go Home?’ : post-election w/ Dave Anthony I don’t think that’s right, but I’ve laughed out loud with pop culture breakdowns like Game of Thrones, Westworld, or shitting on Zach Snyder Batman/Superman movies in the funniest way I’ve heard (miles funnier than Filmdrunk-but no real format to the show) Inactives: NFL talk, fantasy football…and some parenting

In a just world, Matt Ufford should be a mammoth sports media star alongside Katie Nolan. He’s likable, outspoken, funny—plus he’s a military veteran/Captain in the Iraq War (though he does not come across as that).

So yeah, an NFL podcast with Ufford (Seahawks fan) and Nick Stevens (Pats/Star Wars fan and stand-up comedian). Stevens should be easy to hate as a stereotype of a Boston sports fan—but he’s naturally funny and likable, quick with jokes/takes on a spot.

The first episodes of 2015 are great for Matt’s all-time depressing Wal-Mart riff and Stevens’ reaction or Stevens bringing up the Butt Fumble that made me cry laughing—and Ufford lost his shit.

Also, I’ve NEVER done fantasy sports, but I still enjoy the show—most NFL show (NFL Ringer; Simmons; Barnwell) aren’t funny, have chemistry, and maybe too nerdy—this is wildly funny, enjoyable.

YOU’LL LIKE THIS: football, comedy, Star Wars

Filmdrunk Frotcast: Pop Culture, Movies, Comedy As I said, sometimes this show can have too many cooks in the kitchen. There can be 4-6 people on the show sometimes—some of whom aren’t funny or interesting like Laremy, Lindy West. Matt Lieb grew on me heavily. I found him unfunny and someone who comes across as funnier than they think and the other people on the show let him do his thing, don’t cut him off, laugh too hard, or know what to do. But he’s become a centerpiece of the show and now I don’t mind it. I dig Brendan, Joe Sincilito, and some other dude that’s been on more of late But Lieb does not really have an equal comedically to play with him, so he feels very much like an excited dog who just wants to play but could use another dog to play with. Horrible analogy, but feels right.

The show—and Uproxx, in general—hits on topics I am VERY familiar with and want to hear discussed. I hardly tend to agree with Vince Mancini’s tastes and sometimes opinions—he’s more of a critic than a comic. Lieb mostly looks for pure comedic bents and can derail the podcast, in a good way.

KEY GUESTS: Justin Halpern, PFTCommenter, Matt Ufford, Joe Sincilito SONG: Matt Lieb’s ‘Corporate Birthday’

BEST EPISODE: ‘Best of 2016’ (as an entry point, it does a good job capturing what the show does—love it or leave it. So lots of Lieb improv and made-up songs on the spot inbetween conversations)

REVISIONIST HISTORY: MALCOLM GLADWELL 10 episodes total (on hiatus)

Heavily organized and produced. I avoid boring This American Life podcasts like the plague, but Gladwell does that a bit—but better here. It’s interesting.

Best episodes: ‘Satire Paradox’; ‘Lady Vanishes’..the 3-part college episodes is an obsession and interesting political/social axe that Gladwell has to grind.

RECOMMENDED: if you like Malcolm Gladwell’s books even a little—this is otherworldly as an investigative podcast piece. It should NOT be this damn good. BILL SIMMONS (mostly sports) 2 episodes/week; 60-80 minutes each He gets shit on fairly—and sometimes over-the-top unfairly. He has a tired schtick and thoughts, a HORRIBLE voice (the opening segments on his TV show were due to be a disaster), unfunny. I don’t know how to say it: someone like Justin Halpern has a HORRIBLE voice—but he transcends that because he’s so goddamn funny. With that said, he’s talented, inspired/broke the door open for a lot of people, is a good podcast host, easy/affable enough to listen to, and has good taste. I don’t think his friends are funny or worthwhile  (House; Cousin Sal) but I enjoy Jack-O. Mike Lombardi is painfully bad—but I have to sit through it as a die-hard Pats fan since he was in the Pats organization until just a couple months ago. But he gets damn good guests every now and then.

BEST GUESTS/EPISODES: Michael Rapaport, Gladwell, Wesley Morris, Al Michaels, Robert Smigel, Jay Glazer; Key & Peele, Chris Sacca, etc, etc COMMON SENSE w/ DAN CARLIN (a historian rants about politics in a focused way) Carlin is like Burr—he does a podcast by himself for an hour and rambles a bit. Difference is, there is not a single funny bone to Carlin’s body. I agree with Filmdrunk: Carlin comes across like a Right Wing radio host in how he talks—but he’s utterly brilliant. He’s the best guy to break down history in today’s terms. I subscribe more to his thinking as a leftist political-minded person.

I still need to check out ‘Hardcore History’: I hear that’s the shit, but I don’t have time for 12-16 hour anthology pieces. I started listening to ‘Wrath of Khan’ and it’s insane, thorough, well-researched and great storytelling. It’s daunting though.

RECOMMENDED: History/political buffs—with leftist-minded thinking and rambling HOUND TALL: Educational live comedy show where an expert  talks about something and comics engage in it in a panel Basically, an expert comes in (a pimp; a woman who was in a harem; Science; Religion; etc) and a panel of comedians riff on that in a loose way. Moshe is brilliant as a host and he has good comedic guests (Pete Holmes; Joe DeRosa; John Mulaney; Natasha Legerro, etc)

SUGGEST IF YOU LIKE: education, in a weird way HANNIBAL BURRESS: HANDSOME RAMBLER Podcast is in early stages. Mainly it’s just Hannibal and his DJ chilling while Hannibal fucks around with autotune at times. He’s been having more conversations with guests lately (Chance the Rapper, for one)

Episode 2—Hannibal’s experience with Air B’n’B’s JOE ROGAN 3 episodes per week—3-4 hours each The podcast simply goes on for FAR too long (3-4 hours) and the topics meander far down the rabbit hole. But, if you’re like me and have the time, you don’t mind having to listen to a 3-4 hour conversation.

Rogan is a far-out dude, gets shit on for his opinions, lifestyle (Hunting & MMA most likely), and politically correct people (it’s overblown). But he’s an open and fair-minded dude, even if I don’t agree with him.

He’s kind of similar to Pete Holmes: long conversations, deep person—except Pete’s is maybe more focused with questions that come up in every podcast (it’s a funnier version of WTF with Marc Maron) and Holmes is just plain goofier and naturally funny. Rogan is mostly an intense dude—who has more life experience, hobbies, and skills.

BEST EPISODE: End of the World election night podcast Bill Burr steals the show from everybody, including Doug Stanhope. It’s unreal.

OTHER GUESTS: Bill Burr, Dan Carlin, Hannibal Burress, Neal Brennan

Pete Holmes: You Made it Weird (funnier, goofier, deeper Marc Maron conversations) Burr is the funniest comic alive—but Pete is probably the most insanely likable; they both should be massive. Burr does the best panel work on a night show: he’s an angry, loveable, opinionated dude, pushes buttons in a playful way. Holmes is a DEEP-thinking guy—who just is universally likable. Even his face, it’s goofy and instantly funny.

BEST GUESTS… Moshe Kasher (recent); Garry Shandling (month before he died)

SUGGEST IF YOU LIKE THIS: WTF w/ Marc Maron—if Maron was funny/looser/goofier in his interviews

WTF W/ Marc Maron Hardly interviews comics anymore since he’s nearly interviewed them all. I don’t bother to check out as much. He hasn’t had as much good interviews this year. I’ve seen him live, I think, 6 times (and 2 podcast tapings that were in Boston: first one was the best by far)

But reason why his podcast is great is that Marc isn’t a whole person, he’s finding himself—and you can sense he’s trying to make himself better and find himself with the people he’s interviewing. He’s looking for grace, understanding, and just being a better person.

Also, everybody skips the openings to all his podcasts—and just cut to the interview.

BEST INTERVIEWS… Robert Kelly (underrated: might be one of the funniest people I’ve seen live—his own podcast has great moments: him w/ Burr, DeRosa, Kreischer on Bertcast was amazing) Louis CK; Jeff Goldblum

CHAPO TRAP HOUSE Caught this only in the last week.

The Ben Shapiro takedown in the last episode of the year was great (they read passages from his awful book of the extreme conservative writer. Helps to know who he is in a way)

SUGGESTED EPISODE… -Post-Election breakdown ‘We Live in the Zone Now’: My thoughts exactly as a lefty on the election & state of politics

OPIE RADIO Anytime they release a Patrice O’Neal, Bill Burr, Louis CK, or Robert Kelly oldies, it’s special. Some of the most brutal and funny comedy ever was done on Opie & Anthony. A show as PACKED with people as, say, Filmdrunk Frotcast could use is actual comedians who are mostly all on the same level ‘funny’ as each other. Except the main thing with this show is that they bust balls in the cruelest way. Endlessly. With that said, you can easily hate the fans of the show and hate Anthony Cumia’s politics and how far-right/distant he has become (got fired from the show)—and still recognize how brilliant he was as a host. There’s a treasure trove of amazing material on Opie that you can put up with the best comedy ever. It’s the original podcast and when they re-release old shit, it’s a goldmine.

-We’ll See You in Hell w/ Joe Derosa (2 friends talk movies and shit on each other for liking or not liking certain movies: it’s Roger & Ebert basically) Derosa has a mostly HORRIBLE taste in movies.

I don’t think I could recommend this podcast to anybody unless you’ve heard him on a podcast with Pete Holmes, Bill Burr, Hound Tall, or Opie. Pete Holmes would 100% be the best (Pete’s podcast to hear Pete’s impression of Joe, Hound Tall) and Burr would be great to see how easily Burr shits on him. Otherwise, you’d just view him as an unlikable asshole.

Derosa has a couple albums out and they’re worthwhile. But there is one that he recorded that went AWOL and the crowd absolutely was drunk and derailed his special, so Joe went with, trashed his special, and just went off on the audience trashing them. It’s amazing. It’s “You Will Die” and it’s the second part of the special that was recorded and meant to be the special.

COULD GIVE UP ON AND BE COOL -Bill Barnwell (NFL podcast) -NFL Ringer -the Watch (TV/movies)

Only because I’m a big football/TV/movie fan—the hosts aren’t very good, funny, interesting or standout. I think they are good, straight-forward writers though (all formerly of Grantland). I listen to these episodes at 2x speed to make them go by faster. OVERRATED PODCASTS -Keeping It 1600 Politics podcasts from people who worked for Obama as policy advisor & speechwriter. They get insider guests/journalists. Sure, it’s mildly interesting to hear them go over current events—but it’s ultimately forgettable. Kind of smug. Jokes aren’t funny. They are inoffensive dudes and centrists. It’s a podcast for water-carrying establishment Democrats generally and I think they are blind to see at how limp and ineffectual their party is and why that is so. I guess the podcast that came after the election is interesting to listen to—and how shocked they were. They never thought it would happen—and they never thought Hillary was a horrible candidate.

I’d say the Ringer podcasts (the Watch; Simmons) the people who host the podcasts are NOT funny people at all. There’s laughter going on, but it’s never made by funny people. I like Simmons, but I can’t defend him being naturally funny the way he would like to be.

SUGGESTION: listen to Wil Anderson, an Australian comic, alongside Dave Anthony cover politics on FOFOP. I started listening to Chapo Trap House-that’s better than Keeping it 1600 and what I wanted in a politics podcast MOST DISAPPOINTING PODCASTS -Serial season 2—checked out after a couple episodes. It tried something new and failed miserably. -Deadcast –Drew Magary is the funniest online writer for a decade now, but he comes across as obnoxious and loud on podcasts. Tim Marchman? A boring contrarian killjoy. They go over topics I enjoy hearing about though, but I gave up. Also, they do it via Skype, so it misses some chemistry of podcasts that do it in person.

DON’T LISTEN TO ENOUGH BUT THINK ARE GOOD -Chelsea Peretti (Bill Burr episode is great—but that podcast has like 3 episodes a year) -Guys We Fucked -My Brother My Brother & Me (3 brothers, comedy—and I heard their Dungeons & Dragons podcast Adventure Zone is great—but I’m not into that game) -Sklarbro Country (Sports + comedy) -Todd Glass (Patton Oswalt as a guest was amazing a year or so ago)

PODCASTS I PLAN ON CHECKING OUT MORE IN 2017 -Chapo’s Trap House -Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History