#they never interview him after wins what a rarity

[scionshtola]

3.12.17

[readytoclimbtothestars]

Mad Men, or On The Nature of the Deepest Conflict

One of the most revelatory lines on the show is said by a character that was relatively short lived. In the second episode of season 4, Dr Faye Miller tells Don that they both are in the same business, the business of helping people sort out their deepest conflict. When Don asks what that is, she answers “In a nutshell, it all comes down to what I want versus what is expected of me”. As Matthew Weiner, the creator and showrunner, pointed out, advertising does not make you want to do anything, it reminds you to do what you already want to do, that maybe got lost as you did what was expected of you. We see these people, whose job is to remind the public of what they want, as they struggle with the acknowledgment of their own wants and desires, and if and how it is possible to attain them. 

In Don’s case, the irony of his tragedy is that the cage of what is expected of him is one that he created for himself: that of being Don Draper. The suave, charming creative genius with the beautiful wife and the adorable children, and all that comes with it, is something that we see him struggle with constantly. He chose to go down that road, to erase Dick Whitman, and yet at the same time we repeatedly see that he didn’t really leave him behind. Time and time again in the later seasons we hear him voice the idea that nobody really knows him, and thus nobody really loves him. One of the deepest connections he has is with Anna Draper; the comfort he can take in her saying that she knows everything about him, and still loves him, is a comfort nobody else can give him, especially not his wife. He saw that, as soon as Betty learned who he really was, she didn’t want to have anything else to do with him, as he says to Anna. She maybe once loved Don, but she would never love Dick. So, when Anna dies, Don tells Peggy that the only one who ever really knew him died. The deep want of being truly known, and thus truly loved is something that he can never really acknowledge, as it would make the paper castle he built crumble to the ground; so he buries it under the desire for women, alcohol, cigarettes, excesses that are obviously never enough. Tormented by this conflict, he continues to self-destruct up until the point when he hears a stranger voice the same preoccupation of being truly invisible.  He embraces him, apparently feeling a communion he never knew before. Maybe he finally find the freedom to want what he wants and let go of what is expected of Don Draper, the brilliant creative director. 

Pete Campbell, the privileged Wasp, has already defied the expectations of what is expected of him by going into advertising and not into banking. The idea of what is expected of him, or at least what he thinks is expected of him, contribute to his constant unhappiness and impatience, always feeling he’s not being given what he is due. For the first two season, we might say that he feels Trudy is what is expected of him, and Peggy is what he wants. The scene where he describes how he would go hunting, and then let his woman cook what he killed, is the expression of all the desires he feels he is denied, exactly because of what is expected of him. When Beth Dawes asks him what is wrong with him (even though the woman who asks him has just had electro-shock therapy and she thinks he is talking about a friend), he says that after their affair he realized everything he already had was not right. He did what was expected of him and didn’t get anything that he wanted, and now he doesn’t even know what he would want, if he could. His constant struggle with his dissatisfaction can only be resolved when he realizes that there doesn’t have to be a struggle at all. He married Trudy because it was expected of him, but in the end, he realizes that what is expected of him and what he wants don’t necessarily have to be separated. Trudy loved him when he wasn’t all that loveable, and she stood by his side, even when they weren’t married anymore. He always felt that his coworker both wanted and expected him to fail, but in the end he finally gets the recognition he wanted, with the offer of an new job. He stops obsessing over what is expected of him and what is owed to him, and realizes that he can have what he wants, that he is “entitled to more”, as he says to Trudy when he wins her back.

Peggy Olson always went against the idea of what was expected of her. In the first season she is expected to be attractive for the man in the office, and she gets fat (even though there’s also another reason for that). Constantly defying expectations, her journey to establishing herself in the workplace takes her through all the season, and its conclusion with Stan’s declaration and his kiss is not a symbol of returning to what is expected of her, but of getting all that she wanted in the order she wanted it in. Having gone through some pretty traumatic experiences, such as giving away her child, she still is one of the characters with one of the most positive arcs and best endings. She was probably the boldest of them all in declaring what she wanted instead of what was expected of her, and she was rewarded for it in the end. Her relationship with Don was one of the purest things on that show, and it’s not a case that in the end she has a satisfying ending with all of the main characters, be it skating through an empty office as Roger Sterling plays the piano, receiving a cactus and a well-deserved acknowledgment from Pete Campbell, a job proposition from Joan, or one of the three final phone calls from Don. Peggy saw what was expected of her, was not satisfied with it, and went after what she wanted instead. 

Roger Sterling, the rich man who never had to work for anything, didn’t have any expectations to live up to. Nobody expected anything of him, and that can be as damaging as too many expectations. Nobody takes him seriously, not his coworkers, not his wives, not even his daughter, constantly disappointed by him. And he doesn’t either, sailing through life feeling that the less is expected of him, the less he has to offer (except for drinks and witty remarks), and the less he knows what he wants. He seemed to be imprisoned by the lack of expectations just as much as other characters are imprisoned by the abundance of them. In the end, it seems that it took more than 60 years, and meeting the age-appropriate Marie Calvet, to find someone that expected something from him that was not his money nor his wit, and to realise that he could, and he did, want to live up to the expectations.

Joan Holloway knows what is expected of her, and she knows how to use it to her advantage. She needs to be attractive for the men in the office, and she needs to find a man, get married and stop working. As the series goes on, she starts to consciously realise that the expectations do not correspond to her wants. The idea of the perfect marriage is shattered by Greg, and she starts to concentrate on the career she might have, probably (even though she wouldn’t say it out loud) inspired by Peggy’s trajectory, and how this secretary from nowhere refused to listen to Joan’s wisdom and made her own way in a men’s world. So she starts to make her own way too, fighting against the obstacles of what is expected of a woman like her. By the end, she is so far from who she was at the beginning, that she doesn’t hesitate long before choosing her new career over Richard, in a final acknowledgment of the distance between the position she is expected to be in and the position she wants, because, as she tells Richard “she can’t just turn off that part of herself” anymore.

Betty Draper is the rarity among these characters; the one who did all that was expected of her, and the one that arguably got the worst ending. Her mother taught her that what was expected of her was being beautiful, and she was. Yet, with all her beauty, her perfect life with the perfect husband and the sweet children, she is profoundly unhappy. In season 5, when she fails to meet the only expectation anybody has ever had of her, she can’t bear to have even her husband look at her. She spends a life trying to be beautiful and proper, and she is still trying at the end, as her letter to her only daughter details the instructions for the perfect funeral, the funeral someone of her standing is supposed to have. She lived with the profound unhappiness of knowing she was never meant to be more than an ornament on a man's arm, but always refused to acknowledge it, because she knew no other way of being than being what other expected.  

In one interview, Matthew Weiner describes advertising people as “The mirror makers”, referring to the title of a book on advertising. All of these characters, busy as they were making mirrors for the public, didn’t realise they were building mirrors for themselves, and so many of them that they couldn’t find the one that reflected their real image anymore, and what that real image wanted.

[formulatrash]

Could I get your opinion on Hamilton? Bc I feel like people either love him and are like he is the nicest person in the universe or hate him and think he’s the worst & tbh while he does seem genuinely good he’s also clearly willing to do quite a lot to win (2007) & I really doubt the Nico thing was one sided either way so... opinions.

Hello, anon - I got two of these so gonna answer this one rather than both .Lewis, man. Where the hell do you start with Lewis? Unquestionably one of the most talented drivers we have seen or will ever see on track. Not just for raw speed or ingenuity but with the way he has been able to adapt and learn across a changing era of cars - something a lot of the other drivers aspiring to GOAT status (Alonso, in particular) just haven’t been able to do. 

People think of Lewis as having unquestionably the best car. But that’s a recent development (and not always true even then) - the last few years he and Jenson were at McLaren, they were wildly outperforming the cars with a really strong driver pairing. (and the order was a little less rigid then, in all fairness)

I’m nearly the same age as Lewis so I remember him when he was a novelty - when what people said was that there was this guy in the junior categories who was fast - and this was always prefixed - he was black. 

People said he was stroppy, had cheating engines (there is no evidence of this, especially when you consider the budget he was working with) and that he had a bad attitude, he was never going to get to Formula One so why put him in your team, a kid like that couldn’t be a champion… in other words the extremely racialised term “uppity.” Like, have absolutely zero illusions on this front, people were not supportive.

Some were, obviously and for every hand up like the McLaren backing, the detractors got louder. So when Lewis took the GP2 title and moved up to F1, he had to come in hot and obnoxious. Especially with Fernando as his teammate. Especially with spygate about to wipe out any shine left on the mangled heap they’d made of the championship trophy that year.

And oh, the disqualification (for anyone not up to speed: the whole McLaren entry was excluded that season for allegedly spying on Ferrari) just validated the detractors: you see, he isn’t that good. He was cheating. 

Lewis has a temper. I don’t mean that in the sense he’s an angry guy, at all, just that there is a certain length you can push him and he will eventually snap, like all of us - he’s not a robot. And if you have to prove yourself again and again and again, in tests way beyond what anyone else is being scrutinised on, knowing that it is unfair and having no way to get past them but to once again, obnoxiously, excel then you will occasionally also make the odd sniping comment. 

I’ve never heard him say anything stroppier than he once threw a bit of a shit fit because he thought Jenson unfollowed him on Twitter, though - whereas the howling conniptions when he succeeds in whatever the latest arbitrary challenge someone has decided he must pass to be considered successful? Those continue to the day.

Lewis, of course, is now pretty zen. He’s spent a long time working on himself and has been repairing his relationship with his father (who used to be his manager until they somewhat explosively parted ways) and with old rivals. He’s been growing as a person and a driver, he’s been caring less about what people think. The Lewis now is very different to the Lewis even a few years ago - clearly a lot of self-reflection and space has happened, after what was years of charging around and also some - bluntly - horrible psychological shit which the Merc team definitely have to take some responsibility for because it was their success formula to set him and Nico against each other to push each other forwards.

And for all the bitterness between him and Nico, they were never, like, really loathing each other. Just couldn’t work together. I find it really ghoulish how eager the press is to see Carlos and Lando go the same way, asking when will you fall out? all the time like it wasn’t obvious both Lewis and Nico were in pretty horrible states during it. (I saw some of the aftermath via one of them and like, that’s some trauma right there :/)

Has Lewis had his controversies? For sure. Some of them I have been upset by - like when he posted an instagram story telling his nephew he couldn’t wear a dress. Thing about Lewis is that, especially as he’s got older, he doesn’t double-down on things like that, he goes away and reflects - and designed a range of skirts and modelled them for an interview where he was called on it, then went to Disneyland and walked round with his nephew wearing that princess dress he’d mocked him for. [warning: Daily Mail link sorry, only site that had the pics] 

Yes, ideally he would not have been a prang in the first place but it is also very good to publicly show growth. Especially in F1. 

I loved old, obnoxious fuckboy Lewis. He was the middle finger F1 needed showing - and his resilience to the number of times the press and the talking heads and the social circles of F1 tried to push him back down, only to spring back up with a blindingly-polished trophy… ah, you love to see it. 

Lewis means more to me than almost any other driver - and like, I vibe heavily with several - because he is that outlier example who shouldn’t have been counted but who keeps forcing them to score him into the ledgers of history, even now.

Is it good having a vocal advocate for women and for LGBT rights, who isn’t scared to call out motorsports prejudices and racism, so prominently in the sport? Yes. It’s a hard truth that he had to get this level of success in order to gain a platform because no when Lewis speaks people have to listen and report it. Because if his Instagram story can turn into a scandal, it can also be a communications platform. It’s why he holds a lot of sway with Liberty Media. 

Now Lewis’ rights to be in the sport are unassailable. So he can start on other fights he couldn’t take at the time - there’s a reason the F1 press still gives Wehrlein (who is one of the sweetest drivers I have ever worked with) the “uppity” treatment and it’s fucking sad. It’s so embarrassing to work in this industry that’s a thousand miles behind even other embarrassing industries on this global fucking shame. 

Look, I don’t give a fuck about the whole GOAT thing because sport is a continuous cycle (err, most years) and so ‘all time’ is a dumb thing to put in an accolade. But Lewis is, in my opinion, the best Formula One driver we have ever witnessed the career of. He is devastatingly good, has honed himself to a level where mistakes are such a rarity they’re a headline in and of themselves.

To maintain that, year after year after year? It’s not human. It’s a man who’s pushed himself beyond the pinnacle of the sport because he has proven everything and still someone will be typing out some snide little piece, at the same time I am writing this, that Hamilton will never be the greatest because [arbitrary mathematics about how you can’t count three of his titles so we don’t have to respect him yet. Not yet. It’s not that we don’t respect him because of who he is. It’s just one last test….]

Does Lewis being so good at Formula One driving it’s not really comprehensible below the level of fellow world champion make other drivers bad? No. He’s not walking to the titles. And maybe one day someone will be better than Lewis. Maybe he won’t be on form this year, somehow, for the first time in years of racing - if it ever starts again. Maybe he’ll retire to make tracksuits and rescue dolphins. 

I am glad he seems happy now. He looks incredible. Man gets hotter and nicer with every year and you absolutely love to see it. His growth in himself and the sport has been equally impressive and his transformative power, both in terms of pushing forward the sporting side and in terms of using his platforms for good, is awesome. 

(Lewis doesn’t have to speak out about stuff; I know people think it’s naff or crass or obnoxious or preachy but he could just not - and he knows people’d bash him for something else) 

That said, I wish he’d put some money into sponsoring some grass roots motorsport but that is literally my only beef with him. But yeah, we stan a complicated, evolutionary boy.

[bronyinabottle]

Post-Series Finale Mod Note

Well, the series has finally wrapped up. And I felt like it’d be proper to let you guys know’s what I’m doing next and also my thoughts on some of the episodes since the last update.

I want to rest assure that I still have plans to continue this blog for a decent while and in fact hope to have another big story akin to Return to Saddle Arabia sometime next year that addresses some things that never got mentioned in the show that would be relevant to the story of Genie Twilight (Ex: Spike when he was just an Egg prior to Twilight hatching him). In terms of more near future stuff though, I will probably do a little episode response to the final episode of the series.

Anyway, regarding the finale itself. I felt it was AMAZING. I’ll probably get to doing a my thoughts on post for the two-parter and the epilogue episode all on it’s own. Because I really want to focus, re-watch, and gush about so many details of those last 3 episodes. How much did I like the finale? Can I just tell you that the two-parter alone is actually challenging Twilight’s Kingdom for my new favorite episode of the series? It’s outright awesome the series got to end with a bang like this. The epilogue episode was also great, very bittersweet in parts, but I’d say it’s also within the Top 10 of the series and the ending song I’m sure made just about every fan in the series well up in tears.

After the break though, I’ll be giving some thoughts on the episodes since then as I want to just entirely focus on Finale stuff. If you want to hear some of my opinions regarding any specific things in the finale faster though. Feel free to sound off an ask over on my mod blog. But for now, here’s some thoughts about episodes 14-23 of Season 9

THE LAST LAUGH

It was quite cool to see Weird Al come back one more time to the series. Of course, this wasn’t as jam packed with awesome music and moments as his character’s debut performance back in Season 4. But it was a fun episode, though I wonder if they should of put a little more hints regarding something that comes up in the Series Finale. (Though perhaps the Pinkie plush we see in Cheese’s room might be something)

2, 4, 6, GREAT

Yeaaaaaah... if every season has their dud(/s) this is probably Season 9′s for sure. Once again Rainbow’s more dickish then she should be at this point of the series. And while I can understand that they’re different characters. I can’t help but be reminded of Human Rainbow in Friendship Games when she was doing her song for the pep rally. That very much felt like what a Rainbow Dash should actually be doing if they’re hired to lead a cheerleading squad. Kind of sucks though that Rainbow often does seem to get a dud episode in many seasons of the show (Mare-Do-Well Season 2, Rainbow Falls Season 4, 28 Pranks Later Season 6, Non-Compete Clause Season 8). Rainbow’s still my 2nd favorite pony, but sometimes that becomes hard to say after particular episodes.

A TRIVIAL PURSUIT

I’m a little mixed on this one, it’s fun to see Twilight freak out again. But something about this episode screams “Wrong season”. Especially since the very next episode gets into how Twilight has matured as she is closer to taking the role of ruler of Equestria. This kind of episode might of been fine if it had been made anywhere between Season 2-Season 5. Not the final season where she’s heading towards being the new ruler, it’d be kind of worrisome to know your next leader went bonkers trying to win a game of trivia.

THE SUMMER SUN SETBACK

Now this was a good one! A nice setup with the villain trio messing with the Mane 6′s Summer Sun celebration plans while they try to get information about Grogar’s bell. And while it became slightly muddled by the trivia episode prior to this, the note about Twilight’s character development is nicely appreciated. It’s kind of a shame that besides the opener, only this episode and Frenemies were the episodes that built up to the two-parter later. Said two-parter is still one of the best of the series, but it may have helped to have a little more build-up to it during the Season then it actually did.

SHE TALKS TO ANGEL

This was a fun Fluttershy episode for certain, we get to know exactly what Angel feels even if that’s through Fluttershy’s own body. So we can get a sense of really of what Fluttershy’s had to deal with for years heh. Also, the “I wanna marry Discord” off-hand line is pretty funny. Even if now it drives shippers crazy. You either take it that Angel is trolling, or Angel knows something that we don’t. Doesn’t help that something in the finale might of left things very ambiguous on this front.

DRAGON DROPPED

I think it’s actually good that Spike’s essentially outgrew his devotion to Rarity. Of course he’s still willing to help her from time to time as in the ending, but it’s great that he can kind of explore other things he wants to do and/or meet new friends. On a side note though, the first time Rarity’s practicing her apology had to have been one of the funniest moments in a while.

A HORSE SHOE-IN

The final Starlight episode gives her role as being promoted to being the new headmare of the School of Friendship. Which is a fair role to give her though I don’t know if that actually might feel a little underwhelming for fans of her. I mean, I’m glad she’s not like.. going to become a Princess herself as those were exactly the worst fears everyone had about Starlight. But it’s certainly a strange journey to go from a season-long villain, Twilight’s student for one season and the openers and finale of that season being more about her then it was Twilight and the others, to simply being in charge of a school at the end. That school’s still important, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that everything with Starlight doesn’t seem easy to explain as it still stems that we practically got nothing substantial about her after her rather quick turnaround in the Season 5 finale. I’m still as lukewarm as ever with Starlight. I do wonder if there will be a Starlight in G5, she may instantly have a better reception since G4 Starlight has quite the baggage.

On the episode itself though, it feel weird to have this moral of “Don’t hire your friends” only for Starlight to do exactly that by hiring both Sunburst and Trixie. Granted, Sunburst is probably competent. But I think I would of liked to see more of how Trixie would do as counselor more then just standing up for Gallus that one time. Just doesn’t feel right. I think I enjoyed the episode to some extent still, but it probably would of been better if Sunburst was part of the process. So maybe you can an addendum to the moral that sometimes your friends can also be good for the job while others aren’t

DARING DOUBT

Daring Do episodes are almost always fun. Though I do gotta say it’s weird to go with the whole Ahuizotl was misunderstood thing when I believe one of his thing was to try to make 800 years of unrelenting heat? What exactly was that about. But eh, might just have to be pushed with the pile of stuff like Marble and Big Mac.

GROWING UP IS HARD TO DO

It was pretty fun to see the CMC as grown-ups (Even though how funny would it be that we’d get to see that anyway during the finale. I wonder if perhaps this episode came into development simply because they planned the finale to be a timeskip long ago and decided to have a little more use for the flash assets of the adult CMC in a proper episode). A little more bittersweet when you look at Scoots though as you see that she still has small wings, nice attention to detail on her disability though.

THE BIG MAC QUESTION

And the final regular episode of the show is dedicated to getting Big Mac hitched and crazy Discord shenanigans. All I can say is it was a fun episode through and through and even brought back the sort of reality show interview stuff we saw in that one Season 6 Rarity episode

SEASON 9 THOUGHTS OVERALL

I still want to give the Finale it’s own thought section because I think it really deserves attention on it’s own. I thought I’d just give a general thoughts on Season 9. Besides the finale, Season 9 actually felt kind of on the underwhelming side of things. There are definitely good episodes popping up there and there, it just felt like it wasn’t really feeling like most of the episodes were taking any credence to how the show was wrapping up soon. Thankfully the Finale more then makes up for it, but it felt like a lot more could of been done to set things up for the big finale. The finale will no doubt be Season 9′s crown jewel and I do want to share as much thoughts as I possibly can about them when I get to it.

Regardless, this has been a fun series to keep watch on. Hopefully many of us still have some fandom things to look forward to making and/or seeing even as of course with our main show over we’ll see even less productivity at least until we see what Generation 5 will be like. See you guys again soon for when I have a response and big thoughts for the finale episodes!

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, DAVE! You’ve been accepted for the role of EDMUND. Admin Rosey: There's something that makes Edmund such a powerful figure in his own right and Dave, I don't know how but you managed to capture it in the span of this one application. The prose, the voice, all of it was present from the plot points to the interview. His voice was so very poignant throughout the whole thing it made my heart ache a little. I am well and truly enthralled by the Edmund that you have presented to us and cannot wait to watch you dive deeper and show us what makes this boy who he is and how he'll give Verona a reckoning to be feared. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Dave

Age | 23

Preferred Pronouns | He/him

Activity Level | On average a few hours every other / every third night. I have kids so it will likely be after I put them to bed.

Timezone | EST

How did you find the rp? | My sister Kat lead me in your direction

IN CHARACTER

Character | Edmund / Easton Craven

What drew you to this character? A man built from resentment, bones compressed from the ashes of an others mistakes, a cold structure of stone engraved with rage. Teeth that never unclench, a jaw so tight it threatens to break into fragments. Animosity is the dangerous life raft holding together a bitterly broken character, mania stemmed from a lifetime of repudiation. An obsession potent enough to cover years of aching ribs; the soft tissues under the bones filled with a fire harrowing enough to stifle hurt. He craves revenge as if a child reaching out to their mother. Comfort being found in the promise of reunification. If only he could reach, if only his stiff limbs would meet the soft, consoling ones that he felt reciprocating the assignation, he would feel peace. Delusion of contentment driving passionate precision, carefully planned collisions that cause wise, crooked smiles that meet the eyes of madness.

He knows the storm is raging. The thorns sprouting from his blooming roses; depriving the buds of the little sunlight they initially had. He’s feeling just as suffocated and trapped now. Everything around him is whirling in the chaos he created but he won’t let it break him. Even in the blinding darkness he makes himself big, thrashing about so that even those who can see clear as day stay far from his reach. He lives with the actions of a stubborn child; allowing the haze of red fury to cloud his mind as he surrenders his better judgment. Every time he drink the poison he loses another piece of himself to make room. The pressure builds inside of him like a volcano and when he erupts; his pride and joy are the only casualties. He’s sacrificed everything for his cause, his battle cry drowning out the grief but he’s no longer even sure what threat the enemy poses, forcing a blindness on him more dangerous than the dark.

Taking the risk, stepping up to the plate and taking his best shot. When pressed with his back against the wall, Blood betraying him or perhaps the other way around; what choice is one left with? Perhaps the anger lies only with himself but his innate strength fuels the fire of his inner flames and he utilizes them. He makes these flames dry his tears, forces them to dance beneath the spotline, start forest fires to the granite floors beneath his feet. He uses them as his shield and a deadly weapon all in one curve of his lip. He uses them to carve art onto every inch of the elegantly draped walls that enclosed him so that the world can see how wrongly it had mistaken him, all while making the error of not once giving him the satisfaction of knowing he wields with the strength of mind, unaware of the fear that would bestow his enemies. He fights for himself rather than the cause, drawing those who abandon him back to his wake so that opportunity can present itself in the cruelest twists of fate. He will win back his power, giving himself the choice to crush it to ash or feed it to his fire so that it grows in size. They will beg for remorse, what he will do with them he doesn’t know but someone will burn alive; of that he is sure.

Years of neglect and deprivation leave scars, deep gashes in ego and emotional stability. Easton is broken, deeply hurt by being denied by those who were meant to hold him close, being inevitably punished for the actions of others. To pretend he isn’t aching over his loss would be an injustice. Deeply buried insecurities burrow deep in his bones with the aching torment he shoved away.  Still, anger is a much easier emotion to handle, it carries more dignity, a false sense of self control. There’s something there in that deeply rooted delusion of control, believing it so wholeheartedly that it becomes a reality, that I’m immensely drawn to. An emotional whirlwind with a powerful mind, twisting together in dangerous ways. I see so much potential for him developmentally, so many layers to explore. I really want to be able to flesh that out and bring him to life.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? 

“Yet Edmund was beloved” - Villains amongst disastrous plot, all alike in wicked bitterness. Written to be disliked, to cause mouths to turn down with force, muscles to tense in distaste. A rarity amongst his breed, they found a moment of remorse. Weakness was found and admittance to their sinful deeds, an eager audience was forced to face questions of morality.

I think what makes Edmund throughout literature to stand out so strongly was his repentance. It was a rare quality among Shakespeare’s literature and it’s something I feel is important to keep intact to his plot. It made its audience question whether he was truly a cold, cruel man or if he it was driven by a misdirected desire to be accepted. It’s a theme I plan to show throughout the plot, but I would like a bigger when the time is right to showcase his humanity.

Double edged sword- Sly crooked smiles and sparkling eyes, they crave the game, the slipping of cards into a deck undetected, the chips inconspicuously gathering in front of patiently folded hands. Winning the game does not raise feelings of satisfaction, spirits don’t rise at the chips that twirl between his narrow fingers but at the bitter eyes that narrow in his direction as he does so. Pleasure found only in the woefulness of others, misery causing teeth to show greedily, sparkling eyes falling dark with revelation.

I was to do a lot of scheming with him, a lot. Carefully planned betrayals, shady business deals, cunningly undermining those around him. I want a few of these, and I expect nothing less than a few Enemies as a result.

Blood over blood - Empires built steadily over a name that cursed his existence, pressed him back into a crevasse, covered him thick in wool as if to conceal even the heart that beat within his chest. A name placed on his head as if it were to quench the thirst of question, to satisfy the growing hunger for bloodshed that was soon to breed within the expanding chest below. The indefensible half of the term son. Cast down upon with fury and iron fists by all but his counterpart. Antipathy baking in the fires that nestled between fragile ribs, desperately attempting to replace the warmth his brighter half consumed without question or consideration. Confliction of blood contemplated incautiously.  Blood had betrayed him, or perhaps it was the other way around.

There is a lot to be said about Easton’s relationship with his brother. I feel there is true feelings buried deep under the poisonous vines he’s planted within himself. I think it is the single relationship that will reveal that rage is used to cover fear, fear that stems from loss and betrayal.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes.

IN DEPTH

Please choose between the interview or the para sample (or both, if you like!)

In-Character Interview: The following questions must be answered in-character, and in para form (quotations, actions written out if applicable, etc). There is no minimum or maximum limit for your response - simply answer as you would if you were playing the character.

What is your favorite place in Verona? | “Places are places, are places.” Words fell from casually loose lips, flat muscles and eyes rested upon his face as he took in the response of his interviewer, gave himself a moment to enjoy their frustration, the needle of his words knitting the space between their brows together. A dilatory moment of this passed before his lips unsheathed far too-perfect teeth. “The twelfth night.” Amusement laced his words in a way that sounded like a chuckle, spread far across his face to meet his eyes like beams of sunlight, brightening the pale skin it touched. Eyes casually emigrated to the cuff of his sleeve, long narrow fingers fiddling to straighten the small metal clasp that held it in place. ‘Home’ felt like an obvious answer, one that comes from a place deep within one’s soul, one given from utter personage. It was a word used to describe a dwelling of comfort, safety. Ah, but no person or place provided such a vast sensation. All that resided there was a bitter taste that weighed him down as strongly as desire did. He found himself on those places, however pesky, simply prioritized. “I like art.“ He added, blue orbs flickering up from under thick dark brows. There was a great truth in this set of words and yet in the cruelest twist of fate and fallacy he continued with an almost crude sense of humor. "And other historical entertainments."

What has been your biggest mistake thus far? I "Ah, mistakes.” Air left eager lungs as if to sound off sighs of relief. As if voracious for the topic, his lungs pulled in another large breath. “I can attest to many, many mistakes.” It was a topic that engulfed his life, his very breaths taken in vain of the word. It echoed off the walls of his skull, pounding itself into the bone it reached, engraving the term ad nauseum so that he could never forget. “My greatest mistake is the sins of another. Unfortunately, all my own will seem pale in comparison. Boring really.” Far too warm hands folded over his knees, well-practiced politeness plastered across his features. “But I’m sure I’ll even the score eventually.”

What has been the most difficult task asked of you? I  “Difficulty stems from incompetence.” Bold statements were made from confidence, a strong belief that burned in his chest. Neatly trimmed fingernails tapped the dark stained wood of the armchair he poised himself in, Hack stretched out against the opulently draped bolster. Many difficult tasks had been asked of him, several that flashed about his mind in a rapid myriad, pressed up against his smooth forehead so that the pressure built like cotton. Difficult not in question of morality but in the conflict of agenda.  The undertakings themselves brought little burden to his mind but the consequences must always be taken under consideration. The butterfly effects that carried with each accord left the stains of spots on his own broken wings. None were to be taken unnecessarily. “I suspect you aren’t accusing me of that.”

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues? I “The war between the two?” Vibrant eyes narrowed with the flow of words from his parted lips. As if the question brought some offense, pierced through a more obvious concern, a more prominent affair.  It was much easier separated into two parts of one whole, easier but untrue to the nature of this particular footing. To new eyes, the crimson stains would seem so easily poised from a clear separation, Capulet and Montague. Ah, but Easton’s eyes were nor new or untrained. They had seen the blood that pooled from open veins, the carnage and rot that baked in the warm midsummer sun. He tsked as if to scorn the ignorance of those who would ask such. You could not start a book from the middle, nor could you an end. Blight had long held the minds of those from each party. Betrayal bubbled and burst from within each seam, pressed at authority and delegation alike. “It’s easier to blame others for our actions, surely.” As if talking to a child he turned his lips down, the incomprehension something of an irritation, the need for explanation an inconvenience to his own time. “Do you not consider the wars amongst ourselves?”

In-Character Para Sample: Again, write as much or as little as you need to get your interpretation across.

(this is a kinda lot? and not something a situation i see happening incredibly often at all but I write it nonetheless so I included it)

A dream is defined as a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during a state of unconsciousness. This was otherwise known as sleep. The term would never relate to himself, however, as sleep was a luxury only available to the poor, the deprived. The same word, conversely, is a wild or vain fantasy. This definition seemed more appropriate when associating the word, dream, to himself. Wild and vein, indeed. His egotistical nature seemed to be everywhere at once as he closed his eyelids. It burned there in the pictures that were painting themselves in his mind. And suddenly it was as if he were hearing his own thoughts. Thoughts, that seemed obscure and twisted to himself muffled by choking screams. Ah, but his mind was not absent at all. In fact, the image that was painting itself in his mind was both behind his eyelids and in front of them. It was as if his dreams poured out from his mind to spill on the floor. Or more suitably, nightmares.

Air flared his nostrils, filling his lungs with a sudden force so powerful it was audible as he opened his eyes, his rough thumb trailed the skin on the side of his mouth with anxiety as he turned. Deep-set eyes were thoughtful, dark brows pulled together in a pucker from a tilted head that stares down the man who was bleeding out on his new carpet. He looked as if he hadn’t noticed, not the man bleeding, not the ruined carpet. Easton knelt down beside him, his lips pressed together as he flicked his phone back on. “Have you seen this girl?”

His voice was too casual, too kind for the scene, too worried. Headlight with adrenaline, the preternatural display causing reality to feel more like a hallucination. The other didn’t look up, clearly too occupied with the blood that came up with every cough to entertain the deranged man leaning over him.

“She’s red hot I know.” He said in a breathy chuckle. The sound was innocent, lustful even as he shook his head in disbelief. “She’s slippery though. Always hard to find. Not mine either. Not really my type but-” Easton sighed, slight frustration lacing his tone as his eyes trailed away from the phone to stare at still choking interrogatee.

“You see that’s the thing. She’s been ignoring someone for the past 24 hours, it’s like she completely disappeared.” There in his iris’ you could find a new, growing intensity. It was slow at first, a sense of seriousness that within a matter of words became terrifying, unhinged in the deep pits of his pupils. “Here, take a look at her.” Easton shoved the phone further in the man’s face. The light from the screen reflecting off the red stream, almost close enough to engage in it. He knew very well it still wouldn’t be seen, that the blood pooling in this man’s eyes would have him seeing red, not quite in the way Easton was expecting to himself; certainly, there was more of a disadvantage in it. “She’s beautiful right?”

“Anyway,-” Easton’s tone dropped off again with a sigh, the phone going dark so that the men own eradicated state was staring back at him with a click. “She doesn’t report back last night. No text, no calls, nothing. So people start asking around, when’s the last time people heard from her. We don’t like the responses. You know, there’s something about the tone of a person’s voice.”

Easton stood, the now accumulating sweat from his palms being wiped on his dark crisp pants as he began to pace. “My imagination starts running wild. I start thinking of other guys I’ve seen her look at, other associations she’s hung out with, other friends of hers she doesn’t know we know about. You know, I started thinking about what I would do to someone if I found out that he paid her off. I would shackle the fucker up for a year and I would slowly and systematically torture him every morning and every night till he finally shut down. I mean I would burn off all his fucking skin is what I would do.” Something about the tone of his voice insinuated he was talking to a friend, a casual comfort emulating from him in waves that got cut off by sudden bursts of insanity.

“You know, these are the classifications of things I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about bad things.” Feet were trailing in small circles by this point, shiny shoes walking through pools of claret, dragging it with each pace. A heavy sign caused the motion to stop, silence falling in its place as crystal slowly rose to Easton’s lips, a thoughtful sip seeming to bring him back to his purpose.

“So, do you recognize her?” He waited a long moment. “Hm?”

“Yea.” The man responded in response in a choke. Easton quickly rushed to kneel by his side again. “You do?” He asked eagerly, his chest beginning to rise and fall with expectations.

“Uh, Yeah, I see her around sometimes. I mean, I don’t know her, but –” His eyes focused on almost anything but Easton’’s face but Easton kept moving his eyes into the line of sight.

“Hard to miss right?” Easton smiled almost confidently, proudly.

“Right.” The other coughed out again, his fluids seeming to stay inside him for once. The stench of iron and violence still fresh on his breath.

“It’s the little things that get you, the arguments. There had been this little spat about nothing – I don’t even remember what and then poof, she’s out the door, she’s gone. You know where she goes?” Easton didn’t give a moment to respond. “She goes to your side of town.”

“Really?”

Heartbeats were becoming more frequent, patience suddenly running low as if they were thin to begin with. The cause wasn’t a lack of control but a lack of interest. The cards were being dealt too slowly,  passion only residing when there was something to be won. The room already smelled like victory and the fight he received in return was none. The anger now came from a place of disappointment. “Yea.”

Suddenly his voice was getting louder, quicker. The urgency became something of a result of annoyance twisting around his chest, crushing his ribs. Easton’s face flushed red, pressing closer to the others, enclosing some of the space between them with a furious gaze.

“She goes over to that shit hole. She sends a text that she found her friends and then that’s it, that’s the last time she’s heard from. And you know what? I know some of these ‘friends’ over there and you know what they tell me? They tell me she goes over around 1 AM and then doesn’t come back – So she comes in, but doesn’t come out. At least not through town.” He ran his tongue over his teeth as he caught his breath. His tone finding another spasm of normality. His finger lifted, head tilted to the side as brows furrowed once more. “You were down their last night, right?

Easton’s company simply nodded in reply, cringing at the pain that seemed to ache through his muscles at the action. Easton’s head nodded in return, lips tight as he took in the words. “Did you see anything?”

“Did I see anything?”

“Yea, did you see anything.”

“Did I see anything?  I don’t see much of anything ever.“

Easton stared at him for a moment as if he were taking this in.

“Right, but you didn’t answer my question.”

Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.

I am pretty dyslexic so larger bodies of text tend to get grammar and spelling mistake. They are usually minor and people usually have no issue comprehending my work but if there ever is an issue I just ask that you let me know so I can fix it!

[siobhaneardley]

The Shape of Water & Female Sexual Desire.

This year’s Oscar Winner The Shape of Water was, let’s say different, firstly in that science fiction monster flicks are a rarity at the Academy Awards and, if they are they are only nominated for special effects awards. However, The Shape of Water blasted on to the awards scene winning Best Director at the BAFTAS, and now winning the sought after Best Picture Oscar. But what makes this film so special? It has certainly caused quite the controversy online, with people getting rather hooked (excuse the pun) on the concept of fish/human intercourse.

Now although this is quite iconic, this is not what I found unique about the film. For me what I found groundbreaking for a mainstream film is the fact that in the first five minutes of the film, we see the main female protagonist masturbating in the bath, which, as the film goes on appears to be part of her morning routine. In popular culture, we see references to male masturbation everywhere, mainly in teenage comedies. However, women are overlooked. Because heaven forbid that women have sexual desire! Open sexuality has long been the realm of men. But shock, horror, guess what. Women kind of like sex. But movies don’t seem to get this. Female characters in film are rarely the active party in seeking out sex, men are a lot of the time the active pursuers. Yet in The Shape of Water, the woman has a clear and active sexual desire, she actively pursues the fish man, she is the initiator in all the romantic elements of the film.

I recently watched the 1984 film Splash starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, and I couldn’t help but see parallels with The Shape of Water. The roles are kind of flipped in Splash, the woman is the sea creature, the man is the human. However, it is the woman, the mermaid who is quite active in her pursuit of Tom Hanks’ character, Allen. Yet in this film, it isn’t seen as a weird perversion, because on land, Madison (Daryl Hannah) looks like a human. Her desire in the film is presented as cute and naive. She is not human therefore doesn’t know the conventions of courtship that we have set in place, making her seem even more otherworldly. I mean, when we see Madison when she first arrives in New York, on land, she is completely naked leaving the humans who discover her are completely shocked, some disgusted by her open sexuality and others (the men) are excited by it, taking pictures and crowding around her like she is a magical rare being (and that’s without her tail)!

In Making a Splash, Philip Hayward describes the mermaid as a sexual being relying on certain aspects to achieve this, “predominantly, their representation as having the upper body of a young, attractive female; representation as actively in pursuit of human male attention; their seductive vocal skills; and their most complicated sexual aspect; the allure and symbolism of their tails” (98). He also highlights the importance of the modern mermaid being able to switch between forms in order to have sexual intercourse with a human. Therefore, making the sexual desire in these films more heteronormative and not as shocking or perhaps in some eyes perverse.  

Yet in The Shape of Water Eliza is human, her desire is equally as different in her setting, one because of the time-period (the 1960’s) and two because of the subject of her desire. He is not human. He does stand on two legs, has two arms and one head but other than that he is totally alien looking. Even though these films pretty much tell the same tale, of human falls in love with a sea creature, one is seen to be more perverse than the other. Is it because one creature looks more human than the other or, is it the fact that it is a human female who actively sexually pursues the creature? In The Shape of Water, I feel like it is perhaps both. Indeed, when discussing the male mermaid Phillip Hayward suggests that “mermen are symbolically unmanly due to lack of a penis” (151). Unlike their female counterparts, the representation of mermen as sexual beings is nonexistent, unless they turn into humans. Hayward states that mermen in films never have sex with women, in fact, he states, they are often feminized, for example, in the advert, Derek Zoolander features in in Zoolander.

The Shape of Water, in a way very explicitly solves the problem and mystery surrounding the sexual nature of fish creatures. Although the fish man in the film is not a merman. There is a distinct question that went through everyone’s mind when it appears that Eliza has sex with him. This is very quickly answered in a highly entertaining scene with her friend Zelda, who asks the question that everyone is dying to know. The solution is simple, the fish man’s sexual organ reveals itself, leaving Zelda shocked, stating lightheartedly, “Never trust a man”. This is perhaps what would happen in the case of mermen. But why are films so against showing this?  Because it is out of the realms of the heteronormative, breaking into the taboo subject of bestiality?

What then, does this say about Eliza’s desire? Is it perverse? If we were going to be black and white about it, then perhaps. However, it is much more nuanced than that. There was never a point in the film where I thought it was particularly strange. Yes, I have never seen anything like it before, but it was still not weird or perverse to me in the slightest. I found the whole thing rather sweet.

The narrative presents a setting in which traditionally, the monster would be the villain. He is totally otherworldly and highly dangerous. In the film The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which Guillermo Del Toro was hugely influenced by, the creature is dangerous and totally monstrous attacking anyone who goes near him. Yet there is a hint that it does feel an affinity for the woman of the group. In this case, he is the one who captures her, there is no element of courtship or tenderness, he aggressively takes her from the human, male group of explorers. In fact, in an interview with Variety, Del Toro when watching the part where the woman is swimming and we see the creature reach out to her “he thought it was so romantic and exciting that he assumed the two would end up together. He was shocked when they didn’t. “I decided I would someday have to correct that,” he says”.

Del Toro has stated that The Shape of Water is a sort of ‘what if’ narrative. What if the explorer from The Creature from the Black Lagoon had captured and brought the creature back to the US? In this case, the roles of villains are switched. The small amount of sympathy we may feel for the fish man in Black Lagoon is intensified. The villain is now the human male. Richard Strickland feels a complete and utter hatred for the fish man. We see him torture him with a cattle prod with apparent satisfaction, this is only intensified when the fish man bites his fingers off.

So, what is so different about the two monsters. One is traditionally monstrous, non-human and very dangerous. The other is a seemingly normal looking man, but what makes him more villainous? He commits acts in the narrative that made me more uncomfortable than anything that transpired between Eliza and the fish man. One scene, in particular, was when he is having sex with his wife after he had his fingers bitten off and then stitched back on. As he is stroking his wife’s face his fingers begin bleeding, as his wife tries to tell him, he then tells her to shut up and covers her mouth with his bleeding fingers, all the while still (quite forcefully) having sex with her. Funnily enough, the scene that made me most uncomfortable was a heteronormative one. The heteronormative sexual act has here been made uncomfortable and rather disgusting to watch. Which plays of the romantic and tender encounter that Eliza has with the fish man. We, as viewers are made to be disgusted by the heterosexual male’s sexual desire, it is terrifying and abhorrent. Made even more so later in the film where he sexually threatens Eliza.

In the final scenes of the film Strickland’s monstrosity reaches its peak, when he rips his fingers off in front of Zelda in a show of terrifying masochism, which “does not allow for sympathetic identification” as it is a “profoundly disturbing occurrence, one which emanates from both the unexpectedness of the monster hurting himself when his apparent role is to harm others” (Briefel 18). In this final gruesome act, Strickland has stripped any identification that we, as humans may have ever felt with him, and because of the tenderness and humanity expressed by the monster we choose to side with him instead. The fish man only ever hurt others either out of self-defense, or in the case of the cat, out of hunger, however this is quickly rectified as he is able to learn that some creatures are not for eating. We see him understand morals very quickly, while with Strickland we see his morals are non-existent.

It is not just female sexual desire that is explored in this film, it presents the notion that heterosexual male sexual desire in some cases is problematic and that the feminine, which has mostly been ignored in society and in film, is less harmful than the (sometimes) aggressive male sexual desire. The man in this film believes he has a power over women, which is expressed numerous times in an oddly sexual manner. The woman, however, has a sexual desire apparent from the start that does not harm anyone, the film normalized women’s sexual urges and does so in a non-conventional manner.

By Siobhan Eardley

Works Referenced:

The Shape of Water. Dir Guillermo Del Toro (2017)

Briefel, Aviva. “Monsterpains.” Film Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, 2005, pp. 16–27.

Gray, Tim. “Love and Danger on the 'Water' Front.” Variety, 10 Jan. 2018, variety.com/2018/film/awards/shape-of-water-inspiration-from-monster-movie-1202659976/.7

Hayward, Philip. Making a Splash Mermaids (and Mer-Men) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media. John Libbey Publishing, 2017.

[anothergracekellyblog]

I'd intended to post this yesterday to coincide with the 64th anniversary of its publication. However, true to my nature, I got hung up on minor details and it went unposted. Now that I’ve edited the crap out of the cover, it’s finally ready for primetime... sort of.

NEWSWEEK magazine - May 17, 1954

THE COVER: A calm, clear-eyed beauty, Philadelphia's Grace Kelly is the latest star to reach Hollywood's top rung. Now one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood, she undoubtedly inherits much of her drive from her father, the fabulous John B. Kelly, who built a multimillion-dollar construction business from a $7,000 loan. Kelly, a famous oarsman and Olympic winner, saw his fondest dream come true when Grace's brother, John B. Jr., won the Henley Regatta in England. But Kelly dreams have a way of coming true with surprising regularity. For a story about Grace and her family of champions, see page 96.

THE KELLYS’ COOL FILM BEAUTY

In a quieter moment of history, as the words of George M. Cohan's song go, everyone was crazy about a legendary New York girl named Nellie, the daughter of Officer Kelly, and as beautiful and lively a girl as ever danced an Irish reel:

The Boys are all mad about Nellie, the daughter of Officer Kelly; And it's all day long they bring flowers all dripping with dew, And they join the chorus of Nellie Kelly, I Love You © 1922 M. Witmark & Sons, © renewed 1949 Agnes Cohan. © assigned 1952 to George N. Cohan Music Publishing Co.

In 1954 Hollywood, a world away from Nellie in time and space, everyone is still a little awed and breathless by the shooting star of quite a different Kelly girl, from Philadelphia, a coolly beautiful actress named Grace.

At 24, Grace Kelly (see cover) is a relative Hollywood rarity - a star who came out from the East already bright and shining, dispensing with the usual apprenticeship through the ranks of the studio publicity posers, the leg-conscious starlets, and the struggling featured players. After only two years in pictures, she has the kind of contract with M-G-M that Beverly Hills regulars envy - only three films a year and extra payment for any others she chooses. She is currently regarded as one of the hottest properties in films. Since she came to public notice, as Gary Cooper's peace-loving wife in High Noon, and, later, as Clark Gable's major distraction in Mogambo, Grace has made four major films, and her list of leading men (Ray Milland, James Stewart, William Holden, Bing Crosby, and Stewart Granger) sounds like an autograph hunter's New Year's resolutions. Her current hit, Dial 'M' for Murder (NEWSWEEK, May 10, 1954), has just been released.

All of this puts blond Grace quite a bit ahead of little Nellie; but only, in point of fact, by a generation or so. Behind Grace, and probably in great part responsible for her success, is the story of the rise of a great Irish-American family, of men and women blessed by strong arms and good looks, a dogged instinct for hard work, and a sure feel for success.

Grace's father, John Brendan Kelly, 64, is a handsome, vigorous, and wealthy Philadelphia contractor, who won himself a corner of sporting history by his great rowing victories in the '20s. One uncle, George Kelly, is a ranking American playwright (The Show-Off, Craig's Wife). Her late uncle, Walter, was the beloved “Virginia Judge” of the vaudeville stage. Her brother, John B. Jr., followed in his father's footsteps by becoming the greatest oarsman of his time (Diamond Sculls champion in 1947 and 1948). To be a standout in the Kelly family, as Philadelphians justly observe, takes some doing.

Pat Went to School: The story of Grace Kelly begins, perhaps, on her great-grandfather's farm in Ireland.

“There were five boys in the family," as her father John relates, “and not much money to spare. It was plain to my grandfather that he could not educate them all so he called them together one day and said: 'Boys, we are going to put the oldest one of you through school, but the rest will have to stay and work the farm and contribute a share to Pat's schooling. At least one Kelly will be educated.' So Pat went to school and ended up the dean of Dublin University. My own father never had a day in school himself, but he had a wonderful memory, all right, and maybe that's where Grace gets her talent for learning a part.”

At 20, the County Mayo farm boy who was to be Grace's grandfather came to the United States and met and married Mary Costello, who had preceded him out of the same county. They settled at the Falls of the Schuylkill, 5 miles from Philadelphia, and began raising their family. The first seven children all went to work in the mills before they were in their teens. The last three, among them Grace's father, got a break: They were able to go through grammar school before settling down to work.

Tunney and the King: John Kelly served three years' apprenticeship as a bricklayer. He was getting nicely started on his trade - and growing adept at his hobby of rowing on the Schuylkill when the first world war took him off to France. There, in his off-hours, he boxed at 175 pounds, and he was well on his way to taking the light-heavyweight championship of the AEF when he broke his ankle in a truck accident. The man who did win the title was a Marine named Gene Tunney.

Last week in his pleasant Philadelphia office (the building is a replica of William Penn's Letitia Street house) John Kelly read aloud a letter from the former heavyweight champion which concluded: “Polly [Tunney's wife] doesn't know that but for an accident the world would never have heard of her husband as a pugilist.” This may have been so. The man Tunney beat for the AEF title stayed three rounds with him; Kelly had stiffened the same fighter in the first round in an earlier bout.

Bricks and Oars: Kelly came back from France to resume his bricklaying and his oarsmanship. In 1920, having already won the national singles, he went to England to try for the Diamond Sculls at Henley, rowing's highest prize. At the last moment, his entry was rejected because he was not a gentleman - the Henley definition of that being one who has never worked with his hands.

He got his revenge two months later by winning the Olympic singles at Antwerp, beating England's champion, among others. In exultation, he sent his sweaty green rowing cap to the King of England, with the compliments of John Kelly. Twenty-seven years later he stood on the banks of the Thames and saw his son John, University of Pennsylvania student and by Henley standards a “gentleman,” take the Diamond Sculls by eight good lengths.

In 1924, John Kelly married a beautiful Philadelphia girl of German ancestry named Margaret Majer, an athlete and magazine-cover model herself. By the time Grace, the third of their four children were born, the Kellys were growing prosperous. John Kelly had started a bricklaying business with $7,000 he borrowed from his brothers, George and Walter, and he was rapidly turning it into what is now an $18 million contracting concern.

In 1935, John Kelly ran for mayor of Philadelphia on the Democratic ticket and was narrowly beaten. Two years later, when Grace was 7, a much more important thing happened to her. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. came to the Kelly house to visit. (“He kissed me goodnight. I was never going to wash again.")

A Trouper at 11: Grace was a quiet child, who could, however, forget her shyness on the stage. When she was 11, she played a part at a presentation of Philadelphia's old Academy Players. In the middle of the show, her stage mother muffed her lines. With characteristic coolness, Grace dropped her handbag, turned her back on the audience, and gave the older actress her lines, while she was picking up her bag. John Kelly turned to his wife: “We've got a trouper on our hands."

In 1947, fresh from Stevens school in Philadelphia and a trip to Europe, Grace started trouping in earnest. She sped to New York and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts to learn how. To support herself, she found work as a model and worked her way up to the sixth heaven of those models who command $25 an hour. Six times, during her New York days, she looked out at her friends from the covers of Cosmopolitan and Redbook. “The money was very nice," she says as she recalls this, “and that's what makes it all worth-while."

After modeling and the academy, young Grace worked her way into television and did very well on TV's dramatic circuit. Her thinly drawn blond beauty and a certain discipline of manner were heavily in demand, although often for specialized roles. (“I was afraid for a while that I'd be typed as an English wife.”) But few directors who saw her forgot the Kelly features - a face, as one Hollywood surveyor put it, which reminds him of a cool, fast stream in a mountain hideaway.

In 1951, after starting a movie part on location in New York, she went out to the Coast. Preferring New York to Hollywood, she had no desire to move away, and M-G-M had to hustle before she considered a contract. She got her second big part, in Mogambo, on the strength of a screen test which John Ford, its director, remembered. It was a test, fittingly enough, in which she played an Irish girl with a brogue. Ford, an Irishman, found it hard to believe when he heard that she was American born.

A Classic English Type: In California, Grace Kelly lives as quietly as can be in a small apartment on Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood. She still retains her apartment on 66th Street in Manhattan. She is not given to making friends easily, and her manners give many people the impression that she is aloof. Hollywood columnists who try to interview her, after their first fruitless attempts at eliciting expansive or humorous responses, finally emerge as if they had been presented at court.

When she finishes her present picture, Green Fire, a drama about emerald hunting in Colombia (with Stewart Granger as the emerald hunter), she has two more pictures waiting for her (The Cobweb and [To] Catch a Thief). Perhaps atomic-age audiences feel some vicarious reassurance and stability in watching her restrained behavior and gazing into the cool stream of the Kelly face - what many call a classic English type. It makes a nice Hollywood switch-ending to recall that this classic English type is really the daughter of the Philadelphia Irishman who once angrily mailed his sweaty green cap to Buckingham Palace.

[calzona-ga]

Showrunner Krista Vernoff and out trans actor Alex Blue Davis talk with THR about how they'd like the ABC medical drama to advance the storylines for trans characters and actors.

There's a line of dialogue in Thursday's Grey's Anatomy that showrunner Krista Vernoff rewrote more times than she can count. But the impact of the line — from out trans actor Alex Blue Davis (who plays new intern Casey) to his boss, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) — was worth reworking a million times: "I'm a proud trans man, Dr. Bailey. I like for people to get to know me before they find out my medical history."

The moment comes after Casey has just saved Bailey and all of Grey Sloan Memorial from a hacker who, having taken over its computer systems and air conditioning, left several patients in jeopardy and pushed the hospital to the brink of closing. The episode also followed Casey's very personal reveal, having let both his new colleagues and viewers alike get to know him as a person before they learn something deeply personal about him.

"We worked very hard and very closely with Alex and [LGBTQ advocacy group] GLAAD on this storyline," Vernoff tells The Hollywood Reporter. "The scene in which Casey disclosed to Bailey that he was a 'proud trans man' was rewritten more times than anything else — we wanted it exactly right."

Inspired by President Donald Trump's proposed (and since blocked) ban on transgender individuals serving in the armed forces, Vernoff set out to tell a story about a trans veteran. Vernoff then intentionally cast a trans actor for the role of Dr. Casey Parker, one of the long-running medical drama's six new interns for season 14.

"We wanted the audience to get to know this character before they knew his private medical information; we wanted his disclosure to not feel like an 'A-ha!' shock but a genuine unfolding of this character's truth when he felt safe with someone," Vernoff says.

Thursday's episode resolved the hospital's cliffhanger from last year's midseason finale as Casey confides in Bailey that he was arrested for hacking into the DMV's computer system. Bailey is initially stunned as her background check on her new intern didn't catch that very important fact. That's when Casey discloses that there was a mistake on his driver's license that wasn't a typo: his local DMV declined to issue him a new license with his proper gender after he transitioned so he hacked into the system and fixed it himself.

"A lot of people don't understand what you mean when you say 'mistake' on a driver's license — they think it's a typo," Davis tells THR. "It wasn't enough for people to understand what female-to-male is and it's hard to have that changed [on your driver's license] in a lot of states. It's a serious issue."

Davis, whose previous credits included episodes of 2 Broke Girls andNCIS: Los Angeles, says he knew when he was cast that he'd be playing a character with comedic sensibilities that come from a Sandra Oh-like level of directness — who also was transgender. "What's cool about the show, the episode and Krista's vision for this character is he's about way more than being trans," Davis says, noting that he sees Casey's story as unexplored territory on the small screen. "I cried at the table read, it was very moving for me. I've been waiting for a moment like this on TV my whole life. I am so honored I got to say that line on TV because it's a long time coming."

Indeed. Just like Ellen's coming out on her ABC comedy in 1997 proved to be a landmark moment in television and pop culture, transgender characters have become more common on the small screen: Showtime's Shameless features trans actor Elliot Fletcher (who also played trans characters on Faking It and The Fosters) in a romantic storyline with a gay character; Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox made history last season as broadcast's first openly trans actress playing a transgender series regular character (on CBS' short-lived Doubt) and multiple trans actors have had roles on Amazon's Transparent. But what Davis and Vernoff hope Grey's can do is advance the types of storytelling featuring trans characters and actors.

"Trans people for years have been represented as punchlines, victims and villains and not as whole people and I was not aware of that until I went through the experience of my friend's son disclosing that he was transgender," Vernoff says.

Those (married) friends were former Grey's Anatomy showrunners Tony Phelan and Joan Rater (whose son helped inspire Cox's character on Doubt) and whom Vernoff remains close with after working with them as far back as season two of the Shondaland medical drama. (Phelan and Rater's son, Tom Phelan, played a trans character on Freeform's GLAAD Award-winning drama The Fosters.)

"When Tom transitioned, I found myself confused, frightened and bewildered by it all because I had never personally known a trans person or understand what it meant for Tom," Vernoff confesses. Rater, Vernoff recalls, at the time sent a lengthy email to friends and family in which she posed questions and answers that they might have about her son. Vernoff was moved by the experience and never forgot the feeling of love and acceptance she saw for Tom from Phelan and Ratner and those around them.

"Realizing that a trans person is like any other person with a journey in this lifetime — they are not victims, villains, weird or wrong; they're none of the things people believe when they support laws like the one that Trump put forward," Vernoff says. "My goal as a storyteller was to help illuminate that experience as an ally. I reached out to GLAAD for help in doing that because I am only an ally and not a member of LGBTQ community. They were more than happy to help."

For the L.A.-born Davis, also a singer-songwriter whose music has been featured on shows including MTV's Pranked, seeing more inclusive storytelling in which trans characters are not sensationalized is a welcome change.

"TV is opening up a greater range of roles [for trans characters]: Laverne played a lawyer on Doubt, and I'm playing a doctor — both roles haven't really been seen before [for trans characters]," Davis says. "People can see trans folks in a new light: these are people who walk among us and are human beings who have lives. They're not defined by being trans." And just like the gay actors playing straight roles debate that has (thankfully) come and gone, Davis and Vernoff hope the next frontier is seeing trans actors playing characters in which their gender is not the central storyline as well as trans actors playing heterosexual characters where their trans-ness also has no impact on the role.

"What's important for me to remember is there are opportunities out there where I don't have to play trans," Davis says. "I'm an actor. I love acting. I do love that I'm also representing a group of people who have been underrepresented, and that's awesome. But being trans is not my identity; I identify as male. There are male roles out there that I want to play. And being an actor who happens to be trans, it'd be awesome if all those roles opened up for me because people see me and how I define myself."

As for what comes next for Casey, Vernoff says the writers have talked about casting a love interest for Davis' character. The showrunner also hopes to reunite with Fletcher, with whom she worked on Shameless, and cast the actor as "just a dude" on Grey's.

"There's so many beautiful stories to tell and representation changes minds and hearts," Vernoff notes of the impact of art on society. She pointed to Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes adding characters like Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) and Callie (Sara Ramirez) at a time when it was still considered a rarity to put gay or bisexual people on TV and having audiences fall in love with them before revealing their sexuality. "When there's bigotry in the world, people can point and say, 'No, I have a friend who is gay and it's someone you know' — and you realize that it's a character you love on TV. That's how we influence people to open minds and hearts."

That's part of the reason Vernoff wants to try and avoid telling a story in which Casey faces any backlash just because of who he is. "One of the things we talked about with GLAAD is wouldn't it be revolutionary to just tell human stories about trans characters? There's a fair amount of hate that's already depicted and hate feeds hate. I just wanted Casey to be a whole person who is an Army veteran, a good doctor and one of the gang — who happens to be trans. I didn't want to do hate," she says.

That's not to say that Casey won't disclose his medical history again in an upcoming episode as Vernoff and the Grey's writers have yet to break the last third of season 14.  

"We talked about how, when and why trans people disclose their private medical history to their community. Casey might disclose out of advocacy, if we had patient who was trans or doctor who was insensitive to patient but I imagine Casey has disclosed to some of the interns," Vernoff notes. "My goal for Casey was to gently disclose his private medical history to Bailey and, by extension, to America and then keep him in our world as the doctor he is becoming. I told GLAAD and Alex that I'm open to continuing to talk and work with them if there are more stories that would be helpful or ways that I can be an ally."

[filmstruck]

One Moment in Time: Fashion Goes ‘90s with UNZIPPED By Nathaniel Thompson

Right now, we take it for granted how in-fashion documentaries have become, be it in art houses or every streaming platform you can think of. However, not so long ago it was a rarity to see nationwide, mainstream theaters running a documentary feature, even on more than one screen in some cases. Such was the case with UNZIPPED (1995), which Miramax unveiled during one of its all-time greatest years wedged among such titles as BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, IL POSTINO, MURIEL’S WEDDING, KIDS and PRIEST.

A fizzy, splashy concoction streaming as part of the “Couture du cinema” spotlight, UNZIPPED was originally made via independent financing by photographer Douglas Keeve after distributors turned him down en masse, leaving the bulk of funds to come from magazine publisher Hachette Filipacchi. However, it ended up nabbing an Audience Award at Sundance and promptly ignited a bidding war with Fine Line and Miramax among the most aggressive contenders. The latter ended up winning, after an awkward moment in which Fine Line publicly announced its acquisition of the film. Oops.

The film came on the heels of some well-publicized pop-culture documentaries, chief among them MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE (1991), also a Miramax release, and Fine Line’s HOOP DREAMS (1994). What sets this one apart, though few knew it at the time, was that Keeve made the film over a year and a half as a passion project with designer Isaac Mizrahi, whom he had been dating at the time for three years. A top-line photographer and videographer, Keeve later clarified during press appearances that the movie had nothing to do with their eventual breakup.

Classic movie buffs might not be surprised that Keeve cited one particular film as an influence, or a dare if you will: FUNNY FACE (1957), Stanley Donen’s cheeky ribbing of the fashion industry as experienced by precocious beatnik Audrey Hepburn. In particular, that Paramount musical featured a thinly veiled portrayal of VOGUE editor Diana Vreeland played by Kay Thompson, including the boisterous opening song, “Think Pink.” UNZIPPED also ends up taking a page from NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922), though you’ll have to watch to find out how!

Probably because of its splashy fashion-world setting and ample celebrity connections, UNZIPPED was a pretty high-profile film to catch if you lived in a relatively large city in the mid-‘90s. It even had a suitably swanky premiere in Los Angeles in July of 1995 (seriously, this is something 99.9% of documentaries would never get), with a much-reported incident involving Ellen Barkin spilling a drink on herself and swapping dresses with Naomi Campbell, who snagged a new white one from her backup supply. Not surprisingly, all the gowns involved were Mizrahi designs.

But back to Mizrahi and Keeve. The whole idea of one half of a couple doing a feature-length documentary about the other for an extended period of time doesn’t sound all that radical, but it’s still fascinating how Keeve brings absolutely none of that connection to the film itself. If you didn’t read interviews with either of them around the time it came out, you’d have no idea there was anything beyond a standard professional agreement going on. Keeve himself wasn’t exactly an established filmmaker at the time so maybe that accounts for the professional distance here; he’s also a ruthless editor, paring the film down to the bone and clocking the final cut in at under 80 minutes. He explained this decision during his press appearances around the film’s release when he sat down with LA Village View and said, “You don’t really know Isaac at all from this movie and you don’t know much about fashion. You’re lucky if you get one percent of anything. You just get a little teeny piece of his life, but I try to give you as much as possible, and that’s one reason that I cut so fast. The movie’s an hour and fifteen minutes long, and I didn’t want it to be one second longer. I had so much genius footage that was left out, but I hate long movies. Leave ‘em wanting more – that’s the best thing you can do. Make it short and sweet. This is a fashion movie, it’s a fun documentary, and it’s like bang, bang, bang, and you’re done.”

That means UNZIPPED is an ideal film to watch on just about any type of screen, from a large TV to your phone. It isn’t about large-scale spectacle but about capturing a snapshot of the experience of being in the fashion industry, where Mizrahi’s colorful personality found a way to thrive. Though he currently judges for Project Runway: All Stars and remains one of the top signature names in American fashion, Mizrahi isn’t in the public eye as much anymore; perhaps his personality isn’t quite as distinctive in a post-Glee world where extended jokes about WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (’62) definitely feel like they’re from another century.

That means despite its popular appeal at the time, UNZIPPED isn’t a film you hear brought up all that often either. Others have tried to copy the same formula but with far less notable results, most obviously David Furnish’s ode to partner Elton John with TANTRUMS & TIARAS (1997), but this one actually holds up quite well. That could be due to the fact that it’s such a vivid snapshot of a point in time that’s unique in the film world: indie films could command significant screen space in multiplexes; Miramax was the hottest up and coming kid in town in Hollywood; and a fly-on-the-wall look at the fashion world and one of its most colorful princes was the stuff of major motion pictures instead of weekly reality shows.

[megaphonemonday]

but everyone notices

@hermiginnyharvelle​: I may or may not have been rewatching Deathly Hallows and now I reeeeeally need a "help I can't zip up my dress/oh shit I'm zipping up her dress and I'm in love with her oh noooooo"

like i needed any more reasons to get emotional staring at kylie bunbury red carpet pictures...

read on ao3

Intellectually, Ginny understands why the ESPYs always come the Wednesday following the All-Star Game. It’s pure practicality. No one’s playing any games. Baseball's in its midseason break. The NBA, NFL, and NHL are all in their off seasons. High school and college athletes are on summer vacation. 

Everyone’s schedule is wide open; a true rarity in the world of sports. 

The logic of it all is easy. She’d never argue otherwise.

That doesn’t mean she has to like it.

Because on this particular Wednesday following the All-Star Game, Ginny Baker is exhausted. 

Right now, nothing sounds better than going home to her condo—sparsely furnished as it is, it has her own bed, which is really all she wants. Doing nothing but sleep and have food delivered to her for the next 48 hours sounds too good to be true.

Because, of course, it is.  

It doesn’t matter how much Miami had taken it out of her. 

True, there wasn’t much work for her to do during the All-Star Game itself—she’d considered herself lucky to stay on the mound for a whole inning—but the media circus leading up to it was a grind all its own. (How’s her arm doing? Is she feeling 100% again? What does she think of the trade rumors? How does she like the Padres’ shot at the postseason?) Between Work Out Day and the Home Run Derby and the interminable red carpet before the game even started, Ginny’d been interviewed and filmed and photographed until she was sure she was more soundbite than real person.

Suffice it to say: if she never sees another camera or microphone or tape recorder in her life, she’ll die a happy woman.

But try telling her agent that the media market is fully saturated when it comes to the Ginny Baker Brand™. Going to the ESPYs—even if she is nominated—and walking the red carpet—posing for the flock of vultures and their flashbulbs—isn’t going to change that. Anyway, surely there was such a thing as too much press coverage, right?  

(When Ginny hopefully offered up this argument, Amelia stared at her for a full minute, like the suggestion was so utterly foreign she couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around it. It’d been enough to get Ginny to reluctantly backpedal and agree to go.)

Well, there’s no pulling out now. Not when she’s already all made up, hair done, requisite Instagram post already making the rounds on the internet. It hardly matters that she won’t win. There’s nothing Ginny can do to get out of this now.

Although, she thinks, considering the height of the heels she’s supposed to put on, maybe I can fake a rolled ankle...

Ginny sighs and sluggishly pulls her dress off its hanger even as she tells herself it’s better not to get any of the club’s trainers involved in a lie to the entire sports media industry. Her fingers skim over the dark fabric at the waist, and she regrets that something so undeniably pretty only fills her with annoyance. She can’t count the number of times just today she’s shaken her head at the body-hugging number, but Ginny’d bowed to Amelia and Evelyn’s superior fashion sense before. There's no reason not to do it now. 

At least Evelyn had made most of today pretty fun. Even if it wasn’t being back home in San Diego, pigging out on Postmates-delivered Korean barbecue in bed, Ginny had to admit her friend had a knack for making the most out of a less than ideal situation. They giggled and gossiped and goofed off, fitting in the necessary beauty routines in between pitchers of bloody marys and terrible pay-per-view movies. Almost before she even realized it was happening, Evelyn had transformed her into the Red Carpet Ready Ginny Baker™ it seemed like everyone wanted to see. 

Now that Ginny was alone again, having sent Evelyn off towards her own room, tipsy and belting out “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” it was a little harder for her to be caught up in the moment. 

All Ginny had now was her exhaustion, general annoyance with the situation, and this ridiculous dress to put on. 

It would be a shame to miss out if Blip and Mike end up taking home the award for Best Play, she tells herself, stepping into the mostly unzipped dress and tugging it up her body. 

Idly, she wonders what they’ll think when they see her in this. Well. What one of them will think.

It’s an intrusive thought, but similar enough to the kind Ginny’s gotten pretty used to dealing with over the past months. Her inconvenient attraction to Mike Lawson hasn’t gone anywhere. Not over the offseason, not during Spring Training, and certainly not over the front half of the regular season. Going to Miami with him, the only Padres reps for the All-Star Game, certainly hadn’t helped. 

The fact that he hadn’t asked any questions, hardly even complained, when she—more than once, too—used him as a human shield with the roving pack of reporters didn’t make Ginny any more aware of what she feels. She’s been uncomfortably aware of that since before she got that text on her first date with Noah. His teasing grin, even as he kept shifting to provide her with better cover, however, was enough to make her seriously consider actually doing something about it, damn the consequences. 

In return, that was more than enough to send Ginny into something of a tailspin. She’d done her best to avoid him while she recalibrated, but it was an essentially impossible effort. She and Mike share pretty much everything, even when it’s not just them stuck in Miami together. Dugout, hotel, rides to the airport; avoidance wasn’t in the cards. Then, of course, their seats on the red eye into LA were right next to each other. Ginny hadn’t let herself fall asleep for fear she’d wake up propped against Mike’s shoulder just as she has on so many other flights. Hell, only a hallway separates their rooms here in LA. 

And now, not even two days after that realization, she’s got to go walk the red carpet with him.

All right. Maybe her reluctance isn’t just media-induced. 

Ginny holds the neckline in place and admires the effect in the full length mirror. It’s a little difficult since a certain amount of her brainpower is currently dedicated to thoughts of dark beards framing pink mouths. Still, she soldiers on. Amelia and Evelyn had definitely known what they were doing, picking out this dress, even if it’s a little racier than Ginny usually wears for public events. The lack of straps is worrying, but the sheer determination of the elastic in the fabric should be protection enough. Once it’s zipped and in place, she’s been assured, it won’t go anywhere.

It better not, at least. The last thing she needs is a very public wardrobe malfunction or someone to start the rumor that Ginny Baker doesn’t believe in bras. It’s not her fault the scant material at her chest won’t allow for one.

Reaching around for the zipper, Ginny resolves to go to the ESPYs and have—if not a good time—at least an okay one. If she can make it through the night without embarrassing herself, she’ll call it a success. Then, she can go back to San Diego and cry with relief when the only journalists she has to talk to are the familiar Padres beat reporters. 

But first, she really needs to get dressed. 

Which, she realizes with a frown as she tugs again at the zipper to no avail, might prove harder than she’d first assumed. 

There aren’t any buttons or snaps or ties to hold the thing closed, after all. Just a long zipper from the hem all the way up the back of the dress. Ginny is fully capable of handling a zipper on her own. 

Or she’d thought she was. 

Struggling to crane around and catch sight of where she’d gone wrong, Ginny huffs in frustration. At least Amelia wasn’t wrong when she’d said the stupid thing wasn’t going anywhere. She can’t get the fabric to stop clinging long enough to shimmy it around to get a better view of the problem. Even if she does manage to get the zipper somewhere she can see it, there’s no reason to believe she could get the damn thing turned back the right way once she fixes it.

Why did she ever agreed to wear this dress? 

Flopping in defeat onto her suite’s couch, Ginny picks up her phone. 

please come help me, she types to Evelyn, willing to take a little teasing if it means arriving to the ESPYs fully clothed, zipper stuck

Since Evelyn had only departed the suite to, “Make sure my husband isn’t going to embarrass me,” Ginny’s sure she’ll be rescued in no time. It’s not as if Blip, who loves clothes and getting dressed up as much as his wife does, is at risk of embarrassing anyone.

Then again, Evelyn had been belting Whitney as she left, and while Ginny would never admit to knowing this, she has it on good authority that Whitney is a foolproof way to get her friend feeling a little frisky...

Shaking off any consideration of Blip and Ev’s sex life, Ginny tells herself that any minute, Evelyn will be at the door. She’ll fix her dress and reassure her that everything is going to be be fine like the perfect fairy godmother/best friend she is. 

And she won’t be at all annoyed because Ginny definitely hadn’t interrupted her debauching her husband.

When the knock comes, Ginny bounds up from her slump, softly sculpted curls bouncing against her bare shoulders. 

“Jesus, Ev. Why would you let Amelia pick this thing? How am I supposed to keep my tits in here?” Ginny’s complaining before she even opens the door. When she does, though, she halts in her tracks, blinking in disbelief and feeling like the floor cannot swallow her whole fast enough. “You’re not Evelyn.”

“Uh, no,” Mike replies after a long moment in which his gaze rakes over her, more than a little dazed. He shakes himself and continues, “But she did brief me. Some sort of fashion emergency?”

Belatedly, Ginny’s hands fly to her chest. Jesus. How close had she come to flashing whoever was in the hall? Never mind that the hallway beyond her team captain is blissfully empty. It’s easier to worry about that than the obvious.

“So she sent you?”

What was Evelyn thinking? Sending Mike over to Ginny to deal with a wardrobe malfunction? She knows—

It dawns on Ginny. She knows.

He rolls his eyes, clearly taking her emphasis for disdain. If only it were that simple. “I’ve been told I clean up pretty well.”

Mike certainly isn’t wrong. He fills out his light gray, summer-weight suit to perfection. The crisp white shirt beneath his jacket stretches ever so slightly across his broad chest, a blue tie concealing whether or not the buttons are under any strain.

A little—large—part of Ginny thrills at his appearance. It isn’t just that the gray of his suit picks up on the lighter strands shot through his beard—is he going gray?—or that the subtle plaid of the fabric is practically begging her fingers to trace over each and every line. 

No, it has far more to do with the fact that they match. They go together, even. Sure, Ginny’s heels—still sitting neglected in their box—are a much darker blue than either Mike’s tie or pocket square, and his suit is closer to monochrome than the ombré effect on her dress, but who cares? They complement each other. They match.

Or, they will once Ginny’s actually dressed.

“So,” he drawls, shifting a little awkwardly as the silence stretches out, “what’s the problem?”

Ginny would gesture if she weren’t worried removing her hands from the top of the dress would treat Mike to an eyeful. 

And if Mike ever does get an eyeful, it certainly won’t be because of a wardrobe malfunction, she thinks. Then, tacks on more honestly, Or when we have to make a public appearance within the hour. 

Without betraying that bit of inner monologue, she keeps both arms clasped over her chest to hold the fabric in place, and steps aside to let him in. Better to discuss this out of the hallway, where anyone could overhear and leap to conclusions. 

“The zipper’s just stuck,” she says, keeping her back to the wall as Mike comes inside and closes the door. Ginny is suddenly and entirely too aware of just how much of her bare back is exposed and how unprepared she is for Mike to see it. She’d managed to get the zipper up over the curve of her ass, but not much further. “No big deal. I can wait for Evelyn.”

“I’m pretty sure I can handle a zipper,” he replies, sounding far too amused for her comfort. 

Ginny doesn’t chew on her lip as she thinks, but only because she doesn’t want to reapply her lipstick when she inevitably scrapes it all off. This is decidedly not how she’d pictured Mike first helping her with her clothes. 

For one thing, she never imagined him helping her put them on. 

Mike lifts a brow and all bets are off. She’s never been able to back down from a challenge. Even when she knows she should.

“Okay,” she agrees, nodding decisively and taking a step toward him. She can’t quite keep the bait out of her tone. “If you say so.”

With that, Ginny closes the distance and turns her back on her captain. She doesn’t think she imagines his sharp inhale or the long pause before his fingers brush across the top of her shoulders, sweeping her hair out of the way. Ginny doesn’t complain even though there’s nothing for it to get in the way of. 

If anything, she wants to beg for more.

So, of course, his hands disappear from her skin. The disappointment that crashes through her is nearly physical, but thankfully brief. Ginny has to brace herself when they reappear at the small of her back, where the two sides of the dress refuse to come together. It’s just a slight pressure, the faint suggestion of warmth through fabric, but it’s enough to tell her where all of Mike’s attention is currently focused. 

Her eyes flutter closed at the slightly too sharp tug down that dislodges the zipper from where it’d gone astray. How far did he unzip? Can he see the top of her underwear? Ginny thinks the ragged exhale she hears is answer enough. 

At least it’s nice underwear, she finds herself thinking, aiming for detached but veering dangerously close to giddy.

She breathes deep, more than a little disappointed, when Mike rights his course and slides the zip up its track. One knuckle drags featherlight along her spine before, the cloth closing together behind. 

Finally, though it really can’t have taken that long, he reaches the end of the line, just below Ginny’s shoulder blades. His knuckles brush against her skin and over the fabric, making sure it lays flat.

His thumb sketches a gentle arc, just where her skin disappears beneath the dress. Ginny can’t help but shiver, toes curling against the soft carpeting. 

Nonetheless, Mike doesn’t pull his hand away. 

Nor does he when Ginny turns, stepping into his bulk rather than away as she should. His hand remains high on her back as she tips her face up to him, lips parted and eyes wide. 

Suddenly, Ginny’s not too worried about reapplying her lipstick.

Mike looks back, a flush riding high on his cheekbones. His gaze roams hungrily over her face, the hand on her back encouraging her closer. 

Ginny feels like she can’t breathe. But unlike her panic attacks, she leans into this dizzy uncertainty. She lays a hand on Mike’s arm, sliding up the smooth arm of his jacket and coming to a stop at his brawny shoulder. 

Just as she’s resolved to rock in and snap the thin thread of her self-control, code and potential lipstick smudges be damned, three sharp raps sound at the door. 

Mike and Ginny don’t move. Aside from the slight widening of their eyes, both remain stock still, breath mingling in the scant space still separating them. Even after another flurry of knocks, they stare at one another, far too aware of the line they’ve nearly crossed. 

Still want to cross, in fact.

Just as Mike’s eyes dip back to Ginny’s mouth and he leans in, though, the knocking graduates to yelling through the locked door.

“G?” Blip calls, sounding only slightly harried. “Ev wants you to know the car’s downstairs, and if you’re not in the lobby in five minutes, she’s leaving without you.”

It’s enough to pop the bubble.

Ginny clears her throat, and locking eyes with Mike—her friend, her teammate, her something—she takes a step back. 

They can’t be doing this. Not now. 

Not for a long while, yet. 

Disappointment flashes through his eyes, but he still nods and takes his own step back, too.

“Got it, Blip,” she calls back. “Meet you down there.”

He must agree because Mike and Ginny are left in her too quiet suite with nothing to distract them from what they’d nearly done.

Well, Ginny can’t have that. Not if she’s going to spend the evening being filmed and photographed in this man’s company, her every move picked apart and dissected by morning. It’s bad enough that she’s got her own intrusive thoughts, but to know that Mike’s got them, too, that there’s some serious overlap between his and hers, it’s too much.

So, Ginny does the only thing she can; she pretends nothing’s happened. 

She whirls through the suite, collecting her clutch and phone and emergency snacks, checking over her appearance one last time as she fastens the buckles of her shoes, puts on the loaner jewelry Amelia’d scored, and generally pretends Mike isn’t even there. Which is difficult when he insists on staring after her in amused befuddlement. If Ginny spends any time appreciating the adorable little frown furrowing his brow, Evelyn and Blip really will leave without them before she gets her mind back on track.

When she feels prepared to do more than steal glances at him in the mirror—as prepared as three minutes will buy her, at least—Ginny turns back to Mike and pastes a bright smile on her face. 

“Ready to go?”

His eyes sweep over her form, but it isn’t the reckless perusal it’d been when she first opened the door. No, this is slightly more concerned, a cautious once over to make sure she really is all right, and not just faking it. It’s the same look he sometimes gives her on the field, when he thinks she’s lying about having more in the tank. Ginny allows her grin to turn a little more sheepish, uncertain. Mike softens. 

“Yeah, Baker,” he replies. “Let’s get outta here.”

They manage to put up a fairly normal front for their fellow passengers, not that Blip and Evelyn make it hard. They squabble good-naturedly about who deserves to win which awards, seeming to draw both Ginny and Mike into the conversation effortlessly. 

Maybe it even is effortless. Maybe it’s just unthinking and automatic, their desire to engage with their friends on their way to what should be an exciting night.

Ginny, however, has her doubts. 

She knows Ev’s calculating face—has been treated to it more times than she can count over the years—and her expression the whole ride is awfully familiar. Evelyn definitely clocks Mike’s lingering frown, and the way she’s eyeing the careful space Ginny’s left on the bench between her captain’s thigh and hers isn’t comforting. If Blip notices anything, he’s got a better poker face than his wife. 

When Ev ushers her husband out of the car first claiming she wants, “A few goddamn shots of just us before Lawson the camera hog makes an appearance,” and Blip doesn’t complain, though, Ginny knows Sherlock Sanders has struck again.

She tries to appreciate the sight of her friend cowing the photo pool into turning their attention away from Michael Phelps and onto some Blip Sanders, but it’s hard when she’s entirely too aware of the man sitting next to her. He’d slid an inch closer to her when the limo stopped, so now she’s viscerally aware—just like she’s aware of the exact feel of his jacket beneath her fingertips and the way his cologne still lingers in her nose—of his warmth radiating into her. 

So why are her arms covered in goosebumps?

“Hey,” he murmurs, nudging her softly with his elbow. Ginny frowns, but doesn’t say anything. He nudges her again, and she shifts, cocking her head to show she’s listening, even if her eyes are still focused out the window. She doesn’t think she can look him in the face and not kiss him, now. Not with his warm arm pressed against her and his dark eyes looking at her with such genuine concern. 

Damn it. Even the reflection is too much. 

Mike sighs, not quite loud enough to cover the faint rasp of his hands smoothing over the legs of his pants. “Talk to me, Baker.”

If it’d come out any less pleading, Ginny wouldn’t turn around. She would keep her attention on the mayhem outside, and pretend she’s just trying to center herself before wading in. It isn’t even completely untrue. 

As it is, she turns to face him and can’t help but remember that the angle had been a little different back at the hotel. They’d faced each other head on there, and her eye line had been a little lower, level with the ticking tendon in his neck rather than the hints of gray framing his mouth. 

But this is still too similar. 

“What’s there to say, Lawson?”

“Don’t play the avoidance game. Not now.”

“Avoidance game?” she hedges, fingers worrying the hem of her dress. For all its cling, it sure can ride up her thigh. 

Mike just shakes his head. “I know when you’re avoiding me, even when you’re right here. You’ve been doing it since Miami.”

She doesn’t protest. “Yeah,” Ginny agrees. Would it really help to tell him that she’d thought about kissing him, or more, in Miami? Will that make it easier on either of them? It seems unlikely. Nonetheless, she can’t stuff the words back into her mouth once she says, “Maybe today wasn’t the first time I thought—”

His eyes go wide even as his lips part in a disbelieving, reckless grin. His hand lands on top of her own, almost on the bare skin of her thigh, but that’s nothing compared to the way Mike’s looking at her right now.

Ginny swallows and forces herself to go on, “I thought about it. This. Even when I know we can’t.”

His smile doesn’t dim, but that seems to knock the air out of his sails. For a moment, Mike just studies her. Ginny can’t help but stare back, cataloguing every arch and curve of this face she already knows like her own. His hazel eyes caress her face, more tender than any touch. Finally, satisfied with whatever he’s seen, he blows out a long, unsteady breath. Ginny can certainly sympathize. 

His head tilts a little to the side and his eyes go soft as he asks, “We’re good?”

“We’re good,” she promises, gaze dropping to her lap. To his big, callused hand covering hers. 

This thing with Mike is hard and sometimes it’s scary as hell, but Ginny never doubts that their friendship, their connection on the field, comes first. It’ll take more than a few charged moments to throw them off their game.

Then again...

When Ginny finally looks back up at him, it takes a moment for his concern to dissolve away, but Mike is nothing if not excellent at hiding his misgivings. Sure enough, he smirks, a mischievous sparkle lighting up his eyes. He gives her fingers one last squeeze before letting them go. 

“Good,” he drawls, making Ginny roll her eyes. If anything, his smirk just grows, which does nothing to dissuade Ginny from the dismaying opinion that smug looks really good on him. “I know we’re not talking about, well, any of this, but I’ve got something for you to keep in mind.”

When he doesn’t elaborate, she arches a brow and demands, “And what’s that?”

He leans in and brushes a rasping kiss against Ginny’s cheek. She freezes, too aware that all she needs to do is turn her face a few inches and she could be kissing Mike Lawson. Stubbornly, she remains stock still.

Ginny can feel, more than hear, his responding chuckle. “Any time you need some help with your zipper?” he murmurs, right into her ear and making goosebumps erupt across her skin. “I’m your guy.”

With that, he opens the car door and climbs out onto the red carpet, leaving behind one stunned teammate.

Alone in the back of the car, Ginny can’t help dissolve into laughter, maybe a little hysterical. Could anyone blame her, though? 

Once she manages to reel her mind in from the tangent Mike has inspired, she sucks in a deep breath. She doesn’t bother convincing her lips to drop their grin, though. Much as she loves to imply otherwise, Mike’s outrageous self-confidence is irresistible. It's one of the things she—

Well. If she can’t even kiss the man, yet, she probably shouldn’t be thinking that.

Anyway, if he thought he’d gotten the last word in, he has another thing coming. 

Stepping out onto the red carpet, making sure to shake her hair and smile dazzlingly only once she’s positive she has Mike’s attention, Ginny is very sure of that.

[wendylewis-blog]

05.14.2020 /MamasDay+M-Th

Mamas’ Day

My friend Annie sent me a link this morning. I’m embarrassed that I never knew the actual history of Mothers’ Day.  I’ve made the grave mistake for years, it appears as of this morning, dismissing the event as just another Hallmark holiday created to ramp up national consumerism—out of sincerity or duty. Actually, the bigger story has been omitted from American history. The patriarchy (not YOU, men I love) strikes again! There is real feminist significance attached to this day, which deserves not only our attention—but also, our reverence. 

Teaser. “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced American women that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change modern society.  

Thank you, Heather Cox Richardson. I suggest following her with an easy click at the end of the link and/or follow her on Twitter. She posts daily, is politically savvy and keeps it concise/in-depth/readable. 

After canceling the initial Mothers’ Day plan with H/G/bbE/K because of bad weather, which would have put us inside the house, Kitty ended up in CF anyway to grab items I’d purchased for her at Costco. We spent an hour outside in the chilly grey afternoon by the fire pit after gathering kindling and firewood. She brought me brownies, a herby Italian verde sauce she’d made and a bottle of rye whiskey. H/G/bbE surprised me an hour later with a request via text to come into the yard in five minutes and brought tomato and pepper plants (woot!) for my garden. We all watched Ezra TV in the driveway for an hour. We especially enjoyed the episode featuring him teething on the steering wheel. Creative work, little man! 

After they left, I poured myself a stiff drink and stared out the studio window into early evening. A gentle rain was falling. I let circumstance go, let sadness and angst go. I washed my turgid blackboard down and tried to embrace some peaceful emptiness. I was in bed long before 10pm, sliding willingly into the time warp sleep provides for me lately. It was another bittersweet time with my people—not touching, not sitting at a table together, not able to relax into each other the way we would have a couple months ago. But, they are my family and it is never a diminishing return to be with them. Thank you for driving down to see us even though we had called the gathering off. It was a good Mothers’ Day. I love you all more than I can express!

My dreams that night were flush with all things post-apocalyptic. I was in an office building transformed into a flophouse of endless lonely cubicles, bare mattresses thrown down on synthetic grey carpet, bland tan fabric divider walls too short and porous to provide any privacy, a random empty chair here and there—askew, the bathroom’s flickering florescent light pulsing numbly through its plastic diamond-textured ceiling panel. I felt a disconnected calm inside me—a dead calm as I moved through the building. Everyone I saw in there was a stranger—except for an old bandmate I ended up in bed with— so impossible and surreal. It wasn’t the act, gratefully omitted, but the aftermath scenario instead—exposed, mannequin-esque bodies, no desire, no connection, no tenderness—only his crushing possessiveness after I explained that I had many other lovers even though I knew they didn’t matter either. I turned his noise off undramatically, easily as his panic escalated—the click of a switch—like turning off bad radio. He vanished, seemed to dematerialize on the dark street, leaving only strangers hanging on the corners, propped against buildings, inert yet somehow, guardian—but I felt nothing—nothing at all. Alive but dead inside. 

Mon

I woke up at 4:30AM. Shared dream details with B before he headed off to a fresh pot of coffee and work. I always benefit from his insightful (often hilarious) perspective on my intrepid darknesses, asleep or awake. In a previous issue of Lockdown, I’d queried how the virus and physical distancing might affect our intimacies going forward, the dream standing as the latest metaphor. I laid back down, folding into the quiet of my bed and may have slept awhile longer, still rising before dawn. 

Hours were spent in my garden that morning turning over soil in the crisp air, laying straw tiles separated from the bale in the wheelbarrow after cutting the blue plastic string. I laid them over the mulch that had cooked over the summer of 2019, which I’d lovingly spread a few days prior, prepping the ground for seeds that are en route to me: bush beans, marigolds, arugula, mustard, zinnia and nasturtium seeds from my sister, cilantro and basil from Etsy and those MD tomato and pepper seedlings from H+G. It’s been difficult to find non-GMO seeds around here—the same way it’s still hard to find TP, hand sanitizer, and lately, yeast and flour. I planted cilantro, Mexican tarragon, and basil plants I’d found in Northfield in pots, thyme and mint along garden edge that meets my front stoop. 

The morning felt hushed, orderly—my act of civility engaging with living things that don’t speak but offer company and require only my willingness to share a piece of earth with them. Before the sun reached over the garden, I decided to put in one cherry tomato plant because a tomato cage represented future sustenance. I could imagine the little plant growing tall to fill the cage, yellow flowers appearing before the fruit. It felt romantic and I succumbed. I watered everything, filled the bird feeder and headed off to Redwing to run an errand.

It felt good to drive the winding two-lane roads between overwintered, as yet unturned spring fields, slipping down the bluff lines along the Cannon River, the sun all full of itself. The sky was cerulean blue with tiny cotton ball clusters of clouds. The world beyond my windshield seemed serene and normal—even pastoral—a momentary ruse worth believing against the numbing dripdripdrip of our internment. Returning home, I cleaned the kitchen with a similar communion felt with the garden and highways. FaceTimed with a friend and planned a fire pit hootenanny with him and a few friends soon, walked the dog and sat on the stoop overlooking the yard. We ate soup from B’s mama for dinner (thank you, Helen), brought in the tender herb pots for the night and was ready to sleep before 8:30, a rarity for me. I have to say, it felt like a pretty good day! I count them all, good or not. 

Tues

It dipped just below freezing again last night and I really thought that sweet li’l cherry tomato plant that looked so sturdy yesterday could handle it but, ooof!—it’s droopy, quietly murdered overnight. Another casualty of Corona Times, like a broken promise, a breach of trust. I jerked it out of the ground without any tenderness and tossed it into the yard where it will eventually make love with mower blades and clipped grasses. I was mad at myself, of course. It’s just one tomato plant and I have more perched on the radiator under the south facing window, lined up like fresh recruitments ready for service. Still, each seedling, especially this year, feels like an individual. 

I’m alarmed with the message being conveyed by the White House in recent days—normalizing the loss of life, the US population being at least encouraged and possibly forced back into a virulent world with the expectation that we can save the collapsing economy. The grim reaper is leaning casually on his sickle next to my dead tomato plant, the one I exposed to the elements too soon, the one I planted with careless impunity to serve my immediate desire. 

Please listen to this conversation on Pema Chodron’s book When Things Fall Apart. I ordered it after years of intending to and it’s on the way. I will set it on the bookshelf next to my worn copies of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, the Tao te Ching and Dillard’s For the Time Being. Reference books for being alive, human and uncertain. 

JFTR. On Being continues to win me over. Here’s another one if you decide to check it out. She’s really smart and this guest, Ocean Vuong—brilliant. 

Wed 

A beautiful essay penned by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s son Rodrigo. Thanks, C, for sending—and for the seeds which arrived today. I didn’t plant more today because still freezing overnight. 

My college roommate long friend Toni linked me to this article over the weekend. It was SO fkn HELPFUL. It breaks down how the virus gets spread in a very practical way that you can use every day. This article is exactly why my fam and I reeled ourselves back from having lunch inside my house on Mothers’ Day. Everyone agreed.

Colbert has been killing it, as always and this one—so spot on. Also, Seth Meyers’ latest episode—I mean, please! Trump’s Mothers’ Day bit is truly—uhhnbelievable. Waking up to the absurdity of what is happening right now as it rolls and rolls. I also truly live for these socially distanced performances with Jimmy Fallon and The Roots. They make me joy-cry. 

There are good ppl out there doing their best. We are all trying to do our best, even on our hardest days. Beating the zombies back one by one. Don’t believe that the angry gun-toting ppl are coming for us. They are few. We are many. It’s time to activate.

I’ve noticed lately I’m getting a sense for when Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert, for example, might be having a bad day. They aren’t on stage anymore, they don’t have a responsive audience to pump them up, they are people like we are, broadcasting from their homes. They struggle with life under the pandemic just the way we do. I can feel when they are having to get up for another broadcast from home or lapsing in attention, disengaging or losing the thread with someone they are interviewing. It’s an subtle nuance to notice, and it makes me feel as if I am getting a brief peek into their humanity instead of simply watching them put on the show.

I’ve also been making... um, haha... bread—the kind of bread you have to knead and let rise and punch down and knead and let rise again and so on. I finally got some active dry yeast and made two sandwich loaves a week ago. On my second round yesterday, I pushed my 20+ year old Kitchen Aide stand mixer beyond its limit. Smoke drifting from the housing, dough hook seizing up, goodbye trusty appliance. 

While the dough was going through its rising process, I searched DIY fixes which were plentiful and also searched for parts through the Kitchen Aide website, discovering they—are—not—selling—them. Really? Boo on you, Kitchen Aide. You won’t force me to buy a $400 mixer ever again. Double boo on you, assumed capitalism. Until I’m able to find the parts I need via Etsy or wherever (NOT Amazon ever again), I’ll use the mixer my mother-in-law offered me since she doesn’t use it much and remind myself of the days when I used to knead bread by hand—that ancient task. Again—get it together, Lewis! 

I’ll leave you with this brilliant essay from The Paris Review called Fuck the Bread. The Bread is Over. Thank you, Byrdie, for tagging me on this one. I’m still gonna make the bread one way or another because it saves money but I’ll keep the wise words from the authors mother closest to my heart, which translates loosely into stop holding on so tight to what you think you need.

Thurs

So, I’ve been writing today and editing and writing more and editing more. It’s all about thinking and re-thinking everything with nothing on my plate but time staring up at me. There is a strange blessing that has a chance to bloom inside this isolation. 

Go gently, my friends, family and any strangers who may be stopping by. Thanks for being here with me. I really appreciate you, wherever you are today.

Stay safe. Be strong. Fall apart. Know you aren’t alone. Lovelove. 

[romancandlemagazine]

An Interview with Charlie Kelly

In the early ‘70s there was no such thing as mountain biking. A few people had tried putting knobbly tires on bikes and heading off-piste (most notably a man named John Finley Scott and his ‘woodsie bike’ in the early fifties) but no one had taken any notice. That is until a rag-tag gang of cyclists took to the hills of Marin County, California, armed with nothing more than pre-WW2 Schwinn cruisers. Although their explorations took them all over, the track that became famous was a particularly steep downhill fire-road called Repack (due to the fact that after just one run down it your forty year old coaster brake would need to be repacked with grease).

One of the main characters at Repack was Charlie Kelly, who as well as riding foot-out and flat-out down the track, organised and promoted the first downhill mountain bike races. He later went on to start the first mountain bike company with his room-mate Gary Fisher (the aptly titled MountainBikes) and was the man responsible for the Fat Tyre Flyer, which until 1986 was the only magazine devoted to off-road cycling escapades. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I managed to wangle an interview with him a few years back... and here it is.

Photographs taken from Charlie’s website, header photo by Larry Cragg.

First things first, how’s it going?

I have nothing to complain about. I still enjoy life and still ride bikes.

Can you explain what exactly Repack was, and how it all began?

Repack is a steep hill near Fairfax where most of our activities too place. When we decided to have a contest of downhill it was the perfect choice. Very steep and nearly 2 miles long, it was a severe test of bike and rider. A few of us went out there and held a race, thinking that we would do it once and settle all the bets forever. It didn’t work out that way. Everyone wants a shot at the title, so we held a lot more races.

Around the same time you were working as a roadie for the Sons of Champlin in San Francisco, what led you to racing old bikes down hills?

I was a cyclist at that time, a rarity in the circles I travelled in. I had been president of my bike club, Velo-Club Tamalpais, and Gary Fisher and I shared a house. We had some old bikes that we used as our “town bikes” instead of riding our Italian race bikes. There are a lot of dirt roads and trails near where we live, and eventually we took the bikes out on them. It was so much fun we took it up as a regular part of our activities. Some of the other members of the bike club had similar bikes, and so there were already a couple of dozen riders when we held our first race.

Alan Bonds, Benny Heinricks, Ross Parkerson, Jim Stern and Charlie Kelly striking a pose with their Schwinn Excelsiors. Note the custom Excelsior t-shirts printed by Alan Bonds

How many people turned up at the first race?

The record of that race is lost, although I have all the others. It was six or seven people.

How did you go about promoting the races?

It wasn’t difficult. As soon as some guys from a nearby town heard that we had held a race, they wanted to take part also. So we held another four days after the first one. I had a list of telephone numbers that I would call before a race. Eventually I had an artist make posters, but by then we had already been racing for a couple of years. The purpose of the poster was to create documentary evidence of who was doing this and when. I could see that it was getting pretty popular, so I wanted to make sure I got the credit for it. And I did.

Two flyers promoting the ‘Repack Downhill Ballooner’

How did find all those old Schwinns? Did you have to modify them or did you just ride them as you find them?

At first it was easy, because they were considered junk. The problem was that those old frames don’t last very long when they are ridden the way we used them. Every six months or so I would need another. They became much harder to find, and the price was climbing rapidly.

It wasn’t long before you and your friends were designing your own bikes, what improvements did you make?

The most basic improvement was to make it out of chrome-moly steel. The old bikes were made of cheap steel that was heavy and not nearly as strong as modern bike tubing. Cantilever brakes were not as effective in wet weather as the old drums, but they were much lighter. Most of the other components were the same as we used on converted clunkers.

Can you give us an idea of what an average run down Repack was like?

If you’re not terrified, you’re not going to win. You have to ride right up to the edge of control and not make any mistakes that cost you time. The course is not technically challenging compared to a modern course made for long-travel bikes, but to date no one has shattered the old records set on clunker bikes. I believe that the reason we were so fast on the low-tech equipment is that we had a lot of races and plenty of practice on the course.

I remember reading stories about people skidding under fire-road gates at around 40mph, is there any truth in this?

40 mph on a road bike feels pretty fast. The average speed for the record run is around 27 mph. Obviously the top speed is faster than the average speed, but 40 mph seems a little high.

Alan Bonds with a foot-out, denim-heavy slice of high-action

Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher… a fair few fast characters raced at Repack. Now the dust has settled a bit, who was actually the fastest?

Gary holds the record, but Joe won nearly half the races. Otis Guy has the third fastest time by only a couple of seconds, and on the run where he set it, a dog ran in front of him and brought him almost to a complete stop. If not for that, I believe he would hold the record.

Did things ever get heated on the mountain or was it all just a bit of fun?

It was always fun, but there were five or six riders who were the top guys, and the only real competition was among them. Since we started the fastest riders last, when it got down to just those guys and me, the starter at the top of the hill, things got very very quiet. Each guy would be by himself, getting his “game face” on.

When you weren’t racing at Repack, where else were you riding around this time?

I was always a road rider, although my racing career was brief and unspectacular. Most of the clunker rides were not competitive, but just a group headed out on trails.

Fred Wolf on ‘Camera Corner’

If all the old pictures are anything to go by, plaid shirts, old jeans and boots seemed to be the uniform of choice, why was this?

It was the way most of us dressed anyway. I haven’t owned a necktie or a suit in a long time. If I got on the road bike, I changed into a jersey and shorts, but the whole idea of the clunker was that you just got on it.

You started the first mountain bike magazine, The Fat Tyre Flyer, in 1980. What led you to start a magazine?

It was an accident. We thought about forming a mountain bike club, so a few of us held a meeting. At the meeting my girlfriend (Denise Caramagno) and I volunteered to do the club newsletter. The club never had another meeting, but once we published the cheaply printed newsletter, people begged us to keep publishing it. So we did. Eventually I actually learned how to publish a magazine.

In an article you wrote in 1979 you said, “The sport that is going on here may never catch on with the American public.” Were you surprised when it did?

I’m still surprised. How could anyone have predicted that a goofy hobby that most people laughed at would take over the world?

Do you still ride mountain bikes now?

Sure do, and they are much nicer than the ones I started on. Gary Fisher has made sure that I ride quality equipment, currently a pair of Gary Fisher 29ers.

Nowadays you work as a piano mover. Can you divulge any tricks of the trade?

I figured most of it out by doing it. There are certain qualities that are vital, in addition to being reasonably strong. Size matters. A 200 pound guy can do more than a very strong 150 pound guy. (Unfortunately, size also matters in bike racing, but in the other direction, which explains my undistinguished bike racing career.)

My aptitude for “spatial relations” always tested very high. I can visualize three-dimensional concepts, but I’m pretty sure all piano movers are like that. Being smart is as important as being strong, and you need both qualities. No two situations are identical, but with years of experience you can usually find a comparison to something you did before, which shortens the process of deciding how to approach a job.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Buy my book, entitled “Fat Tire Flyer.” Maybe we’ll do an English version and spell it properly, “Fat Tyre Flyer.”

Charlie's book is available now.

For more information on mountain bikes and piano moving, do yourself a favour and take a look at Charlie’s amazing website.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world’s entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile. Two children, Philip Chandler (John Stockwell) and Marlowe Hammer (Michael Dudikoff), are abandoned by their fathers in a fallout shelter cut into the side of a wooded mountain. The pair grow up in the shelter, with 1950s detective fiction and swing music as the guiding force in their learning. Fifteen years later Marlowe succeeds in digging out the cave entrance. The pair give each other haircuts, dress in suits, and go to rejoin the world.

Philip narrates their adventure on their first day out:

My name’s Philip, and this is going to be a yarn about me and my pal, Marlowe. About the day we got out of this shelter and went off into the post-nuclear world. Now, as excited as we were about leaving the shelter, it was still a joint that held fond memories. I mean, it was the only world we’d ever known. Where I practiced my magic, Marlowe, his dancing; where we both dreamed of becoming private eyes, just like the ones we’d read about.

Marlowe hopes to find their fathers, but Philip is disgruntled that they never returned, and presumes that they are dead. The mountain is now devoid of trees. The first people they find are a trio of radiation burned “mutants” chasing a beautiful woman, Miles Archer (Lisa Blount). They rescue Miles, who kisses Marlowe as a distraction and steals his gun. This backfires, as she drops the activation keys to the last nuclear missile. Miles leaves, and the pair are immediately attacked by a biker gang of bald women in red wigs. Afterwards the boys discover the activation keys, which bears their fathers’ names. This excites Marlowe, but disturbs Philip.

They rescue another young woman, Rusty Mars (Michele Little), from a group of armed children Philip nicknames “disco mutants”. She takes a liking to Philip, and leads the two of them to Edge City which is plagued by gang warfare. Rusty takes them to a dance club, where they are captured by cannibals. They want the nuclear keys, and to eat the young men, a rarity of uncontaminated meat. Although Rusty helps them escape and apologises, Philip doesn’t trust her. Just after they part ways the pair meets up with a friend of Miles’ who also wants the keys. After he is dispatched Miles shows up and takes them to her hideout. There she tells them about the purpose of the keys. Miles then threatens to kill them, but they escape.

Rusty has followed them to the hideout, but is attacked by the child gangsters. The pair chase them away, but Philip still doesn’t trust her. He wants to shoot her, but is out of bullets. After Rusty apologises again for lying to him and originally handing him over to the cannibals he says, “That was a million years ago, and I got a short memory. In fact, I don’t even remember who you are”.

The pair resolves to rid the city of the gangs and keep the keys. They go to an abandoned warehouse, using themselves as bait, in the hopes that the gangs will kill each other before killing them. For the most part, the plan works. However, the bosses of the child-gangsters are in fact Philip and Marlowe’s fathers. Before he dies, Philip’s father tells him that the past does not matter. In the end, the only gangster left standing is Miles, who has the keys. She shoots at them, and misses, but startles Marlowe into shooting and killing her.

The film ends with Philip letting go of the angst which he had nursed for 15 years. He adopts Marlowe’s “silver-lining look on life”. The two demonstrate Marlowe’s tap-inspired “post-nuke shuffle” to the crowds of the city. In the closing narration, Philip explains that they plan to set up shop as detectives, but that first he will find Rusty and see if he can repair his relationship with her. Of the keys, he says that he and Marlowe hid them in a secret location, because “you never know, in a tight jam a nuclear missile just might come in handy”.

PRODUCTION Albert Pyun’s first film, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, made box office waves and instantly established him as a hot property in Hollywood. If you haven’t heard much about the young director in the past two years, it’s because Pyun has been busy working on his next feature, a post-nuclear fantasy-adventure tale entitled RADIOACTIVE DREAMS. The film is scheduled for release later this year, though a distribution deal has not yet been finalized.

The long pre-production period was, in part, due to the challenge of acquiring financing (after THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, Pyun had several offers, but wanted to work independently from the studio system and a six month talent search for the roles of Phillip and Marlowe. Pyun estimates that he saw over 600 young actors, striving to find two who weren’t too modern-looking, and could believably carry a 40’s attitude as part of their characters. During this time, Pyun and Karnowski wrote some 50 drafts of the script, began scouting locations, and dove head-long into the other crucial pre-production elements.

A visit to the production office at Laird International Studios reflects just how much work had already been done on the project which, in Pyun’s words, has a budget only “slightly larger than the $3.5 million spent to film THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, the walls are covered with color storyboards by in-house illustrator Shawn Joyce (who will be preparing all the film’s matte paintings), character sketches, blueprints of sets, and even tabletop poster board miniatures of the hippie city square (modeled after San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district), and the bombshelter (which comes complete with a two-car garage). Mark Moses, a winner of several CLIO awards, serves as the film’s visual consultant, with Chester Kaczenski handling art direction.

Principal photography, by German cinematographer Thomas Mauck, who shot many of Werner Herzog’s films, began in March in Pyun’s native Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii. The remote locations-in the mountains and on the site of the Mauna Loa volcano, where an unexpected eruption occurred on the first day of shooting-generated some visually sensational dallies, according to publicist Scott Fields.

Interview with Albert Pyun

How did you come about writing Radioactive Dreams? Albert Pyun: I wanted to do something after “The Sword and the Sorcerer” that was distinctive and not like anything else. I think I felt that if I only got to make 2 movies in my life, the second had to be as imaginative as I could create. So that was the start of it and I had a lot of meetings with studios and what they liked about my first film was how it was imaginative, so I went that direction.

Did the 1980’s missile crisis have anything to do with what inspired you? Albert Pyun: Well, no, but growing up in the Col War years certainly did. I always was a fan  of Dr. Strangelove and i think that and “O Lucky Man” got me going on the idea of the last nuke left.

How long did it take for the guys to get the “Post Nuke Shuffle” down? Albert Pyun: Did they ever?? To be fair, we had to shoot it really fast as the sun was coming up and we were losing extras. So we had to shoot it fast and that was unfair to John and Michael because they did work hard on that dance. We shot most of the big music scenes and extras scenes in one night so that really made it a very rushed shoot night. I don’t know if John was as comfortable with the dance as Michael. I think it went against this sort of “cool” vibe John had. He was very dedicated to what we were doing but some of it i could tell unsettled him.

The dance looked pretty amazing. I’m surprised it isn’t a staple to dance to at weddings and birthdays. Any memories of when you filmed the big final scene? Albert Pyun: Just how fast we had to do it. I was disappointed we could do it with more takes and shots. It was pretty basic and FAST. And they had a costume change in the middle of it. I had actually shot several book end scenes which were set 40 years later and had a young mutant reporter interviewing Rusty about Philip and Marlowe. It talked about what eventually happened to them and how Marlowe was murdered by a gang trying to get the launch keys and how Phillip left rusty to destroy the keys once and for all but never returned. I think there was a small shot at the end showing Philip and Rusty’s son and a quick peek of Philip watching from afar to keep them safe.

The soundtrack to this film still remains very popular. Did you personalty pick any of the artist that made it into the movie? Albert Pyun: Yeah, I selected the songs used. My friend and co-producer John Stuckmeyer was into that LA music scene and got a lot of bands to submit cassette tapes of demos. He weeded out the most appropriate ones and he and I selected the final choices to be used. I think we had a couple written for the movie specifically when we couldn’t find exactly what we wanted.

How did you end up meeting John Stockwell and Michael Dudikoff? Albert Pyun: They came in  during the casting process. We saw a lot of great actors of that time, Judge Reinhold, Clancy Brown, Tim Van Patten, Harry Anderson, many really good actors. We even had a breakfast meeting with Tom Hanks, a tape submission from Ellen DeGeneres. All were young and at the start of their careers as was I.

As a special effects makeup artist, I found the mutants completely terrifying! Any memories of the makeup process on the actors? Albert Pyun: That was by Greg Cannom who would go on to win oscars for Dracula and more. He figured out the design and look. I was disappointed that I had to lose the surfing sequence in the film. We wanted to dye the ocean flourescent orange and have surfing mutants surf and rot I think but the Coastal Commission said no.

Do you think a film like that could be made today? Albert Pyun: No, Radioactive Dreams wouldn’t get made today. It’s way too eccentric and weird. Even in 1984 it was tough to get made. I raised the budget myself from a single investor. He was a real estate developer in San Bernadino California. I think he did it because he finally gave in to my dogged persistence for over a year. He said “no” many times, but I kept hearing “yes”. I’m an optimist I guess. I believed in the film and knew it would be a unique picture to follow up The Sword and the Sorcerer. Anyway halfway through production the funding disappeared.

A couple of Edge City’s best and brightest with costume designer Joseph Porro

SPECIAL EFFECTS Special prosthetic make-ups were created by Greg Cannom. His bizarre designs range from the mysterious repulse men to a wrinkled surf bunny (a girl whose excessive bathing in the post nuclear sun has given her the appearance of a 90 year-old woman) and his favorite, the mutant surfers: those who refused to give up their treasured pastime, even though the ocean has become radioactive.

The surfers’ skin, hanging loosely from their bones, is riddled with chemotherapy patches and permanently-affixed barnacles. their long. scorched, platinum blonde hair is missing entire sections. Josephine Turner, who did the intricate hair ventilating for THE HOWLING and THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, will create the wigs. Straight and extra make-ups will be provided by Ve Neil and Rick Schwartı.

Mutant Surfer

Special fire and mechanical effects will be handled by Joe Lombardi’s Special Effects Unlimited. The film’s extensive stunt work, under the direction of Alan Gibbs offers several cliff-hanging sequences: a chase on winding mountain roads involving female bikers, a high-speed helicopter pursuit, various gun battles and a warehouse explosion. Additionally, there will be a surfing sequence in a ‘radioactive’ ocean-a portion of the real ocean near the shoreline will be chemically dyed expressly for filming.

Cast and crew spent most of their final week of production in Los Angeles, working with a 14-foot high mechanical rat created by Charles and Steven Chiodo, with 22 separate functions and 12 operators-giving it head, arm, and body movement capabilities-said to be the most advanced pneumatically controlled robot ever constructed for a motion picture. Star Lisa Blount does a scene while standing in the rat’s mouth. Her stunt double Andre Gibbs, wife of the film’s stunt coordinator Alan Gibbs, takes over for Blount’s death scene in which she is eaten alive by the rat.

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Radioactive Dreams (1985) Soundtrack Most of the songs featured in the film are pop rock in the new wave vein. The exceptions are Zim Bim Zowie, a swing number, and also a tune in the American Songbook style, Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight, played on a phonograph during the scene when Philip and Marlowe prepare to leave the fallout shelter. The latter and another track called All Talk were left out of the Australian and German soundtrack releases.[7]

Nightmare – Jill Jaxx – 5:10 Radioactive Dreams – Sue Saad – 5:18 She’ll Burn You – Maureen Steele – 4:13 Young Thing – Cherri Delight – 4:09 Tickin’ Of The Clock – The Monte Carlos – 2:07 Psychedelic Man – Shari Saba – 2:41 Eat You Alive – Lisa Lee – 2:40 Guilty Pleasures – Sue Saad – 3:44 (Performed by Saad on-screen) Turn Away – Mary Ellen Quinn – 2:13 She’s A Fire – Sue Saad – 2:07 When Lightning Strikes – Sue Saad – 6:51 Zim Bim Zowie – Darryl Phinessee – 2:20 Daddy’s Gonna Boogie Tonight B.J. Ward All Talk Lynn Carey

CAST/CREW Directed Albert Pyun Produced Moctesuma Esparza Written Albert Pyun

John Stockwell – Phillip Chandler Michael Dudikoff – Marlowe Hammer Michele Little – Rusty Mars Lisa Blount – Miles Archer Don Murray – Dash Hammer George Kennedy – Spade Chandler Norbert Weisser – Sternwood Christian Andrews – Brick Bardo Paul Keller Galan – Chester (as P.K. Galán) Demian Slade – Harold Hilary Shepard – Biker Leader (as Hilary Shapiro) Sue Saad – Punk District Singer Kimberly McKillip – Sadie – Hippie Chick Gulcin Gilbert – Greaser Chick (as Gulshin Gilbert) Mark Brown – Greaser Russell Price – Greaser

Makeup Department Greg Cannom    …  special makeup Ve Neill  …  makeup designer Brian Wade     …  additional makeup effects designer / additional makeup effects supervisor / special makeup effects artist Kevin Yagher   …  prosthetic makeup assistant

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v15n01 La Cosa Cine Fantastico Issue #113, July, 2005 staystillreviews

Radioactive Dreams (1985) Retrospective SUMMARY A nuclear war breaks out in 1986, expending the world's entire nuclear arsenal, except for one missile.

[spockandawe]

Characters: Starscream, Megatron

Rating: Teen

Words: 5,186

AO3

If we don’t get to see something of functionist universe Starscream before LL is over, I might cry. But in the meantime, I’m going to have a lot of fun with the possibilities.

When you hear about the new revolutionary preaching radical reform on Cybertron, you… do not immediately defect.

You want to. You certainly want to. Any movement that’s anti-functionist has your support just on that basis alone. But then when you begin to hear the ideas this mech is spreading—

You work slowly. You can’t risk catching the notice of the wrong officers. It’s been millions of years of service since you were singled out for punishment—humiliation—but you still feel the pressure of that attention on you, every single day of your life. If it was only a risk to yourself— But it isn’t, is it.

You might not be able to go look up this mech’s speeches yourself. And you might not even be able to demand the other officers tell you everything they know either. But you do have enough influence to kick up a fuss over these disruptions that do keep cropping up, new recruits disappearing into the deserts instead of being shipped out to join your wing, expected supplies vanishing from the shipping docks. You can infer more than enough to understand on your own, but you’re such a loyal, dedicated servant of the government that you demand explanation after explanation even when you’re told there’s no more information to be had.

Every little piece of this mech’s teachings that you hear, every last bit of it speaks to you as right. It’s  infuriating, how obviously correct his points are, seeing that these thoughts have never occurred to anyone in a position of influence on Cybertron, that there was somehow never a mass realization that things weren’t right with your world. It makes you furious to hear how correct he is, because it draws into sharp relief just how much wrong your government has done.

If you had your way, you would have stolen a flight back to Cybertron on the very first day you heard the first quotes from his speeches. But this isn’t about only you, and you can never, ever afford to forget that.

Thundercracker is more safe right now, but he’ll be harder to reach or protect once you make a move. And he isn’t as… valuable as Skywarp. The Council will hesitate before killing Skywarp. He’s a precious rarity, the only outlier of his kind, which is why it’s so terribly important to keep him locked up and shut away from the sky and— No. You can’t afford to go down that path right now. Thundercracker has more freedom, but the Council won’t hesitate to kill him. Skywarp isn’t at as much risk, but they have him so tightly controlled you won’t be able to even reach him unless it’s a deliberate, planned rescue.

So you plan. You move as slowly as you can stand and lay your foundations as carefully as you know how. There are always, always eyes on you, and not just because you’ve been so visibly marked out as a problem. You throw your regular tantrums over these inexcusable, indefensible disruptions to your life. How are you expected to serve the government when the incompetents supporting you can’t do so much as bring you the recruits you’ve been promised? What will your superior officers say when you report these problems to them? You promise there will be consequences unless this is addressed immediately.

You’re good enough being a nuisance that it doesn’t take long for your superiors to look for a way for you to become someone else’s problem.

And given the amount of complaining you’ve done over the disturbances happening planetside, your commanders arrive neatly at the conclusion that you should be sent to Cybertron to wrestle with the problem yourself.

Oh dear, who could ever have seen this coming.

Going through the proper channels means a transfer takes months or years, if it even gets approved at all. But when high-ranking commanders are pulling the strings, you get two cycles of warning that there’s a shuttle for you, and you need to leave.

You spend that time polishing yourself up. Not for the sake of vanity— Not just for the sake of vanity. Whatever else has been done to you, you still have a beautiful frame, and there’s no shame in admitting that. You still hate looking in the mirror and being forced to see not-your-face, just an optic that isn’t you and never will be— But this is important.

It means you can do some rough patches on your optic. There isn’t much damage, just the little nicks and scrapes that come from being in a war zone. But you’re going into a new environment, you can’t afford to be three-quarters blind until you find your footing. Half-blind will have to do. You could take that issue to the medics, but given the quality of optics they’ll call good enough for empurata victims? This is honestly the best optic you’ve had from them in a few thousand years, nicks and all. You’ll make it work.

When you arrive on Cybertron, you think that what helps more than anything is that everyone else is looking forward to watching you make a fool of yourself trying to handle the problem they’ve been struggling with for so long. You ignore all the little jibes, never acknowledge any of the sad attempted jokes at your expense. They brief you thoroughly on the situation, and it is certainly a complicated issue. You can see why they’ve been having trouble putting a stop to things. It is rather fortunate for you that you have no plans to stop it at all.

Once you get to real quarters again with a real berth and even a console— You don’t look up Thundercracker’s current posting. If you’re planetside, they’ve sent him out to the front. You don’t need to check that in the records and give the government more proof that they should keep you separated.

You don’t need to look up Skywarp’s posting. You know it down to the room. It hasn’t changed in the last several million years.

It’s uncomfortable being in a government building, even after all this time. You still force yourself to lie down for recharge. While you’re failing to sleep, you go over and over the details of your plan. There are still so many things you can’t do by yourself, but you see a way forward.

In the morning, you don’t put that plan into action. It’s too early, far too early. You need to establish a secure, comfortable power base here before you can begin truly undermining the system. No, instead you play the loyal officer, you organize patrols and raids, order your people to prepare briefings on this and that, every issue of interest, you pull in the mechs responsible for espionage and demand details on how they collect information— Too many things to count. It’s going to take time. But beyond all that, you collect the personnel files for every mech under your direct command and organize private interviews with all of them.

It takes weeks, months to get things in order. And through all that, you have done a great deal of work. You accomplish a great deal. Yet you seem to have made no progress on actually putting a stop to the unrest. Shocking. You’re so terribly disappointed in yourself.

That time does give you the opportunity to review all the information that’s been collected about Megatron yourself. Not that you’re thinking treasonous thoughts, oh no. This is only your duty as a loyal soldier. It’s fascinating. Peace through empathy, he says. Compassion. There have certainly been anti-functionist movements before this one, but none of them had a message like that. Sometimes you don’t think you can believe it in any more than an abstract sense. But you never stop thinking of Thundercracker and Skywarp.

Once you begin pursuing actual results, they’re… strategic. You capture some dissidents, of course. It’s unavoidable. Even the previous commanders managed that much, no matter how inefficient their campaigns were. Your imprisonment rates improve on theirs— marginally. Just enough that point to it as an improvement. At least in terms of raw capture counts. Not an improvement in terms of what you can project about the numbers of subverted mechs in the general population, not in terms of the estimated number of mechs in hiding outside the cities, not an improvement in terms of proportional imprisonment. But you don’t think your commanders really need to know that information.

You do make significant improvements on the defection rates from the military. You have… a certain awareness of how an enlisted mech might express dissatisfaction with their lot. An understanding of what moves they’ll make when they’re planning to bolt. You don’t punish them. But you do ensure they’re shipped off-planet, away from any place they can easily escape. You give them another reason to resent the government that conscripted them. You increase the numbers of rebellious mechs at distant military outposts, at the frontlines of the war, wherever they can be stationed. You don’t know exactly when they’ll reach a tipping point. But they will.

Even within your own division, you have some luck exposing the weakest links to outside influence. You are extremely thorough in going through your personnel files. You can’t exactly go about telling your soldiers to defect, not if you want to win the larger game. But it keeps you occupied. You keep those little warning signs in mind, take opportunities to send those mechs to postings with minimal supervision, furthest from direct Council oversight. Some of them stay loyal. But without a mouth, you’re free to smile to yourself every time you hear about another desertion.

Moving so slowly is painful, especially when you can see the way forward. It’s so clear. It isn’t much comfort telling yourself that after so long, it will only be a few more weeks, months, years, it’s frustrating beyond words when you’re so close. But it’s necessary.  A single wrong step will destroy all your progress, and you’re doing everything you can to lay groundwork for future success. If you can win, every extra moment you take now will have been more than worthwhile.

And it gives you the chance to keep track of Thundercracker and Skywarp. You demand personnel records from the front, insisting you need more mechs, trained soldiers with actual experience. You don’t ever try to ask them to send you Thundercracker. You aren’t that stupid. But you see his name, see where he’s posted, what commander he’s serving under.

At the same time, you requisition use of teleporters left and right—critical espionage business, highest priority, if you interfere, your commanders will be hearing from me directly—It takes time, but you push the limits of the established infrastructure, demanding more teleporters be built at new locations, constantly demanding more and more. When enough officers get sick of dealing with your requests, you aren’t authorized to requisition use of a certain outlier being housed (caged) in a very secure government facility. Your underlings are authorized, not you.

But you’re loud and shrill enough to be given some very detailed information about his mass limits, his range, frequency, et cetera. It isn’t everything, it isn’t a full picture of how they’re holding him. But it’s enough for you to infer the basics of the equipment they have plugged into him. How do you stop a teleporter from running away? Take away his ability to keep himself alive, of course. Once you’re controlling all his vitals from the outside, he’s as good as dead if he leaves.

You doubt the Council has forgotten how hard you fought to be allowed to study science. But you had a knack for it. And there were a few centuries where you thought that maybe, maybe if you studied medicine instead of theoretical science and agreed to be a combat medic, that would be good enough to satisfy them— It wasn’t, of course, and they gave you a very definite refusal. And wrote that refusal all over your frame, so you could serve as an example. Using that partial education you were never allowed to finish to help bring the Council down… you can’t exactly say you’re happy about anything anymore. Not these days. But you’re certain it will be immensely satisfying.

Waiting for your chance is the most frustrating part. You keep your forces stretched as thin as you can without your commanders noticing it. But you bide your time, and an opportunity does eventually arrive. You receive word that Megatron is expected to arrive at a remote mining facility to speak to the mechs there. In that sort of industrial sector, even the mine overseers won’t be making an effort to hand him to the government.

Of course, you immediately propose a raid. Not that it will be successful. You haven’t made any real effort in the realm of counterespionage, and you certainly hope your command is riddled with treasonous dissidents. Megatron always seems to receive word of any planned military actions, and even on the rare occasions your forces have managed to engage, none of your soldiers have been able to capture or kill him. You expect more of the same. Until one of your officers raises that point himself and hesitantly brings up the number of raids that have failed over the last few months.

It is sometimes nice not having to worry about controlling your face. You seize on that point and round immediately on your other officers. A raid will do no good, it hasn’t before. Does nobody here have anything else to propose? None of them have ideas that will work? You don’t want to suggest it yourself, you don’t want to draw suspicious at this stage of the game— But then that same officer suggests an infiltration attempt. You really will have to see about recommending that mech for promotion.

The debate over who to send is tedious, but now you control the playing field. This operative can’t be compromised. That one is on another mission. The facility is too remote for a grounder to reach in time, and teleporter use or stolen vehicles will draw suspicion. And you’re able to use all those prior desertions you’ve enabled to question the loyalty of every other mech your officers suggest.

It takes quite some time to corner them. But you’re patient and you have everything to play for. You can see them getting frustrated. After you’ve sarcastically asked if they have any other suggestions a few times, one of them finally bursts out that you could go.

Victory.

The mech who suggested that you infiltrating the gathering flinches when you turn towards him, but you aren’t angry. Oh no. It’s taking all your strength right now to stop yourself from laughing. You don’t leap on the suggestion. You can’t look overeager. But you make a few cutting remarks about how nobody else seems to think of a mech who’d be able to get the job done. Some more disparaging remarks about the quality of the other suggestions you received.  And when you ask if anyone can think of a better solution, none of the officers say anything.

It’s soon. Accounting for the time it will take to fly halfway across the planet— It’s very soon. You aren’t inclined to nerves, but it’s still a struggle not to fret as you go over and over everything that you need to do. Should you repaint your frame? Disguise yourself? No, no, anything that looks like subterfuge, that could draw the Council’s attention. You need to be open about this. You’re doing nothing wrong, only serving as a loyal soldier. You try your hardest not to think that your things could be set into motion in a matter of weeks, even days— Hope is a lie, it’s always a lie. You do your best not to think about it.

The flight gives you time to review your plan. Unnecessary—You’ve known exactly what you need to do for millennia. And it’s not only self-serving, you aren’t asking for charity. Though you stumble, mentally. Peace through empathy. You’ve been thinking about those words for months. It’s not just charity, it’s about a flier who hasn’t seen the sun in three million years. This is about a mech who’s been bolted for the wall for so long you doubt he can even transform anymore. It’s torture and a slow death. If compassion plays a role in this, anyone would have to admit that.

But it’s better to cover all contingencies. Skywarp is a resource. He’s a valuable resource. Megatron and his people have no access to teleporters unless they manage to steal uses of the teleporters the government controls. That isn’t reliable and it isn’t safe. Relying on those is just asking to be ambushed.  You can fix that. If compassion isn’t enough.

Your internal sensors take you most of the way there, keeping you informed about your coordinates and the occasional other flier in the sky. But once you land, everything is down to your optics.

Not ideal. You’ve never been to this mine before, obviously, but you’ve never been to any mine, and you don’t know much of what to expect. It’s easy enough to find the entrance to the mine, given the number of mechs milling about. And from what you can tell, you aren’t as out of place as you’d worried. It’s been hard to get exact details about the composition of the audiences that come to hear Megatron speak, but even at this remote location where you wouldn’t have expected much more than the local menial laborers, you can see brightly painted mechs with delicate frames that were never meant for this kind of work. There are plenty of fliers, and given how impossible the Council has made it to avoid conscription, it’s beginning to look like the rebels have even more military sympathizers than you’d thought.

You do get a number of looks. Even after so long, it makes your plating itch knowing that you’re under scrutiny and not being able to see well enough to tell who’s looking and how they’re reacting. Outwardly, you ignore them all. From what you can tell from the closest mechs, the ones looking at you mostly look first to your wings, then to your optic. And then they look away. None of them challenge your presence.

Once you go underground and the sunlight is cut off, you’re even more blind than you were before.  You curse to yourself, but you’re not going back now.  And you can’t even get a decent read of your surroundings with your sensors. You know there are miners with empurata, surely they don’t operate this blind— Perhaps it’s that your sensory suite is calibrated for use in the open air, not for these confined, cramped quarters. As the tunnels narrow, you grit your dentae every time your wings scrape painfully against the walls. There must be other sensory applications than the ones you’re relying on, because you can’t imagine anyone can do mining work under these conditions.

It isn’t too terribly long before the tunnels open up into a larger cavern, with marginally better lighting. You’re still frustratingly blind, but your optic is good enough to see the number of other single bright optics throughout the crowd. You aren’t really surprised. But it’s simultaneously infuriating and affirming to see how many of you there are.

There are also a number of larger, dimmer lights that you have to assume are flatheads. You suppose you have to count yourself lucky that you learned how to fall into line before that punishment came into vogue. It is a bit of a shock to see how many of them there are. But you also have to laugh to yourself. Can’t the Council see how they’ve driven their people into Megatron’s arms? You certainly hope they realize, before they die. You want them to know.

You move as far towards the front of the crowd as you’re able. Mechs turn to look and duck your wings as you push past them. You wonder how many of them have compromised optics, and how many direct feeds the Council is getting of your presence here. All perfectly legitimate of course, you’re only on a mission that was recorded and reported through all appropriate channels. This is where you’re supposed to be.

By the time the noise of the crowd jumps to an excited buzz, you’re still not as close as you want to be. When Megatron takes the stage, you can’t make out any more than a large, pale blur. But when he speaks—

You’ve listened to every nanoklik of every audio recording that came back to the government. You’ve read every transcript. None of it compares to being here. It’s the same ideas you’ve heard him express before. It’s the same plan to mobilize the population of the planet, to push for change with so many numbers that the Council can’t refuse you. But being here, listening to those words yourself, watching—as much as you can—the way he moves across the stage, connecting with the audience. Hearing and feeling that same audience shift around you, urgent whispered conversations, all with the same undercurrent of excitement. You never had any doubts about where your loyalties would fall. But now you know that this is a mech you will follow.

While he talks, you do your best to keep pushing up through the crowd. You’re at the edge of the cavern, and your wing keeps catching against outcroppings on the wall, but you ignore it and move further forward. You don’t quite manage to look away from Megatron that entire time.

It’s almost a shock to realize you’ve reached the front, and there’s no further to go. You’re still at the edge of the gathering, but now you’re close enough to make out some details. You can follow his body language as he moves, the way he gestures to the audience as he talks. You can see the rough lines of his face, just enough to make out the red glow of his optics. Not quite enough to tell if you’re imagining the way he looks right towards you (at you?) every few kliks.

Once his speech is done, Megatron engages with the crowd. He answers questions, gives advice, even just listens to stories. You lean back against the wall, less transfixed than when it was just him speaking. Given everything you’ve experienced with the Council and your commanders, it’s unspeakably amusing to see the way he’s willing to speak to all these mechs on a personal level.

Even when the answer is so obvious that asking the question is a waste of time—if you’re a lightweight flier stationed planetside with a decent income and your conjunx is an injured construction worker with a damaged t-cog and unusable legs, clearly you shouldn’t try to whisk him away into the wilderness to live out some ill-considered rebel fantasy—even then, it’s remarkable to see the respect and consideration Megatron gives to each person. Even when it’s a mech reading from a flathead’s screen, not even a question, just the story of why he was made a flathead, Megatron takes the time to tell him that he didn’t deserve that punishment. It all makes sense, given his words and philosophy. But it’s so strange and amusing to see a mech actually trying to live out the ideals they supposedly profess.

It takes a while, of course. The crowd starts to disperse soon enough, but you don’t move to follow them. And you also don’t move to ask Megatron a question yourself. You’re not going to throw away your chance to speak to him. But you certainly aren’t going to do it in front of a crowd with Primus knows how many compromised mechs just waiting to report you to the government. Without a crowd to follow back to the surface, you don’t know how you’ll find your way out, but this is more important than that.

And as time passes, you’re more and more certain that you aren’t imagining the way Megatron keeps looking at you. What remains of the crowd is clustering close to the center of the cavern, and you’re nearly alone where you stand by the wall. But his head keeps turning your way. You can’t see well enough to be sure, but you can feel his optics on you. And you’re still trying not to hope, but you’re confident in your plan, you’re confident that this is a mech who will be able to carry it out, and you’re beginning to believe he’ll listen to you.

You’re planning to wait until Megatron begins to leave and follow him, so you can speak in relative privacy. But you don’t have to. Some stragglers from the crowd are still lingering and talking to Megatron, and your attention is still on him— Enough so that you don’t notice the mech coming up beside you until his hand lands on your shoulder. You push away from the wall and turn to face him, getting ready to tell him in very pointed terms never to do that again.

But before you can say even a word, he says, “Megatron wants to talk to you.”

It’s a shock. It’s perfect, so perfect, but it’s still a shock. You’d been idly impatient over how long it was taking the last few mechs to leave, but now you’re frantically reviewing all your points, everything you need to tell him. It’s simple, in the abstract. If the rebels kidnap Skywarp, they’re acquiring a rare and valuable tool, one of immeasurable value. And you, of course, will be infuriated, with so much more personal investment in defeating the rebels once and for all. If they stage Thundercracker’s death, you have twice as much reason to seek vengeance. The Council has had a stranglehold on the things you value for so long— It will be easy to manipulate them into giving you all the soldiers and resources you need, as long as they think you’re aimed at an appropriate target.

And— Peace through empathy. Megatron wouldn’t just be making strategic moves, he’d be freeing a slave and a hostage.

As long as you can promise him victory, there’s no reason for him not to do it. And you can promise him victory. Two mechs are left talking and asking questions. Only two. You run through your files again, the details of Thundercracker’s posting and the rebel sympathizers stationed with him, and even in his chain of command. You go over all the details you have about Skywarp’s location and its security, and what you‘ve been able to infer about the equipment needed to keep him alive until he can be taken to a medic. You have the information to make this work, you have things of strategic value to offer, and. Compassion.

When Megatron finally turns away from those last mechs and comes to face you, you’re ready to make your case. He steps close enough that you can finally make out most of his face. Your plan has value and your plan will work, it only needs the large-scale coordination that you can’t provide alone.

The first thing Megatron says is, “And should I ask who you are?”

You draw yourself up to stand at attention, wings held high and steady, projecting confidence with every line of your frame. “Air Commander Starscream.”

He nods to himself. You think you can see him faintly smiling. You’re not entirely sure— Perhaps you should just make your case without bothering with conversational niceties—

You still aren’t quite decided when Megatron slowly looks you over. He’s close enough that you can see him looking out over your wings, down your chassis. His optics linger on your claws. You don’t react. When he eventually meets your optic again, you’re trying not to let your impatience show.

But he— You can definitely see him smiling now. Why is he smiling? He laughs once, and says, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Even if you had a face, you wouldn’t know how tor react. You’re frozen. You’d almost think you’d imagined it, you’ve almost convinced yourself that you misunderstood. But then he looks down at your claws again, and laughs under his breath.

You feel like you’ve just been knocked out of the air. It feels like you’re made of ice. You don’t— You just saw him speaking to the crowd, nodding sympathetically along while they went on and on about their sorrows. Why—?

This is still an opportunity you can’t afford to pass up. You force out, “I have a way for you to gain access to an outlier, one with a power I think you’ll find particularly useful—”

“Let me guess. A teleporter?”

He sounds unsurprised. Uninterested. Somehow, you manage to stumble through the particulars of your plan. He doesn’t ask any questions. He seems more occupied with walking around to your side, just. Watching you. You don’t even think he’s really looking you in the optic, you’re increasingly certain he’s just examining your face. You can’t tell if he’s even listening. Or, you suppose he must be listening, because he waves you off when you begin to go into the details of Skywarp’s abilities. That’s your only assurance that he’s heard a single word you’ve said.

And after all that, Megatron agrees to go along with your plan. It ought to be exhilarating, after biding your time for three million years. It ought to feel like a triumph. It doesn’t.

You hardly even hear the words coming from your own vocalizer as you make arrangements to coordinate with his people through this channel and that one, he can probably have these forces ready by this time, potentially putting the plan into action by that date— It feels like two other people are having the conversation, and you’re only listening in.

Even when the discussion ends, he only leans in close, peering at your face again, and you hear him laugh quietly to himself. He says, “Such a... pleasure to meet you.”

You don’t know what you’ve done to earn the way he says those words.

Megatron turns away, goes back to his companion and a few waiting mechs. They walk towards a tunnel  behind the stage that you— think leads downwards.  And then he’s gone.

You turn away too. Because what else are you supposed to do? This is an incredible victory, one that you weren’t sure you’d ever be able to win. It would be nice if it felt that way. You peer down the tunnels leading out from the back of the cavern. You feel like you ought to be able to remember at least something of which one you came through, but you’re too numb to think. After a klik, you give up, select one at random, and walk off into the darkness to try to find a way back to the surface.

[inoue-takehiko-blog]

Monthly Mangaka Spotlight 9: Takehiko Inoue

Hey gang, and welcome to the 9th installment of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, featuring Takehiko Inoue!

I will be completely honest starting from here. At first I decided to take Takehiko Inoue for two reasons. Firstly, I really want an excuse to read all the Vagabond again, it's a statement I feel I do not need to justify. Second, he had three famous manga enough to read my book not starting with an animal hunt. Also, Nate has made me read the Slam Dunk for years now and I thought writing an article about it would eventually bring this to the rest.

When you are best known for almost single-handedly popularizing a sport in your country, you can rest assured you probably did something noteworthy. Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk did just that, bringing basketball to national attention in Japan and winning awards from publishers, fans, and the Japanese Basketball Association along the way. A true fan of the sport, Inoue leveraged the popularity into the Slam Dunk Scholarship Program run by its publisher Shueisha. Not bad for only his third best manga.

Inoue spent just less than a year as an assistant, working with Hoko Tsukasa on City Hunter for 11 months. His first published work was Purple Maple in 1988, a simple short about Akagi, a high schooler, whose basketball team challenge his rivals in a regional tournament in a fight over a girl. Although his art was already exceptional, the simple plot was typical of a first work and showcased his obsession with basketball. Although Inoue himself has not confirmed it, many of Inoue’s fans consider Purple Maple the trial run for Slam Dunk. 

Slam Dunk, a 31 volume series published between 1990 and 1996 Weekly Shonen Jump, is easily the series most synonymous with Inoue’s name and likely more than a little autobiographical in nature. Much like Inoue himself, the protagonist, Hanamichi Sakuragi, joins his school’s basketball team to impress a girl. Also like Inoue, Sakuragi is egotistical and fancies himself a prodigy at basketball before even playing his first game. Unlike Inoue--probably--he is extremely physically gifted, considered an unbeatable monster among the delinquents from his previous school.

The story of Slam Dunk is one of personal growth. Despite all his advantages, Sakuragi is forced to come to terms with the fact that personal strength will only get you so far and it takes dedicated work to become a great basketball player. Sakuragi learns humility and grows as a person all while the reader enjoys Shohoku’s triumphs, high school hijinks, and Inoue’s artwork during the period he really comes into his own as an artist. Although basketball is the vehicle upon which the story rides, what makes Slam Dunk so iconic is the strong characters and excellent pacing of the manga.

After Slam Dunk, Inoue began work on a manga i like to call “the Japanese Space Jam”. Buzzer Beater, a four volume series originally published in Monthly Shonen Jump, was Inoue’s third--and, in my opinion, last---series to focus on basketball. The manga had a much more flamboyant style and character design than Slam Dunk, taking place in a setting in which intergalactic alien teams dominate the sport of basketball. Hideyoshi Tanaka is an orphan living in New York who makes his living hustling people in street basketball who is drafted into the Earth’s team which may just have a chance at winning a championship.

During his work on Buzzer Beater, Inoue contemplated ending his career as a mangaka, feeling he had nothing else to contribute. One of his editors at Morning recommended he read the novel Miyamoto Musashi by Yoshikawa Eiji. While reading the book, Inoue felt the desire to draw the faces of the characters, which eventually resulted in his decision to write Vagabond. In retrospect, the shift from Slam Dunk to Vagabond seemed almost natural for Inoue. Sakuragi and Musashi are similar protagonists being young, egotistical prodigies, but Inoue’s Musashi is a force of nature.

An ongoing series first published in Weekly Morning in 1998, Vagabond chronicles the early life and development of the legendary Miyamoto Musashi from a wild boy to the greatest philosopher swordsman in the history of Japan. The series has the atmosphere of mythic quest, a series of individual, almost allegorical, lessons that Musashi must overcome to reach the next stage of his odyssey to become “invincible under the sun”. Inoue’s portrayal of Musashi is unique among both fictional and historical works. My personal theory is that Inoue is drawing upon the true archetypical force of Musashi, which must be enormously stressful for him. Inoue has put the series on hiatus a number of times due to health concerns without halting work on REAL.

REAL, an ongoing series published in Weekly Young Jump since 1999, is perhaps the most aptly named manga I have ever read, although Way Too Real may have been better. On the face of it, the manga seems to be about a number of characters related to the wheelchair basketball team named the Tigers, but basketball takes a back seat to the real theme of the series. Describing it as a more serious take on Slam Dunk is simply inaccurate. The closest comparisons I can conjure are to JUST Jude Law’s tumultuous character from the ‘90s science fiction film Gattaca or perhaps a perspective piece placing the reader in the shoes of Robin William’s character in Awakenings.

I don’t often like to discuss themes in manga because my experience studying authors has taught me that almost 100% of the time they are unintended if not entirely opposed to the author’s intentions. Even Inoue will admit that he never has a theme going into a particular work, but they tend to crystalize over the course of his writing and he is able to distinguish them in retrospect. With REAL, it's overcoming personal disaster, and the manga absolutely does not pull punches. In heartfelt series like One Piece, action and drama build to crescendos that crystalize into singular evocative moments, but REAL seems to touch upon that rarity in every chapter as it describes every small tragedy of the characters autonomy being taken away piece by piece and their fight, both with their personal hopelessness and with their new physical and social limitations, to take it back.

Inoue’s is a self-described egoist who endorses that personality type in his own works and therefore has paid close attention to his own development as a mangaka. Like many artists, he looks back at his earlier work with a feeling of embarrassment. He takes pride in his work, both in terms of quality and quantity, saying in one interview “One story is 150 frames. I've been known to make three in five hours”. He feels that in his early days as a mangaka, all he wanted to draw was “cool” things, but as he grew more mature he broadened the scope of his work, becoming drawn to illustrating ugly characters and portraying bad people.

Even early on it was plain to see that Inoue was going to become something special as an artist. The way he captured the movement of Shohoku’s players in action showed both his intrinsic understanding of the movement as a basketball player and a tremendous grasp of anatomy. Many of the most impactful panels in his works would not be possible without his mastery of portraying mood through shading and capturing emotion through expression. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is one of single most gifted artists in the industry. His illustration truly are art and are evocative in their own right, combined with his vivid characters, Inoue has produced some achingly beautiful moments. Inoue credits his use of a brush for the unique appearance of his art, stating that he began using one during Vagabond when he realized Musashi's rival, Kojiro Sasaki, could not be drawn with a pen.

To Inoue, story is second to characters. He has said that truly vivid characters will tell the story all by themselves. Each character requires that he draw something from himself and face the same challenges as them. Once he has a vivid character, he said, the story comes naturally as a result of their struggle. In that way, Inoue attempts to write each manga as if it were their documentary, with all the respect to the individual that entails. It’s easy to see how that may come naturally to him as so many of his characters likely face the same challenges as Inoue himself. Young and confident but uncertain about their futures, talented but forced to confront the fact that they will still have to work hard to succeed. To a one they realize they must overcome challenges to eventually meet the standards demanded by their high opinion of themselves.

With such a transcendent artistic talent, it is truly remarkable that Inoue’s writing could be considered equal to his illustrations. Although he humbly stated that he hadn’t thought himself good enough at art to become a fine artist, Inoue seems to have the opinion that creating manga is more difficult. Unlike artists, who must convey beauty on a canvas, with mangaka beauty is not enough, since they must create stories which must have meaning and entertain. In terms of raw work, only catching two hours of sleep a night when a deadline draws near, despite having a team of five assistants supporting you, Inoue certainly presents a strong argument. Much like his protagonists, Inoue’s ability is likely the result of tremendous talent honed to its absolute potential through an unbelievable amount of work. Only that could produce the works he has created.

Source: crunchyroll

[nerdcorp]

News: New HOF Induction, Hogan Returning to wrestling? Why did TNA fire MVP and More!

Hey members of the Space Monkey Mafia!  Here we are, less than 24 hours after the SuperBowl and now all eyes are on WrestleMania (...and Spring Training, The Final Four, Valentines Day, Trump’s 100 Days, etc...).  So with that all being said, lets take a look at the biggest news stories from the last two days!

WWE Inducts Tag Team - The WWE have officially announced the induction of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, aka The Rock and Roll Express.  The team was predominant in the south, forming in Memphis, and traveling all along the south with Jim Crockett Promotions.  They worked with the NWA and AWA during the 80′s, along with stints in the WCW and WWE during the early 90′s.  They’ve bounced all around in the 90′s, from the NWA, WWE, WCW, and Smokey Mountain Wrestling.  They even had a few short stints in TNA in the early 2000′s, before returning again just last year for the Total Nonstop Deletion event.  They become a rarity, having never won World Tag Team titles in WWE, WCW, ECW, TNA or ROH to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Hulk Hogan Returning to WWE? - Dave Meltzer reported on Twitter that Hulk Hogan’s return to the WWE may happen fairly soon.  Asked by fan if/when Hogan will return to the company, Meltzer said, “Expect it sooner than later.”

MVP on Working for TNA/Why TNA Fired Him - Former Cleveland reporter and now Miami reporter, Chris Van Vliet is back in the pro wrestling scene with his interview with MVP.  When talking with Vliet, MVP revealed what he thought about TNA, and while it wasn’t great, it was surprisingly complementary;

I guess the biggest difference, and I don't mean this disrespectfully, is the difference between Coca Cola and RC Cola. One is a conglomerate and the other is a niche audience. There are TNA fans who are passionate TNA fans, but WWE's brand saturation is unmatchable... but if there's a nuclear holocaust tomorrow, the only thing that is going to survive is rats, roaches, Sabu, Sandman and TNA. TNA somehow will survive, they'll still be around.

On why he got fired for TNA, he went to say;

I'll tell you exactly what happened to me. An executive there made a bad decision. He screwed up and fired me for his mistake. I've always said that I don't have any animosity towards TNA; the production crew, the locker room, everybody was great. You just have some really poor management. People in positions that didn't know what they were doing.

Kurt Angle Reveals Who Swayed his WCW Signing - Kurt Angle was on the Statement Show this past week and revealed that not only was he going to sign with WCW, but it was actually a then current WCW star who talked him out of it, saying;

Before I signed with WWE, I did speak with Ric Flair and he told me flat out, he said, 'you don't want to come here. They're going to ruin your career. Go to WWE. Let Vince McMahon mold you into the star that you deserve to be.' And I listened to Ric." Angle added, "WCW went out of business, I think, the first year I started, so he was right.

Quick Hitters:  Three of the Chinese talents the WWE signed have reported to the Performance Center.  Gao Lei, Gu Guangming, Cheng Yuxiang and Wang Xiaolong join Zhao Xia, Yifeng, Big Boa and Tian Bang who are already at the performance center.  The Patriots will receive a WWE Title for winning SuperBowl LI (51).  Meltzer reported that Roman Reigns went in at No.30 to build to Reigns vs. Taker.  Mick Foley continues to live in denial about Snuka’s murderous ways, putting him over again in another interview.  Hideo Itami hints at NXT return.  David Penzer reveals Kurt Angle actually hurt him during their segment together in TNA.