#key and peele war veteran

[96thdayofrage]

How lawmakers block progress and maintain oppressive policies

Many lawmakers, especially in the South, fought to maintain the nation’s founding principles of white supremacy.

In Alabama’s Dallas County, more than half the population was Black in 1961 but fewer than one in 100 Black citizens were registered to vote due to daunting poll taxes and other measures meant to disenfranchise Black voters. 

Across the South, registrars could selectively ask Black voters to read part of the Constitution, then decide whether the text had been read to their liking, said Carol Anderson, an African American studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

As such, they had enormous power to block people from voting, Anderson said.

A modest civil rights act passed in 1957 had enabled the Justice Department to sue states for voting rights violations but put the onus on people whose rights had been violated, requiring them to challenge systems designed to keep them down, Anderson said. By 1963, a federal report examining 100 counties in eight Southern states found that Blacks remained substantially underrepresented at the polls.

Selma, the seat of Dallas County, became an important battleground as tensions escalated. A local judge stifled demonstrations by declaring public gatherings of more than two people illegal, drawing a visit from Martin Luther King Jr. and thrusting Selma into the national spotlight.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Southern legislators repeatedly derailed civil rights-related proposals while chairing key committees, said David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. 

“Their control over these committees allowed them to gate-keep the agenda,” Bateman said.

Images of officers attacking voting rights activists – including then 25-year-old activist John Lewis – on a Selma bridge with clubs and tear gas in March 1965 helped sway public support. Days after the so-called “Bloody Sunday” incident, President Lyndon Johnson pressed lawmakers to pass broad voting rights legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and other discriminatory practices while requiring federal approval of proposed voting-eligibility standards before states could implement them.

Today, Bateman said, as increasing voting restrictions continue to disproportionately affect people of color, “there’s every reason to believe voter disenfranchisement campaigns will persist.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 reversed a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, allowing states to alter voting rules before obtaining federal consent. This summer, the court issued a ruling that disqualifies votes cast in the wrong precinct and only allows family members or caregivers to turn in another person’s ballot.

At least 18 states have enacted laws making voting harder this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In Montana, legislators abolished Election Day registration. Florida curtailed after-hours drop boxes.

Georgia shortened absentee ballot request periods, criminalized providing food and water to queued-up voters and made opening polls optional on Sundays, traditionally a day when the Black vote spikes as congregants vote after church. 

“We still have not dealt with anti-Blackness in this society,” said Anderson, of Emory University. “We’re really looking at the same pattern, the same rhymes.”

In September, Democrats introduced an elections and voting rights bill that would expand early voting options, identification requirements and access to mail-in ballots while allowing Election Day registration.

Police have long upheld racist laws, often with violence

As Blacks demanded equality during the civil rights movement, they faced hostility not just from fellow civilians but from those entrusted to protect and to serve.

In 1961, Freedom Rides occurred throughout the South as activists challenged Southern non-compliance with a Supreme Court decision ruling that declared segregated bus travel unconstitutional. The campaign met with often ugly resistance: In Birmingham, riders were attacked by a Ku Klux Klan mob, reportedly with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains.

Within the mob was an FBI informant who told the agency of the impending attack, but the agency did nothing, reluctant to expose its mole. Two decades later, a U.S. District Court judge excoriated the FBI for its inaction.

“The FBI was passively complicit,” said Diane McWhorter, author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”

The attack occurred with the blessing of Alabama public safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, who told Klan leaders that police would wait 15 minutes before stepping in.

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said he sees the links between the police violence of Birmingham and “Bloody Sunday” and the tanks, tear gas and rubber bullets employed at today’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

“We have John Lewis and others marching on that bridge protesting police brutality, and they get attacked and beat up by police,” said Butler, author of the book “Chokehold; Policing Black Men.” “And last summer, throughout the country there were marches on police brutality – and at these marches, police attacked the people protesting police brutality. The parallels are clear.”

People of color continue to be disproportionately affected by fatal police shootings, with significantly higher death rates than whites over the previous five years, researchers at Yale University in Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania reported last year. “So it’s unclear whether change is actually occurring,” Butler said.

Critics note the police presence and brutality faced by Black Lives Matter protesters during the unrest following Floyd’s murder – the open-source database Bellingcat found more than 1,000 incidents of police violence – in contrast with the relatively unprepared force that was unable to stop hordes of mostly white Donald Trump supporters from breaching perimeter fencing and entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“There has never been a time when policing of public speech hasn’t been racially biased,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of Howard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center in Washington, D.C. “With the civil rights-era protests, most people understood that they were standing up for core American principles as opposed to Jan. 6, where they were trying to stop people’s votes from being counted.”

A USA TODAY analysis of arrests linked to the insurrection found that 43 of 324 people arrested were either first responders or military veterans; at least four current and three former police officers now face federal charges.

Education leaders have maneuvered to keep segregation, hide racist history

Education leaders have also at times sought to stall progress.

Two years after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision ruling segregated schools unconstitutional, Virginia Rep. Howard Smith took the floor to address his colleagues.

There, he introduced a document signed by 82 representatives and 19 senators, all from former Confederate states. The so-called Southern Manifesto called for resisting desegregation and blasted the Brown decision as an abuse of judicial power violating states’ rights.

The gesture demonstrated how deep resistance to desegregation ran in the South. The next year, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus summoned the National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High, in defiance of a federal order.

“After the ruling comes down, you have massive resistance in the South,” said Sonya Ramsey, an associate history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “You have school boards saying they’re not going to do it. You have government officials saying they’re not going to do it. That’s a system.”

Resistance came in many forms, she said, from committees formed to study the matter in perpetuity to policies that allowed whites, but not Blacks, to transfer schools. 

Some institutional leaders did make positive strides, Ramsey noted, even if for economic reasons. While many Southern cities resisted desegregation efforts, officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, eager to promote the area as a progressive business climate, constructed a districtwide busing plan designed to have schools reflect the community with the help of Black and white families and local leaders.

But institutional ills continue, Ramsey and others say – in charter schools now struggling with diversity, in faulty school funding formulas and in ongoing debates about what students should be taught about slavery and racism. Bills limiting how educators can teach about racism have been introduced this year in at least 28 states.

A 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center study of educational standards in 15 states found none addressed slavery’s justification in white-supremacist ideology nor its integral part in the economy; furthermore, the report noted, a separate survey found just 8% of high school seniors identified slavery as the Civil War’s cause.

“It’s fear of the unknown and of disruption,” said Donnor, of William & Mary. “And seeing that the status quo is no longer acceptable. One of the major parallels is in the hostility of the pushback. If you peel back the layers, you can see the similarities.”

News media shapes how Americans view race

The news media has throughout the nation’s history helped Americans understand racial issues – for better or worse. 

In 1962, after James Meredith tested federal law to become the first Black student admitted to the formerly all-white University of Mississippi, the station manager of Jackson’s WLBT decried the decision on-air, saying states should make their own admission decisions.

Station officials strongly supported segregation, rebuffing calls for opposing views, avoiding civil rights coverage and notoriously blaming technical problems for interruption of a 1955 “Today Show” interview of attorney Thurgood Marshall. Ultimately, after repeated complaints to the Federal Communications Commission and a crucial federal court decision affirming public input in FCC hearings, the station lost its license.

“These are the stories we weren’t taught in journalism school,” said Joseph Torres, co-author of “News For All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.” “They (civil rights groups) were saying, it’s a public airwave, and it’s not being fair to the Black community.”

Black media stepped up to offer different perspectives of mainstream narratives or provide coverage that wasn’t otherwise there. When 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 by two men who would ultimately be acquitted by an all-white jury, Jet magazine published a photo of Till’s mutilated body that helped kickstart the civil rights movement.

While some white-owned media such as Mississippi’s Delta Democrat Times and Lexington Advertiser condemned segregation and violence, others such as Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger held to the status quo. Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, purchased the newspaper in 1982.

“Had the Clarion-Ledger taken a leadership position denouncing atrocities going on in front of their faces, the state would be farther along in terms of getting past some of the pain,” said Mississippi Public Broadcasting executive editor Ronnie Agnew, who served as the newspaper’s executive editor until 2011.

In 1968, the landmark Kerner Commission, appointed to investigate the unrest that had exploded in national riots, faulted the media in addition to longstanding racism and economic inequalities. “The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective," the commission’s final report read.

“They made it absolutely clear that the white press had done a terrible job of covering civil rights,” said Craig Flournoy, a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota who has critiqued the Los Angeles Times’ “incendiary” coverage of the 1965 Watts riots, for which the newspaper won a Pulitzer.

Flournoy said the Times relied heavily on white police and white elected officials for material. In one particularly egregious example, he said the newspaper, having no Black reporters on staff, sent a young Black advertising staffer into Watts to dictate dispatches by payphone, but his notes were repurposed into sensational stories that exaggerated the supposed Black threat.

[upyourgeek]

SAD NEWS: After original court clerk Karen Austin left Night Court after the first season, Charles Robinson stepped in to play Mac, the amiable Vietnam veteran rarely seen without his plaid shirt and cardigan, and more than capable of tossing a few well-placed zingers around. Robinson also directed three episodes of Night Court over the course of the series, and appeared in movies such as Sugar Hill, The Black Gestapo, Apocalypse Now, The River, Set It Off, Antwone Fisher, The House Bunny, and more. The actor was also appeared in episodes of TV shows like Roots: The Next Generations, Hill Street Blues, Buffalo Bill, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Love & War, Home Improvement, Buddy Faro, Carnivale, Charmed, House, Cold Case, How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, Big Love, Hart of Dixie, Key & Peele, Grey's Anatomy, This is Us, Mom, Love in the Time of Corona, and much more. A revival of Night Court is currently in the works, with John Larroquette slated to return as Dan Fielding. The Big Bang Theory's Melissa Rauch will star as Judge Abby Stone, the daughter of Harry Stone, played by the late, great Harry Anderson. As the revival will doubtlessly pay tribute to Anderson, it would be lovely if they were able to pay tribute to Charles Robinson as well. He will be missed. Up Your Geek extends its condolences to Robinson’s family, friends, colleagues, and fans. #peaceinparadise #rip #charlesrobinson #actor #nightcourt #buffalobill https://www.instagram.com/p/CRP0lSIHs_F/?utm_medium=tumblr

[aion-rsa]

Rick and Morty: A Guide to Every Voice Actor

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The world of Rick and Morty has grown to absurd proportions. The show spans multiple planets, galaxies, timelines, and multiverses, meaning there’s always an opportunity to meet strange new people and creatures. 

As such, Rick and Morty’s voice cast has grown along with the adventures of its titular pair. While co-creator Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer, and Sarah Chalke have reliably voiced the central Smith-Sanchez family this entire time, the show also relies on a large crop of other voice actors. Some actors recur while others pop up only a time or two as very special guests. But all contribute to the rich aural tapestry of Adult Swim’s very ambitious animated series. 

Gathered here is a list of (to the best of our knowledge) every voice actor who has popped up on Rick and Morty, who they played, and where you may have heard (or seen) them before. 

Justin Roiland

Rick, Morty, Mr. Meseeks, Mr. Poopybutthole, Mr. Always Wants to Be Hunted

Justin Roiland is not just the co-creator of Rick and Morty but also the vocal engine for how much of the show sounds. Roiland portrays Rick, Morty, Mr. Meseeks, Mr. Poopybutthole, and countless other distinctively voiced characters in the show’s weird world. From the pilot on, Roiland’s tic-filled voice patterns have driven a lot of the humor behind the show. 

Roiland has been an animator and a voice actor for quite a long time, getting involved with his eventual Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon and his Channel 101 imprint back in 2004. There he made Internet-only cult animated series like House of Cosbys, and 2 Girls One Cup: the Show. His voice was previously well known as Earl of Lemongrab (“Unacceptable!!!”) in Adventure Time. 

Chris Parnell

Jerry Smith

Former SNL cast member Chris Parnell has had a prolific career in comedy both as a live-action and voice actor. Parnell is best known for playing Garth Holliday in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Dr. Leo Spaceman in 30 Rock, and many more roles in film and television. In the animation world he’s voiced characters on Archer, Robot Chicken, Gravity Falls, and beyond. His voice is often perfect for the “everyman” role and as such he has only been required to embody the sad form of Jerry Smith on Rick and Morty thus far. 

Spencer Grammer

Summer Smith

The daughter of Kelsey Grammar, Spencer Grammar got her start as Casey Carywright on the ABC Family college dramedy Greek. Since then, she has done chiefly live-action work on shows such as CSI, Chicago PD, and Grey’s Anatomy. 

Sarah Chalke

Beth Smith

Canadian actress Sarah Chalke brings two enormous roles from TV comedy’s past to her work on Rick and Morty. At first she was best known as the “second Becky” on ABC sitcom Roseanne. She would then go on to portray Dr. Elliot Reid for nine seasons of the classic Scrubs. Chalke is still chiefly a live-action comedic actress today but has done some more voice work in the past, including on Clone High and American Dad. 

Kari Wahlgren

Jessica, Cynthia, Samantha, Mother Gaia

Kari Wahlgren works extensively as a voice actress for animated movies, TV shows, and video games. As evidenced by her character list above, she is often Rick and Morty’s go-to voice to portray one of Summer’s teenage peers. 

Brandon Johnson

Mr. Goldenfold

Brandon Johnson is a familiar face and voice to Adult Swim audiences. He has previously popped up on NTSF:SD:SUV and American Dad. On Rick and Morty he voices Mr. Goldenfold, who is seemingly the only teacher at Morty and Summer’s school. 

Phil Hendrie

Principal Gene Vagina

Philip Hendrie is best known for hosting The Phil Hendrie Show, a proto-Comedy Bang Bang-esque talk radio show in the 1990s where he portrayed both a fictionalized version of himself and many other wacky characters. He broke into animated voice acting in the late ‘90s, voicing dozens of characters on King of the Hill and popping up in Futurama as well. On Rick and Morty he plays the unfortunately named principal of Morty’s school. 

Ryan Ridley

Frank Palicky, Lighthouse Keeper, Concerto

Ryan Ridley is a writer and producer on Rick and Morty, and like many of the show’s writers is sometimes called upon to lend his voice to a character or two. His best known creation is the Lighthouse Keeper on the Purge planet obsessed with his terrible screenplay. Ridley has also written for Ghosted, Blue Mountain State, and Community. 

Rob Paulsen

Snuffles, Centaur

Rob Paulsen is a legendary voice actor best known for voicing two Ninja Turtles (Raphael and Donatello) and several Animaniacs characters. His filmography is truly impressive and includes the important role of Snuffles the Smith family dog on Rick and Morty.

Jess Harnell

Scary Terry, Ruben

Harnell is another Animaniacs veteran. After voicing Scary Terry and some additional voices in season 1, Harnell has yet to return to Rick and Morty. 

Patricia Lentz

Joyce Smith

Patricia Lentz provides the voice of Jerry’s mom. She’s had a long, impressive career of live-action and voice acting with some highlights including Runaways, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Happy Days. 

Dana Carvey

Leonard Smith

The voice of Jerry’s dad is provided by one of SNL’s better known alums in Dana Carvey. A master impressionist, Carvey was an important figure on SNL during the ‘80s and would go on to star in Wayne’s World, The Master of Disguise, and Trapped in Paradise. Shortly after his SNL career, he hosted The Dana Carvey Show, which did not last long but is notable in TV history for having an incredible cast of writers including Louis C.K. Charlie Kaufman, Jon Glaser, Robert Carlock, and frequent Dan Harmon collaborator Dino Stamatopoulos. 

Echo Kellum

Jacob Philip, Brad, Triple Trunks

“I throw balls far. You want good words? Date a languager.” So sad that we had to leave Brad behind in C-137. Echo Kellum provides the voice of Brad and several other Rick and Morty characters.. Kellum is a UCB grad who has appeared in Key & Peele, Comedy Bang! Bang! and most notably Arrow as Mister Terrific. 

John Oliver

Dr. Xenon Bloom

John Oliver now carries on the legacy of The Daily Show in his superb HBO news series Last Week Tonight. Prior to finding his perfect comedy news niche, Oliver had a lengthy comic acting career starting in his native England and extending into his new home in the U.S. Oliver previously played an important recurring role in Harmon’s Community and pops up just once on Rick and Morty. 

David Cross

Prince Nebulon

David Cross is one of several sketch comedy legends who lent their voice to Rick and Morty as part of their lengthy careers. Cross created and starred in sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David alongside co-creator Bob Odenkirk (how has he not popped up on Rick and Morty yet?). Since then he’s had a successful stand up career and been a part of some impressive TV ensembles such as Arrested Development. 

Dan Harmon

Birdperson, Kevin, Mr. Marklovitz, Davin, Ice-T, Dr. Glip-Glop, Nimbus

Dan Harmon is the co-creator of Rick and Morty alongside Roiland. The two share a long history going back to the Channel 101 days. While both Roiland and Harmon are skilled storytellers, Harmon has truly delved into the science of story throughout his career. Harmon is best known for creating and showrunning Community, which became an onscreen sensation for fans and an offscreen nuisance for NBC due to Harmon’s at times difficult behavior. On Rick and Morty, Roiland and Harmon deploy Harmon’s deadpan delivery to good use, with him often playing monotone characters like the beloved Birdperson. 

Tom Kenny

King Jellybean, Squanchy, Conroy, Million Ants, Etc.

Tom Kenny is an incredibly successful voice artist who you likely best know as none other than SpongeBob SquarePants. On Rick and Morty, Kenny’s roles are decidedly less wholesome than the sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea. Kenny was a big factor in season 1 playing King Jellybean and Sqaunchy. He’s popped up sparingly in seasons 2, 3, and 4 as well, most notably as Million Ants of the Vindicators. 

Cassie Steele

Tammy Gueterman, Tricia Lange

Somebody’s gotta play Tammy Gueterman, that traitorous monster. And that “honor” goes to Cassie Steele. Steele’s name is recognizable to Canadian (and some American) audiences due to her role as Manny Santos on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Rick and Morty was her first voice acting role. She will continue her voice acting career as the lead in Disney’s upcoming Raya and the Last Dragon.

Claudia Black

Mar-Sha/Ventriloquiver

Claudia Black has turned up on Rick and Morty twice, once in season 1 and once in season 4. It’s a surprise she hasn’t done so more often as she’s built up quite the voice acting career. After becoming well known in sci-fi series like Farscape and Stargate SG-1, Black continued on into a successful gaming career, providing her voice to Uncharted, Gears of War, and Dragon Age. 

Maurice LaMarche

Morty Jr. Brad Anderson, Abradolf Lincler, Crocubot

Maurice LaMarche’s smooth baritone is quite familiar to many animation fans. LaMarche has voice acted in everything from Animaniacs to Futurama. He’s got a killer Orson Welles impression and that seems to be the starting point for many of his Rick and Morty characters. 

Alfred Molina

Mr. Needful

Many of us know Alfred Molina from his incredibly successful film career in projects like Boogie Nights, Spider-Man 2, and The Da Vinci Code. But Molina has also had quite the career as a voice actor as well. In the past couple decades, Molina has lent his sturdy voice to Rango, Monsters University, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Frozen II, and more. He was clearly a shrewd choice for the Lucifer-like Mr. Needful. It’s a wonder why he hasn’t turned up on Rick and Morty more. 

Richard Fulcher

King Flippy Nips

Richard Fulcher is best known as the unofficial third member of British comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh, though he himself is American. Fulcher wrote and acted in every incarnation of The Mighty Boosh. He has also had a prolific career in comedy acting outside the troupe. As of late, Fulcher has leaned into his voice acting abilities including this sadly one-off role on Rick and Morty as King Flippy Nips, ruler of Pluto. 

Nolan North

Scroopy Noopers, Multiple Others

Nolan North has done extensive videogame work in franchises such as Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, and the Arkham series. That’s right: the voice of shrimpy Plutonian Scroopy Noopers on Rick and Morty is both Nathan Drake and Desmond Miles. North also voices many other characters in positions of authority for the show. 

Aislinn Paul

Nancy

Aislinn Paul is another Degrassi: The Next Generation alum who has broken into the voice acting world. On Rick and Morty, Paul plays only Nancy, Summer’s nerdy classmate who everyone is always mean to. Hopefully one day there will be justice for Nancy. 

Alejandra Gollas

Lucy

Alejandra Gollas is a bilingual Mexican actress who has acted in films, TV shows, and stage productions for decades. Her only Rick and Morty role was that of creepy Titanic enthusiast Lucy. 

Scott Chernoff

Revolio Clockberg Jr.

Originally referred to as “Gearhead,” Revolio Clockberg Jr. is one of Rick and Morty’s most recognizable recurring characters. Embodying this important role is veteran voice actor and TV writer Scott Chernoff. Chernoff has lent his voice to dozens of animated properties and has even written for many successful comedies including BoJack Horseman, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, and School of Rock. He is one of many Channel 101 veterans involved in Rick and Morty and pitches in with some other background voices on the show here and there. 

Keegan-Michael Key

Schleemypants

Keegan-Michael Key is likely best known as half of the ultra successful sketch comedy duo Key & Peele. (Wonder whatever happened to the other guy!) Key has had an enormously successful career as a comedic actor on television. On Rick and Morty he plays testicle-looking time cop Schleemypants. 

Jordan Peele

Second Fourth-Dimensional Being

Oh, here’s Peele! Schleemypants’ unnamed partner is the only character Peele has played on Rick and Morty. 

Jemaine Clement

Fart

New Zealand comedic actor Jemaine Clement is best known for being half of the Grammy award-winning comedic musical act Flight of the Conchords alongside Bret McKenzie. Clement has also worked extensively with fellow Kiwi Taika Waititi to produce recent classics like What We Do in the Shadows. His deadpan delivery was a perfect choice monotone gaseous being “Fart.”

Andy Daly

Krombopulos Michael

Krombopulos Michael is Rick and Morty’s Boba Fett: he looks cool but ultimately does nothing. Playing K.M. was one of the most sought-of “character voice actors” in the industry. Daly’s cheerful everyman delivery has proven useful on dozens of comedy shows across the entertainment landscape. Perhaps best known for his starring vehicle Review with Forest MacNeil, Daly has also lent his voice to series such as Harley Quinn, Bob’s Burgers, and Big Mouth. He can also be heard as a crucial role on Roiland’s Solar Opposites. 

Christina Hendricks

Unity

Christina Hendricks is best known for her role as Joan Holloway on Mad Men. In addition to that, however, she’s appeared in quite a few genre films and shows like Firefly, Life, and The Neon Demon. Hendricks has done some voice work here and there and her only role on Rick and Morty to date is assimilation expert and one-time Rick Sanchez paramour Unity. 

Patton Oswalt

Beta-Seven

Patton Oswalt is basically the dark matter of the comedy universe. He and his voice turn up just about everywhere. Perhaps his best known voice acting role is that of lead character Remy in Ratatouille. On Rick and Morty he has played only Beta-Seven thus far and is surely due for some more appearances. 

Keith David

The President

Even if you’ve never heard of Keith David, you have surely heard his voice. An unmistakable baritone with gravitas, David has leant that voice to projects such as Gargoyles, Halo, and Spawn. David has worked with Harmon before on the final season of Community. Surely, there is no better voice for Rick and Morty’s unnamed President…or its Reverse Giraffe.

Kurtwood Smith

General Nathan

Not sure if you recognize Kurtwood Smith’s voice? You would if he called you a dumbass. Yes, Smith is best known to TV audiences as Eric Forman’s ornery dad Red on That ‘70s Show. He provides that same ornery spirit to the role of General Nathan on Rick and Morty in “Get Schwifty.” 

Stephen Colbert

Zeep Xanflorp

Stephen Colbert is of course a longtime comedic actor, host of The Colbert Report, and now host of The Late Show on CBS. The Late Show understandably takes up most of his time nowadays but he was nice enough to portray the intelligent alien living inside Rick’s flying saucer’s Miniverse battery. 

Nathan Fielder

Kyle

“The Ricks Must Be Crazy” has quite the star power among its voice cast. In addition to Colbert’s Zeep, the episode also introduces another Microverse populated by Kyle. Kyle is played by Nathan For You’s cringe comedy maestro Nathan Fielder. 

Jim Rash

Glaxo Slimslom

Jim Rash is another frequent Dan Harmon collaborator, best known for his role as Dean Pelton on Community. Rash is an accomplished comedic actor and an Oscar award-winning screenwriter. He’s the perfect choice to play alien couples counselor Glaxo. 

Matt Besser

Fungo

Matt Besser is an improv comedy specialist who is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. Over his long career, he’s appeared in just about everything. On Rick and Morty he portrays alien diplomat Fungo, who tries to convince Jerry to donate his penis to Shrimply Pibbles. 

Werner Herzog

Shrimply Pibbles

Werner Herzog might be the strangest inclusion in the Rick and Morty voice canon. Herzog is a towering figure in the cinema world as a director, screenwriter, documentarian, and occasional actor. His German accent and generally serious and pessimistic disposition has made him a natural target for comedies looking to inject a bit of weird humor into the proceedings. 

Chelsea Kane

Arthricia

Chelsea Kane has appeared in several TV series targeted to tween audiences like Disney Channel’s Jonas and Freeform’s Baby Daddy. Her brief role as the Purge planet’s Arthricia was a jumping off point to try more voice actor roles on shows like Hot Streets, Regular Show, and DC Super Hero Girls. 

James Callis and Tricia Helfer

Pat and Donna Gueterman

James Callis and Tricia Helfer portray the parents of double-agent Tammy Gueterman for a very specific reason. Callis and Helfer are best known for their roles on Syfy’s classic series Battlestar Galactica, with Callis playing brilliant scientist (and traitor to humanity) Gaius Baltar and Helfer playing Cylon model Number 6. Pat and Donna Gueterman on Rick and Morty look just like the actors playing them, which should have been our first clue that something is amiss.

Nathan Fillion

Cornvelious Daniel

Who is Nathan Fillion if not nerd culture’s best friend? Fillion came into prominence by playing Captain Mal Reynolds on Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly. Since then Fillion has had a solid career on shows like Castle and The Rookie. In his spare time, however, he provides his voice to animated series like Rick and Morty and Big Mouth, often playing a thinly-veiled version of himself. Cornvelious Daniel is notable for being the first character onscreen in Rick and Morty to enjoy that sweet, sweet McDonald’s Szechuan sauce. 

Tony Hale

Eli

Tony Hale won two Emmys for playing the Vice President’s bagman Gary Walsh on Veep. Before that he was the youngest Bluth child, Buster, on Arrested Development. As of late, however, he’s getting more into the voice acting scene. You (or your kids) may best know him as the beloved Forky in Toy Story 4. But prior to that, he popped up as a cheery Mad Max-style biker named Eli on Rick and Morty. 

Joel McHale

Hemorrhage

Joel McHale is, of course, another Community alum. He played lead character Jeff Winger on Harmon’s old NBC series. In addition to that, McHale has had a lengthy career in comedy, having hosted The Soup and Netflix’s recent Tiger King special. He was also a tight end of the University of Washington football team but that’s neither here nor there. He voices bucket-wearing post-apocalyptic warlord Hemorrhage on Rick and Morty.

Susan Sarandon

Dr. Wong

Perhaps no character on Rick and Morty has delved deeper into Rick’s psyche than Smith-family psychologist Dr. Wong. Lending her voice to Dr. Wong in the infamous “Pickle Rick” episode is legendary actress Susan Sarandon a.k.a the Louise in Thelma and Louise. 

Peter Serafinowicz

Agency Director

Peter Serafinowicz is a British comedian and actor who used his role voicing Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace as a launching pad to befriend some truly talented creators and get some truly fascinating roles. Serafinowicz has popped up in Shaun of the Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy, Parks and Recreation, and more. He also portrayed the titular Tick in Amazon’s The Tick. His role in Rick and Morty is briefly that of a Russian villain agency director who tries to take down the ever-elusive Pickle Rick. 

Danny Trejo

Jaguar

“Pickle Rick” really has quite the impressive guest voice cast. Danny Trejo joins Peter Serafinowicz and Susan Sarandon in lending his voice to this episode. Trejo plays Rick’s loose canon action hero ally, Jaguar. Outside of Rick and Morty, Danny Trejo may be one of the most recognizable faces in entertainment. A frequent collaborator of Robert Rodriguez, Trejo has leveraged his fascinating upbringing and tough guy appearance into countless roles. 

Gillian Jacobs

Supernova

Another Community alum! Superhero team The Vindicators requires a lot of guest voice talent and clearly Dan Harmon knew one place to turn. Jacobs played Britta on Community (she’s the worst). The Pittsburgh-born actress has also appeared in Girls, Don’t Think Twice, and Ibiza. 

Christian Slater

Vance Maximus

Christian Slater is a big get for Vindicators leader Vance Maximus. While he’s best known to modern audiences as the titular Mr. Robot in Mr. Robot, Slater got his start as an actor with popular roles in movies like Heathers, Interview with the Vampire, and Broken Arrow. Slater has had a fruitful voice acting career as well, having previously played “Slater” in Archer. 

Lance Reddick

Alan Rails

Alan Rails is another one of the hallowed Vindicators crime-fighting team. Playing the ghost train-summoner is Lance Reddick. Reddick has been a mainstay on television for decades, turning up in Oz, Fringe, Lost, and more. Most notably he played Cedric Daniels for the entirety of The Wire’s run. 

Logic

Logic

Logic is one of the few Rick and Morty guest stars who gets to be an animated version of himself.  This Maryland-based rapper has released five successful albums and enlisted Rick and Morty to help promote his sixth mixtape Bobby Tarantino II. 

Clancy Brown

Risotto Groupon, Story Train passenger

Talk about a guy with a commanding voice. Clancy Brown has been a successful actor for a long time, going back to his roles in Highlander, The Shawshank Redemption, and Lost. He’s undoubtedly best known to animation fans, however, as the voice of stingy Krusty Krab owner Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants. On Rick and Morty, he’s played alien restaurant manager Risotto Groupon and a Story Train passenger in season 4’s “Never Ricking Morty.” 

Thomas Middleditch

Tommy Lipnip

Thomas Middleditch is likely best known to television audiences as overmatched tech tycoon Richard Hendrix on HBO’s Silicon Valley. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for Middleditch’s comedy career. The prolific improviser played Tommy Lipnip in Rick and Morty and must have impressed Justin Roiland enough to give him a lead role on his Hulu comedy Solar Opposites. 

John DiMaggio

Multiple Minor Roles (Death Stalker, Leader, Knight, etc.)

John DiMaggio is an incredibly busy voice actor. If you’ve ever enjoyed an animated comedy, there’s a good chance DiMaggio contributed his voice to it. His best known roles include Bender on Futurama, Jake the Dog on Adventure Time, and Scotsman on Samurai Jack. 

Sherri Shepherd

Judge

Sherri Shepherd is an actress, comedian, and TV personality best known for being a co-host on The View for seven years. Since then she’s turned up as an actress or talking head on many shows and lent her voice to portray a judge that deals with Morty in the season 4 premiere. 

Sam Neill

Monogatron Leader

In addition to having one of the best Twitter accounts in the world, Sam Neill is also an actor best known for playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. The New Zealander has continued to work quite a bit in recent years, turning up in Thor: Ragnarok and Peaky Blinders. On Rick and Morty he plays the leader of the  Monogatron alien race in “The Old Man and the Seat.”

Taika Waititi

Glootie

Playing another Monogatron, this one named Glootie, is New Zealand actor/director Taika Waititi. Waititi got his start in the New Zealand comedy scene alongside other Rick and Morty guest star Jermaine Clement. Since then he has only gone on to become one of the most in-demand filmmakers on the planet. Waititi is behind Thor: Ragnarok, JoJo Rabbit, and an upcoming Star Wars film. 

Kathleen Turner

Monogatron Queen

Kathleen Turner is what you would call a “get” for Rick and Morty. Turner has won two Golden Globe awards and been nominated for an Oscar and several Tony awards. She is best known for her roles in ‘80s movies Romancing the Stone, Prizzi’s Honor, and The War of the Roses. Turner has also been working as a voice actress since the ‘80s, voicing Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and going on to act in The Simpsons and King of the Hill as well. 

Jeffrey Wright

Tony

Jeffrey Wright is no stranger to sci-fi, having toiled away as sad robot Bernard on Westworld for three seasons. Wright got three-quarters of a way to an EGOT in one role by playing Belize in Angels in America. Since then he’s acted in several Daniel Craig Bond films, Boardwalk Empire, and The Hunger Games. On Rick and Morty he plays the role of an alien who vexes Rick into an existential crisis by continuing to use his private toilet. 

Elon Musk

Elon Tusk

Elon Musk is a South African/Canadian/American engineer and industrialist who serves as the founder and CEO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, along with numerous other ventures. Presumably he did not call anyone behind the scenes of Rick and Morty a pedophile but you never know. 

Justin Theroux

Miles Knightley

Justin Theroux has had quite the career in Hollywood. He first came to prominence acting in the David Lynch films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. He then continued to appear in major films while also writing some for good measure like Tropic Thunder, Iron Man 2, and Rock of Ages. On television he played Kevin Garvey in HBO’s The Leftovers. For Rick and Morty, he played the role of “heist artist” Miles Knightly in “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty.” You son of a bitch, I’m in. 

Pamela Adlon

Angie Flint

Pamela Adlon is the rare case of an actor who was first best-known for voice work breaking into the live-action arena in a big way. Adlon is best known for giving voice to Bobby Hill on King of the Hill, while also voice acting in other animated projects like Recess, and 101 Dalmatians: The Series. A longtime collaborator of Louis C.K. (though not so much anymore), Adlon appeared on FX’s Louie and got a well-received FX show of her own, Better Things. On Rick and Morty, Adlon portrays Angie Flint – a lock-picker who Rick recruits to his heist team.

Matthew Broderick

Talking Cat

Matthew Broderick is a longtime stage, film, and television actor best known for his roles on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, WarGames, The Producers, and much more. Most recently he turned up on Netflix’s sadly-departed post-apocalyptic comedy Daybreak. On Rick and Morty, Broderick plays a Talking Cat with a secret so heinous it will drive anyone to near insanity. 

Liam Cunningham

Balthromaw

To portray the voice of a wizened dragon, Rick and Morty turned to an actor best known for a series filled with them. The Irish actor Liam Cunningham is known to most people as Ser Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones. Though not usually a voice actor he must have enjoyed his role on Rick and Morty as he turns up again briefly in Roiland’s Solar Opposites. 

Phil LaMarr

Multiple Minor Roles

The first two things most people (and by most people I mean me) think of when they think of Phil Lamarr are his time on Mad TV and the moment his head explodes on Pulp Fiction. But aside from sketch comedy and head explosions, LaMarr has had a remarkable voice acting career. He portrayed the title character in Samurai Jack while also providing his voice to Justice League, Static Shock, and countless video games. It’s surprisingly hard to figure out what voices Phil LaMarr plays on Rick and Morty but given his talents it’s certain to be quite a few.

Christopher Meloni

Jesus

When Rick and Morty briefly presented the savior of mankind in season 4’s sixth episode, surely there was only one choice to play him. Christopher Meloni has had one of the more fascinating careers in entertainment. After playing the deadly serious role of Elliot Stabler on Law and Order: SVU for years, Meloni has re-embraced his comedic side in projects like Happy!, Harley Quinn, while reprising his role in the Wet Hot American Summer franchise.

Paul Giamatti

Story Lord

Paul Giamatti once joked in a late night talk show interview that his role in any given heist or action movie would be the guy wearing a headset in a van, typing on a computer, and telling the hero to “get out of there, man!” He has since parlayed that character actor sensibility into a remarkable, multi-award-winning career. Giamatti is best known recently for portraying Chuck Rhoades on Billions and producing AMC’s Lodge 49. Prior to that he played lead roles in American Splendor, HBO’s John Adams, and much more. The guy has a good handle on stories and therefore makes perfect sense as Rick and Morty’s Story Lord. 

Alan Tudyk

Chris, Observant Glorzo, Multiple Minor Roles

Alan Tudyk is a nerd culture mainstay. Very few comic-cons come and go without Tudyk involved in at least one project presenting within them. Tudyk has played Hoban “Wash” Washburne on Firefly and its spinoff movie Serenity, Mr. Nobody on Doom Patrol, and many more beloved characters. His live-action appearances are just the tip of the nerd iceberg, however, with Tudyk providing his voice to everything from Solo: A Star Wars Story (K-2SO) to Harley Quinn (Clayface/The Joker). On Rick and Morty, Tudyk plays several unnamed characters. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Rob Schrab

God

Rob Schrab is a Channel 101 veteran and longtime Harmon collaborator. Schrab is best known for his work as a director of projects like Monster House, Community, Parks and Recreation, and more. On Rick and Morty he plays none other than God…or at least the Zeus-like god of a remote planet. 

Jim Gaffigan

Hoovy

Jim Gaffigan is a wildly successful standup comedian who co-created and starred in a TV show about his life for TV Land called The Jim Gaffigan Show. While he’s appeared sparingly in films, of late he’s dabbled in voice acting, lending his voice to Hotel Transylvania 3, Playmobil: The Movie, and Luca. His kindly Midwestern accent lends itself nicely to the helpful but doomed Hoovy on Rick and Morty.

Planetina

Alison Brie

Five seasons in and Rick and Morty is still finding old friends from Community to make their debut. Alison Brie played Annie Edison on Dan Harmon’s classic series. Since then she’s become quite the star, serving as a lead on GLOW and voice acting in BoJack Horseman and The Lego Movie 2. She even provided the voice of Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow in the video game Marvel Avengers Academy.

Steve Buscemi

Eddie

Steve Buscemi is a prolific and talented character actor known for his classic roles in Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, The Sopranos, and more. That he plays such a relatively minor role on Rick and Morty suggests that he might be a fan of the show and just wanted to stop by and say hey. Buscemi is also notable for being a New York firefighter prior to his acting life.

Christina Ricci

Princess Ponietta

Once known as a talented child actor, Christina Ricci has continued her creative work into adulthood. The actress has starred in films like Speed Racer, Black Snake Moan, and the upcoming fourth Matrix movie. Bless her for dropping by Rick and Morty only to play an CHUD horse-person princess pregnant with Rick’s heir.

Kyle Mooney

Blazen

Kyle Mooney is an SNL cast member and writer who specializes in offbeat characters and sketches. He also wrote and starred in 2017’s Brigsby Bear. His role hasn’t been officially confirmed on Rick and Morty yet but it seems as though he voices the Mortal Kombat-esque faux badass Blazen.

The post Rick and Morty: A Guide to Every Voice Actor appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2TZnSGJ

[lovelahela]

❛ it lives in the woods ❜ ─ prologue

⇢ masterlist ; check masterlist for fancast!

⇢ pairing: noah marshall x f!mc (marisol reyes)

⇢ genre: horror

⇢ chapter: zero (prologue)

⇢ words: 2687

⇢ description: something old and powerful lives in the woods surrounding the small town of westchester... something that knows their names. tensions flare, old wounds are reopened, and lives hang in the balance of one, very important question: are you scared?

⇢ notes + warning: this story will include disturbing scenes, potentially dark/triggering subjects (including but not limited to underage substance/alcohol abuse, depression, anxiety) and strong language. reader discretion is advised.

        Tonight, the moon is playing peek-a-boo, weaving in and out of ribbons of black clouds scudding across the sky. Accompanying the flickering radiance of lampposts scattered across the small town of Westchester, the light of the moon stretched across the vast cluster of trees that surrounded it and to a cosy, modern house far away from said lampposts that stood out significantly next to the worn-out, withering shack that stood meters away from it. The town was characteristically quiet, its folk invested in whatever dream of winning the lottery and marrying the most good-looking Hollywood actor they were having. It was almost peaceful.

        The functioning word here being almost.

        Inside that modern little house lay a young teenage girl, fast asleep in the comfort of her mattress and scented candles. Marisol Reyes tried very hard to be normal, thank you very much. She ran two clubs, maintained outstanding grades, and managed Westchester High's successful swimming team as an efficient captain. Some might even say she was one of the "popular kids," but she was no where near that (proven by the constant degradation courtesy of Britney and her posse), and preferred to keep it that way. All Marisol wanted was to blend, to be away from the spotlight - she had enough of it after being drowned in all the wrong kinds of attention when one of her best friends perished a decade ago. Being pointed at by judgemental kids and gossiping parents took a toll on her, and she swore to go out of her way to erase the devastating, untimely death of Jane Marshall from her life - she would never be the "best friend of that girl who died" ever again.

        Although Marisol strongly refused her mother Soledad's advice to see a child psychologist and cope with the horrible trauma that cost her her childhood, she insisted that she was able to, get over it. She pushed aside the recurrent nightmares and the obsession with self-defense and martial arts classes, plastered on a smile, and said she was fine - every single time, all through the ten years of looking over shoulder and denying just how damaged she really was.

        The sound of violent vibrations against a wooden surface startled Marisol Reyes out of her uncharacteristically peaceful slumber. She jumped out of her bed and grabbed the kitchen knife that always lied stoically on her bedside table like a war veteran, hair frazzled and muscles tense. The focus of her almond-shaped eyes darted around the room frantically, fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife as her heart beat wildly in her chest. Once she could not make out an outline of an intruder in the darkness that enveloped the area, she realized the vibrations were coming from her phone, buzzing enthusiastically with text notifications. She groaned at her overreaction to such a harmless event while rubbing the sleep from her eyes and picked up the small electronic device in her tense hands.

TEXT MESSAGE

3:12 AM

UNKNOWN NUMBER

marisol, you there?

it's dan.

i messed up. i'm sorry, i'm so sorry

Mark as spam?

Block number?

        "Oh my God..." whispered Marisol, rereading that one text over and over again to make sure she didn't imagine it.

        it's dan.

        Those two words stole the breath and heat from her very skin. Suddenly her defenses are like paper, paper being soaked by rapidly falling rain drops. Dan Pierce. They hadn't spoken since the tragic incident a decade prior - after the funeral, the eight children went their separate ways, determined carry the truth behind that catastrophe with them to the grave no matter how deep they buried it inside of them. She debated replying - she hadn't so much as greeted him in so many years, and suddenly he bombards her phone with frantic messages in the middle of the night? Something seemed off. Marisol could practically feel danger creeping up slowly but surely behind her.

TEXT MESSAGE

3:15 AM

DAN PIERCE

marisol?

MARISOL

dan, hey.

it's been a while, u okay? what's up?

DAN PIERCE

i went into the woods.

i had to be sure, i had to prove to myself that he wasn't real.

that it was all in our heads.

but he is, mari. he's real. it was all real.

read 3:16 AM

        Marisol's previously tense hands began shivering vigorously along with the rest of her limbs, all of them weakening by the second. She closed her eyes and drew in long, deep breaths, attempting to calm down and muster up whatever courage she had left. She wasn't sure if the texts she responded with were an attempt to convince Dan, or herself.

TEXT MESSAGE

3:17 AM

MARISOL

hey man, u sure ure not drunk?

DAN PIERCE

he was whispering, just like when we were kids.

MARISOL

dan, please stop.

we made all that stuff up, we were kids.

mr red was just a dumb game that spun out of control.

we made it all up.

DAN PIERCE

 he does. he's with me right now.

MARISOL

for fuck's sake dan

if ure in the woods get out NOW

it's not safe in the dark

DAN PIERCE

i can hear him in the trees.

i can hear him whispering...

read 3:18 AM

        Marisol hissed a long string of curse words, fumbling around in the dark for her jacket. It didn't matter that they lost touch with each other, she couldn't bear the thought of losing him - of losing someone else in the disbanded group that she once would have said she trusted with her life. Maybe, if you dug deep enough through the traumatic, emotional baggage she lugged around every waking moment, she still would.

        Just as she snatched the keys to her mother's car (which she was only allowed to use in the case of an emergency, much to her dismay), someone rapped the window harshly, startling a shriek out of her. Her phone slipped out of her hands and landed on the wooden floorboard with an upsetting thud, just barely illuminating the room with a disturbing glow.

        With the manner of a paranoid animal about to get preyed on viciously, Marisol snuck a peek at the window. Her blood ran cold when she made out the shape of what she was hoping was a human. Wasting no time, she jumped towards her lamp and turned it on. A yellow light filled just enough of the vicinity - enough to see that the man waiting outside her window was none other than Dan. She heaved out a relieved sigh and opened the window  (reluctantly so), ushering him inside outside of the chilly embrace of the crisp night.

        He climbed into his former friend's bedroom, hoodie dirtied by mud and hints of dead leaves. His long hair was unkempt, his eyes were accompanied by worrying and prominent bruises under them, and what used to be his beautifully tanned skin was then pale and sickly as though he was near death itself. Dan sat hunched over on the floor like a frail puppet being held up by a single fraying string. It was horribly peculiar to see him like this - he always held himself with confidence, tall and muscular frame towering over even those taller than him. To see him lying on her floor, so vulnerable and beaten down, it was heartbreaking to say the least.

        "God, Dan, what happened to you?" asked Marisol, eyes softened with concern as she scanned his body for the injuries littered on his skin and mud staining his clothes. He looked up at her, expression shallow, striking a faint but growing fear inside of her. "How... how did you even get here? We're on the second floor."

        "I climbed." His answer was curt and simple, no emotion to his voice at all. Nothing in his eyes or the tone of his voice supported the signs of terrifying struggle that blemished him. Marisol gulped.

        "Oooookay, Spider-Man!" Nervous laughter cut through the uncomfortable silence choking them. She frowned and took small, careful steps forward as to not startle him. She crouched down to look him in the eyes as calmly as she should, slowly pulling down the zipper of his hoodie.

        "Listen, bud, why don't you take a shower? I'll wash your clothes, give you some of my dad's, and you can tell me happened, yeah?" Her voice was low and soft, as though she was consoling a frightened child. Peeling the hoodie off his slouched shoulders, she avoided his eyes, which were - very creepily - trained on her paling face. She sighed, visibly relieved when he decided to focus on the string of Polaroid pictures and what looked like dozens of framed award certificates hung up on her wall, suddenly completely neglecting her physical existence next to his enfeebled body.

        "I'm fine." His words resembled that of an accused, soulless criminal awaiting his punishment in court, perfectly trained to deny his guilt to his grave no matter what the situation was — it seemed to rehearsed. Then, abruptly, his head snapped in her direction and he grabbed her forearms tightly, staring at her with wide, crazed eyes. She could have sworn she felt all of her internal organs cease functioning for a split second and yelped pathetically. "Come on! We need to get the others!"

        Her breath hitched in her throat. She searched and searched her brain for the proper response, hyper-aware of the growing madness that distorted his handsome face. When she spoke, the pitch of her voice was a bit too high for her liking. "What — What others?"

        Dan's hold on her tightened noticeably, causing her to flinch and whimper involuntarily. A curt, mad laugh that sounded like one the Joker himself would utter left his lips. "Our friends, of course! Noah, Lily, Ava, Lucas, Andy, Stacy — the whole gang!" Another laugh that deepened the pit in her stomach, a laugh that would haunt her for days.

        Suddenly, Marisol regretted turning away psychological help. The rate of her breathing quickened anxiously as she felt a gate in her mind burst open, letting unwanted memories flood it mercilessly at the mention of their names. She could not see Dan anymore, only flashing images of ruins, of an eerie forest, and of nine children irresponsibly skipping through the trees, on their way to revisit the entity that would then change their lives forever. Her eyes were coated with a glossy sheen of tears that were more than ready to flow down her cheeks against her weakening will. When she finally mustered the courage to speak again, she whispered: "I've barely spoken to them for years, Dan. Not since Jane — "

        Before she could register what was happening, Dan stood up and pulled her with him with an unimaginable force that was sure to leave bruises. Their faces were uncomfortably close, so close she could smell the scent of blood and dirt that replaced his usual cologne. He stared at her like an enraged panther, tiny bubbles of froth forming at the corners of his mouth and face contorted with a venomous outburst. Fear was struck inside her that she felt in her very core — she almost thought he would kill her right then and there. "They have to come. Everyone has to be there. That's the rule."

        She could feel the sweat trickle down her neck, the throbbing of her tear-filled eyes, the ringing screaming of a little girl in her ears, and the thumping of her horror-stricken heart against her chest. "Rule?"

        The world stilled around them. Suddenly, she could not hear a single thing, not even her own breathing — only the awfully familiar words that the boy hissed: "Everyone plays together."

        Marisol could not have been more thankful for the sound of her phone buzzing yet again against the floorboards. She took that as an excuse to gingerly wiggle out of his loosened grip and, with shaking legs, approached her cell and picked it up. A crack tarnished the previously pristine screen, but she decided to worry about that later when it was a more appropriate time to fret over a slightly broken phone. 

        But what she saw was her breaking point. Her free hand reached up to cover her mouth and stifle a sob threatening to spill out of her quivering lips and before she could control it a steady flow of salty tears coated her cheeks.

TEXT MESSAGE

3:26 AM

DAN PIERCE

are you still there?

i think i'm lost

marisol? my battery's almost dead, please help me!!

read 3:26 AM

        The shock ricocheted up her skeleton; an enormous engulfing terror made her feel so, so sick in her mind and body. She's seen darkness before, the kind that makes an empty street look like an old-fashioned photograph, but this was different — this was the kin of darkness that robbed her of her common sense and replaced it with a paralyzing fear. By her genes, she is a predator with the intelligence and perceptive eyes to hunt, but in that moment, she felt like a helpless prey. Marisol slowly rose from the illuminating screen of her phone, her wide, suspicious eyes meeting his. 

        "Dan?" She sniffled weakly.

        Although his eyes were cold an empty, right underneath them a grin stretched his lips impossibly from one ear to the other, radiating clear indications of raging madness.

        "Marisol."

        She lunged for the knife on her bedside table yet again, shrieking as he took large and quick steps towards her violently shaking form. She searched desperately for an escape route that wasn't blocked by the towering body of the intruder in front of her but to no avail. He grabbed her wrist with a bone-crushing hold, squeezing yet another helpless screech out of her. Her voice broke when she cried out: "Dan, please! Don't make me do this!"

        And he did nothing but widen the frightening smile that would permanently etch itself into her retinas, haunting her every time she closed her eyes.

        So Marisol did the only logical thing her frantic brain could come up with — with a heart-wrenching scream, pained by having to inflict pain on a friend who was once very dear to her, she drove the blade of the knife into his abdomen. Much to her increasing horror, he did not so much as flinch at the pain, only tightened the hold around her throbbing wrist. He merely growled like a feral animal, burning holes into her with his enraged gaze. "Wrong move."

        Dan tackled her effortlessly to the floor, straddling her hips and forcing her into a cage that she would never break out of in her wildest dreams. He smashed her head against the rough surface underneath her, darkening her fading vision. "We all have to go back, remember?"

        "LEAVE ME ALONE! GET — OFF — ME!" She thrashed in his hold, no longer attempting to swallow the sobs. Finally, after agonizing attempts to kick and thrash and flail, she was able to free one of her hands and in result scraped her previously perfectly manicured fingernails down the skin of his face.

         A cry of disgust and disbelief bounced off the walls of the room when it peeled right off, revealing putrid flesh under it. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, leaving her to stare into milky whiteness while the stink of stale dirt burned the  insides of her nostrils. His long, skinny fingers curled around her neck, pressing, closing with a lack of mercy or remorse, feeling like tendrils wound around her oxygen supply. Despite her lungs blazing with agony, Marisol continued to fight fruitlessly until her energy started to dissipate like water going down a drain. Her hands fell to her side and her body grew limp, using her last breath to scream for help that, somewhere in the back of her min, she knew would never come. The last thing she saw before she embraced the coming blackness of unconsciousness was the ghastly monster that rendered her powerless and savagely tore open her old wounds.

[nancywheelxr]

Prompt for Five TUA: Klaus is an idiot but dammit Klaus is his idiot and he’s not about to let anything happen to him.

Oh my god, this is so them!

“Get in the goddamn car,” Five screams, leaning over the seats to shove the passenger door open.

When his brother had called him earlier that evening, whispering about a heist of all things– a heist in a bar, and Five had told him that’s not what a heist means, he hopes that’s not what Klaus means, but god forbid Klaus ever listen to anyone– Five had wanted to hang up immediately.

Because being dragged into another idiotic scheme is not what he had in mind when he stopped the apocalypse. Peace, or maybe even monotony would do. But something in Klaus’ voice had given him pause.

It’s the way it cracked at the end, he thinks. And the quiet waver in the middle, how he went quiet after and then laughed without any humor like he was just going through the motions for Five’s sake.

So against his better judgment, Five had said fine, wait until I get there, and nicked Diego’s car keys because Klaus might be an idiot, but he’s his idiot, damn it.

It was pretty easy. In fact, Diego should feel ashamed.

And pulling up in front of a Veterans of Foreign Wars bar is not exactly what he had expected, but it’s less of a surprise. It did explain the oddities in Klaus’ behavior, even if it made everything more confusing. Five can’t see what on Earth could be inside that his brother would want badly enough to steal.

Not now that he’s clean, at least.

Well, he had an inkling on what this could be related to, but the sight of Klaus bursting through the bar’s front door interrupts any sort of train of thought. He’d been hiding something on his coat, with a group of very angry men following closely behind.

“Drive, drive, drive,” Klaus shrieks, and Five peels away from the curb while his door is still half open, tires screeching as they go. “Oh, thank fuck.”

Five feels an overwhelming urge to reach out and slap him over the head. Finding no reason good enough not to, he does. “What was that? Do you know how bad this could have gone?”

“Hey,” Klaus whines, glaring at him, “it was important, alright? I’ll give it back in a few days, I just– I needed a copy first.”

“Thanks, that explained zero things,” he rolls his eyes, softening once he glances at his brother’s shuttered expression. “Look, this is about Vietnam, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” a heavy, tired sigh comes from the passenger seat. Klaus slumps further, pulling whatever he had been hiding under his coat– a framed photo, Five realizes. One that had probably been on display at the bar, by the looks of it. “This is– it’s the only picture I know of, okay? It’s the only one where we’re together, and I’ll give it back later, I swear, I just wanted a copy, that’s all.”

Oh. Five clears his throat, fingers twitching in the wheel. The memory of leaving Dolores in the department store is still fresh in his mind, and sometimes, he still walks by the store, hoping to catch a glimpse of her through the windows.

He never goes in, though.

“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Five warns, “all the stores are closed now. And don’t tell Luther, he’ll be a baby about it.”

Klaus smiles, even through the sadness pooling at the edges. “Copy that,” he relaxes, shoulders easing, “and hey, thanks for the ride.”

“Please,” Five begs him, “lose my number.”

[jacobseedsrifle]

War of The Mind (Jacob Seed/Lilly Wolfe)

Summary: Just a little story I wrote about Jacob and Lilly that I decided I wanted to share. Sorry if it’s bad. In the story Lilly’s depression is starting to get too much for her and Jacob doesn’t understand what’s wrong with her. But at the end, she finally opens up to him and they stay the happy, idiotic couple they are.

Warnings: Mentions of depression

———————————————————————

It was just another normal day at the St. Francis Veteran’s Center, or so it seemed like it to everybody except Lilly. Lately, her depression had been consuming her more, making her tired and gloomy. Lilly was the head trainer for the Judges at the Veteran’s Center. Jacob had made her head trainer due to her skill to be able to handle Judges, and they seemed to take a liking to her. Most people around the center called her ‘The Judge whisperer’. Lilly loved her job though, she loved working with the Judges and even had her own unique Judge, Lucien. When Jacob had caught him, he had a lot of trouble trying to turn the large, black beast into a Judge and took him to Lilly to help. Instantly, the two bonded and after Lucien went through the process of turning into a Judge, he was slightly larger than the rest and his coat remained black which was very unusual, but he still had the piercing yellow eyes of a Judge. The wolf wouldn’t let anybody near him except Lilly, and unless he was at Lilly’s side, nobody could touch him. So, Jacob decided to let Lilly keep him. After all, he wouldn’t mind his pup having her very own Judge, let alone a very rare one. Jacob believed his coloring came from a genetic mutation, but Lilly didn’t care. Since Lucien was hers, he had a dark purple cross on his head instead of a red one, because that was Lilly’s favorite color. Truly one of a kind, just like his master.

Lilly was sitting on a bench outside of the Judge pens. She tapped her foot rapidly, trying to get rid of the thoughts racing through her head. When she heard footsteps coming her way, she looked up to find Jacob walking towards her. She smiled and stood as he stopped in front of her. “Slacking on the job are we?” He said as he grinned at her but Lilly just frowned. “Sorry..I’ll get back to it” she replied in a low, shameful voice. Jacob was confused for a moment and grabbed her hand just as she turned around. “I was just kiddin’ pup, what’s wrong with you?” His words came out harsher than he intended, but Lilly was used to it and could tell when he was actually being nice. She didn’t look at him. “Nothing, I’m just tired. And I wasn’t slacking I was just taking a break”. Jacob shook his head and let go of her hand. “Alright, pup. I’ll see you tonight”. And with that, Jacob walked away to get back to training. Lilly sighed as she opened the gate to get back to the Judges. It seemed like he didn’t care. But why would he? Nobody did. ‘He probably thinks I’m weak�� she thought. Little does she know, Jacob does care. Quite a lot in fact. But it’s hard for him to show it, and with Lilly’s actions lately, he thinks that he bothers her. He thinks that she’s grown tired of him or embarrassed of him. She used to be ecstatic, had no problem running to him the moment she saw him and bombarded him with affection. But now she just seems distant and bland. He thinks it’s his fault, the way he expresses his feelings and his (not) ugly scars. But it’s not. As the hours went by, Lilly continued working with the beasts. Teaching them commands, working with the other trainers, and caring for the wounded ones. Before Lilly had came along, Jacob insisted that the trainers just kill off the wounded, that they were weak. Lilly thought differently.

The sun began to set and the light from the small fires throughout the center flickered off of the walls. Lilly finished up by putting the last Judge in it’s cage. She walked over to the shed where they kept the Judge food to make sure it was all ready for the morning. After that, she latched and locked the gate and began walking back towards the center’s building. She had her own office across the hall from Jacob’s where she took care of Judge reports, training techniques, Judge shipments and all that. She nodded to the guards as she entered the building. Everyone at the center knows that Lilly belongs to Jacob, but she has a more comforting aura than him. But even so, nobody messes with her on account that she can be nasty when angry. Not to mention they would have Jacob to answer too as well, and that alone was a scary thought. So, Lilly was well respected there. As Lilly walked down the hall, she took in the familiar, musty smell of the building. The walls were stained yellow and peeling in some places, the carpet was torn and the floor completely exposed in some spots. The place was poorly lit as well, giving it an eerie feeling. When she reached the stairs she took the railing in her hand, it felt scratchy as the green paint peeled away from the metal. As she ascended them, the half rotted wooden steps creaked something terrible. When she reached the top, she turned left towards Jacob’s quarters. The center was huge, and each type of Jacobs men had their own quarters. The hunters, Judge trainers, guards, VIPs that trained people alongside Jacob, and so forth. Even though Jacob had his own room at the center, he and Lilly didn’t live there. They had their own home not too far from the center. She sighed as she reached the door to her office. She glanced at Jacob’s door, from what she could see he was still Inside, given the light shining through the door frame. She unclipped her key ring from her belt, and fumbled for a few seconds to find the right key. She had tons of keys, her office keys, Judge cages and gate keys, veteran center keys, house keys, car keys, and so much more. She finally found the right key and entered her office.

Jacob was in fact in his office. He was going through some reports and such, and was stressed to his max. The thoughts about Lilly not interested in him anymore only made it worse. He paused when he heard footsteps coming down the hall, and then the jingling of keys as Lilly entered her office and the door clicking shut. He sighed and leaned forward, placing is elbows on his desk and then his head into his hands. Then he heard music coming from the other side of the hall. Lilly always played music while she worked. Jacob couldn’t help but smile a little bit. He loved that girl to death. But then frowned again as he remembered what happened earlier. He slammed a fist onto his metal desk, surely leaving a dent. Before he had met Lilly, he didn’t think he was capable on finding love. He didn’t think he was capable OF loving. He thought it would just make him weak. But mostly, he never thought anybody could love him. He was terrible at expressing how he felt. And he was terrible at making Lilly happy, at least that’s what he thought. But Jacob did make her happy. Lilly hadn’t told Jacob about her depression, she was convinced it would make him think that she was weak. But it’s been getting harder for her to hide it from him.

Lilly was getting ready for a new shipment of wolves coming tomorrow, assigning their numbers and cages and calculating how much bliss she would need for the transformations. She rested her cheek against her hand as she wrote. When the door creaked open, she didn’t look up. She new it was Jacob, anybody else would knock. After a few moments Jacob cleared his throat, causing Lilly to finally look up. “Why are you pushing me away, pup? What did I ever do to you?” Lilly could hear a little bit of hurt in his voice, but he did his best to remain stoic. She looked back down to her work. “Nothing.” Her response was short. Jacob felt the anger building up inside him. He had finally allowed himself to get close to someone, and now they don’t want anything to do with him. He was angry with himself, mostly. He should of known better. But that wasn’t the case. Lilly wanted everything to do with Jacob. He clenched his hands into fists and kept them by his sides. Lilly looked up again and saw him looking at her. His eyes were filled with anger, and hurt. “Just say it. Just say you’re tired of me. Tell me how much I embarrass you.” Lilly was shocked by the words that left his mouth. Had she really made him feel this way? She stood up, and Jacob watched her intensely as she made her way over to him. He was much taller than her, her being only 5’1. She looked him in the eyes. “Jacob, I’m not embarrassed of you. I’m not tired of you. Why would you think that? I love you.” Jacob furrowed his brows, he somewhat doubted her. “Then what the fuck is your problem? Why are you being so distant with me?” Jacob wouldn’t admit it, but he loved when she bombarded him with attention and love. Lilly backed away from him and looked down. She was about to turn away but Jacob placed a hand on her shoulder. He looked at her with a pleading expression. “Lilly, tell me.” She sighed. She wasn’t good at all at explaining how she felt, either. She was always afraid people would judge her. “It’s...it’s my depression. It’s just been very bad lately and..and I just..” she couldn’t finish. Jacob was taken aback. Why hadn’t she told him? He knew the feeling all too well. How the mind can be your worst enemy and your downfall. Jacob lifted a finger to her chin, forcing her to look at him. He could see the tears building in her eyes and how she fought them back. He leaned down and kissed her passionately. After he pulled back, he brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me?” She looked at him. “I thought you would see me as weak”. He shook his head at her. “You’re not weak because your mind is mean to you. Actually, it makes you stronger. It’s hard to deal with your demons. But you fight them every day and that, pup, makes you strong.” She smiled at him, and he pulled her into a hug. She buried her face into the crook of his neck and he placed a hang on the back of her head. “Let’s go home, pup.” After she pulled away, she looked up at him and gave him a devious smile. “I have an idea”

The guards nearly jumped out of their skin when the doors to the entrance of the Veteran’s center burst open. Out came Jacob, Lilly riding atop his shoulders. Jacob had his arms over her legs to keep her from falling off as he ran. He could hear her laughter, which made him smile. Lucien was waiting patiently outside and as soon as he saw them, he was running at Jacob’s side, barking hysterically. Jacob hadn’t felt this happy in a long, long time other than finally reuniting with his brothers. After he reached the truck, he kneeled down so Lilly could climb off. After he stood up again, she leaned up to kiss him, her hands grabbing at his army jacket. Jacob kissed her back, placing his hands on her hips. After a few moments of kissing, Lilly pulled back, out of breath. Jacob smiled and placed his forehead to hers. “I love you, pup”. She smiled. “I love you too, Jake.” The moment was interrupted when a large black blur shot from the side, knocking Jacob down. The blur then proceeded to lick at Jacob’s face. “Damn it, Lucien” Jacob said as he tried to get the Judge off of him, but you could hear the laughter in his voice. Lilly doubled over in laughter. “Careful Lucien, you might hurt the old man!” She continued to laugh.

“Very Funny”

[romvnova]

Becoming The Raptor Wrangler: Chapter Four

“Holy shit.” The explicit word tumbles carelessly from Owen’s lips as he swipes his hotel keycard, the door unlocks and he pushes it open. The room’s luxurious and huge. Not one room but three joined rooms not including the monstrosity of a bathroom. He takes a moment to poke around, fingers skimming over the real Italian marble bathroom countertop. The mirror has a small wifi signal glowing blue in the left hand corner and an idle power button and his eyebrow rises.

Owen immediately feels highly uncomfortable knowing that this is where Mr. Misrani’d put him up: a fancy ass hotel room that was evidently made for a serious VIP. A room, mind, that Owen likely couldn’t even afford for an hour. And they were giving it to him during his stay on Isla Nublar: which was indefinitely …or for as long as the park still drew revenue and stayed open, at any rate.

He tosses his duffel bag on the bed, yanked the zipper open and pawed through it until he found a cream colored henley shirt. He pulled his sweaty shirt over his head, balling it in his hands, glimpsing around for a hamper to toss it into, before remembering the walk-in closet. He disappears into it, dropping the balled up shirt into the lined basket before stepping out.

“Jesus christ.” He snarls, hand shooting out to grasp the closet’s doorframe to steady himself as his heart pounds all the way up into his throat. Still trying to come down from the anxiety attack he’d gotten on the Main Street of being around so many goddamn people put him on edge. An already too-familiar red head standing by his bed in his hotel room with no warning damn near sent the war veteran into a second episode. “Don’t you knock?”

She turns around, startled — and that in particular was rather comical to Owen — as if she didn’t expect him to be there. Her eyes widen and she tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, sheepishly, knowing she’s been caught. Her cheeks flush a bright red to rival her hair as her eyes linger, perhaps a bit longer than she’d have liked, on his bare chest.

“I —,” Claire takes a deep breath, squaring her dainty shoulders as she strolls nearer. “I did knock. You didn’t answer so I thought…” but she trailed off with no obvious intention of fully explaining herself.

“You’d just let yourself into my hotel room?” He finishes for her, giving a mocking nod. “Y’know if you wanted to be alone with me in my room all you had to do was ask.” He teases her with a cocky, lopsided grin, brushing past her. She makes a cute indignant noise in the back of her throat from behind him that causes a chuckle to rise in Owen’s own. It was inappropriate and he’d likely just broken five different fraternization rules right then and there but god, he can’t help himself. There was something about Claire Dearing that makes him want to banter with her.

Perhaps it was the fact that he suspects she can not only handle it but return what he gives her tenfold.

“I wasn’t…” She inhales deeply and lets it out in a heavy sigh. “We’re on a tight time schedule, Mr. Grady.”

“Owen.” He corrects her automatically as he pulls his cream-colored henley shirt on and zips his duffel bag back up, turning to face her once more. “That’s fine.” He replies and holds his hand out to her. “First, give me that key card you used to get in here.”

She glares at him and procures a small, white keycard from her pocket and places it in his hand. His fingers curl around it in his palm and he smiles at her, causing her nostrils to flare as he moves around his bed to place it in the nightstand, making a show of closing the drawer.

“Please Mr. Grady. I was going to return it to the front desk when we left. Don’t insult me.” She rolls her eyes and scoffs, making it very clear that any idea of ‘them’ and ‘hooking up’ positively disgusted her.

Well good, Owen thinks in an internal huff.

“Word of advice, Miss Dearing?” He words it to sound like a rhetorical question because he’s going to give it to her anyway, whether she wants to hear it or not. “Don’t ever sneak up on me again. It’s disrespectful, I don’t appreciate it, and you could cause me to go into an PTSD episode.” It wasn’t meant to be a threat; just a warning, but he feels incredibly disrespected by her for just letting herself into his hotel room regardless of whether she knocked or not, her subtle insult of him didn’t help to soften the wound either. To be fair, he’d been as cruel as her but damnit if he didn’t feel justified in it.

“Now, I believe we’re on a tight time schedule?” He encourages her to lead the way with an errant gesture of his hand to the hotel room door. To Owen’s surprise Claire doesn’t lead him back out the front where all the guests flock like herds of sheep. Instead, she takes him out the back entrance for hotel staff.

“I’ll have your keycards set to unlock these doors so you can avoid Main Street.” She tells him distractedly over her shoulder as she types on her tablet, clutched once more in her grasp.

He’s begrudgingly grateful, and he wonders whether she’d been more observant to his panic attack on the Main Street than he’d originally assumed.

Which caused Owen to immediately reassess and analyze the scene in his hotel room. He thought Claire was being impatient. Barging into his room because they were on a tight time schedule as she didn’t hesitate to remind him the first chance she got …but what if he’d misinterpreted the whole thing?

What if, assuming she was more observant than he’d given her credit for, she’d been checking up on him. Not because of the schedule but because she’d seen his episode he thought he’d been slick in hiding?

“I’m sorry I startled you, Mr. Grady.”

“Owen.” Her cheeks flush a lovely shade of red as she catches his gaze from the other side of the black and blue Jeep they were going to be taking. Owen watches as she fusses with her hair as he climbs in the passenger side. It doesn’t completely hide her face but he suspects it helps to keep him out of her peripheral vision.

Owen grabs the roll cage bar over his head as she peels out down the dirt road. The Jeep’s suspension is built for the uneven terrain but speed isn’t graceful on the dips and bumps and it jars his teeth together.

“This is the raptor paddock and cage.” She says as she puts the Jeep in park in front of the giant metal construct. Construction workers are hard at work on it, welding and fusing it together in places.

“Is it safe?” He points to the catwalk as he hops out of the Jeep.

“Yes.” Claire replies and he wastes no time jogging up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He steps on the metal catwalk, fingers running over the railing as he looks below him at the ‘cage’. It’s an open  space and in the far corner is the entrance into their massive paddock. It stretches far enough to allow the raptors to roam and run without feeling claustrophobic. Plenty of forest, a massive watering hole, and plains.

He looks over his shoulder as he hears the sound of Claire’s heels on the catwalk.

“I wouldn’t…—” He started, ready to grab her if it looked like she was in danger of losing her balance…or breaking an ankle. Once again, Claire Dearing navigated the metal grate of the catwalk in a manner that would, Owen doesn’t doubt, give a runway model a serious run for her money. She gives a soft clear of her throat and smiles at him, a bit smug a bit charming as he lean his hip casually against the short catwalk railing.

“We’re going to have four ACU guards stationed at each corner of the cage,” She points to the spots on the wrap around catwalk. “Armed with non-lethals, of course, as per our safety regulations.”

“You put twelve amps in those raptors, it’ll destroy their trust in me in an instant.” Owen tells her.

“So …what? You’d rather risk being killed?” Claire questions him.

“I’d rather ACU not interfere with my work.” He tells her, taking a step closer to her.

“It’s company protocol. There has to be at least four ACU guards per carnivore paddock while the trainers and handlers are working with them.” Claire tells him simply, her tone implying that he’s not going to negotiate it with her.

“Fine,” Owen agrees watching as Claire’s shoulders sag a little with relief. “But while they’re stationed in my paddock, with my raptors, they’ll listen to me. If I tell them to hold fire, they better damn well hold their fire.”

Claire blinks up at him, clearly deliberating the terms he gives her. “I can manage that.” She eventually murmurs in compromise.

“Good.” Owen says before he turns away from her and walks the rest of the catwalk, eventually following her down the stairs and back to the Jeep.

“Owen Grady, this is Dr. Henry Wu.” Claire introduces them as the elevator doors open to the incubation lab. It’s sterile and white and reminds Owen of a military medical facility. Out of all the scientists there, Dr. Wu is the only one wearing a bespoke black suit.

Owen shakes the doctor’s hand.

“Dr. Wu, this is Owen Grady. He’ll be spearheading Project IBRIS.” Claire says as he leads the way down the corridor of glass walls and doors. As they move past, Owen glimpses around him with muted fascination. He’d never been one for science, but there’s something methodical about watching them work: extracting DNA from amber samples. Playing with double helix’s suspended on touch screens in their areas, mixing genomes.

“What’s the survival rate of the hatchlings?” Owen asks as Dr. Wu leads them down a secondary hallway and presses his hand against the reader to unlock the door with a soft hiss. Claire takes a step to the side to allow Owen to pass before her, as he comes to stand before the two large nests, each nest holding six velociraptor eggs.

“The typical rate is two per nest, but it’s a bit of a lottery, Mr. Grady. Sometimes it’s two, sometimes it’s one …sometimes it’s none at all and the process starts all over.” Owen feels his brows furrow at the utter lack of emotion in Dr. Wu’s voice as he says it. Owen isn’t sure if the man is just apathetic or if, after years of dealing with failed incubations he’s just grown …desensitized.

Owen frowns but leans closer to examine the next that Dr. Wu hovers around, hand pressing against a draw diagram with neat scribbling written on it. He looks down at in surprise.

“What’s this?”

“Ah, each raptor hatching has mixed DNA with a different reptile to give them all a unique appearance. I thought it would be easier for you to tell them apart that way.” Dr. Wu makes it sound like it’s an generously altruistic act but Owen can’t help but feel insulted.

“How incredibly kind of you.” Owen deadpans sarcastically, letting out a low grunt of pain as he feels Claire step on his toes in a clear warning.

“Sorry, Mr. Grady.” She murmurs in an apology that sounds sincere but he knows damn well isn’t. She puts on a good show for Dr. Wu.

If Dr. Wu noticed the silent battle of stares happening between Claire and Owen he pays no attention to it, or rather draws no attention to it. Instead, he lets the band of his black rubber gloves snap against his wrists as he puts them on and points to four eggs in the oldest nest.

“As you can see these eggs have stress fractures along the egg shell. I estimate they’ll hatch within the next couple of days or so, but I’ve taken the liberty of syncing this tablet,” Dr. Wu gestures to it and Claire grabs it off the table for him and hands it out to Owen. “to these monitors. I want you here from sun rise to sun fall watching them, but the tablet’s alarm is set to go off if they begin to show increased signs of activity. Your employee ID card will get you into the lab’s elevator and into this room exclusively.”

“Alright.” Owen agrees. He knows the importance of being here when they hatch, of imprinting upon them the moment they’re born. It’ll jumpstart and further help to cement the bond he’ll work to create with them.

“Well,” Owen pulls up an office chair and lowers himself down into it. “Best get started.” He says dismissively.

Dr. Wu takes his exit then, not needing to be told twice until it’s just Claire and Owen. She procures a sleek, white phone from her pocket and holds it out to him. Gingerly, Owen takes it. Like everything in this lab it looks highly breakable.

“Company work phone. It’s pre-programmed with everyone’s numbers. ACU, Dr. Wu, the park rangers are all on your speed dial.” Owen thanks her, watching her as she hesitates for a moment before she glimpses back over her shoulder and exits the lab room, heading back the way they’d came. Owen rubs his eyes and stretches in the chair before he turns his gaze to the two nests, his eyes drawn to an egg in the second nest. It’s a bit bigger than the others: not noticeable upon first glance and it’s shell is almost a matte pearlescent color with tiny, iridescent blue vein-like marks, easily missed if one wasn’t studying the egg as intensely as Owen finds himself. He stretches out a finger to touch the egg, the rough texture of the shell warm beneath his fingertips. He follows an iridescent blue vein’s path along the egg with a gentle trace of his fingertip and recoils his hand and drawing in a sharp breath when he feels the egg thrum like a heartbeat. Owen’s brows furrow before he decides he better not touch them again, lest Dr. Wu catches him.

He looks like the kind of man who’d love nothing wrong to read him the riot act and given that Owen’s fairly sure Claire’s already given herself that power he doesn’t want the two of them to gang up on him. He settles back in the chair, watching the monitors and comparing them, making sense of the scientific mumbo-jumbo enough to have a grasp on what he’s looking at and what he’s looking for.

[hudsonespie]

The Man Who Planned D-Day

Ask most sailors to name the Royal Navy’s greatest 20th century commander and names such as Cunningham, Fraser, Keyes, Beatty, maybe Pound or Chatfield might be offered.

Admiral Sir Betram Ramsay, who died on January 2, 1945, was a leader more in the Eisenhower vein: a supreme organizer rather than a seagoing commander, directing operations from a headquarters rather than an admiral’s bridge, and the man behind not one but two of the greatest naval operations ever mounted.

A quiet, modest figure, demanding of his staff and himself, he bore tremendous burden stoically, invariably confiding only in his wife. Thoroughness was his trademark – as was his willingness to delegate to the junior officers around him, a characteristic which led to a pre-war clash with the old guard in the Admiralty.

That clash led to his resignation as Chief-of-Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet – a move which would have ended his career, had not war engulfed Europe. Assigned the post of Vice Admiral, Dover, fate would see to it that he was thrust into the crucible of war in May and June 1940.

Ramsay’s diligence and ability to delegate were key to the improvised evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the Continent. Despite the severe strain which the ten days of Dunkirk placed on Ramsay – the operation stretched “everyone to the limit,” he wrote to his wife – the results of the evacuation were “beyond belief”, thanks largely to the Navy running like “a perfect machine.”

Operation Dynamo earned Ramsay plaudits from ordinary soldiers, colonels and generals, and George VI, who knighted him three days after the evacuation ended.

He would go on to be the architect of the amphibious landings in North Africa (Operation Torch), Sicily (Operation Husky) and finally Normandy (Operation Neptune, the D-Day landings).

Adm. Ramsay (center) with the RAF's Sir Arthur Tedder (left) and Rear Adm. Sir Phillip Vian (right) (Royal Navy)

The image of ‘Ramsay the staff officer’ rather obscures ‘Ramsay the sailor’. For much of his career, he was a seagoing officer. He served in the first commission of the revolutionary Dreadnought, commanded the cruisers Weymouth and Kent and the ‘Tiddly Quid’, battleship HMS Royal Sovereign.

Ramsay’s formative years in command, however, came with the Dover Patrol – protecting the passage of men and material to France and preventing German forces slipping through the Channel on or below the surface. After commanding the floating gun platform HMS M25, a monitor used to pummel the German lines, in late 1917 he was appointed commanding officer of the legendary destroyer HMS Broke which had charged at the High Seas Fleet at Jutland and subsequently careered out of control.

HMS Broke (Illustrated London News / R. Perkins / Crown copyright)

In the second week of May 1918, Broke was one of eight destroyers assigned to a daring – and often overlooked – raid to keep German submarines bottled up in their Flanders base.

The Zeebrugge Raid on St George’s Day had partially blocked the exit from that port. A similar attempt along the coast at Ostend had failed wretchedly. On May 9, the Royal Navy returned – determined to scuttle HMS Vindictive in the narrow channel leading to the harbor and beyond to Bruges.

Broke led three other destroyers west of Ostend, sending star shells into the night sky to light the way for the blocking force: Zeebrugge veteran HMS Vindictive, protected by a cluster of motor boats.

As they neared their final destination, the launches peeled away to cause havoc. HMS CMB 26 fired a torpedo at Ostend pier from very close range – too close, for the shallow water carried the reverberations from the blast and shook the launch so violently that her engines were damaged and seams parted, causing her to take on water.

The boat’s mechanic succeeded in stopping the ingress of the North Sea – and in restarting the engines, enough to limp to Broke who took her in tow.

The 35-year-old Commander Ramsay received a Mention in Dispatches and was named chevalier (knight) of the Légion d’honneur by the French. In time, he would earn the Republic’s second highest honor, named a grand officier of the Légion d’honneur.

That distinction, however, was awarded posthumously. Ramsay was killed on the second day of January 1945 when his Fleet Air Arm Hudson crashed on take-off at Toussus-le-Noble, a village four miles south of Versailles; the admiral had been due to confer with Montgomery in Brussels.

Half a century later, villagers erected a memorial to Ramsay – and the four other sailors killed in the accident – outside the town hall, where the Union Flag is flown.

from Storage Containers https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/the-man-who-planned-d-day via http://www.rssmix.com/

[salmankhanholics]

★ Salman Khan invited to be a member of the Academy Awards !

Film Academy Invites Record 774 New Members, From Gal Gadot To Betty Whiteby

Pete Hammond | June 28, 2017

UPDATED with Cheryl Boone Isaacs interview:  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have unveiled 774 new members (although 30 0f those names are duplicates over several branches) invited to join the Oscars organization, bringing the total membership closer to 8,500 -ish.  This is a record number, up from last year’s  683. The invitees come from 57 countries, the organization says in unveiling its list, with the list comprising 39% female and 30% people of color (poc), both numbers increasing overall totals in those categories which has been a focus of AMPAS over the past couple of years. AMPAS now boasts overall female membership to 28%  and poc  to 13%, both marking incremental increases year to year on the Academy’s stated journey to doubling those areas by 2020.

Elle Fanning is the youngest invitee at 19, while Betty White at 95 is the oldest. The list of actors also includes Wonder Woman‘s Gal Gadot along with other superhero types like Chris Evans , Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson,Chris Pratt and more. SNL is heavily represented with current and former cast members invited including Amy Poehler, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Maya Rudolph , and Molly Shannon . There are quite a few veteran TV names not known for movie work in the class including Sharon Gless, Lou Ferrigno, Debbie Allen (who choreographed the Oscar show for several years though) and White. It seems some of the branches dug deep to come up with names for this year’s list  which also includes 24 Oscar winners and 91 nominees already. Among directors, Get Out contender Jordan Peele, Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins, the Russo brothers, and  Tom Ford are on the list which is heavily dominated by international names. The latter development is for me the most impressive in terms of this continuing membership drive. It appears the Academy is really trying to become the United Nations of cinema and if they keep  going at this rate they just may succeed.  How this extremely diverse new membership list affects the Oscars is anyone’s guess, but I would say the old ways of trying to predict how Oscar voters would behave are quickly fading  as a heavily globalized organization just could continue to shake things up.  When I spoke to outgoing AMPAS President Cheryl Boone Isaacs about this shortly after the list was revealed she wasn’t thinking so much about its ultimate effect on Oscar outcomes. “All of our members are professionals at the top of their forms, every last one of them. And I believe that they vote based on their knowledge of particular skill sets , and that’s what they look for .  What’s most important is that each year more  people are actually  looking at more films and really taking a dive into the film , both from their branches and areas of expertise as well as the film itself , and that is certainly what the voting for Oscars is , but it also involves  more people getting involved in our Nicholl Fellowship screenwriting awards, or the Student Academy Awards , or the Sci Tech area,  all of what we do. It’s not just the Oscars,” she said.

As for the record number of invitees this year , and the ongoing membership drive, she said she is not necessarily counting on it being this big each year. “We are not looking at numbers in that way. What we are looking for is inclusion. Whether the numbers will continue to be at these levels we will know each year, but probably not. We are not looking to grow the organization. We are looking to have our organization more representative of men and women, here and around the world who are participating in the art form,”  she said adding there are a lot of factors involved and that includes a larger global footprint. “We are not looking to increase membership. The goal is instead to increase a diverse membership that represents us around the world.”

Actors

Riz Ahmed – “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Nightcrawler” Debbie Allen – “Fame,” “Ragtime” Elena Anaya – “Wonder Woman,” “The Skin I Live In” Aishwarya Rai Bachchan – “Jodhaa Akbar,” “Devdas” Amitabh Bachchan – “The Great Gatsby,” “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham…” Monica Bellucci – “Spectre,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” Gil Birmingham – “Hell or High Water,” “Twilight” series Nazanin Boniadi – “Ben-Hur,” “Iron Man” Daniel Brühl – “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” “Inglourious Basterds” Maggie Cheung – “Hero,” “In the Mood for Love” John Cho – “Star Trek” series, “Harold & Kumar” series Priyanka Chopra – “Baywatch,” “Barfi!” Matt Craven – “X-Men: First Class,” “A Few Good Men” Terry Crews – “The Expendables” series, “Draft Day” Warwick Davis – “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Harry Potter” series Colman Domingo – “The Birth of a Nation,” “Selma” Adam Driver – “Silence,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Joel Edgerton – “It Comes at Night,” “Loving” Chris Evans – “Captain America” series, “Snowpiercer” Luke Evans – “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Girl on the Train” Fan Bingbing – “I Am Not Madame Bovary,” “Cell Phone” Elle Fanning – “The Beguiled,” “20th Century Women” Golshifteh Farahani – “Paterson,” “AboutElly” Anna Faris – “Scary Movie” series, “Brokeback Mountain” Tom Felton – “A United Kingdom,” “Harry Potter” series Rebecca Ferguson – “The Girl on the Train,” “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” Lou Ferrigno – “The Incredible Hulk,” “Hercules” Gal Gadot – “Wonder Woman,” “Fast & Furious” series Charlotte Gainsbourg – “Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer,” “Melancholia” Jeff Garlin – “Safety Not Guaranteed,” “WALL-E” Spencer Garrett – “Public Enemies,” “Thank You for Smoking” Domhnall Gleeson – “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Ex Machina” Sharon Gless – “The Star Chamber,” “Airport 1975” Donald Glover – “The Martian,” “Magic Mike XXL” Judy Greer – “Jurassic World,” “13 Going on 30” Rupert Grint – “Moonwalkers,” “Harry Potter” series Noel Gugliemi – “Lowriders,” “The Fast and the Furious” Jon Hamm – “Baby Driver,” “The Town” Armie Hammer – “The Birth of a Nation,” “The Social Network” Naomie Harris – “Moonlight,” “Skyfall” Leila Hatami – “A Separation,” “Leila” Anne Heche – “Rampart,” “DonnieBrasco” Lucas Hedges – “Manchester by the Sea,” “Moonrise Kingdom” Chris Hemsworth – “Thor” series, “Rush” Ciarán Hinds – “Silence,” “Munich” Aldis Hodge – “Hidden Figures,” “Straight Outta Compton” Bryce Dallas Howard – “Jurassic World,” “The Help” Bonnie Hunt – “The Green Mile,” “Jerry Maguire” Jiang Wen – “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Let the Bullets Fly” Dwayne Johnson – “Moana,” “Central Intelligence” Leslie Jones – “Ghostbusters,” “Masterminds” Keegan-Michael Key – “Don’t Think Twice,” “Keanu” Aamir Khan – “3 Idiots,” “Lagaan” Irrfan Khan – “Life of Pi,” “Slumdog Millionaire” Salman Khan – “Sultan,” “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” Rinko Kikuchi – “Pacific Rim,” “Babel” Zoë Kravitz – “Divergent” series, “Mad Max: Fury Road” Sanaa Lathan – “Out of Time,” “Love and Basketball” Carina Lau – “Infernal Affairs 2,” “Days of Being Wild” Tony Leung – “The Grandmaster,” “Lust, Caution” Rami Malek – “Short Term 12,” “The Master” Leslie Mann – “Funny People,” “Knocked Up” Kate McKinnon – “Ghostbusters,” “Office Christmas Party” Sienna Miller – “The Lost City of Z,” “American Sniper” Janelle Monáe – “Hidden Figures,” “Moonlight” Michelle Monaghan – “Patriots Day,” “Gone Baby Gone” Viggo Mortensen – “Captain Fantastic,” “The Lord of the Rings” series Ruth Negga – “Loving,” “Warcraft” Franco Nero – “The Lost City of Z,” “Django” Elizabeth Olsen – “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene” Deepika Padukone – “xXx: Return of Xander Cage,” “Piku” Sarah Paulson – “Blue Jay,” “12 Years a Slave” Robert Picardo – “Hail, Caesar!,” “TheMeddler” Amy Poehler – “Inside Out,”“Sisters” Chris Pratt – “Guardians of the Galaxy” series, “Jurassic World” Zachary Quinto – “Star Trek” series, “Snowden” Édgar Ramírez – “The Girl on the Train,” “Joy” Phylicia Rashad – “Creed,” “For Colored Girls” Margot Robbie – “Suicide Squad,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” Maya Rudolph – “Maggie’s Plan,” “Bridesmaids” Hiroyuki Sanada – “Life,” “The Twilight Samurai” Henry G. Sanders – “Selma,” “Whiplash” Rodrigo Santoro – “300,” “Love Actually” Rade Šerbedžija – “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” “The Quiet American” Nestor Serrano – “The Insider,” “Lethal Weapon 2” Amanda Seyfried – “Les Misérables,” “Mean Girls” Molly Shannon – “Other People,” “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” Anna Deavere Smith – “Rachel Getting Married,” “Philadelphia” Hailee Steinfeld – “The Edge of Seventeen,” “True Grit” Kristen Stewart – “Café Society,” “Twilight” series Omar Sy – “Inferno,” “The Intouchables” Wanda Sykes – “Snatched,” “Evan Almighty” Channing Tatum – “Hail, Caesar!,” “Foxcatcher” Aaron Taylor-Johnson – “Nocturnal Animals,” “Kick-Ass” Lauren Tom – “The Joy Luck Club,” “Cadillac Man” Jeanne Tripplehorn – “The Firm,” “Basic Instinct” Paz Vega – “Kill the Messenger,” “Sex and Lucía” Dee Wallace – “Grand Piano,” “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” Ming-Na Wen – “Mulan,” “The Joy Luck Club” Betty White – “You Again,” “The Proposal” Rebel Wilson – “Pitch Perfect” series, “Bridesmaids” Mary Elizabeth Winstead – “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Swiss Army Man” B.D. Wong – “Mulan,” “Jurassic Park” Shailene Woodley – “The Spectacular Now,” “The Descendants” Donnie Yen – “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Ip Man”

Quote from Deadline

P.S. He still has to expect the invitation.

[greekanthropologist]

Beauty in Crisis

Reposted from UCL’s Medical Anthropology blog

I selected my field – or, rather, my field selected me – after I read an article in the international edition of Der Spiegel, published in May 2013. The article claimed that in ‘austerity Greece’, the wealthy segments of the population “are having more face lifts and breast implants than anywhere in the world”.

I had often suspected that cosmetic surgery was popular in Greece. I grew up in Athens, and two of my friends in high school underwent the same procedures after turning seventeen: a nose job and, later, breast augmentation. Still, Spiegel’s jab at Greece’s social inequalities and reckless spending was more or less a baseless accusation: Greece is not the place where the most cosmetic procedures in the world are conducted. Many plastic surgeons confirmed to me that surgeries have dropped by an estimated 40% since 2010. Greece is not even included in the latest International Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures, published by ISAPS (the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery).

Nevertheless, I was eager to explore the Greek cosmetic medical landscape. Greece has largely been portrayed in anthropology as the de facto rural and ‘traditional’ outpost of Europe. Its ‘unique’ (read: fragmentary, incomplete) path towards modernity (Paxson 2004; Hirschon 2012) has been regularly a matter of dispute. But Athens is a modern city: it shares with most European capitals several basic and uniform characteristics, though Athenians themselves will still proclaim that their city is not fully European. Some will say this with pride, and others with scorn; it depends on whether they relate to, or feel let down by, ‘Europe’. At the same time, there has been a revival, a romanticized idolization of the past – of ‘traditional’ ‘Greekness’ – embraced by both by the scornful and the Euro-friendly. It is most apparent in lifestyle choices and leisure activities (in travel destinations and dining, for example). Partly due to the dwindling of the majority’s finances, and partly because Europe seems less alluring now than it did in the past, most Greeks now turn ‘inwards’ to rediscover the nation and restore their relationship to it.

In this contested terrain, I have carried out my research for the past 13 months.

The first thing that became clear to me was that in order to understand the cosmetic medical landscape, one has to look at what existed before the financial crisis. Although the ‘austerity years’ have put Greece back on the map internationally, the country remains under- and mis-represented. The scale weighs dangerously in favor of its ‘glorious past’, and its modest present is always – either by accident or by intent, as is the case with the aforementioned Spiegel article – deemed disappointing. In anthropology, too, urban Greece up to the early 00s was almost entirely overlooked, with few exceptions. I argue that this recent past, in the cities and not just the islands or the remote villages, hold the key to understanding contemporary Greece. Ethnographies of Greece in their overwhelming majority have focused on the periphery, leaving the center unexplored and misunderstood.

Cosmetic surgery is not new to Greece. Georgios Polykratis, who treated wounded soldiers at the Greco-Albanian front during World War II, is generally recognized as the first modern Greek plastic surgeon. He paved the way for the state’s recognition of plastic surgery as a medical specialty in 1954, and attended, representing Greece, the First Global Conference of Plastic Surgeons in Stockholm in 1955. Since then, Greece’s surgeons have been consistently training and working alongside other European, American (and later Brazilian and other) surgeons, and surgeries in Greece spiked during the 80s and 90s. A Greek surgeon, whom I have met and interviewed, was part of the first team to ever successfully complete a partial face transplant in France, in 2005.

Plastiki (originating in the Greek verb platho = to mould) is now one of the most lucrative medical industries, globally and locally. The technologies advance constantly, attempting to ‘correct’ or ‘enhance’ an ever more expanding map of the human body, and big pharma has incorporated non-surgicals in their domain, with great success. (Examples include ‘botox’, chemical peels, hyaluronic fillers, mesotherapy and other ‘rejuvenating’ and anti-ageing treatments). Allergan, the company who makes Botox™ and Juvederm (best-selling hyaluronic fillers), has a market value of 90 billion US dollars (as of May 2016) and was included in the Forbes list of the most innovative companies.

Non-surgical methods are especially favored in Greece at the moment. Most will argue that this is due to the fact that they are cheaper (but only in the short run). With capital controls in place, people cannot easily pay for an operation costing a few thousand euros. Smaller fixes cost less, are ‘less invasive’ and less risky, and – most importantly – they can be repeated, therefore individuals can ‘top up’ on their happiness every few months. This is, arguably, why injectables have become so successful worldwide, and why they are profitable a business globally. They fit perfectly in a consumerist environment, where spending takes place in regular intervals.

I also believe that anti-ageing becomes a major preoccupation in a population that is indebted, financially stagnant, and feels pressurized to conform to more ‘progressive’ and competitive rules. Mas gernane prin tin ora mas, loosely translated as “they’re sucking the life out of us” is an expression I hear often. In this climate of slow decay, little cosmetic fixes might offer a “lift”, a “boost”, and a “way out” from what seems to be a future that is drab.

In a questionnaire I often give out to patients at a clinic, one woman wrote:

“I believe injectables have replaced anti-depressants, and plastic surgeons have replaced psychiatrists.”

Though much has been written about whether cosmetic surgery is able to actually make someone happy (Gilman, 2010), and whether individuals are ‘duped’ into buying their happiness (Frank, 2006) or if it is a legitimate conduit towards empowerment (Edmonds, 2010), I will close this entry with the words of a veteran plastic surgeon:

“Einai moda [it’s fashion]. Everyone does it because everyone else is doing it.”

Alexia Liakounakou, UCL PhD Candidate

Photo: Pharmacy in Thessaloniki

2017

© Alexia Liakounakou

[brajeshupadhyay]

Democrats, after report that Donald Trump disparaged war dead, eye chance to win over military voters

Washington: Long before The Atlantic published an article Thursday night depicting President Donald Trump disparaging America’s war dead, liberal veterans groups had been feverishly working in battleground states to appeal to veterans and military family members, a cornerstone of Trump’s base.

That effort got a significant jolt in both interest and money, and the attention of Joe Biden, in the hours after the article appeared.

By Friday morning, Democrats, especially those with a military background, were reacting with both outrage and a sense of opportunity, denouncing Trump in news conferences and news releases and assuring veterans and military families that they had their backs.

Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, lashed out at Trump on Friday afternoon in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, noting that the remarks attributed to the president were part of a long pattern of dismissing military families and their concerns.

“If what is written in The Atlantic is true, it’s disgusting,” Biden said. “It affirms what most of us believe to be true: that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander-in-chief.”

In recent months, political groups devoted to veteran and military families have raised millions of dollars to target veterans with advertising, working with the types of sophisticated data lists usually used by Democrats to go after minority and swing voters.

On Friday, less that 12 hours after The Atlantic published its article, the largest liberal veteran organization, VoteVets, released an online ad featuring the parents of troops slain in Iraq and Afghanistan, one speaking in Spanish. In the first five hours after it went up, the group said it raised $100,000 from 2,500 donors.

The Democratic Party is also leaning heavily on its most popular veterans, like Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a former Democratic presidential candidate, to attack the president on his treatment of veterans and the military — something that would traditionally be a strength for an incumbent Republican president but which is increasingly becoming a weak spot for Trump.

Over 70 current and former elected Democrats with national security backgrounds also released an open letter to Trump seeking an apology.

“For years there has been a movement away from the old assumption that the Republican Party is the party of national security,” Buttigieg said. “These revelations help push that over the tipping point.” He added, “I think that voters need to hear from those who did serve. I am planning to be part of a chorus of veterans from different generations speaking to why this is wrong.”

The idea is not to win a majority of the veteran vote, which most Democrats consider nearly impossible, but to peel away a small percentage of persuadable veterans and military family members. While Trump’s popularity has fallen steadily among troops over the past four years, according to polls, it remains high compared with other subsets of voters.

But in an election that will be won on the margins in key battleground states, Democrats are hoping small movements will help, especially in states like North Carolina, Florida and Arizona, where in 2016 Trump won twice as many voters with a military background than Hillary Clinton did. In such states, a small number of veteran and military votes, supplementing a base of Black and Hispanic voters, could be enough for Democrats to win.

“In a close race, everything and everyone matters,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor of Inside Elections, a non-partisan analysis organisation. “We have to remember that Trump did just enough to win in 2016. He won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida by less than two points. Four years later, the president simply doesn’t have any margin for error. He really can’t afford to slip with any voter group, including military families and veterans, because he’s not doing dramatically better with a specific demographic to balance it out. “

The report by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said that Trump decided against visiting a cemetery for US soldiers killed in World War I during a 2018 visit to France because he did not believe it was important to honor the war dead. The report, which Trump vigorously denied, also suggested that Trump privately referred to US soldiers killed in combat as “losers” and “suckers.”

Trump is currently running a handful of military-focused ads on Facebook that proudly note that he has killed terrorists, “rebuilt our military” and “repaired a broken VA.”

For many of the nation’s 20 million veterans — a mostly heterogeneous group that voted disproportionately for Trump in 2016 — the problem is not Trump’s regular drip of insensitive remarks about troops, veterans and other military leaders. Rather, it is his constant disparaging of his perceived political enemies, his party’s failure to move the needle on health care costs and their attempts to undo the Affordable Care Act and other topics that have also registered with other key voting groups, like suburban women.

Some polling from conservative groups shows that there is as much as 80 percent approval for Trump’s policies among people with a military background, even as his overall approval ratings among them hover closer to 60 percent.

It’s numbers like those that make strategists hopeful.

“We don’t need a 10% swing with veterans,” said Fred Wellman, an Army veteran and the senior adviser for veterans affairs for the Lincoln Project, a Republican-led effort to unseat Trump.

There has long been a distinct divide between high-ranking current and former military officials, many of whom long ago lost faith in Trump, some of them quite publicly, and the enlisted ranks, where his support may remain vigorous. Further, a vote lost to Trump does not necessarily translate into a vote for Biden; many of these voters disgusted with the president may simply abstain.

Still, groups like the Lincoln Project, and liberal veterans groups, are leaning heavily into Trump’s attempts to divert funds from military projects to pay for a border wall, for instance, or the poor state of military housing.

“The military community is somewhere between 28 to 30 million people,” Wellman said. “Then add in patriotic Americans. The majority of veteran and active duty members are Republicans, yes, but we just ask them why our military is living in moldy housing and Gold Star families treated like this? One to four percent is all we need.” He added that the group’s town hall meeting with veterans attracted 10,000 viewers Tuesday.

VoteVets has raised $2 million so far to target voters in 16 battleground states with high concentrations of veteran and military family voters, largely by sending other veterans their way to prod them. The goal is to reach out to at least 250,000 voters by Election Day.

The group has retained Chuck Rocha, who was the architect of Senator Bernie Sanders’ outreach to Latino voters, to help amass a database of veterans and military voters who have reached out to VoteVets via social media, texts and other means.

“What we used to put it in TV commercials now goes to hundreds of vets texting and calling other veterans,” then following up at times with lengthy calls, Rocha said. “It’s the same thing we did with all these volunteers with Bernie, instead of sending postcards they are having conversations with other veterans.”

Common Defence, a smaller group than VoteVets and one that leans further to the left, has mobilised volunteers in Arizona, North Carolina and Maine for the closing months of the election in support of Biden, as well as Democratic nominees for Senate.

On a call with reporters set up by the Biden campaign Friday morning, Duckworth, who was severely wounded while serving as a helicopter pilot in Iraq, took issue with a section of The Atlantic report in which Trump reportedly shunned the presence of wounded veterans at public events. “I’ll take my wheelchair and my titanium legs over his bone spurs any day,” she said, referring to the minor ailment Trump cited to obtain a medical deferment during the Vietnam War.

“The Atlantic story will not move Trump’s base,” said Jon Soltz, the chairman of VoteVets. “But we’re already seeing some early evidence that is a powerful hook to have conversations with persuadable or on-the-fence veterans and military families. And we’re clearly not the only ones who understand this. The White House pushback on this story, while likely not effective, has been fast and swift because they know how damaging the story is, too.”

Jennifer Steinhauer c.2020 The New York Times Company

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2EZZvod

[skiinggray5-blog]

Disney Channel Orders Second Season of High-Flying Animated Series "Star Wars Resistance" for Fall 2019 Premiere

[01/09/19 - 11:00 AM] Disney Channel Orders Second Season of High-Flying Animated Series "Star Wars Resistance" for Fall 2019 Premiere Plus: the mid-season one trailer, featuring a first look at a major villain from "The Force Awakens," was released today on the Star Wars YouTube page.

[via press release from Disney Channel]

DISNEY CHANNEL ORDERS SECOND SEASON OF HIGH-FLYING ANIMATED SERIES 'STAR WARS RESISTANCE' FOR FALL 2019 PREMIERE

Mid-Season One Trailer Debuts with First Look at Major Villain from 'The Force Awakens'

Disney Channel has ordered a second season of the high-flying animated series "Star Wars Resistance" for a fall 2019 premiere. The series follows Kazuda Xiono ("Kaz"), a young pilot recruited by the Resistance for a top-secret mission to spy on the growing threat of the First Order. Season one continues on SUNDAY, JAN. 13 (10:00-10:30 p.m. EST/PST), on Disney Channel and DisneyNOW. The mid-season one trailer for "Star Wars Resistance," featuring a first look at a major villain from "The Force Awakens," was released today on the Star Wars YouTube page.

The voice cast includes Christopher Sean ("Days of Our Lives") as Kazuda Xiono; Suzie McGrath ("East Enders") as Tam Ryvora; Scott Lawrence ("Legion") as Jarek Yeager; Myrna Velasco ("Elena of Avalor") as Torra Doza; Josh Brener ("Silicon Valley") as Neeku Vozo; Donald Faison ("Scrubs") as Hype Fazon; Jim Rash ("Community") and Bobby Moynihan ("DuckTales") as Flix and Orka, respectively; Oscar Isaac ("Star Wars: The Last Jedi") as Poe Dameron and Gwendoline Christie ("Game of Thrones") as Captain Phasma.

Renowned Lucasfilm Animation veteran Dave Filoni ("Star Wars: The Clone Wars," "Star Wars Rebels") created the series; Athena Portillo ("Star Wars: The Clone Wars," "Star Wars Rebels"), Justin Ridge ("Star Wars: The Clone Wars," "Star Wars Rebels") and Brandon Auman ("Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") serve as executive producers; and Amy Beth Christenson ("Star Wars: The Clone Wars," "Star Wars Rebels") is art director.

About Disney Channel

Disney Channel is a 24-hour kid-driven, family-inclusive television network that taps into the world of kids and families through original series, movies and short-form. Currently available on basic cable and satellite in over 91 million U.S. homes and to millions of other viewers on Disney Channels around the world, Disney Channel is part of the Disney | ABC Television Group. Disney Channel-branded content spans television, online, mobile, VOD platforms and the DisneyNOW app. There are 47 Disney Channels available in 33 languages worldwide.

About Lucasfilm Ltd.

Lucasfilm Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is a global leader in film, television and digital entertainment production. In addition to its motion-picture and television production, the company's activities include visual effects and audio post-production, cutting-edge digital animation, interactive entertainment software, and the management of the global merchandising activities for its entertainment properties including the legendary STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES franchises. Lucasfilm Ltd. is headquartered in northern California.

Lucasfilm, the Lucasfilm logo, STAR WARS and related properties are trademarks and/or copyrights, in the United States and other countries, of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. � & TM Lucasfilm Ltd.

[01/09/19 - 02:02 PM] 3.1 Million Viewers Encounter the First Sighting of History(R)'s New UFO Drama Series "Project Blue Book" History spins the numbers for Tuesday, January 8. [01/09/19 - 12:47 PM] MotorTrend Announces 37 Hours of Live, Multiplatform Broadcast of Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Additionally, for fans who can't get enough of the fast-paced action, MotorTrend is bringing viewers deeper inside the Scottsdale auction with daily, in-app exclusive content that explores every angle of the event both on and off the auction block. [01/09/19 - 11:00 AM] "2 Dope Queens," From Hit Comedy Duo Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, Returns to HBO for a Second Series of Four Hour-Long Specials, Starting Feb. 8 Guests include Lupita Nyong'o, Daniel Radcliffe, Janet Mock, Lizzo and Keegan-Michael Key. [01/09/19 - 11:00 AM] "Mental Samurai," The First-Ever Obstacle Course for the Mind, Hosted and Produced by Rob Lowe, to Premiere Tuesday, February 26, on FOX In the series, people from all walks of life will compete, and underdogs will triumph, in the game that anyone can play, and almost no one can win. [01/09/19 - 11:00 AM] Disney Channel Orders Second Season of High-Flying Animated Series "Star Wars Resistance" for Fall 2019 Premiere Plus: the mid-season one trailer, featuring a first look at a major villain from "The Force Awakens," was released today on the Star Wars YouTube page. [01/09/19 - 10:02 AM] "Tropical Cop Tales" Makes Its First Arrest on February 1 on Adult Swim The live-action comedy series follows two burnt-out city cops when they relocate to a tropical paradise for a relaxing twilight to their careers. [01/09/19 - 10:01 AM] Nickelodeon's New Original TV Movie, "Bixler High Private Eye," Starring Jace Norman and Ariel Martin, Premieres on Monday, Jan. 21, at 7 P.M. (ET/PT) The live-action comedy follows Xander DeWitt (Norman), an inquisitive teenager who has a knack for solving mysteries, as he tackles his biggest case yet when his father suddenly disappears. [01/09/19 - 10:00 AM] Viola Davis and the Cast of "The Big Bang Theory" to Present Special Awards at the 24th Annual Critics' Choice Awards The Critics' Choice Awards will be broadcast live on The CW Network on Sunday, January 13. [01/09/19 - 09:35 AM] Video: "Trigger Warning with Killer Mike" - Official Trailer - Netflix With no due respect, "Trigger Warning with Killer Mike" launches January 18 on Netflix, taking on the economy, gang culture, religion, education, and more. [01/09/19 - 09:24 AM] YouTube Sci-Fi Comedy "Weird City" from Jordan Peele and Charlie Sanders Reveals Full List of Series Guest Stars The six-episode series will debut exclusively on YouTube Premium on February 13. [01/09/19 - 09:01 AM] Video: Trailer Debut - Margaret Qualley and Anthony Mackie Star in the New Trailer for "IO" The Netflix film follows one of the last survivors on a post-cataclysmic Earth, a young scientist dedicated to finding a way for humans to adapt and survive, rather than abandon their world. [01/09/19 - 08:24 AM] Tuesday's Broadcast Ratings: NBC Tops Demos on Disrupted Night ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC all carried news coverage at 9:00/8:00c. [01/09/19 - 08:00 AM] Video: Trailer & Key Art Debut - "Russian Doll" Premieres February 1 The Netflix series follows a young woman named Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) on her journey as the guest of honor at a seemingly inescapable party one night in New York City. [01/09/19 - 06:30 AM] Smokey Robinson to Appear on "Aretha! A Grammy(R) Celebration for the Queen of Soul," Broadcasting Sunday, March 10 on CBS The concert will tape on Sunday, Jan. 13 at 6:00 PM, PT at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. [01/09/19 - 06:00 AM] iHeartMedia & FOX Announce Nominees for 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards This year's event airs Thursday, March 14 (8:00-10:00 PM ET live/PT tape-delayed) on FOX, live from Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2019/01/09/disney-channel-orders-second-season-of-high-flying-animated-series-star-wars-resistance-for-fall-2019-premiere-912210/20190109disney01/

[grabtee]

Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater

New Post has been published on https://lazadashirt.com/birthday/key-peele-do-you-wanna-go-to-war-balakay-christmas-sweater/

Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater

I didn’t watch last night but good for Beyoncé for her song celebrating her Blackness and the Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater. As far as the actual game sounds like Mr Newton has lots of growing up todo but if you can’t keep it together when you‘re winning it’s a pretty good indication of how you act in defeat….sorry not the way I was raised. Humility goes a long way. Absolutely No reason to call this man a BOY. ..that’s just stupid. Even if you didn’t mean it that way it smacks of racism.

Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater, Youth tee, V-neck, Sweater and Unisex, t-shirt

Guys V-Neck

Ladies Tee

Ladies V-Neck

Long Sleeved

Let’s start off by eliminating “The Post.” It has no chance here, a nomination is it’s reward. “Lady Bird” and “Call Me By Your Name” are also out, they’re missing key nominations (editing for both, director for CMBYN). “Phantom Thread” and “Darkest Hour” were both a lot stronger than I expected when it came to nominations, but neither has much of a chance. “Dunkirk” was divisive, and older members may have been somewhat more drawn to “Darkest Hour.” “Three Billboards” is also just too divisive. It will get plenty of #1 votes but because of the preferential balloting system, it won’t be able to win. I think “Get Out” will get a lot of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place votes, but the old-class academy may have either skipped it or ranked it low on principle as it’s a genre film. That leaves “The Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater” as the least offensive, least divisive, and probably one of the least interesting films of the year, as your winner by default.

Best, Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater

Guys Shirt

Hoodie

Washington and Day-Lewis are veterans and prior winners who are just happy to be here. Kaluuya was phenomenal, but they’ll reward “Get Out” somewhere else. Chalamet gave the best performance of the year. It was so physical, emotional, and nuanced. But he’s 22 and Key Peele Do You Wanna Go To War Balakay Christmas Sweater win an Oscar (He’s playing a meth addict later this year alongside Steve Carrel in an adaptation of the bestselling book “Beautiful Boy” so… next year?). The Oscar will go to Gary Oldman for his over the top, hammy performance as Churchill that is not only vastly inferior to what John Lithgow did on “The Crown,” but is almost entirely lost under too much prosthetic makeup. It’s a shame as Chalamet, Day-Lewis and Kaluuya were better in every conceivable way.

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[todaynewsstories]

Return to Egypt revives memories of desert battle for British veterans

EL ALAMEIN, Egypt (Reuters) – For Bill Blackburn, the memories that returned were the flies, the thirst, and the power of the artillery barrage that opened the battle of El Alamein.

Blackburn was one of six British World War Two veterans to visit the desert battlefield on the 76th anniversary of the decisive Allied victory that marked an important step towards the eventual defeat of German and Italian forces in Africa in May 1943.

Those who fought are now in their late 90s, and may not return again.

The battle began on the night of Oct. 23 1942 when Commonwealth forces from General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army began driving back Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika, which had threatened to sweep across Egypt and into the Middle East.

“It sounded like hell on earth, the night sky was lit up with gun flashes and bangs, and we got a few shells thrown back at us but nothing compared to what we threw at the Germans,” said Blackburn, 98, from West Yorkshire, England.

“After the barrage ceased we were dug in and we were there for several days before the breakthrough, and then we moved forward,” he added.

The veterans returned to the battle site because the British government paid for the trip for the first time, using the proceeds of fines levied on banks over the manipulation of the Libor interbank interest rate.

Joe Peel, also 98, was a gunner at El Alamein who had his hearing badly damaged by German bombing and said he had never expected to return.

“It’s marvellous to be back here just to see what we did here. But it’s changed quite a lot,” he said, speaking on Saturday at a ceremony at the Commonwealth war cemetery, where the nearby desert and Mediterranean coast is rapidly being developed amid a construction boom.

Across the coastal road is a German war memorial commemorating more than 4,300 German and Austrian dead, where a joint ceremony was held on Saturday for the first time.

Casualty rates on both sides were especially high at El Alamein. The battle was “terrible”, Peel said.

“You couldn’t see nothing hardly, because the dust and the sand were blowing up with the shells and goodness knows what.”

El Alamein was seen as key for boosting Allied morale, despite more than 13,500 dead, wounded or missing over about 10 days of fighting as Commonwealth forces broke through poorly supplied German lines.

Blackburn’s Royal Artillery regiment eventually advanced through Tunisia before crossing to Italy.

“It was pretty tough really, whenever you had a meal you were eating flies and couldn’t get rid of them. It was pretty rough but we got through it,” Peel said.

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'Shape of Water,' 'Three Billboards' lead Oscar nominations

NEW YORK/January 23, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) — Guillermo del Toro’s lavish monster romance “The Shape of Water” fished out a leading 13 nominations, Greta Gerwig became just the fifth woman nominated for best director and “Mudbound” director of photography Rachel Morrison made history as the first woman nominated for best cinematography in nominations announced Tuesday for the 90th annual Academy Awards.

Oscar voters put forward nine best-picture nominees: “The Shape of Water ,” Martin McDonaugh’s rage-fueled comic drama “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ,” Gerwig’s nuanced coming-of-age tale “Lady Bird ,” Jordan Peele’s horror sensation “Get Out ,” Joe Wright’s Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour ,” Steven Spielberg’s timely newspaper drama “The Post ,” Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic “Dunkirk ,” Luca Guadagnino’s tender love story “Call Me By Your Name ” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s twisted romance “Phantom Thread .”

“The Shape of Water” landed just shy of tying the record of 14 nominations by “All About Eve,” ”Titanic” and “La La Land.” Del Toro’s dark fantasy — a Cold War era ode to outsiders about a mute cleaning lady and an amphibious creature — scored a wide array for nominations for its cast (Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer), del Toro’s directing, its sumptuous score (by Alexandre Desplat) and its technical craft.

Reached by phone Tuesday in Los Angeles, del Toro said he would celebrate by working and eating an extra chicken sausage for breakfast. “That will be my indulgence for the day.”

The Mexican filmmaker said “The Shape of Water” has resonated because it explodes “the myth of ‘us and them.'”

“You realize that we are all, in some way or another, a bit of an outsider in different ways,” said del Toro. “Not fearing the other but embracing the other is the only way to go as a race. The urgency of that message of hope and emotion is what sustained the faith for roughly half a decade that the movie needed to be made.”

The cascading fallout of sexual harassment scandals throughout Hollywood put particular focus on the best director category, which for many is a symbol of gender inequality in the film industry. Gerwig follows only Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Kathryn Bigelow, the sole woman to win (for “The Hurt Locker”).

Also nominated for best director was Peele. He becomes the fifth black filmmaker nominated for best director, and the third to helm a best-picture nominee, following Barry Jenkins last year for “Moonlight.” He’s also the third person to receive best picture, director and writing nods for his first feature film after Warren Beatty (“Heaven Can Wait”) and James L. Brooks (“Terms of Endearment”).

“What’s the opposite of the Sunken Place?” said Peele on Twitter.

Though all of the acting front-runners — Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards”), Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Allison Janney (“I, Tonya”), Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards”) — landed their expected nominations, there were surprises.

Denzel Washington (“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”) was nominated for best actor, likely eclipsing James Franco (“Disaster Artist”). Franco was accused of sexual misconduct, which he denied, just days before Oscar voting closed. The category’s other nominees were a retiring veteran — Daniel Day-Lewis for what he’s said is his final performance (“Phantom Thread”) — and a pair of breakouts: Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me By Your Name”) and “Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”).

Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey in Ridley Scott’s “All the Money in the World,” also sneaked into the best supporting actor category. Added to the film in reshoots little more than a month before the film’s release, 88-year-old Plummer is the oldest acting nominee ever.

Perhaps most unexpected was the broad success of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” which scored not only nods for Day-Lewis and Lesley Manville, for best supporting actress, but also nominations for best picture, Anderson’s direction, costume design and Johnny Greenwood’s score.

Anderson likely displaced not only Steven Spielberg (“The Post”) but Martin McDonagh, the director of the film many have tapped to win best picture, “Three Billboards.” His absence is a major knock for a film that has endured the harshest backlash of the contenders, with many claiming it’s out of touch in matters of race.

Still, “Three Billboards” scored seven nominations Tuesday, behind only “The Shape of Water” and Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk.” The World War II epic, thus far little-honored in Hollywood’s awards season, emerged especially strong with Oscar voters, taking eight nominations, many of them in technical categories. It’s Nolan’s first nomination for best director.

Though the favorites are largely independent films, a number of blockbusters fared well, including five nods for “Blade Runner 2049,” four for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” three for “Baby Driver,” two for “Beauty and the Beast” and two for Pixar’s “Coco,” which is up for best animated feature.

Still, Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” which became the highest grossing movie ever directed by a woman, failed to receive any Oscar nods despite an awards campaign. (Sean Baker’s far lower budgeted “The Florida Project” also managed only a supporting actor nomination for Willem Dafoe despite hopes for a best picture nod.)

But the box-office hit that carved the most unlikely path to the Oscars was “Get Out.” It opened back in February on Oscar weekend, and went on to pocket $254.7 million worldwide. It scored four nominations.

Though many minorities were still absent from the acting categories, the film academy, which has worked to diversify its membership, put forward a field of nominees almost as diverse as last year when “Moonlight,” ”Fences” and “Hidden Figures” powered a rebuttal to the “OscarsSoWhite” backlash of the two years prior. Four black actors — Washington, Kaluuya, Spencer and Mary J. Blige (“Mudbound”) — are among the 20 acting nominees.

Meryl Streep, who stars as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in “The Post,” notched her 21st Oscar nomination. She was joined for best actress by McDormand, Hawkins, Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”) and Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”).

“I am honored beyond measure by this nomination for a film I love, a film that stands in defense of press freedom, and inclusion of women’s voices in the movement of history,” Streep said in a statement. “Proud of the film, and all her filmmakers. Thank you from a full heart.”

The 89-year-old French filmmaking legend Agnes Varda, an honorary Oscar winner this season, is also up for best documentary for her co-directed “Faces Places.” The other nominees are: “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” ”Last Men in Aleppo” and two Netflix entries: “Icarus” and “Strong Island.” Yance Ford, the director of “Strong Island,” about Ford’s investigation into his brother’s 1992 murder, becomes the first transgender filmmaker nominated for an Oscar.

Some had lobbied for “A Fantastic Woman” star Daniela Vega to become the first transgender actor nominated. While Vega didn’t garner a nomination, her film, from Chile, landed in the best foreign language category. The other nominees are: “The Insult,” from Lebanon; “Loveless,” from Russia; “On Body and Soul,” from Hungary; and the Palme d’Or winner “The Square,” from Sweden.

Last year’s Oscars broadcast, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, drew 32.9 million viewers for ABC, a four percent drop from the prior year. More worrisome, however, was a steeper slide in the key demographic of adults aged 18-49, whose viewership was down 14 percent from 2016.

Though the show ran especially long, at three hours and 49 minutes, it finished with a bang: the infamous envelope mix-up that led to “La La Land” being incorrectly announced as the best picture before “Moonlight” was crowned.

This year, the academy has prohibited the PwC accountants who handle the envelopes from using cellphones or social media during the show. The accounting firm on Monday also unveiled several reforms including the addition of a third balloting partner in the show’s control room. But the movie business has larger accounting problems. Movie attendance hit a 24-year low in 2017 despite the firepower of “The Last Jedi,” ”Beauty and the Beast” and “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2.”

It was a dominant if bittersweet day for 20th Century Fox. Its specialty label, Fox Searchlight, is behind both “Three Billboards” and “The Shape of Water,” and Fox released “The Post.” Yet Fox’s leading 27 nominations may soon count for the Walt Disney Co., which last month reached a deal to purchase Fox for $52.4 billion.

Both Amazon and Netflix failed to crack the best picture category but earned nominations elsewhere. Netflix’s “Mudbound” scored four nods and Amazon’s “The Big Sick” grabbed a nomination for Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s original screenplay about their real-life romance.

“At times we worried it would be insurmountable, or would rip us apart, or even worse — that no one would like it,” Nanjiani and Gordon said in a joint statement. “The fact that it connected with audiences is exhilarating, and this nomination proves that our love is real. We have decided to stay married.”

By Associated Press, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (J.S)

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'The Predator’ will finally reveal why the hunters are attacking Earth

After decades of mystery, the true motivations of the aliens in the Predator series may finally be revealed.

In an interview with Pop Culture, actor Jake Busey spoke about Shane Black’s upcoming sequel, The Predator, hinting about how the film will reveal some details about the history of the Predators.

[RELATED1]

"This one definitely falls in line with the original franchise, in that it does focus on the technology that the Predators have," Busey said to PopCulture.com. "It focuses on what the goal of the Predators is, and what their modus operandi, and why they come to the planet, and that type of thing. It's definitely in line with the original franchise."

That’s the only thing that will be in line with the original franchise. Over the summer, Busey revealed that his character will be directly connected to Predator 2—he’s playing the son of his father Gary Busey’s character from the 1990 sequel.

“[Shane Black] called me and he said, ‘Hey, you wanna do this movie? We don’t have money for you but it’ll be a fun thing to come play and be your father’s son,’” Busey said to ComingSoon.net. “And so as much as I have followed in my dad’s footsteps career-wise, this is like really following in his footsteps by playing a character who is the son of the character he played. And I don’t think there would be any other forum where I would do that; I think this is the one thing. If you liked the very first movie a lot, you’ll really like this one. This one has a lot of essence of the first movie.”

[RELATED2]

Predator star Olivia Munn previously spoke with Men’s Fitness and told us that the story of the film has a “standalone” feel and that “it’s within the world of Predator, but the movie is not a continuation of another one. It has its own ensemble with some amazing actors. It's one of the coolest things I’ve been a part of”.

Munn also went on to say that she’ll get to use some of her badass fighting skills from X-Men: Apocalypse on The Predator as well.

“I’ll say this, my character knows how to use a weapon,” Munn said. “You always see in movies that the guys just automatically know how to use it and the girls, they have to kind of fumble through it. I didn’t want her to be a soldier, but there's no reason why she wouldn't know how. Shane and I were on the same page about that immediately.

[RELATED3]

Actor Thomas Jane previously dropped some major reveals about the plot, saying that it would focus on a group of Afghanistan war veterans that get mixed up with Boyd Holbrook’s Quinn McKenna, the main protagonist.

“We play these veterans from like Afghanistan, Iraq War, or whatever,” Jane said. “But we’re all fucking crazy so we go to the VA hospital to get our meds. We’re all shellshocked, PTSD soldiers. We’re at the VA hospital and we’re in group therapy, and, of course, somebody flips out—this is backstory, I don’t think we really see this—somebody flips out and we all get arrested and get thrown onto the bus to go down to the hospital, and they throw this other guy [Holbrook] on the bus too.”

Holbrook, Busey, Munn, and Jane star alongside Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones), Keegan Michael-Key (Key and Peele), and Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) in the film.

The Predator will be released on Aug. 3, 2018.

[RELATED4]

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from Men's Fitness https://www.mensfitness.com/life/entertainment/predator-will-finally-reveal-why-hunters-are-attacking-earth