#taking what he knows about documentaries and sledgehammering

[isagrimorie]

Aside from the harebrained scheme of canceling both Batgirl and Scoob! sequel when both movies finished film, it turns out Zaslav also removed six movies from HBO Max.

Movies, Alan Sepinwall noted, Jason Kilar the former head of HBO Max greenlit.

Sepinwall noted this is looking more like Zaslav wanting to spit at all of Kilar's work.

[dawn-petrichor-world]

Prank and delivery

Summary: You're pregnant and have to spend the last weeks at home but boredom drives you nuts. You decide to prank Jax instead of rest.

A/N: it was supposed to be a short drabble. It's my third drabble for the SOA universe and first long drabble wrote with +1000 words not proofread.

I send a imagine to @soaharleys but then (again) I wrote down my thoughts. Hope you don't mind.

Warning: pregnant!reader, stubborn!reader, worried!Jax, water breaks.

It’s been weeks or months you’re stuck in bed not allowed to move and it’s driving you crazy. The only things you can do are walking for some minutes, taking a shower only with assistance but as time flies your health gets better slowly and you’re pretty sure you will end up completely unable to get up from the bed. So it’s better to enjoy the moment.

- “I’m bored. Come, pick me up. I have to go to the club.” you require on the phone.

- “You are not allowed to get out the bed.” Reminds you Juice.

- "You're wrong! I’m allowed to walk, I’m allowed to go out. So pick me up now or I’ll drive there.”

- “If you do this and Jax found out I didn’t help you, he will cut me in pieces.” He replies before hanging out.

Ten minutes later, Juice arrives and drives you to the club with a pout expression all time long.

-“Stop sulking! He doesn’t have to make a scene. I will tell him I threatened you or more exactly you’re here for nothing to happen to me, so if he puts a finger on you I’ll cut it.” You try to reassure him.

At the club, everyone is in shock to see you there and wonders about your health, the baby, etc. Gemma cuts them off and clears the path for you to go in. You sit on the couch, Juice gives you a glass of water that you drink in one shot.

After spending many times at home, watching TV shows, movies, documentaries, etc you need action. Staying at home and laying on the bed is a torture and painful. You end up with an idea and share it with everyone and beg for help or more exactly you’re threatening them to stay there, to turn their life like hell and make sure Jax releases his frustration and his wrath on them.

It’s funny when people are nicer and scared to upset a pregnant woman and it’s delightful to play with that.

A bike’s revving outside and stops next to the door. A handsome tall blonde man stops in the doorframe when he sees you and takes off the helmet slowly, thinking you are a hallucination but you’re really there with a huge smile on your face.

- “Love! What are you doing here? Is there something wrong with the baby?” he asks you worried and while he's removing the glove with his teeth to touch your enormous belly with his bare hand.

- “I’m fine but I needed to socialise.”

- “I would've called your friends and invited them to see you.”

- “I want to see people somewhere else with me stuck in the bed, looking like a dead whale on the beach.”

- “You are a sexy whale.” He corrects you with a smile.

- “You are not supposed to say she’s a whale unless you want to die.” Says quietly Gemma who takes her son’s stuff.

Then you explain to him why you are there. At home, most of the time Teller sees you watching interior design shows, so your sudden desire is not surprising but the club is not the place to redecorate. Using the baby card is your last chance, that doesn’t really work this time but you don’t care because the others are with you.

Days after days you go to the club to talk about your plan and even call some engineers, once physically there, with Gemma all of you discuss in privacy in the meeting room.

Friday, Jax is completely freaking out when he sees workers with the materials fully ready to destroy everything but you stop them before the first sledgehammer smatches the wall. Confused your lover looks at you to try to understand and you sign him up people behind him who try not to laugh.

- “You gotta be kidding! That’s a prank!" He finally understands and says with relief.

- “Not entirely a prank. I still want a room for kids here. I know it’ll be cool. So I talk with everybody and before you ask, yes, they were real engineers and they are real workers but I paid them to act and they did it great. Next time they will destroy the wall for sure."

Everyone laughs and makes fun of Jax who clearly went through different stages of mind but when your water breaks, that one wasn’t expected.

He starts to panic, the baby is coming too early and you suppose to be at home in bed to rest, he screams at people around both of you but you grab his shirt that ripped and yell at him because the contractions to stop screaming on them, to breathe and you remind him there is a bag in his bedroom that his mother prepared and puts there months ago, just in case.

At the hospital things are completely different, it’s another kind of level. You are growling like an animal and whining because of the pain and when Jax tries to act nicely it annoys you at all points.

The nurses are perfect, total angels even when you curse at them or cry because of your behaviour. But the atmosphere changes once you deliver the baby and the nurse has to take her without presenting you and with a concerned face disappears without saying anything. You completely freak out and try to stand up but Jax stops you with the help of the others personal healthcare.

Once in your room, someone knocks at the door and a sweaty and whispering voice wakes you up. A nurse pushes something with a baby in it.

- “The baby is a little tired of all the effort. We had to make sure she’ll be fine, we put her in, so don’t need to worry.”

- “She!” Jax, Gemma and you say at once.

- “What is the name of the warrior?”

- “Brooklyn,” starts Jax.

- “Cordelia,” you continue.

- “Brooklyn Cordelia Teller Morrow.” answers Gemma.

You sob and put your hands on your mouth to choke the noise, Gemma rubs your shoulder and kisses your head while Jax talks with the nurse who tilts her head. Then she opens the glass bed, carries Brook and puts her on your chest. The feeling between happiness and sadness is a mess but you don't move. She looks like a shrimp but she’s so beautiful that makes your heart melts in your chest.

Jax cries too but his tears are pure joy, someone else knocks at the door and Clay walks in with Abel in his arms Jax gets him back and presents the baby to the big brother.

- “Say hi to your little sister, Brooklyn.”

- “Hello.” He says that makes you laugh, and he even kisses her on her head.

A flash blinds you but you understand what's going on, you wipe your eyes to clear your sight and furrow your eyebrows upset.

- “You’re beautiful.” Says Gemma.

Thanks for reading it. Hope you like it. My Masterlists

[writing-in-april]

Soured Nostalgia

Spencer Reid x Female Reader

Summary: When Reader moves their stuff in to Spencer’s apartment they find photos that he kept over the years. One photo of the past springs up memories of Spencer’s precious relationship with Elle.

A/N: hey heeeyyy everybody- here’s a fic I’ve been really excited to share with everyone. It’s my eleventh fic for my 30 fics in 30 days!!! This was the original request (I made it a little different lol I hope you like it)I had a fun time with it mostly cause I totally think Spencer and Elle had something going on at some point 😉 Plus I got to incorporate older angsty post prison Spencer and mention how he used to be a little baby ☺️ I’m curious to hear y’all’s thoughts about the Reidaway ship, or really anything so feel free to drop an ask to my inbox here. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy!

Warnings: 18+, Smut, Joking about being jealous???, Reidaway in the past, Spencer being sad about the people who’ve left him, Sub Spencer, Only a bit of dry sex, Masturbation, Unprotected sex, Use of a belt to restrain, A few taps on the cheek, Reader’s hand is around Spencer’s throat for a second

Main Masterlist Word Count: 3.2k

Reminiscing on the past was difficult depending on how the story had ended. Memories that may have been happy could turn too painful because of the ending result. Age turned the memories into unreliable accounts as well, unable to truly remember how things had been back then and how you had truly felt.

Memories were still something to hold onto and cherish even though they got twisted with age and opinion. Nostalgia, a sentimental or wishful affection for the past, was an addictive feeling even if it made you cry. It remained addictive even if most of your past memories had hurt you with no sentiment attached. Everyone always chased the euphoric feelings they had when looking at the ghosts of their past. Sometimes even when looking back you can find something that had once soured had turned sweet again.

Spencer had many memories that he was no longer able to look back upon for a host of reasons. Most often it was because he could no longer bear to look back on a memory of someone who had left him. Whether it was his Dad, Gideon, Hotch, Blake, Elle, and many others, looking back at them just made him often feel like everyone in his entire life had left him.

That wasn’t true of course, he still had his Mom- and you. Even with his Mom there were still many of his memories with her were still stained with guilt, though that had gotten better with time and with your help.

You had begun helping him find the benefit in looking back, trying to make the soured nostalgia a bit sweeter again. It was getting easier as time ticked by for him to open up to you about everything in his past, the good and the bad. At first you had been staring at a wall that he had been building higher and higher throughout the years, it was daunting how tall it was. When you helped take a sledgehammer to it, making it crumble beneath your effort, he pulled away for a while. He felt comfortable by himself behind his own Great Wall until you showed him the benefits of sharing the secrets he held behind it. But, you still stayed, helping him as much as you could until he was willing to open up.

It had been many months since you started your effort to help him break it down. At some point in the last months you had both fallen into a relationship, a romantic one. What had once been a platonic relationship forged from shared interests evolved into a romance emerging from the rubble of his wall.

He had even given you a key to his apartment at one point, which he had never done with anyone except the bureau. Emily was the one that really had it, but that was strictly for work reasons. This was a show of trust which was much more helpful than his wall that had reached the heights of a skyscraper.

A simple key soon turned into you staying at his place more often than at your own. You had casually mentioned one day while watching one of Spencer’s favorite documentaries that you basically lived here now. It was a true statement, most of the clothes you wore on a daily basis had been given a spot in his dresser and the toothbrush you kept there was not the one you used for travel- that one was at your place. You had begun to put your mark on Spencer’s life in a more permanent way than before.

When he had spontaneously suggested the next day that you should move in with him, you knew that your small comment had stuck in his brain. It was easy to agree to, you had said you basically already lived here, plus living with the love of your life sounded like a dream. You only had a few things that you wanted to bring over and it was mostly decorative stuff that you could’ve let go if Spencer hadn’t insisted that he wanted you to make the space your own.

While turning the space that was once solely Spencer’s into something for you both, you had found a small clear box with a blue lid, filled with pictures. Spencer didn’t have a lot of personal pictures framed, there was one with you and him by the bed, one with the team by his desk, one with him and Morgan on the living room wall, and one with you two and his Mom also hung up in the living room.

When you had shown him the box he could tell you were curious, letting you look through it without a moment of hesitation. In the past Spencer would have been wary sharing his memories with you, but now he’d let you look. If only you could get him to look at the box with you.

You weren’t surprised he didn't want to look with you once you saw the people littered throughout the snapshots. Varying people that had left were in most of them, even some you never met.

Ones with Hotch and Gideon- even one from a long time ago with his father buried at the bottom. As you browsed through them you were glad he was able to hang up that photo of him and Morgan, at least they had parted with some closure. It also helped that he still saw him regularly, he had never fully left like some of the people from his past.

One picture in particular stood out to you, it was another team photo, they seemed more carefree in this one compared to now. There was baby Spencer, before you had known him, in a birthday boy hat smiling with the rest of the team. You guessed it was around his 23rd or 24th birthday, going by the slick back gelled hair he had sported in his earlier years. He seemed so much more different back then, perhaps more carefree compared to now. But, he also seemed much more unsure of himself, maybe a bit self conscious. In the photo you could tell he was nervous, just by the look in his eyes. He still had that same look in his eyes whenever he felt nervous.

Then you looked closer at where his eyes were focused on, there was a clear line of sight from him to Elle. Elle was way less nervous in this captured moment compared to Spencer, though from what you had heard she had always been like that.

Your gaze on the photo was broken when Spencer then came into the living room where you were sitting on the couch.

You decided to test the waters to see if he might want to take a look at the photo with you, “Why do you look so nervous in this photo?”

He stopped the path he had been taking, then stood still for a second before deciding to sit next to you on the couch. Straining his neck he gazed over at the photo you were holding in your hands. It was silent for a while as he looked over it, stopping to look at his old team. Some of the team still remained intact, namely JJ, but she wasn’t the same as she had been all those years ago. You let him take it from your hands, so he could look at it closer. He cleared his throat a little, though his voice still came out slightly raspy when he spoke, though he didn’t answer the question you had asked him,“It’s the only picture I ever had taken with Elle…”

“I know you guys were- close.” You didn’t ask your previous question again, sensing that it was still too much to talk about in specifics. What he was telling you right now was even more than what he told you, only telling you that she was his first, everything. Any supplemental information was from talking discreetly to JJ about it one night because you were somewhat curious.

Tiptoeing around the relationship you knew that they had previously was like walking through a minefield. You tried the best that you could to avoid making him too upset. When you got him to open up, it wasn’t by forcing him to talk all at once. Busting the wall down was done brick by brick, not all at once.

“I’m glad you aren’t jealous of her.” His comment was said with less sadness than before. It was nice to see a glimpse of the weight coming off of his shoulders, even if it was just for a moment.

“What? Do you want me to be jealous of her?” You teased, lightheartedly so he wouldn’t dwell on the sad aspect of their past relationship. He smiled softly which deepened when you playfully stuck your tongue out and crossed your arms.

“No- you’ve got nothing to be jealous about…” Any playfulness in his voice was erased as his sentence trailed off. You didn’t say anything for a moment in case he wanted to continue his thought. And, after a moment of silence he did, “I haven’t spoken to her since she left…”

“I know- I was just joking about being jealous. I know how much she meant to you…” His eyes moved away from you, at first you thought it might be because he was still feeling the pain of losing her all those years ago. But, there was something else in his eyes, it naturally made you curious, “What are you thinking about?”

“If you were jealous- what would you have done?” His mind must have shifted away from thinking about the ending of his memories with Elle, which was a step in the right direction. At least he wasn’t avoiding the topic all together, he was still talking about her in a sense.

You bit your lip, thinking about what direction you could take this in. You weren’t going to lie, your mind had gone straight into the gutter at his suggestion and by the look on Spencer’s face so had his.

“Hmmm…” You pretended to ponder while you moved from where you were sitting on the couch to sit on something better, Spencer’s lap. Straddling him then with ease you looked down at his face tracing his cheeks with your fingers. His pupils were blown wide now, almost completely devouring his iris that had become a small ring. He didn’t say anything yet, waiting for you to continue your thought obediently, “I think I would do things to you that I suspect she never did.”

He gulped hard, hard enough that you could hear it. You continued to trace your fingers along his face, sometimes picking a lock of his hair to twirl, waiting for him to say something else like you knew he wanted to. It only took a few more seconds of your touches and your eyes staring into his own before he asked, “C-Can you show me?”

You stopped your movements, pausing for dramatic effect before crushing his lips onto your own. He squared into your mouth at first, clearly taken off guard by your sudden kiss. Before he had processed what was going on enough to let you, you forced your tongue into his mouth, earning you a delicious moan from him.

When you moved again suddenly, separating your mouth with his for just a moment, he tried to chase your lips. Pushing a finger to his lips you then used that to push him back into the couch, then answering his question, “Gladly.”

You kept your finger on his mouth to seal them shut. He could have opened it easily to respond to you, but he wanted to see what you might do next.

Instead of going back to kissing him you started to pull his belt off of him. It was difficult with one hand, taking much longer than it would be with two. But, you still kept your finger rested in the position most people use to shush someone.

Once the belt had finally been pulled from the belt loops of his slacks you finally removed your finger from his mouth. He still remained quiet, his eyes following your every move intently. You then went to work, pinning his hands above his head, then beginning to restrain them with his belt.

“Did she do this to you?” Goading him while you looped the belt around his hands. You made sure to go as slow as possible while you restrained him just to make it last longer until you gave him what he wanted. You even began to grind down on his cock a little bit, it obviously ached to be free from its confines in his trousers by how strained the slacks were getting.

“No!” His voice was broken and breathy, exactly how you wanted it as you tightened the belt around his hand a little more.

Once you were satisfied that the belt was tight enough you got off of him to remove the shorts you had been wearing, along with the rest of your clothes. Normally when you were naked and Spencer was clothed it would be when you were underneath him as a sort of power play. In this position, where he couldn’t move without fear of consequences while you restraddled him completely naked was almost even more empowering.

To play with the dynamic even more you had him remain confined in his slacks for a while longer, while you touched yourself. You were already quite wet from seeing Spencer in this position and exerting that power by pumping your fingers in you while he could do nothing had you dripping onto his slacks.

Spencer’s jaw had gone slack while watching you moan above him, completely speechless from your actions. It was almost comical and entirely too easy to tease him about, “Close your mouth you might catch flies.” His mouth clenched shut at that. It soon fell slack again at your next words while you brought yourself closer to the edge with your fingers, “What? Did she never do this for you?”

All Spencer could do was sit there and take it, shaking his head side to side, only a little so he could keep his eyes on you. You decided to be merciful, pulling your fingers out of you just before you orgasmed. You wanted to finish at the same time as him anyway.

Finally, you pulled his aching cock out of his slacks. It was throbbing in your hand as you spread your wetness with the fingers that had been inside you. Because you had edged yourself earlier, you couldn’t take teasing him any longer. You lined the head of his cock that was red and weeping up to your entrance, sinking down as fast as you could take him. While you sunk down you rubbed your clit in slow circles, not enough to make you orgasm, but enough to make it easier to take him.

Once you had fully taken him you wasted no time, immediately beginning to build up a fast pace. And, of course you couldn’t help but goad him again,

“Did she make you feel this good?” Your pace you had chosen was rough, bouncing and rolling your hips with reckless abandon while he had to take it without being able to move. He could have thrusted up into you even without the use of his hands, but he had one too many of your punishments in the past to be willing to break the rules so explicitly. Now if he ever broke the rules now it was him subtly bending them. Though, you could tell by the way his eyes rolled back into his head that he had no intention of doing that tonight. It felt too good to be used like this by you.

He still had not answered you though, not on purpose, but you still needed an answer. Tapping his cheek a few times, just hard enough to get his attention. It caused him to whine, but he still didn’t give you an answer. Since that didn’t work you decided to ask again, “I asked you a question. Did she make you feel this good? Did she use you like this?”

To add an extra edge to your words filled with a deadly tone you reached one of your hands forward to grasp around his neck. To make him look at you directly you forcefully tilted his neck, eyes once again trained on yours. He finally found it in himself to answer, “It felt good with her, but it feels best with you! I love you!”

“Good.” You simply stated and dropped your hold on his neck so you could return it to its place on his chest, using it as leverage to help you continue your fast pace. Your orgasm was fast approaching, his cock hitting you in the perfect spot, all you needed was a bit more stimulation. When you brought your hand down to run fast circles onto your clit, you soon fell apart above him. Spencer couldn’t help but look up at you in awe, speechless at how beautiful you look while you writhed on top of him.

Your own release pushed Spencer close to the edge and he started to beg, “I’m gonna cum! Please, can I?”

His hands had tightened into fists above him, knuckles going white over the effort of keeping them right where you had placed them originally. You were pleased with the way he had begged, glad that he had asked permission before even thinking about cumming. You still left him in suspense for a bit longer as you continued to work yourself on his painfully hard cock. Pressing a few kisses to his exposed skin under his collar was admittedly just to torture him a bit longer before you finally gave the command.

“Cum for me then.” Spencer followed your command eagerly, taking only two more of you bouncing on top of him to release inside you with a groan. While he rode out his release his lips captured around one of your pebbled peaks, sucking hard to get one last moan out of you.

Slumping forward after you had both finished and you had taken the belt off his wrists with the promise you’d lotion them up after you cuddled. You rested your head on his shoulder, wanting to stay as close as possible for a little while longer. He started tracing his fingers up and down your spine, relaxing you even further, almost to the point of falling asleep.

Before your eyes closed shut in post coital sleepiness your mind wandered a bit back to Elle. Elle had been an important figure in his life, his first real connection with someone special. Sure you teased about being jealous, but you thought it was important to tell him that you were ok with him thinking back on her. You knew he loved you. It most likely would take time till he was able to think or talk about her without a sharp pain in his chest, reminding him of how it all ended.

He hadn’t told you exactly what had happened, but it wasn’t hard to fill in all of the gaps. You turned your head, eyelashes fluttering when you nuzzled into his hair. Then you spoke quietly just enough so the sound could travel the short distance to his ear, “You should frame the picture, you look cute in it. And, I meant to say it earlier, I love you too.”

Ask Me Anything

—-

Tag lists (message me if you want to be added):

All works: @shotarosleftpinky @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar @s1utformgg @takeyourleap-of-faith

All MGG characters: @muffin-cup @willowrose99 @princesssmooshie

Spencer Reid/CM: @calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes @onlyhereforthefanfics @jareauswifey @princesssmooshie

Sub Spencer: @thatsonezesty13 @pastathighs @virtualpeanutartisanjudge @calm-and-doctor @princesssmooshie

[sloshed-cinema]

Seabiscuit (2003)

Oh, the parallels, the parallels!  The relationship between jockey and racehorse is a close one in these racing movies, man and beast united in one common goal.  But here, well, it’s on a whole other level.  Gary Ross takes a sledgehammer to the audience in establishing this.  When folksy, knowing horse trainer Tom Smith first encounters Seabiscuit, the horse is fighting off a gaggle of handlers.  And yet nearby is jockey Red Pollard scrapping with other young men.  Both are high-spirited, angry, and have a chip on their shoulder.  CINEMATIC PARALLELS!  And yet it’s not enough.  The camera follows Tom as he looks between the two again and again and again.  Might have missed the connection the first few times, after all.  The pair track along similar courses, hot-headed at first but always connected as they approach a string of victories.  They cannot be apart.  When Red agrees to appraise a horse his former mentor is trying to sell, it bolts, resulting in a severe leg injury to the jockey.  Seabiscuit shares a similar fate when “cheated on” by another jockey.  The pair heal together, rebuild together, and return together.  A fine narrative device, to be sure, but it’s all a bit much here.

The stakes up in here, and I don’t mean the Belmont ones.  It’s already a challenge to make a movie about a sport founded on rich people shouting from the sidelines as their property streaks around an oval seem compelling.  But no task is too great for master writer-director Gary Ross.  The film utterly destroys any emotional connection to the characters with an interminable and scattered opening half hour which feels like flipping between five to eight different Ken Burns documentaries.  How is the viewer supposed to understand what is happening, much less give a shit about any of it, when characters, locations, and narrative beats are treated like a Tenth Grader hastily skimming the AP US History Test Guide for a chapter right before an exam?  Even after the movie slows to a conventional narrative pace, it relies on its characters declaring that we should care, or overwrought melodrama in editing and symbolic imagery to convey the same.  California tech bro beats East Coast old money.  Color me inspired!  Will we be compelled to watch a similar tale of Emperor Elon overcoming mean Mr Twitter in our 2042 Tesla Productivity Camp Presented by Meta?  Barf.

THE RULES

SIP

Narration begins.

Location jump.

Unintentional comedy editing.  Or maybe the editor wanted to sabotage the movie?  I dunno.

Red talks to Seabiscuit.

BIG DRINK

William H Macy chews the scenery like it’s goddamn Hubba Bubba.

The film cuts to stock photos.

Red quotes a literary classic.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #470

Top Ten Films to Watch on Star on Disney+

We’ve been watching a lot of Disney+ lately. This is partly due to the fact that our family movie nights have become, almost accidentally, a quest to watch every bit of Star Wars content on the service; so far, we’ve watched the entire Skywalker Saga and are now moving onto the spin-off movies. The younglings have become addicted: Daughter #1 is getting stuck into The Clone Wars, whilst Daughter #2 is demanding we jump straight into The Mandalorian. As for the Princess to my Scoundrel, well, she and I have been thoroughly enjoying WandaVision, which by the time you read this, will have finished. Sob! Nothing to do but gird our loins until the arrival of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in a couple of weeks! At least this excellent TV programme appears to have whetted my wife’s appetite for watching more of the MCU movies. Maybe soon I can make oblique references to Mary Poppins, y’all, and someone else in the house will actually know what the hell I’m on about.

Well it looks as if there’s going to be even more use out of our Disney+ sub as the months roll inexorably on, what with their new Star channel. This is where they’ve shoehorned all the mucky films they bought from the naughty boys and girls at Fox; sweary adult dramas, sexy bits, and scenes of explicit wrist-slapping abound. So now we have this toybox of grown-up content to savour! What to watch? What not to watch? I’ve already started at the most obvious place by diving into some vintage Arnie with Commando, one of the funniest action movies ever made. It did not disappoint.

So where to next? Re-watching semi-forgotten classics, films I’ve not seen in literally decades? Or checking out things that slipped me by (there’s an entire list to be made of “films I read about in Empire in the ‘90s, got really excited about, but never saw”). Do I watch the crappier Die Hard films, or cheesy action movies (er, like Commando, I guess)? Or dive deep into prestige fair? Or just watch Spy Hard for the Weird Al theme tune, practically the only bit of the film I remember? The options are virtually endless.

So that’s what this week’s list is: ten films I intend to watch on Disney+ very flipping soon. Or, y’know, just play Zelda until Falcon starts.

9 to 5 (1980): there was a lot of talk of Dolly around the New Year, and my wife and I even watched a documentary about her. As a result, I had a scoot around to see if it was possible to buy 9 to 5 as a birthday or Valentine’s gift for my better half; it’s a film neither of us have seen in years if not decades, and we’re both big Grace and Frankie fans too. Alas, it’s a difficult film to get a hold of; there doesn’t appear to be a Blu-ray readily available. Praise be, then, that it’s now on Disney+; a terrific comedy film, with a nice bit of feminist bite. I’m not sure if it’ll feel dated or – post-#MeToo – oddly prescient. But I’m really, really looking forward to watching it again.

Crimson Tide (1995): I do love a good tense thriller, and I seem to remember this as being a particularly great tense thriller. This feels like one of those “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” candidates; a claustrophobic two-hander with no real action, almost a theatrical chamber piece, but made with huge stars and a big-time director (the late, great Tony Scott). I saw it once, on video, when it came out, so it’ll be great to revisit.

The Color of Money (1986): another minor classic that I’ve not seen for decades, and a film I remember even less well than Crimson Tide. It’s cool to revisit (or discover for the first time!) films by great directors, and this is Scorsese we’re talking about. Cruise as a freshly-minted movie star, still taking risks; Newman as a great elder statesman. I’ve genuinely no idea what it’s like, it’s been so long, but I’d love to see it again. Just wish The Hustler was on D+ too!

Quiz Show (1994): I’d mentioned before that there are loads of films from the ‘90s that I read about as an eager young film fan but never saw; this is one of them. An apparently-great drama about corruption at a hugely popular TV show in ‘50s America, with Ralph Fiennes in a very early Hollywood role. I think I’d enjoy it.

Looking for Richard (1996): another of those ‘90s films…! This fascinated me as a teen, and I’d love to see it: a documentary about Richard III, made by Al Pacino, featuring people talking about Shakespeare (got a lot of time for that) and also scenes of the play performed and filmed. It’s a real curio; also weirdly came out around the same time as McKellen’s Richard III. Maybe something was in the water? We’re due another big Rich in my opinion.

Jennifer’s Body (2009): a follow-up from Juno writer Diablo Cody, a horror centred around high school and female sexuality, this has always seemed like it might be a dark, delicious delight; it wasn’t very well received at the time, but has grown in cult status; as has its star, Megan Fox, who I’d argue has not had the easiest time within Hollywood. Anyway, I really like the look of it, and it’ll be cool to check it out.

Tombstone (1993): I love a good Western, and I seem to remember that this is a very good Western. A story of Wyatt Earp that goes beyond the famous gunfight, my memories of this are very vague; I know that there’s a very good Val Kilmer performance as Doc Holliday, and of course Kurt Russell as Earp himself. I might try out that “watch along” feature and watch this, remotely, with my dad.

Romancing the Stone (1984): I probably haven’t seen this since the eighties so I’ve got no idea if it’s really any good, but I do remember enjoying its Indy-inspired adventurism and – in particular – Danny DeVito’s bad guy. Douglas is always great value as a leading man, although from what I’ve since read this is really Kathleen Turner’s show. It’ll be interesting to see if it holds up, but hopefully it’ll be a good stop-gap until they finally get the Indy films up on the service.

Good Morning, Vietnam (1988): another film that I want to revisit, even if I remember it a little better than others on this list. My memory is that it’s utterly fantastic, a really stark look at the realities of Vietnam during the time of the war, and also a phenomenal, very human performance from Williams. Also I remember it being very funny when he does let off some steam (sorry, bit of Commando creeping in there). And really, it’s Williams I want to see again; that earnest, real, pained but beautiful Williams we get in his very best performances. It’s very likely I’ll cry just watching him on screen. God, I miss him.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016): I needed some crappy sequel to talk about, and here it is. I can’t overstate how much I loved the first Independence Day in ’96, so the (apparent; I’ve not seen it) terribleness of this sequel hit me like a sledgehammer. It can’t be that bad, can it? Is it not at least so-bad-it’s-good? I mean, the trailer made it look atrocious, and it’s killed off Will Smith – the best character! – off-screen, so odds are not good that it’s a hidden gem. But I’ve got to know.

This was actually a pretty tough list, and I had to knock off some films that I’d love to rewatch (Conan the Barbarian, The War of the Roses), as well as stuff like Idiocracy and Office Space that I’ve never seen. Also Kingsman: The Secret Service, which is a fairly recent release that slipped me by, and I’m not sure why I’ve never gotten round to seeing; I blame the kids! Also, there was going to be some xenomorph or xeno-monkey action on here, but frustratingly all the Alien (and Predator!) movies are missing, and the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy – which I’ve also never seen! – is only served by its middle instalment. Yeah, I can watch the seminal ‘60s original again (and I may!) or the indecipherable and strange Tim Burton version, but what about, y’know, the trilogy that everyone raves about? I assume this is due to pre-existing deals keeping the films elsewhere (elusive…), but the sagas of Alien, Predator, and the complete Die Hard package are – I believe – being kept until most profitable (mark my works: Die Hard at Christmas). Anyway, it’s a bit frustrating, that, as I’ve never seen Covenant or The Predator, and I’d love to watch the whole lot from the start anyway.

I guess I can console myself by also watching the one Die Hard film I’ve never seen, namely the critically-acclaimed A Good Day to Die Hard. I mean, I’m assuming it’s critically acclaimed. I guess I’ll find out.

[sidespromptblog]

The Past: Part 5

One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine

Summary: Logan doesn’t recall being Apathy, he can’t remember a single instance in his life where he was the dark side Apathy. As far as he’s aware he’s always just been… Logic, Thomas’ Logic to be more precise. He lives and he breathes as Logic and nothing more.

Except…He’s certain that he isn’t supposed to have emotions, that little things like being called stupid and having the word infinitesimal thrown at him aren’t supposed to hurt the way that they do. He’s certain that he was never supposed to feel, let alone everything that he does now. He just doesn’t understand these feelings, not to mention the dreams of a blank white tie that was folded to crisp perfection. He doesn’t understand the dreams in which he stands before Deceit and the others, with such a tiny smile, but a smile nonetheless.

He doesn’t understand, why when he looks at his friends… and he feels nothing but fear and anger.

Rising up into the living room, Logan stopped dead as he looked around at his surroundings, not only was there to greet him.. there wasn't a single person in his line of sight… but from the looks of it, dinner had already been made and the dishes cleaned up in time for everyone to go to bed. Just how long had he been down there, how long had he been unconscious, and… how long had it taken Remus to crawl down and get him out of that ravine? Looking around at the darkened room, and the even darker hallway he didn’t have a single clue. Just from squinting at the ever-present clock on the wall, he was just barely able to make out the time as the little night light that Virgil had plugged in behind the sofa offered him some semblance of light to see with.

It was… past midnight!

How.. just how? It had been morning whenever he’d left, the others had still been eating breakfast!

The sledgehammer of shock slammed right into his ribs as he stood all by himself in the dark living room, for a solid moment not even sure what to do other than to go upstairs and curl up in his actual bed and fall asleep once again. Had the others even noticed that he was gone? That he had been gone for an entire day instead of just a few hours? Had they cared at all?

Something foreign clawed at his stomach like a savage animal, threatening to tear him apart where he stood. Why was it suddenly getting so hard to see all of a sudden? Why did his chest hurt so much right now? Why.. why did he feel like…. Why did he feel at all?

Why do we feel? Logan felt himself jerk at the whisper of the dead voice in his ears, it was.. it was the very same voice he heard coming through his mouth time and time again in his dreams. It was so.. off and yet so similar to his own, it felt more real than the feelings coursing through him threatening to take him down under. Why do we feel? The voice asked again, Logan wanted so badly to answer it.. to have some kind of worthy answer for it that would explain why he of all of the sides felt anything in that one moment. He didn’t know why he felt, and more importantly… he didn’t know why it felt so wrong to feel in the first place.

Instead of answering the deeply psychological question, Logan resolved to answer his own hurt feelings in the way that most people did.

As he took the plate of leftovers that had been left out for him in the microwave and warmed them up, determined to take them to his room where he would either spend hours watching documentaries or falling asleep as soon as his belly was full. Whichever one came first, he wasn’t too worried about. Because either way it would end with him getting food and/or sleeping until the next morning, and that was beyond good enough for him as he clambered up each step with a warm plate of food in his hands. God, it was going to feel so good to sink back into his bed, and just relax after the day that he’d had. Tomorrow would be another thing entirely to deal with, but he’d deal with it as soon it got here. No later and no sooner. Until then he could just rela-

“Hello, Logan,”

Logan felt every inch, every cell, and every organ in his body simultaneously freeze all in one instance at the sound of the voice coming right behind him. The air became trapped in his lungs as his hand remained frozen on his doorknob that he had already started to turn, he could practically feel Patton’s eyes staring into him as he turned his head looking back at the moral side who blankly stared back at him. Something welled up in his throat, clogging his breathing as his hand limply let go of the doorknob. He was… he… was this fear? Was this what fear felt like? Was he scared of Patton? Scared of.. of what about him?

“Patton,” Logan forced the deadweight of his tongue to move and form the other side’s name, this felt like the only thing he could do with the moral side looking as serious as he did in that one moment. Patton looked… well, he looked serious enough to kill someone, and honestly.. Logan didn’t really want to test that little theory. “You scared me!” A fake smile curled on his lips, small enough that it could easily be read as one of his usual genuine smiles. “You do not normally make a habit of lurching in the darkness, do you? I thought that was Virgil’s occupation.”

An easy smile smoothed right over the serious expression that had been tacked onto Patton’s face, easing some of the discomforts that had nestled itself inside of Logan’s guts.

Patton giggled as he waved his hand casually at Logan, “Oh I’m sorry Logie, I just heard some noises and got worried for a second. We haven’t seen you all day now, I had to make Virge go to bed. He wanted to wait up and make sure that you were alright.” Patton’s eyes darted up and circled in on the stark white bandage that was wrapped around Logan’s head preventing the moral side from seeing his injury. “You are.. alright, aren’t you?” Patton’s voice dropped into the whisper, as he inched forward his hands clasped in front of him so tightly that Logan could see his knuckles standing out.

And icicle froze on Logan’s heart for a second. Charm him, lies aren’t going to work. Charm him!

A warm laugh bubbled up from Logan’s lips, creeping past the coldness that had settled beneath Logan’s skin. “Are you worried about me Patton? Me?” He teased, watching a light pink settled over the moral side’s cheeks, it almost horrified him that.. that he felt nothing about it. No shame, no guilt, and… and no love towards the sight of the pink blush dusting itself over Patton’s cheeks. There was only one thing that he seemed to constantly feel about Patton when he was around, and that was… fear. “I am well don’t you worry, I took a bit of a tumble in Roman’s forest while reading my book. It was entirely my fault I’m afraid. But I was able to patch it up.” He grinned, it was a smile that felt like melting wax on his face, but he did it anyway. “I just need some rest, and I’ll be in perfect condition tomorrow.”

An airy laugh left Patton’s lips as the other side’s eyes took all of him in, from the missing tie to the bandage wrapped around his head. Except.. it didn’t feel like Patton was ‘checking him out’ and more like.. like he was looking for weaknesses, flawed in the flesh suit that was Thomas’ logic, as if.. as if there might be something wrong that Patton would need to deal with.

“Have you been having nightmares?” The question came like a kick to the gut, and Logan forced himself to not change a single thing about his expression, still keeping that damn smile on his face. There was a glint in Patton’s eyes, a look that he ordinarily would have written off as just excitement, but.. but since those dreams, he could only see it as something else. “I heard you tossing and turning last night, so… are you sleeping okay?”

The question didn’t sound soft, nor did it sound concerned. It sounded… like a probing, like.. like... There might be something wrong with Logan himself if he WAS having these dreams.

Deny.

Logan didn’t have any problem with that.

Furrowing his brow, Logan acted as if he was thinking on the subject for a moment as he shifted the dinner plate to his other hand. “No,” He pretended to muse, scratching at his chin with his warm hand, “I don’t think I’ve been having any nightmares..” He mumbled, but not before adding, “I did get a crink in my neck the other day from laying on my side the wrong way, so that’s probably it. It’s impossible to get situated with a pulled muscle.” The tense lines around Patton’s face smoothed out with another smile, were there going to be even more questions? This.. this almost felt like an interrogation, that if Logan showed one wrong move or emotion, then Patton would.. he would… he…

The image of Patton’s hand coming for his head, his fingers burning like the surface of sun unwillingly came back to him, and just like that, the ice that had settled inside of him was back. It clawed at the back of his neck, as his hairs stood up on end, as fear coursed through his blood like a gushing river refusing to allow him to forget what it felt like.

“Of course kiddo!” A sympathetic smile that felt all too condescending appeared on Patton’s face before the moral side turned to go back into his own room. “Goodnight Logie!” The sound of Patton’s door shutting rattled in his ears, as he mechanically opened his own door before shutting it behind him.

Within seconds the wrapped up plate of food tumbled out of his numb fingers as his back slid down the door until he was curled up on the floor. His breathing was loud and echoing in his own ears, “What’s wrong with me?!” He gasped out, before clasping his hands over his mouth, his body shaking and rattling like a kettle that was about to go off at any second. “What the hell is wrong with me?!” He asked again, to the emptiness of his bedroom as tears blurred his vision and he clawed at his own legs, burying his face into his knees muffling his sobs as the terror that had gripped him so tightly before finally let him go as soon as Patton was out of sight. He couldn’t help sobbing again, pressing his hand to his wet mouth as he curled up even tighter. “What’s…. what is wrong with me?”

In the emptiness of his bedroom, there was no answer.

[secretlessvicki]

Charades and Masquerades

He was a devote Catholic. She was the direct descendant of Madame Marie Laveau. Could he bring her to the side of God and holiness? Or would she show him the ways of magic and sin? 

What happens when a string of murders in one of the most haunted cities brings together two people who never planned to see each other again? And how this all tie into an infamous treasure?

Prologue   Ch 1

Chapter 1

It was another night of tossing and turning for Lieutenant Killian Jones. Being aboard a naval ship never alluded to a good night's sleep. But it wasn’t just the crashing of the waves and the sways of the ship that always had Killian waking in the morning feeling just a tired as he had been when he went to bed.

The empty rum bottle that sat on his desk and the memories of abandonment and betrayal plagued his mind. His mother passing just before his sixth birthday. His father not returning home one night after work. And an endless string of foster homes only homing he and his brother for the paycheck not really caring how the boys fared. And then there was her.

“Get your bloody arse out of bed!”

A sudden splash of water woke Killian from his sleep. “What the fuck, Liam? You couldn’t have just woke me with an alarm like everyone else?”

“I tried. That blasted device has been blaring for half an hour.” He pointed to what looked like a previously working alarm clock. Now it was just a pile of wires and plastic parts all across the cabin floor. “Did you go through another bottle again? Killian, when are you going to stop all of your self-loathing?”

Liam Jones, older brother extraordinaire began tossing away empty bottles with a roll of his eyes. He had been there with Killian through everything. The morning their mother passed, Liam was there holding his baby brother as he cried into his shirt. When their father did not come home, it was Liam who watched over his little brother. The day he turned eighteen, Liam fought with everything he had to earn custody of Killian. It meant working two jobs while also making sure that the rebellious Killian attended school and was clothed and fed. By the time Killian was old enough they were both in their respective ports serving in Her Royal Majesty’s Navy.

“Liam, the bloody fucking sun is not even out. Why in God’s name do I need to be up before it’s light out?” The faint pounding in his head increasing with each blink of his eyes. He almost swore someone was wielding a sledgehammer behind his eyes.

“You know better than to take his name in vain, little brother. Did you forget everything you learned in Bible study?”

A sudden memory of a nun slapping a ruler against a chalkboard flashed in Killian’s mind. He didn’t remember everything but he knew the important bits. Jesus turned water into wine. The Ten Commandments. It’s not as if any of it had helped him recently.

“Are you going to tell me why I am sitting awake on wet bed sheets? We are suppose to be on liberty. That means sleeping in.”

“You are only sleeping in because you stayed awake all night. Now put a shirt on and meet me in the Mess. I’ll fill you in over breakfast.” Liam threw a pillow at his brother before leaving.

After a string of incoherent curses, Killian rummaged around his bunk to find his uniform. Without a window in the cabin, he took a guess at what the weather would be like. The coast of Ireland in April could always be deceiving and he was sure Liam was going to take them both out for the day.

It took Killian almost 10 extra minutes to get down to where he was sure his older brother was waiting for him. He could almost hear Liam drumming his fingers against the metal table each time he had to stop because a fellow sailor commented on his red eyes or the dark circles underneath. Every time he opened a bottle he would tell himself that he would only have a shot or two. But two shots would turn into an entire glass, and after two glasses Killian would ditch the useless tumbler and drink straight from the bottle. He knew what would happen. No matter how much water he drank or how many painkillers he took, the result would always be the same. One massive headache and a piss poor mood.

His mood was even worse when he walked into the Mess to find that Liam had a glass of some awful green concoction. It could only be one thing. Liam Brennan Jones’ version of a hangover cure. One thing for sure was that the bloody drink would taste absolutely terrible.

“What ever happened to a good English breakfast after a night out on the town?”

“First of all, you did not spend the night out on the town. You wallowed away in some pub all night only to drink yourself unconscious in your bunk.

Second, you can do whatever you please at the end of the month when you get discharged. Until then you will continue to follow not only the royal navy’s rules but mine as well. I will still be your older brother even when I am no longer your captain.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Killian saluted. “In two weeks you will have a new lieutenant to push around.”

“Aye, sometimes I look forward to the day. But until then you are mine, little brother. Now drink up. I want you more coherent. Something big came about last night.”

“Younger brother.” Begrudgingly, Killian drank his hangover cure. He flagged down one of the steward’s for a proper breakfast, finally settling in for Liam’s big news.

“Are you ready?”

Trying very hard not to roll his eyes, Killian slowly nodded his head. The movement felt like his brain was hitting the inside of his skull but Killian managed not to wince. At least he hoped not.

“We found something!” Liam vaguely explained.

“We? As in you and me? Because I certainly do not remember finding anything of importance. Or do you mean the crew? If that is the case I must be far more hungover than I thought, because I was almost positive our latest mission was a recon.”

“Just shut it you git and let me explain. Petty Officer Morgan…”

“Oh you mean that American you have been chatting with in your free time?” Killian suddenly was more interested in this story. Especially when it involved his prude of a brother and a woman.

“It is not like that Killian and you know it. Get your mind out of the gutter so I can explain. She and I have been emailing back and forth since we meet when you and I were stationed at the U.S. Joint Reserve Base in New Orleans. Reylin is into history same as we are. In fact, she actually did a semester abroad at Imperial College the same time you were in your second year.”

“So she likes history. Sounds like the two of you were made for each other.”

“Stop it, Killian. Would you let me get to the point? She likes history and her favorite subject is lost treasures of the world. She and I have been talking about our hobbies outside of our respective navys and she mentioned looking into an old New Orleans legend. Jean Lafitte.”

If Killian hadn’t been interested before, he was certainly now. While he was not as enthusiastic about history as his brother, Killian Jones did have a love of pirates, fiction or real.

“So you two were talking about a man who was one of the lesser known pirates? What is so important about him?”

“What is important is that to the people in the southern states, Lafitte is not just a second rate pirate. There he is a legend. And before you interrupt me again I wanted to tell you that Morgan has been looking into an old legends about Lafitte. More specifically his last buried treasure.”

“And she found it?”

Pirates and buried treasures had not been what Killian had thought he would be spending his morning talking about. And honestly, he still wished he wasn’t, his bed and pillow were screaming for him to return.

“Not exactly. But she has been digging and she found coordinates to a possible location.”

“Liam, what does this have to do with us?”

“I was thinking that you will be discharged at the end of the month and I will be on leave from my tour. And what better bonding than going on a treasure hunt?”

Killian was thankful that in that moment the steward had brought him his breakfast. He was going to need more protein to get his brain functioning if he was going to deal with Liam and another one of his grand ideas of adventures. The last time the two of them spent bonding time together, Liam ended up in a naval hospital in Brazil after finding out he was highly allergic to a thorny plant in the jungle.

“You want to go on a treasure hunt?” Killian began scanning the room. “Are you pranking me? Or is this some type of documentary for National Geographic? You honestly think it is a good idea for the two of us to fly to the colonies to help a Yankee sailor hunt for an unknown buried treasure? Are you sure you are not trying to impress this lass? Because trying to become Indiana Jones sure sounds like it.”

There was silence between the men as Killian ate and Liam sulked. It was when Killian’s eyes didn’t seem so heavy and his proper posture returned that Liam spoke again.

“You are telling me that you do not want to go? Killian Jones- Mr. ‘I love a challenge’ does not want to help a pretty woman find a long lost treasure? What else would you be doing besides wallowing away in your apartment?”

What was he supposed to say to that? Killian huffed and slouched in his seat. He could tell that Liam knew he had won. 

The next week and a half was spent listening to Liam and Officer Morgan talk about what the possibilities were at the end of the coordinates Reylin had. Killian had to admit that it was all very interesting and that he often found himself wondering what the treasure could be. Realistically he knew that the chance of finding something valuable was slim to near impossible. But it didn’t stop Killian from reading up on Jean Lafitte in his spare time.

As it turned out there was more to the man than it seemed. He had no loyalties to anyone but the person paying him. He looted supplies from ships belonging to Britain, France, and America. But what was interesting was that much of the loot that was stolen was dispersed by Pierre Lafitte, Jean’s half-brother. From his reading, Killian could tell that Jean and Pierre were close. Enough so that he could see the similarities between these brothers and he and Liam.

Jean was the romantic type. A number of legends and tales told of his seduction of women and his charm. Liam had almost choked on his dinner one night when Killian read the latest biography. “Sounds like a certain young lieutenant I know.” He had coughed.

Pierre was more reserved. He was the brains of the operations. It was his job to make sure that all treasures were sold or taken care of. While Jean was out having fun raiding the ships, it was Pierre who was keeping them both out of jail. Until he unfortunately found himself behind bars in a rat infested jail in New Orleans that is. Killian kept that news away from Liam.

Late one-night, Killian sat at his desk lost in a rabbit hole of information. If he was going to go on this adventure with his brother and some American lass, he wanted to know what it was that they were going after. His search started with possible treasures that one might look for with pirate hunting. It was after one in the morning, that Killian ended up on a forum made up of men and women across the world that discussed possible leads in hunts, myths and legends, and even a few experts on famous lost treasures. One post in particular caught Killian’s attention.

The lost treasure of Jean Lafitte is considered one of the world’s greatest lost treasures. It is believed that Lafitte hid the treasure somewhere in the city with clues left behind for his brother to one day find. To this day it has never been recovered.

The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans herself spent much of her life dedicated to finding out what was in the lost treasure of Jean Lafitte. No one knows why she wanted the treasure so badly. Was it for the money? Was the treasure powerful? Could it have possibly been tied to the city? To magic? Was the treasure a person? Perhaps the treasure is the long lost Fleur de Lis.

There were more posts and comments that all led to the same thing. The Napoleon Fleur de Lis. It was a pure gold statue encrusted with the finest cute diamonds and rubies. The fleur de lis itself was priceless without even considering it’s history. Napoleon had the statue commissioned as a physical representation of his family crest. Before his exile the statue had gone missing only for it to turn up in the hands of the American government after the Louisiana purchase. The government then gave the Fleur de Lis to the city of New Orleans as a gift. Years later the very statue went missing again, never to be seen again. At the same time, Pierre Lafitte had been imprisoned for the murder of an American sailor (was later exonerated) and his brother had moved all operations to Galveston.  

This was it. It had to be it. The treasure that Reylin and ultimately Killian and Liam were hunting.

With a quick text message to the group chat between the members saying he found a lead, Killian sat back in his chair with a grin on his face. Maybe this whole treasure hunting thing wouldn’t be so terrible after all. It could be just the distraction he needed from his constant thoughts of her eyes. Or the three faint lines she would get on her forehead when he said or did something that annoyed her.

That night he fell into a restless sleep. Dreams of a conversation from a time long before his own flashed behind his closed eyes. But just before he woke the next morning, the mystery man in Killian’s dreams faded into an image of himself. Green eyes full of tears broke his heart as he spoke to her.

“I told my brother. He knows to come find you. Keep it safe.”

[sciencespies]

When Michigan Students Put the Car on Trial

https://sciencespies.com/nature/when-michigan-students-put-the-car-on-trial/

When Michigan Students Put the Car on Trial

Gordon Lightfoot and the Broadway cast of Hair performed. Barry Commoner and Ralph Nader spoke. But the most bizarre event at the University of Michigan’s teach-in the month before the first Earth Day was a mock legal trial for a 1959 Ford sedan.

About 1,000 people gathered at high noon on March 11, 1970, on the grassy quad at the center of the Ann Arbor campus to watch the blue-and-white clunker face charges of “murder of the American public, crossing state lines to pollute, inciting traffic jams, creating physical and psychological dependence, and discriminating against the poor.” This last charge reflected newly urgent concerns about highways, which tended to be built in lower-income neighborhoods, and resulted in polluting and sometimes even bulldozing those communities.

The sedan had a lot going for it—powerful witnesses for the defense; a distracted judge, who spent the mock trial reading an issue of Auto Racing (such ruling-class complacency amid ecological crisis!); and a society increasingly built around cars as the primary form of transport.

“Rob Rockyfeller,” witness for the defense, testified that his (fictional) foundation had found that auto exhaust was only half as toxic as aspirin. His appearance lampooned the various foundations that supported business-friendly policy in the name of general prosperity. Another witness attested to the importance of cars to the American economy. But no witness evoked the country’s car mania more vividly than “Dr. Sigmund Ford,” who sat stiffly on the stand with his head tilted slightly back, looking down his nose at the crowd below him.

“The automobile is essential to the maintenance of the American’s psyche,” Ford shouted, urging the court to consider the emotional security a car gives to the American man. “You can’t take it away from him! How else could he know his power and virility? How can we show our neighbors we’re stronger and more powerful than they are without a Lincoln Continental?”

“But what would actually happen to [Americans] if you took away cars?” asked the prosecutor, wearing a plaid skirt-suit and, of all things, leather driving gloves.

“But you see, cars are very important,” Ford began, dodging the question. “They serve a function—”

“What would be the effect on people?” the prosecutor interjected. Ford couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer. “You just can’t take away their cars,” he shouted. “You can’t take away my car!”

The verdict was rigged, but hundreds of people gathered in Ann Arbor as the car was convicted.

(University of Michigan)

The judge, stirred briefly from his magazine, found Dr. Ford a compelling witness and ruled the sedan innocent before accusing a dozen activists of “conspiring” against the automobile. A handful of activists then unceremoniously debenched the judge and turned the trial over to the assembled crowd, who delivered a guilty verdict. The car was sentenced to death. Bystanders smashed it to pieces with sledgehammers.

The automobile was a common target for such stunts at environmental teach-ins that year. At a rally in February at San José State University, student-activists bought and then buried a new car; at Indiana’s DePauw University on Earth Day, one student arrived on campus on horseback with a sign that read “Ban the automobile.”

But the mock trial in Michigan was a bold move in a state whose economy was still very much tied to the auto industry. In 1970, forty-two percent of Americans employed in the manufacture of automobiles and equipment called Michigan home. Ralph Nader, author of the landmark 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, which would help force the auto industry to transform its safety standards, told audiences in Ann Arbor that corporations, not consumers, were responsible for the pollution from automobiles. Significantly, the rally wasn’t attended only by college kids, so often accused of being unfamiliar with the real world. Industry leaders attended, and Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, was on hand to demand environmental reforms from car companies. The UAW donated $2,000 to the national Earth Day teach-in.

“If you ask me, ‘Can we solve [ecological crises] within the framework of business-as-usual?’ My answer is no,” Reuther said in an interview at the teach-in. “We’ve got to create new instruments, new institutions; we’ve got to develop new approaches and new concepts to deal with these new problems.”

A filmed documentary on the University of Michigan 1970 environmental teach-in, asks the questions: Do teach-ins work? (The Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan)

Reuther was adamant that cleaning up cars didn’t have to cost autoworkers jobs. “Because industry has for so long polluted the environment of the plants in which we work and has now created an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions in the communities in which we live, the UAW will insist on discussing the implications of this crisis at the bargaining table,” he said at the UAW’s annual convention in Atlantic City in April of that year.

Indeed, pollution had finally become a national concern: In 1970, levels of common air pollutants were about 73 percent higher than they are today, and the automobile was the main culprit. “Nobody was talking about climate change at that time,” says Doug Scott, then a graduate student in the School of Natural Resources and co-chair of the group that organized the university’s teach-in. “But there was just a general perception that the freeways packed with one driver per car pouring out leaded gasoline was not a good thing.”

A program for the March 1970 event at the University of Michigan.

(University of Michigan)

Nobody expected the trial stunt alone to change policy. But the guerrilla theater was a way for the young generation to make a memorable point. “We tended not to reject ideas,” Scott says. “Someone, and I couldn’t tell you who, decided that an awfully good way to get this going would be to take sledgehammers to a gas guzzler.”

The teach-in helped shape the lives of some of the student activists. Doug Scott went on to lobby Congress on behalf of nonprofit advocacy organizations such as the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club; one of his most notable achievements, he says, was helping pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which more than doubled the size of America’s national park system.

And a few months after the teach-in, the UAW joined environmental groups including Environmental Action and the Sierra Club in signing a resolution calling on Congress to make air pollution standards strict enough to force auto companies to phase out the internal combustion engine. Instead, carmakers developed and embraced the catalytic converter, which helped drastically reduce air pollution and allowed the internal combustion engine to live on.

As air pollution from automobiles dropped, their footprint on the ground kept growing. In the decades that followed, disputes about proposed highways that would cut through city neighborhoods continued across the country. George Coling, a member of the teach-in’s steering committee while a graduate student at Michigan’s School of Public Health, pursued a long career in ecological activism, and saw the toll of these freeway fights up close. “There were massive intrusions of interstates into urban neighborhoods, which meant displacement of whole areas, razing of homes and businesses,” says Coling.

To Coling, the car’s show trial and violent execution were about more than just pollution: They symbolized the need to move beyond a car-based transportation system toward one that offered better mass transit, which could be more environmentally friendly and cost users less.

Still, looking back after a long career in environmental justice, he acknowledges that destroying a car was not a wholly righteous thing to do. “The act of smashing a car is quite elitist,” Coling says, because it fails to consider “the very real need that people have for transportation.” Americans may not be as psychologically dependent on cars as Dr. Ford claimed, but they still need them to get around. Even the unnamed owner of the executed car admitted at the demonstration, over the arrhythmic clang of sledgehammers on metal, that he had donated the vehicle after purchasing a new car.

Vehicles today are greener, thanks to government standards and new technology. So why are climate-warming emissions piling up? —Ted Scheinman

Tailpipe exhaust is cleaner than ever, and fuel efficiency is up, lifted lately by hybrid and electric vehicles. Yet cars’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions aren’t falling because there are more Americans—and they’re driving more.

(Data analysis by Emilio Leanza; Sources: Pew Trusts, Edison Electric institute, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Information Administration, the Federal Highway Administration)

#Nature

[danmacrae]

Silly 90s Intro Blab: A Thing To Skim Through On The Toilet

Hello! I’m semi-tolerable nuisance Dan MacRae! Why am I shouting at you? Not sure! Sorry, I’ll take it down a notch.

Instead of learning how to pleasure a woman or how to unlock the mysteries of grooming, I have devoted my life to TV nonsense. Blessed YouTube presence RwDt09 has been collecting these amazing compilations of era (and sometimes season) specific TV intros and they are my everything. Imagine having a child that didn’t suck? That’s the feeling RwDt09′s videos put in my heart.

I've been obsessively rewatching this collection of mostly forgotten early '90s TV intros. The bulk of these shows died a quick death and feel like the product of whatever drugs TV execs take. (Probably something snorted from one of those awesome McDonalds coffee straws they ditched in like 2002.) Because I'm a handsome pin-up hunk of the year, I wrote some dumb blurbs about the first few shows and have some stray thoughts on the rest. This appeals to no one but me AND I APOLOGIZE TO NO ONE!

In the immortal words of John Lennon, let’s get biz-zay!

DINOSAURS: I’m at a point in my life where I can acknowledge that Dinosaurs sucked. It’s incredibly freeing. Christ, this is like that stupid-ass Norman Lear show where dogs did social commentary BUT WITH HENSON PUPPETS! I hope Baby Sinclair was stomped to death and eaten as pudding before the extinction series finale. (Yes, that happened.) The intro isn’t bad, mind you. You get the lumbering theme song and Earl gets stuck in a door CUZ LAFFS! TIMES SURE HAVEN’T CHANGED HO HO HO! God I hate these fucking dinosaurs.

Intro MVP: It’s not a stellar pack, but we get a bit of Robbie Sinclair who census data has shown led to a variety of surprising sexual awakenings for youths at the time.

SCORCH: A 1300-year-old dragon named Scorch visits the 1990s on a budget that looks not far removed from Skank on The Ben Stiller Show. The song will make you want to barricade your sex organs from a world where you can bring children into a world with THAT CAWAZZZY SCORCH! The theme song really is a special brand of irritating and Scorch looks like a malformed Deviant Art dildo with a vaguely religious bent.

Intro MVP: Probably John O’Hurley for not actually appearing in the intro. (Even with O’Hurley’s weird résumé.)

FISH POLICE: Not to be confused with the (ARF! ARF! ARF!) Dog Police, Fish Police and Family Dog are shows I know almost exclusively from being mentioned as examples of the crappy post-Simpsons primetime animation gold rush. Fish Police actually looks good animation-wise, but it’s pretty clear you’re gonna be sledgehammered with endless “COULD YOU IMAGINE FISH DOING THESE OLD TROPES? DO WE NEED TO CALL A SEARCH PARTY FOR YOUR SIDES? ARE THEY SPLITTING ALREADY?” jokes. Congrats dipshits, you made a cinema-touched precursor to Frankie & George. You dummies. Also there’s the tone of casual racism UNDER THE SEA so do with that what you will. DID YOU SEE CHINATOWN? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SHIT?

Intro MVP: Thank goodness they specified who John Ritter voices so we could all bask in Inspector Gil as a character name. Fuck you, Fish Police.

CAPITOL CRITTERS: Christ, this looks UNWATCHABLE. Like walk into oncoming traffic as an alternative unwatchable. Capitol Critters centers around an animated mouse named Max (voiced by Neil Patrick Harris) witnesses his family being murdered in Nebraska and moves to D.C. and wait what the fuck is going on with those roaches? (Racism, mostly.) Who thought this was a good idea to invest time, money and animator joint damage in? Stephen Bochco, baby! I have a perverse curiosity to see an episode but after 90 seconds I know I'd be dying to eat a fucking gun instead of suffering through any more of Capitol Critters.

Intro MVP: Gotta be Bochco. Also, EAT SHIT BOCHCO!

And now a really tiny blab about the rest. Watch this clip package, ya goofs!

FAMILY DOG: Folks were fucking horny for Spielberg TV shit in the 90s, ditto Tim Burton too and that's how an Amazing Stories, uh, story was morphed into a shitball TV series that Brad Bird wanted no part of. Also, I have no idea how to explain things like the CBS StereoSound chyron to anyone born after Clinton left office.

THE CRITIC: Nice to see you, Jay Sherman! This is a lovely intro and you likely know that already. I've done a few rewatches of The Critic (not the web series season, though) and I say the show definitely holds up and is far from a duketastrophe. That said, some of the parody film clips that got raves at the time are kinda creaky in hindsight.

CHARLIE HOOVER: Can I say something? Fuck Sam Kinison. Hmm... That's a bit harsh. I guess I just don't get him on any level. The only thing he's done that I've ever found all that funny was when he said he wished Andrew Dice Clay die of stomach cancer from the inside out, like Bette Davis. Kinison's not my cup of tea is what I'm getting at. In Charlie Hoover (GET IT HURF HURF), Kinison is a foot high loudmouth in a long coat that's getting 40-year-old square Tim Matheson where he needs to be in life.

A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN: Or... "Betty Spaghetti's Here Which Is All The Star Power You Need!"

HARDBALL: A League Of Their Own had a fun, feel good intro with all the corny touches of ol' timey baseball. Hardball tries to sell you on Joe Rogan: Baseball Fella and the vague scent of urinal troughs.

GOOD GRIEF: Howie Mandel golfs in a cemetery and it's not particularly clear if he's just fucking around on strangers graves for fun. (Alternate Theory: Those graves belong to the family from Bobby's World. All the Generics!)

THE FANELLI BOYS: If enjoy broad Italian-American stereotypes to the point of falling down laughing at the sight of a pizza box, you'll love The Fanelli Boys! Joe Pantoliano and Christopher Meloni both star.

SOMETHING WILDER: Something Wilder was the sort of show where I wished Gene Wilder well and still kept 5000 miles away from watching it. Also, Wilder's face on that house is CHILLING.

DUDLEY: Embrace the luxury hotel elevator elegance of Dudley! Does it feature Dudley Moore make a series of faces where he seems surprised by everything? You better believe it. This was also where Max Wright got work in-between taking abuse from a cat eating alien and Norm Macdonald.

CAROL & COMPANY: It's a bit Carol Takes On in the intro with Carol Burnett in assorted costumes and that's alright because everyone does the assorted costumes intro thing. Tickets to the show are blown across America and get in the hands of whatever Orphan Black Carol happens to be in the area.

THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW: This is an extremely 90s sort of intro that feels like something more upscale soft rock stations did in TV ads at the time too. Richard Kind directs a bit of paper at someone midway through.

DREXELL'S CLASS: One of more storied entries in the Dabney Coleman being an asshole catalogue. The first intro features Dabney, ol' Drex himself, just hanging around in class being hot shit and occasionally mimicking a flying dinosaur. The second intro is a more traditional clip collection highlighted by a young Brittany Murphy (WHO WAS MURDERED! FACT! REMINDER!) and Coleman in a wild 8 ball jacket. Rembrandt off Sliders also makes an appearance.

TEECH: If this intro looks exactly like a sitcom where a Cool Black Music Instructor™ teaches Prep School bad boys in Bush Sr era America that's because it is exactly that sort of sitcom. Maggie Han deserves better.

THE ROYAL FAMILY: It seems extra cruel to take Redd Foxx's popcorn away considering he'd be dead before the fifth episode even aired. Della Reese is in this, die-hard Della fans.

ROC: This intro works perfectly. We get Charles S. Dutton, Ella Joyce and an easy to digest Jerry Lawson theme song. (En Vogue would do the theme later.) It’d be nice if they could get Edgar Allan Poe wagging a finger at seafood or something else in the background to push that Baltimore thing even more, but I still wish this intro from 25+ year old Fox comedy all the best in its future endeavours.

BREWSTER PLACE: Speaking of good intros, Brewster Place is a first rate brand of TV welcome. Brenda Pressley is the MVP of the intro over Oprah Winfrey which might explain why Brenda Pressley has been missing since 1992. (I know she’s on The Path. Just play along.)

SUNDAY BEST: The intro equivalent of getting someone to throw shit at a wall, we get an early 90s NBC grab bag of fuck it whatever shots of TVs and TV dinners with poor Carl Reiner trotted out partway through.

AMERICAN CHRONICLES: Mark Frost and David Lynch paired for a documentary series in the early ‘90s on Fox because Fox was like fucking UHF at the time. The industrial strength creepy opening doesn’t include any shots of narrator Richard Dreyfuss turning towards the camera and that’s a damn shame.

AMERICAN DETECTIVES: If you get horny for stressed out real-life detectives, this will send your undergarments to Mars! Lots of mustaches here. A whole Safeway bag’s worth. Some real rural gas station rock going on with that theme tune.

FBI: THE UNTOLD STORIES: The tone of this entire intro is: “Hey kid, wanna see a dead body? Or twenty?” Creepy music blasting over Jackie Kennedy on the back of JFK’s death limo and Wayne Williams heading to trial equals primetime party fun!

ENCOUNTERS: THE HIDDEN TRUTH: Suck it, Sightings! Encounters is leading a new dawn for crackpot horseshit to eat Bugles to! I appreciate the shameless X-Files knockoff intro thing Fox is doing (cuz it’s their show) that comes complete with head shop blanket alien head popping up midway through.

STEPHEN KING’S GOLDEN YEARS: Essentially Garth Marenghi's Darkplace with one hell of a music rights win tacked on.

TRIBECA: This opening reminds me an awful lot of terrible movies I was bullied into watching on VHS at a friend’s house.

WIOU: One thing I like in a TV intro is when something fun happens with the title onscreen. It’s a minor thing, but the way those WIOU letters turn into view? HOOCHIE MAMA! Eight is Enough’s Dick Van Patten does a fantastic job of conveying that being a weatherfellow is tough work.

GABRIEL’S FIRE: I will never for the life of me understand how the early ‘90s could not sustain a James Earl Jones fronted program titled Gabriel’s Fire. Those worlds are supposed to meld beautifully.

PROS & CONS: Gabriel’s Fire would morph into the more lighthearted Pros & Cons which symbolized its new form by laying it on thick with the Video Toaster touches. Instead of James Earl Jones peering at you from the darkness, this go-around it’s a lot of smiles and silly moments with Richard Crenna.

BURKE’S LAW: Hearing “it’s Burke’s Law” at the start of that intro is like when “Do you smell what The Rock’s cooking?” would play before Dwayne Johnson would wander down a ramp to kick Triple H in the stomach. In this case, it’s to get you fired up that Gene Barry’s back on television. This particular episode promises Dom DeLuise and Tawny Kitaen together at last!

MAX MONROE: LOOSE CANNON: If you only see one intro for a Shadoe Stevens vehicle that transitions from a Donut Hole shot to an extended leer at a lady’s bum, make it this one!

TEQUILA AND BONETTI: The creators of Tequila and Bonetti know that if you want folks to get on board for an L.A. dramedy about a New York cop and streetwise police partner dog, you should kick things off by trying to make you feel sorry for this asshole who “accidentally” murdered a kid. Seriously, that’s the route Tequila and Bonetti goes with this fucking insane opening that begins with newspaper headlines screaming “COP KILLS 12 YR OLD” while he cradles a black girl in her arms and then BOOM! we’re spun around to JACK SCALIA GRINNING AROUND WACKY LOS ANGELES AND ALL ITS CRAZY CHARACTERS LIKE A DOG THAT JUMPS THROUGH A FUCKING WINDOW WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? THIS IS LIKE IF SOMEONE STROKED OFF THE HANNITY VIEWING AND KEPT WHAT WAS SPURTED OUT ONSCREEN! It’s just a really, really, really bad intro.

[savetopnow]

2018-04-05 19 MUSIC now

MUSIC

Brooklyn Vegan

What's going on Thursday?

tours announced: Franz Ferdinand, Dandy Warhols, Now Now, Sea.Hear.Now, more

Cold Waves festival announces 2018 NYC, Chicago & L.A. lineups (Meat Beat Manifesto, Frontline Assembly, more)

Kenny Rogers cancels tour due to "health challenges"

Handsome Boy Modeling School are back, opening for Dr Octagon, new LP in the works

Consquence of Sound

Frances Bean Cobain debuts her first-ever song

ASAP Rocky premieres “ASAP Forever” featuring Moby: Stream

Lorde covers St. Vincent’s “New York” in Brooklyn: Watch

Saba unleashes new album Care For Me: Stream

NBC Entertainment boss teases reboots of The Office and The West Wing

Fact Magazine

Goth pioneer and Christian Death frontman Rozz Williams subject of new documentary

MUTEK.SF adds Moritz von Oswald, Matias Aguayo, Aux88 and more to lineup

Moscow experimentalist Kate NV signs to RVNG Intl. for new album для FOR

Oneohtrix Point Never announces new album Age Of

Brent Faiyaz is an unconventional songwriter with the makings of a classic R&B singer

Fluxblog

Talk About The Findings

Hohner Eko Taktron Arp

One Two Let Me Go

Shower Me In Symphonies

Fifth-Dimensional Views

Idolator

Now, Now Drops Eerie “AZ” Video, Announces US Tour Dates

Kim Petras To Perform At LA Pride Festival On June 9

Sabrina Claudio & Khalid Team Up For Sultry Single “Don’t Let Me Down”

Cardi B’s ‘Invasion Of Privacy’ Tracklist Contains Surprisingly Few Features

Don’t Miss These Most Anticipated Tours Of 2018

Listen to This

Melt - Oh Brother [Indie/Pop]

Da Vinci's Notebook -- Another Irish Drinking Song [A capella] (2002)

John Moreland - Cherokee [Folk] (2015)

Warner Meadows -- Yuca [Hip hop] (2017)

Paul Cherry - Flavour [indie / yacht rock]

Popjustice

New Music Good Friday: Post Precious! Dragonette! CHVRCHES!

NONONO’s new one is v excellent and here’s the video

New Music Friday: all hail Let’s Eat Grandma’s miniature pop symphony

Paloma Faith’s branded content is better than your branded content

Saluting the artwork for PRETTYMUCH’s Healthy

Reddit Music

Elliot Smith - Needle in the Hay [Alt]

Dirty Vegas - Days Go By [Dance/Electronic]

Dance Gavin Dance - Midnight Crusade (NEW) [Experimental Rock/Post-Hardcore]

Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer [HD version]

Weird Al has been covering songs lately without parody, and he and his band has been doing some of the best covers I ever have heard

Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan, Kesha Sing Romantic Classics With Flipped Genders on New Comp

Russell Simmons Denies 2016 Rape Allegations

Hear Khalid, Sabrina Claudio Duet on New R&B Song 'Don't Let Me Down'

Meet Maluma, the Colombian Heartthrob Who Could Be Latin Pop's Next Crossover Star

Watch Future, Young Thug in Horror Movie-Themed 'Group Home' Video

Slipped Disc

Maestro move: Czechs pick a German

Zubin Mehta, 81, is slow to recover

London’s South Bank goes geriatric

The first Chinese to conduct in the US

Too busy to play LA?

Spotify Blog

The Weeknd Drops Two New Music Videos Only on Spotify

Taylor Swift’s New Delicate Video Only on Spotify

Spotify Expands Secret Genius With the Launch of Studios

Spotify and Genius Team Up to Launch Déjà Vu Podcast, Hosted by Stereo Williams

Spotify Celebrates Black History Year-Round with Launch of Black History Is Happening Now

We Are the Music Makers

How do you know what key your track is in?

Why did The Weeknd start his own label initially?

Sweet girl let me take over the garage

Sweet girl let me take over the garage

I own Komplete and plan on buying a 2nd hand Komplete Kontrol. Will I have any issues?

[mrmichaelchadler]

Odie Henderson's Top Ten Films of 2018

So many movies spoke to me in 2018, so much so that I had a harder time narrowing this list down than in prior years. For example, the margin between the top five films on this list is razor-thin. The distance is even closer between the top two movies, which flip-flopped right up until the time I wrote this sentence. And there are honorable mentions to the underrated “Widows,” the terrifying “Custody” and the memorable documentaries “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

10. "I Am Not a Witch"

Good satire is hard to come by. Writer/director Rungano Nyoni has made a great satire with a vicious bite and a deliciously pointed gaze at all its targets. Aided by a scarily good Maggie Mulubwa, a young actress whose use of silence is wise beyond her years, Nyoni takes on every type of exploiter, from the patriarchy to the folks who come to Africa looking for weirdness and not realizing that they’re being trolled by those who they deem inferior. The film never tips its hand, and as the story gets wilder and funnier, its emotions become more devastating.  

9. "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse"

Just go see this. I want you to walk into this one blind. This is a gorgeously animated feature and the voice talent is first-rate. The story is pure comic-book joy, reminding us that in that world anything can happen and realities are constantly being twisted, rejiggered and combined. Seeing Miles Morales onscreen made me giddy, but he’s not alone. Any movie that not only gives me a Spidey who looks like me but also one voiced by a full-on film noir Nicolas Cage knows my sweet spots. And my goodness, this is SO MUCH FUN. Just go.

8. "Leave No Trace"

Here I’m reminded of Roger Ebert’s oft-cited quote about movies being an empathy machine. I had no idea about these characters and their environment. But by the final frames of director Debra Granik’s film, I had not only learned about these people, I was with them in spirit, shedding tears for them and hoping they’d get by. There’s no way in Hell the excellent Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie is a supporting character, as the awards machine keeps saying. She’s stitched so tightly into this film’s fabric that it couldn’t exist without her character. She’s not only our stand-in, the story hinges upon the changes her journey creates. Ben Foster offers memorable support as her dad. I am glad I saw “Leave No Trace.”

7. "Roma"

Director Alfonso Cuaron takes over from his usual cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and the result is his most personal and best work. His framing is practically another character in the film, and his use of black and white conveys both a dreamlike state and a harsh realism. This story of people from two different classes is refreshingly female-oriented. The leisurely pace only adds to its magic; it puts us onto the film’s rhythms and we fall into them accordingly. As Cleo, Yalitza Aparicio is a revelation, with one of the best performances of the year. “Roma” is a memory play whose Mexican-set story feels like an antidote to today’s demonization of that country.

6. "Paddington 2"

The bear is very furry. And his movie is very, very good. This sequel finds Paddington Bear in great spirits and gainful employment. That is, until he becomes embroiled in a Hitchcockian tale of the man—or rather bear—wrongly accused. Paddington’s jail time is shared by Brendan Gleeson and made possible by an evil has-been actor played by that sly charmer, Hugh Grant. Director Paul King, his F/X people and Ben Whishaw’s voice-work bring Paddington to life wonderfully, but the actors who surround him are equally important in casting this film’s lovely spell. Grant in particular is positively shameless and absolutely fabulous, a villain for all awards seasons.

5. "Amazing Grace"

This Sydney Pollack-helmed concert recording sat in Warner Bros. vault for decades before being shepherded into a finished product by a tireless Alan Elliott. And what a product it is: One of the greatest music documentaries ever made, starring a young, radiant, resplendent and transcendent Aretha Franklin returning to her gospel roots to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. The resulting album was the biggest gospel release of all time. But listening to it is nothing like seeing it performed live, complete with choir and appearances by the Holy Ghost. It only took 46 years to see Re in all her glory, but it was definitely worth the wait.

4. "Black Panther"

WAKANDA FOREVER!! Pick any aspect of this Marvel marvel and you’ll find excellence. Whether it’s Ruth E. Carter’s dynamic costumes, the eye-popping cinematography by Rachel Morrison, the rousing score by Ludwig Göransson featuring Kendrick Lamar, or the unapologetically Afrocentric world building inherent in the Ryan Coogler Universe, you can’t go wrong here. You’ll cheer for the protagonists led by Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, his tech-savvy sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and the Dora Milaje. You’ll hiss at the complicated villain Killmonger, played in spectacular fashion by Coogler’s Robert DeNiro, Michael B. Jordan. And if you’re a brown kid holding out for a hero, you’ll beam with a pride that’ll burn brighter than a thousand suns.

3. "BlacKkKlansman"

Spike Lee’s angry, funny, funky and explosive retelling of the life of Ron Stallworth takes a sledgehammer to D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” and the racist beliefs it celebrated, beliefs that unfortunately still exist today. Stallworth’s infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan is milked for its comic potential, but underneath it all is a fascinating interrogation of identity and the repercussions that arise when that identity is marginalized. While John David Washington’s Stallworth gets the laughs with phone calls to a clueless David Duke (Topher Grace), it’s Adam Driver’s Flip Zimmerman who earns most of the film’s introspection. The powerful real-life coda is Lee at his most brilliantly political, challenging those who’d disavow the crazier aspects of his story by showing just how scary and accurate they actually are.

2. "If Beale Street Could Talk"

Barry Jenkins’ beautiful and haunting adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 book captures the author’s voice and spirit while simultaneously evoking its director’s trademarks and influences. Jenkins has several arrows in his quiver—the brilliant actress known as Regina King, James Laxton’s tactile cinematography, Nicholas Brittell’s delicate music—each of which hit the intended bullseye. KiKi Layne and Stephan James are superb as the couple who anchor this Harlem-set romance, tenaciously holding on to their relationship while injustice threatens to tear it apart. Jenkins maintains Baldwin’s matter-of-fact storytelling, which makes the characters’ joys all the more rapturous and their tragedy that much more shattering.

1. "Blindspotting"

This fearless exploration of the complex, messy, and complicated qualities of interracial friendship should be garnering all the attention currently reserved for the simplistic and insulting “Green Book.” Screenwriters and co-leads Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal have a lot to say about rapid gentrification, racial stereotypes, police brutality and the type of friendly alliances that are as potentially dangerous as they are life-saving. The two leads are fantastic, and director Carlos López Estrada successfully navigates tonal shifts with a visceral, reckless abandon. It ends with a powerful monologue by Diggs that’s the most daring thing I saw in 2018.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2LhyEm4

[theconservativebrief]

For a while now, the most succinct takedown of the smug self-satisfaction of South Park at its worst has been a screencap of a Reddit comment.

Its central paragraph reads:

It’s a show that teaches its audience to become lazy and self-satisfied, that praises them for being uncritically accepting of their own biases, and that provides them with an endless buffet of thought-terminating cliches suitable for shutting down all manner of challenges to their comfort zones.

The comment itself is hard to find an exact date for — the earliest reference to it that I can find is from 2015 — but its general tenor speaks to a shifting understanding of South Park: What was once a fun, snarky takedown of America’s worst tendencies now reads to many as a TV series that taught an entire generation of kids that it’s stupid to care about anything, let alone engage with it politically.

And nothing underlines the comment’s sentiment better than its mention of “ManBearPig,” the subject of a 2006 South Park episode of the same name, from the show’s 10th season, in the very first line.

Released in the buildup to the premiere of An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore-featuring documentary on the devastating potential of climate change to remake the face of the planet, “ManBearPig” is a very 2006 take on the topic, with Gore enlisting the kids of South Park to hunt through some caves in search of the clearly made-up beast. Instead of capturing ManBearPig, Gore only makes things worse, and the episode subtly presents the argument that Gore is a hypocrite about climate change because he doesn’t live in a yurt or something.

Now, 12 years after “ManBearPig,” South Park has abruptly revisited the subject, in something of a surprising reversal. In the show’s latest episode, “Time to Get Cereal” (which aired November 7) ManBearPig is real, ManBearPig is angry, and everybody’s a little sad they made so much fun of Al Gore. It’s just the latest half-apology made by the show in an era when its “caring is for losers” ethos feels emptier and emptier.

Our friend. Our hero. Our ManBearPig. Comedy Central

The single most pointed segment in “Time to Get Cereal” involves a blowhard dude eating at a Red Lobster with his wife and kid. The wife is insistent that ManBearPig is a big problem, that it’s going to keep ravaging the countryside if something isn’t done. The husband says, first, that it’s made-up, and, well, if it is real, then what can we possibly do about it now? How can we know the Chinese will help us solve the problem, huh?

And all the while, ManBearPig — who’s smashed through a window into the restaurant — devours other diners, until he finally devours the husband as well. Notably, this sequence of footage is also the sequence that replays over the episode’s closing credits — which creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone seem to reserve for moments of the episode they find particularly funny or pointed or both.

This is as close to an outright acknowledgment of ManBearPig as a stand-in for climate change as the episode gets. As such, it’s easy to interpret the scene as a mild repudiation of the 2006 episode. The arguments the husband makes before he gets eaten are the sorts of arguments a South Park hero might have made 12 years ago. They boil down to, “Why should I be forced to care? I don’t know that other people will.” But in the face of something that will cause massive death and devastation, those arguments pale just a bit.

This slight soberness also extends to how the episode treats Gore, whom South Park still sees as a figure to mock, but for a very different reason. In “Time to Get Cereal,” he’s become insufferable, because he was right about the threat of ManBearPig, when nobody else would listen. So before he’ll help the kids send ManBearPig back to hell — for that is where the beast issues from — he forces them to admit he was right and apologize. (It should be noted that Parker’s spin on Gore is one of his funnier impressions.)

But the joke here isn’t on Gore’s smugness, or his wrongness, or anything like that. It’s a joke about what happens when you finally convince people you were right all along, even if it takes more than a decade. Gore is still petulant and sniveling, but by the episode’s logic, he has a right to be — and that’s the main difference between “Time to Get Cereal” and “ManBearPig.”

Now, South Park is always gonna South Park. For one thing, “Time to Get Cereal” openly ends on a cliffhanger. It teases the upcoming November 14 episode “Nobody Got Cereal?” by putting the show’s main characters in jail with ManBearPig on the loose, so it’s possible the show will reverse at least some of what happened in “Time to Get Cereal.”

For another, most of the episodes in this young 22nd season (which began at the end of September) have been excuses for the kids to go on weird journeys. There might be political plots sprinkled in alongside those journeys, but the point is that the kids are having adventures, not that they’re learning important lessons about America along the way.

And that’s all in keeping with what the show has been doing since the election of Donald Trump. South Park wrote off Trump as a ridiculous buffoon when he was running for president, portraying him not via Trump himself, but via South Park teacher Mr. Garrison, who became Trump-esque. It’s as if the series isn’t sure how to live in a world that governs itself by South Park logic.

Yet that’s the larger conundrum South Park finds itself in. For a TV show driven by the same rationale as an internet troll — that provoking a reaction from those who care about literally anything is funnier than anything else on the face of the planet — it’s also become a show that increasingly seems uneasy about living in a world where the trolls have their way.

The kids went trick-or-treating this year too. Comedy Central

The animated sitcom can, theoretically, run forever. The only thing stopping it from doing so is the fact that it might eventually become unprofitable, because ratings will inevitably slip considerably. But considering that The Simpsons debuted (as a sitcom) in December 1989 and will turn 30 in a little over a year, it obviously takes quite a lot for a hit animated sitcom to become unprofitable.

A show like The Simpsons or South Park (which debuted in 1997) or Family Guy (1999) is really only limited by how long everybody involved wants to keep making it. That’s especially true for South Park, which is much more driven by the whims of Parker and Stone than their long-running animated peers. But it’s not as though the two couldn’t hand off the show to a new creative team if they ever wanted to. (Note: This will never happen.)

Regardless, the thing about animated TV shows is that they don’t really change, while the world around them does. If you’re familiar with The Simpsons’ beginnings, to watch an episode of the show in 2018 is to be instantly amused by how it was once the most subversive show on television. And though South Park maintains some degree of its bad-boy cred, a recent campaign for the show hinged on how babies born when it debuted are now old enough to be in college.

And all these shows are enmeshed in modes of storytelling that seemed entertaining when they premiered but now feel a little out of date. The Simpsons made a splash by pulling apart the tropes and ideas that TV had been built on for decades, taking a sledgehammer to the structure of the family sitcom. Now it’s just another institution.

Family Guy leaned into the sorts of ironically racist and sexist humor that was popular in the late ’90s, part of a wave of entertainment that lampooned what its creators perhaps saw as liberal overreach. Now it feels ever more like the “ironically” never modified “racist and sexist” as sharply as the show might have liked.

But no series has been as affected by the passage of time as South Park. On one hand, the series has been able to pivot more successfully than others, thanks to Parker and Stone’s continued involvement in every aspect of its production. On the other, it has never quite shed its status as TV’s most libertarian show, built atop the ethos that you shouldn’t bother caring about what other people do, unless they try to make you do something for the greater good, in which case, you should make fun of them.

In the 2010s, South Park has occasionally grappled with this element of its legacy. A whole season wondered if maybe people advocating for political correctness aren’t entirely wrong (just mostly wrong). And in a series of episodes that aired before and after the 2016 election, the show ended up turning Hillary Clinton into a more sympathetic figure than it typically let national politicians be. (It seemingly only did so because she lost, but there was something almost tender about the way the show portrayed her after the election, a marked contrast from her prior appearances.)

And yet South Park is still trapped, to some degree, by having launched in 1997, amid a booming American economy, where the issues that got Americans most worked up too often amounted to trivial bullshit. Even if you disagreed with South Park’s central “caring is stupid” ethos, it was a lot easier to let the show have its fun back then, without worrying about its cultural impact.

Now even Parker and Stone seem to wonder sometimes what South Park’s legacy might turn out to be. And what’s weirdly intriguing about episodes like “Time to Get Cereal” is the chance to watch the two of them look at who they were, who they are, and who they might become. They might still want to mock Al Gore, but in 2018, they know that doing so shouldn’t invalidate everything he says.

Original Source -> 12 years after mocking Al Gore’s fight against climate change, South Park reconsiders

via The Conservative Brief

[mredwinsmith]

Universe Point After Afterword: Part 1

When I initially sat down to write Universe Point, I envisioned the final chapter being about the events surrounding the first time I stepped onto the fields at nationals after twenty odd years of playing this crazy sport. But as I reached the final stages, I realized that the book wasn’t actually about me. It was about ultimate itself and whether or not I actually got to play at nationals was weirdly irrelevant. (Thus pushing aside my ego for what I believe was the first time ever) But after experiencing nationals (grandmasters) for the first time, I felt compelled to write that final chapter anyway because it was such an amazing experience. Skyd has graciously given me a space to share that chapter. Hope you enjoy.

Universe Point – After Afterword

Sometime in the spring of 2011, (around the time I started writing my book) I received a message from my old friend Black Tide Matt. It basically went like this:

“Hey Cramer, are you 40 yet?”

“Uh….I’m only 34.”

“Damn it. I was hoping you were old enough for grandmasters.”

Fast forward to 2012.

“Hey Cramer, are you 40 this year?”

“I’m 35.”

“Damn it.”

And 2013.

“Hey Cramer are you….”

“I’m 36. I actually crunched the numbers and I’ve found that so far I’m aging at damn near the same rate as other humans,” I responded. “If that pattern holds, it puts me at a definite yes around 2017. I’ll let you know if anything changes though.”

He asked in 2014, 15 & 16 anyway just in case I’d made a radical discovery about the accuracy of my birth certificate until finally 2017 rolled around. This time he didn’t have to ask. I sent a preemptive strike on January 1st.

“Matt, I’m going to be 40 this year and yes I will play on your Grandmasters team if you still want me.”

When he said yes, I floated to the ceiling. His team, Endless Sunset, out of San Diego had made grandmasters nationals five years in a row and were pretty certain to do it again. Having been injured at my only chance to play at (college) nationals back in 2003, the mere thought of being on those fields revved me up for weeks even though the tournament was damn near eight months away. So I set out to do what all grandmasters players do in the months before a big tournament – try not to get hurt. Which at 40 can happen during any life event – doing squats, swinging kettlebells, going for a run, watching hockey, putting on pants, opening a drawer, reading stuff– you’re pretty much dodging grenades at every single moment.

To keep my ultimate skills game ready, I played in the Wednesday Night Pittsburgh Summer League on a fluorescent orange team that was either named Cutie Tang or Scorange or Not a Deer depending on the week. In our final game before I was set to fly to California for regionals, we were marching the disc downfield on universe point when I came across the back of the end zone wide open. A floaty backhand went up that allowed my defender, Pittsburgh Thunderbirds play-by play-man and long time ultimate stalwart Matt Weiss, to catch up. Somehow my age-depleted vertical allowed me to go over him to make a sweet catch along the sideline, picking it and stretching to get my toes down in bounds.

When I was five years old, my mom sent me to a gymnastics class where the instructor said, “You should stretch every day.” So I did. And I needed every bit of those thirty-five years of flexibility training to ensure that bits of my knee didn’t end up in the bleachers when Weiss rocked me an inch before my cleats hit the grass.

With all of his weight still pressed down on my legs, Weiss extended his hand to me with panic in his eyes. “Oh shit, Cramer. Please tell me I didn’t just take you out on the last point before regionals.”

“Hold on,” I said, pulling my leg out from underneath him and flexing it. “Nope, I think….yeah, I’m good,” I said trying to hide my surprise.

“Oh thank god,” he responded, rolling off me and flopping to the grass.

It may have taken a minor miracle, but I was going to be healthy headed to….

The next day at work a concrete block I was smashing offered a lot less resistance than I anticipated. My sledgehammer crashed through it, ricocheted off a railroad tie and crushed my left hand against a fence post. I was headed to California with a broken middle finger. Life is an asshole.

So that Friday morning after a cross country flight to San Francisco, lunch with my ex-teammate Iron Mike, and a surprisingly cool drive through the mountains northeast of the Bay Area, I arrived in Sacramento to meet my new teammates at a super sick AirBnB with thousands of bedrooms, a refrigerator bigger than my kitchen, and an in-ground pool. It was the first sign that grandmasters was going to be a rather large departure from college and club. For the first time ever my teammates obviously had some cash to spend – since ya know, we’re all middle aged now and (supposed to) have careers and shit. This was not the “cram eight guys into a seedy Motel 6 in downtown Rochester” experience that I was used to. I slept in a real bed that I didn’t have to share with anyone else. Let me repeat. 2,000 miles from home – slept in a real bed – by myself – in my own room. What was I, playing at Wimbledon? It didn’t make sense.

Black Tide Matt and I realized that even though we’d chatted a bunch on social media, we hadn’t actually seen each other in going on fifteen years. It was an awesome reunion. He looked basically the same and though he told a lot less Black Tide stories during the weekend, I did arrive at the house to find them screening “I Bleed Black,” (the old UCSB documentary) on the flat screen in the livingroom.

“Ya know I used to play for…”

“We know, Matt. Some of us were your teammates.”

A couple other great dudes were staying with us at the house that weekend as well. Matt’s co-captain, Ryan, was as California as it gets – tall, wind-swept blonde hair that didn’t move, and this unassuming yet somehow vitally important to the economy kind of vibe. Bryan was a lanky west coast surfer with glasses, who from a distance could’ve passed for the kid who does the morning announcements at your local high school. Guillermo was another of our out of region guys, a speedy Argentinian soccer player from Memphis who at 40 looked like he could still be playing on Lionel Messi’s wing.

And then there was my old buddy Brody who’d founded the University of Pittsburgh’s college team back in the late 90’s. Many ultimate players would recognize him on sight from his trademark floppy hat and the bazooka-sized camera he lugs around taking pictures at most national tournaments. We’d played against each other a ton in summer league in our late teens and early 20’s, but had never been on the same team. So when Black Tide Matt asked if I knew any other top tier out of region players, I put the two of them in contact – excited at the possibility of sharing the field with him. Later on, it could easily be argued that it was my most valuable contribution to Endless Sunset.

Our games that day were at noon, 2:00, and 4:00, right in the heat of the day, a fact that loomed over us as we drove to the fields on an already broiling morning.

“What’s it saying?” I asked as Brody checked the weather on his phone.

“Ninety-five and sunny.”

“Ninety-five? Maybe uh…..they’ll be wrong.”

Turned out I was a prophet. The high reached 100.

So our warm up consisted of a bunch of guys who really wanted to play ultimate – just in Vancouver or Anchorage or somewhere that wasn’t Sacramento on that particular Saturday. Guillermo and I did our yoga and stretching routines in the skinny shadow of a light stanchion while other guys chugged water like it was beer and tried not to spontaneously combust. As we were called out to warm up, a lot of dudes suddenly remembered they still needed to put on sunscreen in the tent or go hit the pisser. It felt like the sun had crept up to where the moon hangs out. It was neck baking.

But I hadn’t flown in from Pittsburgh to sit in a tent, so I put on the kick ass blue, orange, and every other color known to man Endless Sunset jersey that I was borrowing for the weekend and ran on the field with our defensive line. Our first game was against what felt like a pickup team out of Los Angeles. They had a few good players but not a lot of numbers and we coasted to a 15-4 victory.

We huddled up before our next game against a team called Old Growth out of San Jose. “This is the game we need,” Black Tide Matt implored us. “If we’re a nationals caliber team, we thump these guys. It’s hot, but that’s no excuse. We know what to do, so let’s do it. Sunset on three. One, two, three…”

“Sunset!”

I came out as hot as the air temperature in that game. We were up 1-0 when I went in on defense. We forced a turn on the goal line and set a vertical stack. From the back I saw that our handler had overshot the guy he was aiming for. I bailed him out, racing over to catch it for the goal, my first with Endless Sunset.

Feeling great, (even with my broken finger) I stayed on. About halfway up the field, I forced a high swilly throw that we easily knocked down. As I jogged across the field to my outside cutter position, I was unexpectedly open and whoever picked it up shot a crossfield flick way out in front of me. I slid to catch it with a guy on my back, then popped up and floated a high release flick over a defender’s fingertips for our third goal. I only rested for a point before coming back in to catch the goal that put us up 5-1. At that point, I was obviously feeling pretty confident. I was playing solid D and on our first five points, I’d scored or assisted on three of them.

Then just before halftime came the point that almost sent me back across the country in a body bag. I was feeling awesome as I went out on D yet again. Old Growth worked it the whole way down the field before turning it just outside the end zone. I started to sprint deep and…..we turned it damn near immediately. I hauled ass back to cover my guy and…..they turfed the first pass. We worked it halfway up the field and overthrew a deep shot to the end zone. After four turns, the point was getting a little long for a bunch of old guys in the heat. I believe an automatic text went out to every EMT in greater Sacramento that they should be on alert for a pending mass casualty incident.

Old Growth brought it to the goal line and my guy cut in. I stuck with him and shut down the passing lane, then jumped inside for a hopeful poach before turning and following my guy deep down the middle. As I was chasing him, OG put up a long outside in flick down the sideline that I turned and hustled for, backing up my teammate, a skinny D hound named Dennis. He knocked it out of bounds, rendering my help completely needless so I turned and once again focused on offense.

In grandmasters at the age of 40, you’re actually considered young. And the problem with being young and comparatively big, fast, and athletic is you’re still expected to do big, fast, and athletic things. Unfortunately your body is no longer 19. It’s just not 49 yet. And what I found on that point is that there’s a huge difference between 19 and “not 49 yet.”

After the turn, I cut in and didn’t get the disc, so I released upfield. The guy guarding me was heaving breaths like a wounded gorilla. His hands briefly went to his hips, a sure sign I had him beat. At midfield I accelerated. Three quick steps and I was streaking past everyone up the sideline. The thrower saw me. It was going to be an easy…..

The only way I can describe what happened is that my legs just….shrunk. It was like in high school when the teacher handed out a test that was unnecessarily difficult and you pushed it aside and went, “Yeah, screw this.” That’s what my legs did. I saw it later on video. One second I’m a serious athlete sprinting down the sideline and the next I’m a cross between a scarecrow and a monster sewn together from random body parts. I didn’t lay out so much as collapse. The disc hit the ground an inch from my outstretched fingers. It was the last time I could reasonably say I felt “fine” that day.

Based on that debacle, a whole bunch of guys who I’d just met that morning began to give me running advice.

“So Cramer uh….you really need to work on your stride. That was the most awkward run I believe I’ve ever seen. We thought you pulled both hamstrings.”

“Nah, my stride is fine. I was just dead at the end of that point.”

“Yeah but your stride though. You’re like an old robot out there. Like a rusty one that’s been in a shed since the 50’s and needs lots of repairs.”

“Seriously though, my stride is ok,” I said. “There were five turnovers on that point. Five.”

“No offense. I’m not trying to be critical. You just need someone to show you how to run. Because it’s obvious you’ve never been taught proper technique.”

“I was a runner in college. I know how to…..it’s a hundred degrees and I ran up and down the…..” The argument wasn’t worth it. “Yeah, I’ll try to work on my stride.”

I played sparingly in the second half as we got past OG rather easily, 15-6. But though I guzzled more water than actually fell on California the year before, I still couldn’t catch up.

The two words that would describe my next game against Shadows (the top seed) out of San Francisco would be dizzy….and ineffective. I played four points, realized that I most likely had a minor case of heat stroke and then was told I should probably sit out the second half.

“We’re going to need you for tomorrow,” they told me, which was a really nice way of saying, “Dude, we’re going to let someone who isn’t sucking as hard play a little more. Cool?”

That night, our team and a bunch of the LA dudes got some beers and chilled in the pool. Black Tide Matt ordered enough pizza that the local Dominos thought it was a prank, and we all chilled watching the sun set over the palm trees talking of our ultimate origin stories – of how we’d discovered the sport in the 80’s & 90’s back when the sport wasn’t even “fringe.” Nobody got plowed and jumped off the roof into the pool. Nobody puked. Nobody got “a tiny bit confrontational.” It was just a chill night. Grandmasters style.

After a gallon of chocolate milk and what felt like fifteen Gatorades, I was almost back to normal the next morning. It helped that the games started at 9:00AM before the sun decided to burn off the atmosphere. In the 2 vs. 3 game against Old Growth, I got a hand block on the first point, which my confidence desperately needed. We played a solid game and when Guillermo caught a little backhand in traffic over the goal line and raised his hand in the air signifying our 15th goal, I pumped my fist and smiled, damn near skipping onto the field. It assured us 2nd place in the Southwest Region. After 22 years, I was at long last going to play at nationals.

The final against Shadows was a big test and though both teams were assured a trip to Denver for the big tourney in July, Sunset had apparently never beaten them. So it was a huge deal to my teammates. The full name of their team was apparently Shadows (Of Our Former Selves). And damn if they were only shadows of their former selves, it was scary to imagine the players they were at 25. I’m (arguably) the fastest over 40 ultimate player in Pittsburgh, a decent sized city with a great ultimate scene. And they had fourteen guys at minimum who were as fast as I was. As a side note, I’m no longer convinced that the fog that rolls into the Bay Area each day isn’t just a cloud of human growth hormone.

Unlike the day before, I felt pretty good as I took the field against them. Late in the first half I laid out to snag a low throw, then popped up and saw Guillermo fake in and take his guy deep. My high release flick hit him in stride to put us within 6-5.

After my biggest moment of the tournament so far, I stormed into the tent and high fived my teammates. “See…see, I’m a pretty good player when I know where the hell I am!”

Then on the next point Defensive Dennis had a sick layout along the sideline to start a break that tied the game 6-6. It was looking like we were going to hang with and perhaps even upset the beasts of the Southwest.

I went in on the next point and glued myself to my guy, not letting him go anywhere without my tattoos in his face. We forced a turn. Feeling confident, I faked deep, stuck my heel in the ground and left my guy behind me. Our handler put up a flick that maybe needed some more zip, but it didn’t matter. I was going to catch it and start the break that was going to put us up 7-6. There was no other possibility.

I just assumed the dude who was guarding me was old and would never be able to recover from the juke I threw on him. And you know the saying about what happens when you assume – it makes you look like a goddamned lazy idiot when you don’t run through the disc and allow your guy to sneak past you and tip it away. (I may have modified that saying slightly to fit the circumstances.)

After that, Shadows went on a four goal run and we never quite recovered losing 15-8 in a game that I’d definitely helped squander. Though disappointed, we came together with the guys from Shadows in a great spirit circle after the game, laughing and shaking hands.

“See you fellas in Colorado.”

Being in that circle with a bunch of athletes who now had gray hairs, a little less muscle, and a few more ailments, I could definitely appreciate the quote at the bottom of the Shadows uniforms.

The older we get, the better we were.

It’s true. I’m far better at 22 now than I ever was when I was actually 22. I think my vertical from back then is up to 70 or 80 inches. My forty yard dash time comes in around four flat. I once scored 17 goals in a game that ended 15-1.

The older we get, the better we were.

It’s the one great thing that us ancients have on the new wave of players who find themselves promoted in slick ass Callahan videos and ESPN live streams. They’re always going to be exactly as good as their actual performance. They can’t stretch the truth. So when I start feeling slightly depressed that the pro leagues and television contracts missed me by half a decade, I can always smile at the young’uns and say, “You should’ve seen me way back when, junior.” And laugh because they won’t be able to verify shit.

You kids may have your Evan Lepler interviews and your Sportscenter Top Tens, but we have legends. Which let’s face it, I’m going to try (and likely fail) to convince myself is somehow cooler.

I spent the entire plane ride home in a middle seat waiting for the leg cramps I knew were on the way. Honestly, it felt like my own hamstrings were stalking me. Somewhere over central Indiana they finally jumped out of the bushes, frightening the hell out of the business people on either side of me. If I were on top of my game, I’d have patted my pocket and said something along the lines of, “Damn it Brutus, quit scratching daddy! Little guy sure hates flying. But that’s squirrels for ya, am I right?” As it was, I just got to chuckle uncomfortably as they both began desperate searches for their headphones.

Uncomfortable plane ride aside, it had all been worth it. At long last, I’d be playing in the tournament that had eluded me for over two decades.

Universe Point is available now on Amazon!

  The post Universe Point After Afterword: Part 1 appeared first on Skyd Magazine.

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[lalobalives]

*An essay a week in 2017*

Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net. A boat approaches. They think the humpback is dead. He begins to move. A last ditch effort to save its own life. The people on the boat radio for help. They know the whale won’t make it until help arrives. They must be the help. They begin to cut away at the net with what they have on the boat–a small knife. They cut and cut. The whale begins to move. He is still tangled. They keep cutting. Suddenly the whale gets free. For the next hour it dives and jumps out of the water. It slaps its enormous tail on the water. It hurls its body above the water and splashes back down into the depths. This is its freedom dance.

***

On Wednesday, in my high school fiction class, we started reading Gabby Rivera’s “Juliet Takes a Breath.” I got the students, three boys and five girls, to talk about people who have inspired them, like the protagonist Juliet is inspired by Harlowe. I ask: “Have you ever had someone make that big an impression on you? They go around sharing.

One boy says he has no big inspirations. I know him to be a huge comic book fan. He’s a burly fourteen year old with kind eyes and a big heart who is often biting with his jokes. He’s awkward. He’s been bullied. His humor can sometimes sting. I’ve had to remind myself that he is just learning how to be a brown man in this world. The world has already tried to crush him.

I ask: “Well, who introduced you to comic books.”

He smiles with no teeth. Says: “No one did.” Then he shakes his head. “No, my dad did but not through comic books. He introduced me to super heroes. He gave me a whole bunch when I was like five or six. He wanted to see which ones I liked.” I smile. Lean in closer. “And a few years later, I learned that comic books tell the stories of those super heroes.”

“And you were hooked,” I finish for him.

“Yes.” He smiles again. This time he shows teeth.

I move on to a senior I’ve known since she was a ninth grader. Before she went natural and now dons a head of tight brownish blonde curls. She looks at me and smiles with her whole face. “You,” she says and starts to turn the pages of her homemade journal. She folds white papers in half, staples them, seals the cover with clear packing tape. I imagine she has stacks of these at home. “I quote you all the time,” she says. “Last week, you told me…let me see.” She flips through the pages. I see lines of poetry. The beginnings of stories. Anecdotes. Musings about her day. Quotes from the many books she reads, some that I’ve suggested. She’s always reading. She stops on a page. Scans it with her index finger. “Last week I told you something shifted in me. I told you I think I’m more than a poet. You said, and I quote: ‘I’ve been waiting for you to see that. You’re a storyteller.’” She looks at me. Her eyes are welling. I blink hard. I can’t hide the heat in my face. I am all the colors.

“You’re the first person to tell me I’m a writer. To make me believe that I can make a life out of words.” I give her a high five.

I will hug her later. Tell her that I love her. Tell her that I believe in her. She is going to Smith in the fall on full scholarship. She is going to major in creative writing. I tell her: “You are light years ahead of where I was at your age. Just keep doing the work. Keep writing and pushing yourself. You got this.”

Later that evening, I cried at a comic shop after hugging and congratulating my sister friend homie Gabby Rivera on her first comic book outing, America #1, published by Marvel. There was a line out of the door for her signing, yo!

On Tuesday evening I went to a screening at the UN of the documentary AfroLatinos: The Untaught Story written by my Comadre Iyawó Alicia Anabel Santos, produced by Renzo Devia. The room was packed!

It hit me in the back of the comic shop on Fulton how very proud I am of these two glorious women who mean so very much to me and are amongst the best humans I’ve known. To say that I am proud does not suffice. I was moved to big fat tears, and just as I was about to apologize, I remembered what Lidia Yuknavitch said during workshop at Tin House: “Never apologize for your tears. My Lithuanian grandmother used to say that crying was the only language she trusted because it was the language of the body.”

I think of the inscription Gabby wrote in my copy of her novel: “We are the revolution.” Indeed.

***

I have a hard time accepting compliments. I have a hard time hearing that I have inspired and motivated and been an integral part of someone’s journey. I have seen these two talented women grow and evolve. We have gone through changes together. There were moments where it was too much to be in each other’s lives, so we weren’t. And then we came back. We’ve shared joy and tears. We’ve shared writing and stories. We’ve sat in classes together. We’ve workshopped each other’s work. They’ve both participated in my Writing Our Lives Workshops.

I tremble as I write this. I want to explain that I’m not say that I’m not taking credit for their accomplishments. I am acknowledging that we have been part of each other’s journeys. I want to say that I don’t know if I’d be where I am had I not met and loved them. I want you to know how much they feed and inspire me; that they are integral parts of my life and my evolution.

I remember when Iyawó told me she Renzo had invited her to tour Latin America and the Caribbean to work on the documentary. I remember when she started preparing for the months on the road and when she left. I talked to her from so many places across the globe. Me here in NYC, being a single mom, working and writing and trying to build a life for myself. Her in Haiti and DR and Brazil and Colombia and Honduras and…

I remember when Gabby told me about this book she was writing. I remember when she shared that Juliet came to her in my first Writing Our Lives class, in the petri dish class. I’ve often thought that that class was a failure. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was still figuring it all out. You learn so much in the journey…

***

In her essay collection Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes: “All artists, writers among them, have several stories — one might call them creation myths — that haunt and obsess them.”

***

Imposter syndrome has been sinking its claws deep into me this week. It’s nothing new. The feelings of unworthiness have walked with me for most of my life. If I look at the root of it, at where it comes from, I know it comes from my mother. Here’s the thing: a part of me feels guilt over this, over this writing I’ve done about my mother, over calling myself unmothered, over not being able to tell people that I have a great relationship with my mom, that she is my foundation and my church, that all things go back to the altar of la madre.

We texted a few days ago. It ended like it usually does: I am left reeling and questioning and wondering: if so many people love me, why can’t you? Why can’t you love me, mom? Why?

I am tired of feeling that. This shit is exhausting…and yet, here I am. Writing it. Again.

***

In her forecast for this week’s Venus retrograde, Chani Nicholas writes for Sagittarius:

Get to know what you are capable of. Don’t back down from it. Refuse to diminish it. Own it without arrogance, but with an unwavering acknowledgement of its magnificence.

Consider all that you have learned about your creative, erotic energy over the past 8 years. Which love affairs were your greatest teachers then? What did you learn from them? How have you healed? How do you approach this aspect of your life differently now? What were you learning about your creative energy then? What projects were your biggest teachers? How did you approach them then? How do you approach your creative work now?

The last two weeks of Venus’s retrograde ask you to sink deep below the surface of things. They get to the root of why you feel worthy and unworthy. Desirable and undesirable. Connected and disconnected. They scour the base of your energetic reservoirs, your creative wells, your oceans of imagination for clues as to what may have entered your streams of consciousness, telling you that you aren’t what you are. They ask you to heal the old wounds. Flush out the poisons from childhood. Cleanse the systems that were put in place by familial patterns so that you can better honor the gifts that you have received from the gods. ~ChaniNicholas.com

***

Over the past two days, I’ve found found myself searching for unmothered womyn like me. I’ve searched their names, their stories, their poems. I’ve been looking to feel less alone in the world. I need to see words like mine. Words that dare to speak our truths about our mothers. Words that chip away at the mother myth with a sledgehammer.

I reached out to folks on FB: Emily Dickinson’s poem Chrysallis inspired the title of my memoir. My sister friend Elisabet told me the other day that Dickinson was very much unmothered like us. I did not know this. There’s something about knowing I’m not alone in this that has gifted me much solace. All this is to say that I want to know more about Dickinson’s relationship with her mother. And if there’s any other unmothered woman writer that you think I should know and read, please do share. Yes this is me searching for roots. I am willing to be vulnerable and share that. There is no shame in our wounds.

In my research, I discovered that I am indeed not alone. There is nothing like learning that you are not alone in your ghosts and obsessions…

In a letter to her mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson wrote: “Could you tell me what home is. I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” http://classiclit.about.com/cs/articles/a/aa_emily.htm

Virginia Woolf’s mother died when she was thirteen years old. She writes in her autobiographical fragments Moments of Being: “Until I was in [my] forties”—until she’d written To the Lighthouse—“the presence of my mother obsessed me. I could hear her voice, see her, imagine what she would do or say as I went about my day’s doings. She was one of the invisible presences who after all play so important a part in every life.”…

And once it was written, Woolf noticed, “I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her.” Why? The question haunted Woolf. “Why, because I described her and my feeling for her in that book, should my vision of her and my feeling for her become so much dimmer and weaker? Perhaps one of these days I shall hit on the reason.” Source: The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Woolf would later call her mother’s death “the greatest disaster that could happen.”

***

They call us unmothered. There are those who are unmothered because their mothers died. Then there are those like me, whose mothers are alive and still don’t mother us.

Merriam-Webster’s defined unmothered as: deprived of a mother: motherless <adolescent gosling that, unmothered, attached itself to him — Della Lutes>

Dictionary.com takes you straight to the various definitions of “mother” as if unmothered couldn’t possibly exist. As if nature would not allow that. God wouldn’t. The universe wouldn’t. And yet, I exist—an unmothered woman. ~excerpt from “They Call Her Saint”, A Dim Capacity for Wings, a memoir by Vanessa Mártir

***

I remember finding the term unmothered and how shocked I was by it. More than anything I was shocked by the realization that I wasn’t alone in my suffering and there were other people out there like me, who walked unanchored in this life. I wanted to read more work by and for us. I’ve searched high and low for it. I’ve reached out to mentors and friends for suggestions and recommendations. What has this made me realize? That I want to, have to, will one day compile an anthology of work by and for us unmothered women. An anthology of poetry and fiction and essays. I will create this for womyn like me to see that they’re not alone. That we see them. That there is refuge. There is something about seeing yourself in literature that is so profound and comforting. This is also true for the unmothered who have been living with the mother myth for so long, who have been told “solo hay una madre,” who have seen people gasp and clutch their pearls when they dare to speak of their mothers honestly, to show that she is not what the myth said, she wasn’t loving, she wasn’t kind, she broke you in so many ways… And here we are picking up the pieces. Let me show you how this shard glints in the moonlight. Let me hold up that mirror, sis. Let me show you what solidarity looks like…

***

In his essay “Finding Abigail” Chris Abani write: “Ghosts leave their vestigial traces all over your work. Once they have decided to haunt you, that is. These ectoplasmic moments litter your work for years. They are both the veil and the revelation, the thing that leads you to the cusp of the transformational.”

***

To be clear, there is no pride in me saying I am unmothered. This is a wound I walk with. I just decided that there is no shame in it either. This is my truth. This is me coming to terms with my existence. This is me seeing you. This is me telling you that for far too long we have carried this, telling ourselves that there must be something wrong with us because how could a mother not want to mother and be tender to her child? Mother is earth. Mother is the world. And to say that mother is wrong or incapable is to say that the world is wrong and incapable, and how could that be? It can’t…right? Wrong. There is nothing wrong with you now as there was nothing wrong with you then, when you saw your mother sneer at you, hatred pulling at the corners of her eyes. This was her pain. This was her trauma. That is not yours. You, I, we are worthy of love. We are lovable. It has been a journey to see that and own it. And some days I still struggle to see it and be it. But today you saw me. You said, yes. You said, me too. This healing ain’t easy but you must name your ghosts before you can tackle them. Mother is not the enemy. She just is what the world made her. What are you going to do with that unmothered wound? Me? Imma make art and I’m gonna love and Imma mother in resistance to how I was mothered. This is what I have and it is everything.

***

Kintsugi (“golden joinery”) or kintsukuroi (“golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates the artifact’s unique history by emphasizing the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing the artifact with new life. Kintsugi art dates back to the late 15th century, making it more than 500 years old. It is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which calls for finding beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The repair method was also born from the Japanese feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted. Source: My Modern Met

***

I started therapy a year ago. My first words to him were: “I am an unmothered woman.” I am still in therapy, still digging into that wound. What I’ve come to is this: there are people who have mothered me in ways my mother couldn’t and still can’t. I am grateful for those surrogate mothers every single day. I had my Millie and I had my brother and so many others who reminded me that I am loved and lovable. They taught me that I can be different. That I can use these scars to make something beautiful out of this life I was given, that I have made. And, no, I didn’t do it alone. And, yes, I can stop the cycle. And there is also the bittersweet realization that I wouldn’t be who I am nor would I be able to do what I do, see you and be with you and be the mother and writer and teacher and student that I am, had I been mothered. See, it’s true in many ways que solo hay una madre, and that’s why I am still wounded by this truth of being unmothered. So the decision is: be broken by it or let it be my fuel. I didn’t know that I made the decision when I left at 13 and didn’t look back. I didn’t have the language then but shit, that girl somehow knew she had to save her own life. I’ve been doing it ever since. Even when I fucked up. Even when I repeated the “love me, please love me” cycle I learned from my mother. I was then and now still trying to save my own life. I was trying to see the glint of the moon in these shards. Today I want to say thank you to that 13 year old Vanessa. You are my hero, nena. You be the illest.

***

I have family on my FB friends list who don’t get why I write what I write or why I do the work I do. I see you. You’ve had a different experience with my mother or you don’t want to look at your own wounds or you’d rather I stay silent because you’re more interested in protecting the family name and keeping these secrets that don’t protect any us. I get it in many ways. I still won’t be silent. Don’t ask me to be. I’ve thought this through. I know I may hurt some people in my journey to heal and free myself of these ghosts. Yes, I think it’s worth all of it. Why? Because the cycle stops here. It has to. Silence already killed my brother. There can be no more casualties.

***

A little a while ago, as if to remind me again, a post came across my FB. The article starts: “How did Marcia Butler, the distinguished oboist, save herself from a detached, withholding mother and a sexually abusive father?… But Marcia was also hooked on trying to understand her mother. ‘I cobbled together weekly rituals through which I might pretend to be close to her and imaginatively pierce her thick veneer,’ she writes.”

So many of us are broken by our wounds. Some of us have somehow found a way to overcome and be fed by them. This is one story. I am writing mine.

[Woolf] was shocked by her [mother’s] death, but then again Woolf believed it was her “shock-receiving capacity” that “makes me a writer.” She thought the productive thing to do with a shock was to “make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.” The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Relentless Files — Week 61 (#52essays2017 Week 8) *An essay a week in 2017* Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net.