#this photo reminds me of the text where rick says he used to get turned on by watching chris play bass 😭

[grxtsch]

the classic chris and rick photo 🙏

[seblainelove]

A playlist dedicated to Seblaine

For seblaine week, day 3 @seblaineaffairs

I choose songs with lyrics that reminded me of seblaine and wrote a drabble with them.

1. I knew I loved you - Savage Garden

I knew I loved you before I met you

I think I dreamed you into life

I knew I loved you before I met you

I have been waiting all my life

Sebastian loved Blaine before he even met him at Dalton. He saw his performances with the warblers through videos and fell in love with him. He was hoping to meet him one day. Praying he'd come back to Dalton. When Blaine came back to Dalton it was too good to be true.

2. Whenever you need somebody - Rick Astley

When you're all alone and if you're feeling down

Call me, I'll be around

Whenever you need somebody

I'll bring my love to you

You don't have to say you love me

I just want to be with you

Lost inside your love is where I want to be

I'm just asking you to spend some time with me

Time and time you say you want to be free

And you can have some fun that's okay with me

Sebastian took his chance and invited Blaine for a drink. He told Blaine about him being a legend and that he regreted he missed him. Blaine was happy someone actually appreciated his talent. He was feeling down because he wasn't performing anything at McKinley. Sebastian was a fun and wild loving person. He told Blaine about his life in Paris. Blaine felt happy with Sebastian. Like he finally found someone warm and accepting. Blaine opened up to Sebastian and told him about the hardships he faces at McKinley. Sebastian told him he can call him anytime he wants and he'll listen to him. He can even meet him up anytime he likes.

3. I want you - Joseph Tilley

We can take it slow

They don't gotta know

Focus on my lovin baby let it take control

Dance the night away

Nothing left to say

You and me together baby that ain't no mistake

Blaine told Sebastian that if the warblers know that he's meeting with sebastian alone they'd be hurt because they're all like a big family. Sebastian told him that the warblers shouldn't know about them meeting so no one gets hurt.

4. Pay my rent - DNCE

When you love so good

Wanna give you every hour

If you said you could

I would give you all the power

Blaine and Sebastian started texting each other. The two of them got along so well. they texted every hour and almost every minute of each day. They also hung out together a lot. Blaine was so happy with Sebastian as if he found his soulmate. Sebastian was always flirty with Blaine so Blaine took it that Sebastian likes him. Blaine told Sebastian about his feelings and Sebastian kissed him in the middle of his confession. Sebastian promised him that he'll always make him happy.

5. Love me less - Max

I got too much dirt to come clean

Closets full of skeletons that you don't wanna see

Will you judge me? All my ugly?

I won't blame you if you do

No lies, don't wanna keep no secrets

Even if what I'ma say will leave speechless

No secrets

If I introduce you to my demons, tell me, baby

Would you love me less?

Sebastian and Blaine were happily dating but one time they met a group of boys who were from another school. they approached Sebastian. They seemed to know him. Sebastian just greeted them back and left while pulling Blaine's hand. Sebastian knew that his past would hunt him now and he should come clean to Blaine. He didn't want to keep any secrets away from him but he was worried Blaine would love him less. He gathered his courage and told him he used to date these boys. Blaine was surprised that Sebastian had a lot of ex boyfriends when he is just in highschool. Sebastian told him that he was ashamed of himself.

6. I Believe - Jonas Brothers

Every night, every day, how about every lifetime?

Yeah, I know what they say, and that's fine

'Cause I'm here to stay through the good and the bad times

Babe, you send me to space and you're mine, yeah

Blaine told him that he shouldn't be worried or ashamed. Having dated a lot of people doesn't make him bad in any way. Blaine told him that he'll never leave him ever for a stupid reason like that and he'll always stay by his side. Blaine told him that he believes in him.

7. Don't talk to me that way - Dayon

Say that you will change the way you walk,

The way you talk,

The way you wear your hair.

Change the way you dress, the way you kiss,

Everything cause you are scared that i'm might leave you

Oh why should I leave you

Blaine tries not to let Sebastian exs get into his head but he couldn't. They were all so handsome and attractive. So Blaine decides to change how he looks to impress Sebastian. He puts gel and wears tight clothes. Sebastian got confused by the sudden makeover and realizes that Blaine was insecure. So he tells Blaine that he shouldn't change anything. He loves Blaine the way he is. There is a reason why an ex is an ex it's because Sebastian wasn't into them.

8. Because you live - Jesse mcartney

Because you live and breathe

Because you make me believe in myself

When nobody else can help

Because you live girl

My world

Has everything I need to survive

Because you live, I live

Ever since Blaine started dating Sebastian he felt more confident. Sebastian always supported him and cheered him on. He always was the first to attend Blaine's performances. And he always took Blaine to celebrate after each performance. Blaine felt fortunate to have Sebastian by his side. Blaine told Sebastian that he loves him. Sebastian told him that he loves him more.

9. 5:32 pm- the deli

Everyday at five thirty two pm Sebastian makes Blaine a cup of coffee at his house. They sit on the balcony while hugging each other and watch the sunset together.

10. Do you remember the first time we met- 316

Blaine plays this song on the piano for Sebastian. He dedicates this song for him. His life has been from good to better because of him.

Blaine and Sebastian graduate highschool and enter the same college. They live together in the same dorm room. They spend their days studying together and cheering each other on. Sebastian decides to surprise Blaine on their college graduation day. He comes with a plan to propose to Blaine.

11. Never gonna give you up- Rick Astley

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Sebastian leaves the ring box on their desk so Blaine sees it and assume that Sebastian would propose to him today. He takes Blaine to a fancy restaurant. Blaine expects Sebastian to pop the question but Sebastian doesn't. Sebastian then goes to the mini stage they had for performers and announces to everyone that he's dedicating this song to his precious person. Blaine was sure that Sebastian would propose to him now but Sebastian sings Rick Astley's never gonna give you up the whole time then sits down and eats the rest of his food. Blaine was dumbfounded. Was he just rickrolled? Blaine was upset he told Sebastian he saw the ringbox and he thought Sebastian would propose to him. Sebastian told him that wasnt a ringbox for him it was a gift for his mom. Blaine felt embarrassed.

12. I do - 98 degrees

I do Cherish you

For the rest of my life

You don't have to think twice

I will love you still

From the depths of my soul

It's beyond my control

I've waited so long to say this to you

If you're asking do I love you this much

I do

On their graduation day. Sebastian puts the ring in his pocket. Him and Blaine wear their graduation robes and hats. They sit waiting for their turn to get their diplomas. When they got their diplomas they posed for pictures. A lot of their friends came and they were taking a picture of both Blaine and Sebastian. In one of the poses Sebastian kneeled down. Blaine was shocked he looked at Sebastian. In Sebastian's hand was the ring. Sebastian opened it. " Blaine Anderson. In These past few years we had the best times together. So will you continue living the best life with me together as my husband? I'll love you and cherish you until I die"

Their friends were taking a lot of photos and cheering them.

" omg of course, of course I do" Blaine's tears rolled down.

Sebastian put the ring around Blaine's finger and they kiss.

[starletwriting]

Killervibe Fic Week Day One: Fake Dating

Word Count: 3063

Notes: Occurs in the place of 5x07 (the season five Thanksgiving episode).

Tags: @thatkillervibe @shakesqueer-writes @narniasfinestavengingsociopath

~~~

“I need a really big favor.”

Cisco looked up from the tech he was working on and faced Caitlin. “Yeah?” 

“I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend.” 

Cisco raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite the request. What for?” 

“My mom invited me to Thanksgiving with the extended family this year. I tried to get out of it by telling her I was spending Thanksgiving with my boyfriend, but then she insisted that I bring my boyfriend along with me.” Caitlin said. “I had to tell her it was a boyfriend. She wouldn’t have gotten off my case if it were anything else.” 

“So you need me to pretend to be that boyfriend?” Cisco asked. “Why not Barry?” 

“He’s spending Thanksgiving with Iris and Nora. This is his first Thanksgiving with his daughter, I’m not gonna take that away.” Caitlin said. “Please, man, you’re my only option.”

“Alright.” Cisco slowly nodded. “I’ll do it.”

“Oh, thank you so much.” Caitlin beamed. “Anything you need in return, it’s yours.” 

“If I ever need a favor, I’ll be sure to let you know. Besides,” Cisco met her eyes with a soft, caring gaze. “I’m not about to subject my best friend to the wrath of a judgemental mother alone. I know what that’s like. My mom was always asking me when I’m gonna get a girlfriend, when I’m gonna get married, when I’m gonna give her grandchildren.” 

“See? That’s why I need you.” Caitlin rested a hand on Cisco’s shoulder. “You get me.” 

“Hey, you know I’m always here for you. Even if that includes being your fake boyfriend for some family Thanksgiving you don’t really wanna go to.” 

“Like I said.” Caitlin chuckled softly. “You get me.” 

~~~

The smell of food filled the entire house. The turkey was still warm from the oven, golden-brown and rich, and surrounded by plenty of sides to go around. Cisco hadn’t left Caitlin’s side since they got there, and even now, he was sitting in the seat next to her. He was mostly making harmless small-talk with Caitlin’s relatives, talking about his job at Star Labs or his family, anything they asked. A few of them asked about his relationship with Caitlin. As someone who kept a whole secret superhero identity, Cisco had gotten used to lying. However, he found that lying about being in a romantic relationship with Caitlin was a lot easier than he expected.

“So, Cisco,” Caitlin’s mother passed the mashed potatoes to him, along with a side of gravy. “How did you and my daughter start dating?” 

“Well,” Cisco looked over at Caitlin to his left, meeting her eyes with the softest loving gaze he could muster. It wasn’t hard, looking at her. Then he turned back to Caitlin’s mother. “Caitlin has been my coworker and best friend for years. Spending all that time with her, I got to know her as the truly amazing, wonderful person she is… the feelings came naturally. I eventually mustered up the courage to confess, and well… look at where we are now.” 

“Aww, that’s sweet!” One of Caitlin’s cousins piped in. 

“Cisco is truly the best boyfriend I could ask for. We go for coffee dates at Jitters so often, the staff practically recognizes us. If I’m having a bad day, all it takes is one text and this guy will show up at my door with chocolates and a movie. He’s the most thoughtful, most considerate guy I know, and I’m so lucky to have him in my life. And I…” Caitlin laced her fingers in with Cisco’s, and gently squeezed his hand in hers. “I love him.” 

“You guys are too cute!”

“Alright, enough.” Caitlin’s uncle teased. “You’re gonna make the rest of us jealous.” 

Everyone at the table laughed heartily, and the conversation changed. Instead, they were discussing sports and the Macy’s Day Parade, and Caitlin and Cisco were off the hook. It was only when Caitlin let go of Cisco’s hand to grab some green beans that they both realized how long she had been holding it. Cisco and Caitlin both blushed, and then desperately tried to change the subject. 

Cisco was asked multiple times about what he does at Star Labs, but Cisco didn’t mind explaining. Caitlin’s family seemed to respect that he was a mechanical engineer. They asked about what it’s like living in Central City with all the meta attacks, to which Cisco tried to answer in the most vague way possible as to not reveal that he’s a meta himself, and one of the heroes stopping the attacks. Caitlin’s mother seemed particularly skeptical of Cisco’s answer on that question, but Cisco understood why. Dr. Tannhauser knows about her daughter’s superhero life. It wouldn’t take a genius for her to gather that Cisco is involved, too.

After dinner, Caitlin and Cisco helped clear off the table. The leftover food was placed into containers or wrapped in tin foil to be saved for later. Caitlin’s mother offered Cisco some leftover turkey to bring home with him, and he took it because he didn’t want to be rude. He figured he could have it for dinner one night when he didn’t feel like cooking or stopping by Big Belly Burger on the way home from work. 

The evening was coming to a close and the sun was setting in the distance. And yet, no one was quite ready to leave. The kids were upstairs playing with action figures, the adults were downstairs talking. Cisco and Caitlin managed to get away from the small talk for a bit, and Caitlin decided to bring Cisco upstairs and show him around her childhood home. After all, the house was a large part of Caitlin’s childhood, and she wanted to share that with her best friend. 

“This was my bedroom for twelve years.” Caitlin said. “Over there, I had a bulletin board with notes, pictures, postcards, et cetera. And over here,” Caitlin opened up her closet and took out an old, battered stuffed animal. “I had all my stuffed animals. This one was my favorite when I was about ten. I think his name was Oscar.” 

Cisco took the stuffed animal and held it ever-so-gently in his hands. “He looks like an Oscar.” 

Caitlin walked over to the other side of her room, where she had a telescope positioned so that it was looking right out her window. She turned to Cisco. “My dad got me this telescope for my ninth birthday. I had practically begged him for it for years.” 

“Wow, this is nice.” Cisco walked over and peered through the telescope. “You can see Mars from here.” 

“My dad and I spent so many nights together just looking at the stars, identifying constellations.” Caitlin said. “He would make some astrological pun and I would laugh, and he’d make another and I’d keep laughing. Mom would hear us down the hall and remind us that it’s late, and it was a school night. Dad would just make me promise to wake up for school the next day, and we’d continue looking at the stars until one of us got too tired.” 

Cisco wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Caitlin grabbed a photo frame off of her dresser and showed it to Cisco. Cisco blew off some of the dust. 

It was a picture of the Snow family. Caitlin looked about eight or nine in the picture. Her brown hair was woven into two little twin braids that rested on her shoulders. She was wearing a floral print dress and holding hands with both of her parents on either side of her. Her dad was smiling in the camera with a loving gaze that Cisco had never seen from Thomas Snow, and her mom was laughing- something Cisco had never seen Carla Tannhauser do. Cisco held the picture delicately in his hands.

It wasn’t just a picture. It was a piece of Caitlin’s childhood. 

“We did a photoshoot in the park for our Christmas cards. The photo turned out really nice, so Mom got it framed. I’ve had it ever since.” Caitlin said. “Those were simpler times, y’know? That was before Dad was Icicle, before I was Killer Frost, before Mom grew distant. Back when my main worry was stupid Lexi LaRoche.” 

Cisco wrapped his arm around Caitlin’s shoulder, offering her a comforting side-hug. He set the photo back down on her dresser, then turned back to Caitlin and brushed her hair behind her ear. “You know I’m here for you, right? No matter what happens with Icicle, no matter what happens with Cicada. You and I, we’re a team. I dare fate to try to seperate us. I’m always going to have your back.” 

“Thank you, Cisco.” The warmth in Caitlin’s eyes reflected her gratitude more than words ever could. “And, you know… The present is certainly different from the past, but it’s not necessarily worse.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Caitlin nodded. “Because right now, you’re here with me.” 

Cisco couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “You’re a sap.” 

“Yeah, yeah, maybe so.” Caitlin laughed. “C’mon, let’s head out. It’s getting late.”

The two of them walked back downstairs and said their polite thank yous and goodbyes to Caitlin’s family before heading out the door. Cisco twirled the keys around his finger as he walked down the sidewalk, and only stopped once they reached the car, in order to open and start it. Once Cisco had pulled out of the driveway, Caitlin began searching the radio for something to listen to. 

“Why are they playing so many songs from 2009-2010?” Caitlin asked. 

“I have no idea, but I’m not complaining.” Cisco shrugged. “2009 songs weren’t half bad.” 

“You also unironically like Rick Astley so I don’t know if I trust your music taste.” 

“Ouch. That hurts.” 

“What, me saying I don’t like your music taste?” 

“Yes, exactly that. I hold my music taste in high regards, thank you very much.” 

“Wait- shh.” 

Cisco glanced at Caitlin with a curious eyebrow raised, silently asking her what the matter was. Caitlin only leaned forward to adjust the volume on the radio, making the current song loud enough for Cisco to hear. 

“Oh my god, they’re playing Poker Face.” 

Caitlin nodded. “Cisco, this is like our song.” 

“From the very first time we met Barry.” Cisco said. “It feels like forever ago.” 

“Five years is a long time.” 

“Sing with me.” 

Caitlin laughed. “What?” 

“Sing along with me.” Cisco looked at her with a certain playful glint in his eyes, one that he knew she couldn’t say no to. “C’mon, you know the lyrics.” 

“You’re driving!” 

“So? I’ve been driving long enough to know how to focus on the road and sing at the same time.” Cisco said. “Besides, there’s not that many cars out tonight.”  

“I’m not the best singer.” 

“Who cares? It’s just us.” Cisco offered his signature smile, the one he knew Caitlin couldn’t say no to. “C’mon. Sing with me.” 

“Oh, alright, alright.” Caitlin gave in. She couldn’t resist smiling a bit at Cisco’s playfulness. He always knew the best way to persuade her. “But you start.” 

“Alright, deal.” 

Cisco started off humming the tune, then progressed into actually singing the words. Caitlin joined in, singing quietly at first, but she got gradually louder as she grew more comfortable. Cisco was right. She knew the lyrics. It was only the two of them. There was no harm in letting loose a little. 

Towards the end of the song, the both of them were belting the lyrics into air-microphones they pretended to hold in their hands. When the time the last note played, they burst into a fit of giggles, sounding less like adults and more like schoolchildren. Cisco was intent on staying focused on the road, but he took the liberty of taking one hand off the wheel to playfully shove Caitlin’s shoulder. 

“See? I knew you’d have fun.” 

“Alright, alright. You were righ-”

Caitlin trailed off as she heard the car engine began sputtering and slowing down. She looked at Cisco, who met her eyes with a concerned gaze of his own. He trailed off to the side of the road and managed to park the car on the dirt before it completely broke down. The two of them immediately unbuckled and got out of the car to take a look at what went wrong. Cisco popped the hood to try to understand what happened, but even he couldn’t figure it out.

“Maybe your car’s just old.” Caitlin suggested.

“Hey, don’t insult her like that.” Cisco rubbed the side of the car’s hood, as if comforting it. “She works great for her age.”

Caitlin laughed. “You’re a weirdo.” 

“Oh my god.” Cisco gasped, as if a realization had just dawned on him. “The battery.” 

“What about it?” 

“I was supposed to replace the battery and I completely forgot.” 

“Ah, so that’s it.” 

“Look, in my defense, life has been kinda crazy for us lately. We had just defeated Devoe- and Devoe was rough- when Barry and Iris’s daughter from the future shows up, and just her being here is causing timeline changes everywhere, and apparently now there’s a new supervillain named Cicada, and he can dampen our powers with that dagger of his. So yeah, I maybe forgot about a few things from my non-superhero life.” 

“I don’t blame you.” Caitlin said. “I know firsthand how crazy life has been.” 

“Hang on, maybe I can call someone for help. I wonder if Barry’s willing to come get us.” 

“Couldn’t you breach us?” 

Cisco held up his hands, showing Caitlin the white bandages tied around them. “My powers are still dampened from the shrapnel, remember?” 

“Right. Sorry. It’s been a long day.” 

“It’s okay. Lemme call Barry or Iris and see if they can come get us.” 

Cisco made a quick phone call. Caitlin decided to wait in the car, so she got back in the passenger’s seat and waited to hear from Cisco. Once Cisco hung up, he climbed into the driver’s seat next to Caitlin and placed his phone down on the dashboard. 

“Barry’s coming to pick us up.” He said. “He’s taking Iris’s car. We can call a tow truck for my own car, seeing as how there’s no way Iris’s will be able to tow it.” 

“Alright.” Caitlin said. “So I guess now the only thing to do is wait.” 

“I’m sorry. You’d probably be home by now if we hadn’t broken down.” 

“What’re you apologizing for? It’s not like you planned on it.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cisco sighed and leaned back against his seat. “Still, though. Even with your family’s constant questions… I’m glad I came with you tonight.” 

“Yeah?” Caitlin turned to him. “Even though my uncles wouldn’t stop asking you about baseball?”

Cisco laughed. “I was really confused. I really haven’t got a clue about baseball. But yes, even then.” 

“Well, good. I’m glad you came out with me tonight, too.” 

“Honestly, it’s better than eating store-bought turkey while watching Star Wars alone in my apartment, which is honestly probably what I would’ve done.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t have let you be alone for Thanksgiving. I would’ve invited you over.” 

“That’s nice of you. Thanks.” 

“Y’know,” Caitlin readjusted her position so that she could face Cisco without leaning her neck. “I have to admit, I’m kinda glad Barry and Ralph were busy.”

“Why?” 

“Because… I don’t think it would’ve been quite this special if I had done it with Barry or Ralph. Barry, he’s married. Ralph, he’s not really my type.”

“What, and you’re saying I am?” It was initially a joke. Cisco followed it up with a chuckle, as if implying the idea was absurd. 

Caitlin didn’t respond. 

“Wait.” Cisco met Caitlin’s eyes with a million emotions at once as he realized what Caitlin’s silence meant. “You’re saying…” 

“Look, Cisco…” Caitlin took a deep breath as she mentally prepared her next words. “There’s another reason why I really wanted you to go with me tonight. Why I wanted you to pretend to be my boyfriend. Because, if I’m being honest with you… I like you. As more than a friend.” She hesitated. “God, I sound like I’m in middle school. But it’s the truth.”

Cisco paused. He took a moment to process the confession he had just gotten. The wheels in his head were turning, his heartbeat raced in his chest. He sighed, then found his words.

“You wanna know why I was so good at pretending to be your boyfriend tonight? I mean, none of your family members suspected a thing. Acting has never really been my forte. I took some acting classes with Dante back in high school, but we both sucked and inevitably dropped out. My point is, I can sell a fake story to cover up my hero alter ego when I have to, and I can lie when something really depends on it. But pretending to be in love with someone… I think I could only pull that off if it were at least partially true.” 

“What’re you saying?” 

“Remember when I told your mom that story about how we got together?” Cisco said. “Well, the whole part about me catching feelings for you... that was true.”

Caitlin’s eyes widened. “You… have feelings for me?” 

“Don’t act so surprised. With your intelligence and your charming personality, I’m surprised anyone can look at you and not fall completely in love.” 

She blushed. “I just… never thought my feelings were reciprocated.” 

“Neither did I.” 

“I’m glad we did this then.” 

“Y’know, Caitlin…” Cisco tapped his fingers against the leather car seat. “I think I have a great idea for how you can cash in that favor you owe me.” 

“Yeah?” 

“We’ll go out together, somewhere where it’s just us. We can talk and joke and I’ll buy you coffee. It’ll be a date. Our first real romantic one.” Cisco studied Caitlin’s expression for a reaction. “How does that sound?” 

Caitlin reached for Cisco’s hand and laced her fingers into his, holding his palm gently in hers. It was just like she had held it back at dinner, only this time, it wasn’t for show. 

“That sounds wonderful.”

[heather-in-heels]

Sam

This is a love story, but it is only love in the sense of meeting a person who changes you forever. You meet them at a time in your life when you need their fresh set of eyes the most. As a result, you wind up in love with them. Not a romantic love, but a thoughtful love where you know you left an imprint on their heart and they left one on yours, too.

Sam was a New Yorker, I live in the Los Angeles Valley. East Coast. West Coast. Over 2000 miles in between. That has all the trappings for a romcom waiting to happen, but in reality it doesn’t pan out as meet cute as you imagine. 

We met on Tinder. Another setback. This is the end all, be all, of the apps for hookups. Swiping and uploading your best photos — voila, maybe you find your true love because an algorithm and narcissism said it should be so!

I’ve always liked to read the captions. His read, “If you have a good world view and you enjoy movies, candy, wine, and adventures... I think we would get along just fine.”

Swipe right. Hard right.

So I gotta ask what you do for work cause you clearly have more than the rest of us :-)

Also... hi :-)

That was his first message to me. I had to dig far into the recesses of my Tinder profile to find it. The message made sense if you know me. Most of my online dating photos are me with brand mascots. I write about characters and they’re in 70%, if not more, of my iPhone’s photos.

Hi Sam. Winking emoji.

That was my first message back to him.

Sam was staying in Canoga Park, a part of the San Fernando Valley I knew well(ish). It was a little more foreign to him. Kind of like how I felt about Brooklyn, where he lived and I had never been.

We talked for several days, on and off the app. He asked me out. I said yes and our first date was on March 12th. Sunday. I never go out on Sunday nights. That’s because I am boring. I go to bed early. There was something about him, though. If the conversation in person was half as good as the one through text,  I had to meet him. This could either work for or against me, but that’s the bet you take on any date. 

When Sam walked into the restaurant/bar, my eyes felt like a row of jackpot symbols at a casino. He looked like the actor Patrick Wilson. He dressed well. He was funny and thoughtful and witty. I felt like I won some kind of lottery I didn’t know existed. We all put our best foot forward on the first date, but this wasn’t the best version of him. This was him. I was seeing every bright part right now. The color gold in a world gone gray. 

This was exactly the kind of person I wanted to be with when I saw my future. Previously in this episode of Heather’s Life, I had dated nothing but scrubs as my girlfriends liked to call them. I didn’t know what it was like to date a good guy.

I went to the bathroom at one point and when I came out, he was chatting with the people at the table behind us. He had also hung up my coat, that I had carelessly tossed onto my chair, onto a hook. I stood and watched him speaking with these people for a moment, smiling. It was so him. Charming the whole room and everyone in it.

I’m leaving out my favorite detail. He came bearing a gift. We had been talking about our favorite candy before we met and I said mine were Twizzlers. He brought a pack with him. 

I never ate the Twizzlers. It was such an unspeakably simple, kind act that I wanted to hang on to them.

We talked about our lives and selves and dreams. He told me about how he saw Daft Punk live at their Alive tour. We talked about our mutual love for EDM. He talked about his DJ’ing he had done before. Rick and Morty, and how he identified as Rick. Anne Hathaway, his celebrity crush. His dream of becoming a late night talk show host. How he hated missing the turn exits on the freeway and having to drive further out.

Sam was a man of spontaneity, something I, as a person, have never been able to do. No, wait. I was spontaneous once. I used to take trips, even though I had debt and little money to spend. Then I turned 30 and stopped doing a lot of things. Sam insisted that this was no excuse. No way to live. He had debt too, but it didn’t stop him from showing up or living life. 

Hours later, we got ready to leave. He offered to give me a ride home. I never say yes to these kinds of offers. But, I felt safe with Sam. I knew it would be okay. 

We drove the short distance back to my place, singing along to Taylor Swift on his Apple Music. Full blast to “Style.” We missed an exit on the way, but he laughed it off. 

A good first date. An even better first kiss.

Life went on. He went home and I stayed put. Both of us worked a lot. I should add here that he worked so much. Rivaling myself, and that is not a good thing either.

A few months later, some texts in between, me going on dud dates with other guys, Sam texts me to say he’s coming back to California. “Let’s hang out!”

I jumped at the chance to see him again. 

See, it happened. A second date. We weren’t supposed to get another, but we did and the catching up was even better the second time around. Things were changing for the both of us, on the up and up. I was getting my student loans paid off. He was interviewing for new design clients in San Diego.

Another drive back to my place together, and then we decided to go out again the next night.

Three dates? Inconceivable! He had a surprise for me this time. We were going to a carnival. He was the driver and I was the passenger. But, even though I had no idea where this carnival was, I still directed him to the right place. I had a feeling I knew where it was when he mentioned seeing certain landmarks and it wasn’t in Van Nuys. I won a stuffed otter as a prize. 

Later that night (well, it was more like later that morning), we drove back to my place. I had a thought on the way there. Why go home at all? He had always wanted to go to Malibu and I live close enough. It was a beautiful night and I suggested that we drive down to the ocean. 

Sam was so excited to do it. The drive was a straight shot down one road. The top to the car was down, the wind was blowing, and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” was blasting on his Apple Music. It reminded me of that moment in the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower when the main characters are driving through a tunnel listening to David Bowie and feeling, as the protagonist Charlie called it, infinite. Every time I turned to look at Sam, he was grinning from ear to ear. He was having the time of his life. And even though I was a mess, with my hair everywhere and no makeup on, I was too.

Life and time went on after that night and we went back to our respective worlds. October approached and with it the New York trip I was going on. I had been working myself to the bone every night after work for months and was exhausted and excited for it to finally come together. Sam had mentioned we could hang out when I got to New York. We FaceTimed a few times together and he, somewhat begrudgingly, admitted he would go with me to Katz’s Deli. There were way better food places than Katz’s to go to, he said.

What was our last conversation about? The last conversation I had no idea would be the last one? Bob Ross. He loved Bob Ross and I found a game on some website that you could play and told Sam about it. We admitted that it did look a little challenging to play and maybe it could be played by someone else later on.

That was the last time I talked to him.

I found out about Sam’s death on Friday September 28th. I was packing my suitcase for the New York trip. Then, I saw a Facebook post about him. He had died.

The five stages of grief rolled out fairly quickly. Denial, because it felt like a sick joke. Anger, because I could not understand. Bargaining, because all I could see was this beautiful, living, laughing boy. Why did he die when so many horrible men get to live? Depression. Acceptance.

I haven’t gone through the fifth stage yet. I think I’m still stuck in the fourth.  

I put a black dress in my suitcase first, rolled into a tight ball. The Twizzlers occupied their own side pocket. I gradually packed throughout the night in between taking calls and answering texts from concerned friends and family. Sometimes I would pause while packing and stare off into space. Or I would pack while crying because my brain kept telling me to move forward.

When I arrived to the airport on Saturday, I felt like I was walking through JELL-O. Everything was a dull roar. I stared off aimlessly into space for about an hour before I decided to go sit at a bar. I drank at a rock and roll themed bar and talked to a stranger sitting next to me about what had happened. I don’t know how we stumbled into this conversation. He was a VP for a banking firm in New York. Had 500 employees under him. Knew what it was like to lose someone and shared his own story with me. I felt less alone.

The turning point, which I tell everyone about, happened at 12:30 AM on a Sunday morning. I had arrived to my hotel by then and didn’t know what to do with myself. I was hungry and went to the pizza place next door. In front of me was a couple from Australia. Behind me was a guy from Atlanta. Behind him was a woman from Fort Lauderdale. Everyone was from a different place in the world, all gathered together for pizza.

It changed everything for me, this moment. This was the first time in years where I felt a connection. I haven’t gone out or done much in awhile now. I sleep, I work, I go home, and work some more so I can pay my student loan off. This loan has taken over my life and it totally shows.

I don’t live, and I am trying very hard to get better about that. This is something Sam, in the little time I knew him, told me I needed to do. I used to fight him on this. Everything is too expensive. He would counter that he also had debt. I need to be working during this time. He told me you can work at any age. Finally, I would get to the bottom of it all and admit that everything was so fragile. My life is like a carpet that is always close to getting yanked out from underneath me. I don’t have a husband or children or a house or anything that a lot of people have at my age. I’ve gotten to the point where I am grabbing this carpet and refusing to let go because I am too afraid of what happens when there is no more carpet. 

At the core of myself, this kind of behavior infuriates me. The me that I am and have always been. The me that Sam saw. She sees me doing this and knows it’s actually childish behavior. She is a person who tells me to be kinder, keep doing more, and do not believe one state or city or country can stop you. She keeps the faith that it will all work out even though she doesn’t know how.

That Sunday morning was the first time in awhile I felt connected.

Several hours later, I prepared to say goodbye. I had asked his cousin in advance if I could go to his service, out of concern that it would not be appropriate since I knew so little about him. She graciously said I could go. The outfit I had to wear, the drive into Brooklyn, the absolute feeling that this was concrete and final. He was gone.

The drive to Brooklyn was my first one there. As the car got closer to the building, I saw all of the cop cars blocking off the streets and everyone heading into the building. There were so many people. Every single one impacted by him. Most of them were crying.

I had never been to a funeral for an Orthodox Jewish family before. The actual burial would take place off-site. No cremation. No flowers or wake. A shiva would be held on Wednesday. The men and women sat on opposite sides of the room with folding tables standing in place between us. We may have been separated, but grief held everyone together like a nasty cobweb we were all trapped inside. 

The first moment I heard the fine print details behind Sam’s debt was when his brother delivered his speech. I knew Sam had debt, of course. Knew how much and how he had incurred this debt. 

What I didn’t know that even in debt Sam kept giving to everyone he knew. He continued to financially support his family. He paid for everything he could with the little he had. He gave what a reasonable person would not or what they would try to excuse themselves from doing. When I told him I was coming to New York, he offered to let me stay at his place. I laughed when I heard that. Part of it was because it was funny, since I assured him I already had a hotel room. The other part was that I could not imagine making an offer to a person I barely knew.

In retrospect, I saw that every action, every decision, came from a place where kindness and love were put forth first. Give, and maybe ask questions later. He loved you for who you were and wanted to be there to support you at every turn.

I cried a lot.

When I left, a monarch butterfly flew in front of my Lyft car. That butterfly was completely Sam’s spirit. I just knew it. He would not want me to go back to the hotel and cry. This was a big week for my career and my dreams. Months of hard work went into this week. I could not disappoint the people involved. This meant just as much to me as it did to them.

What followed, in light of a deeply dark day, was a beautiful week. The gala was a hit, I walked up to the NASDAQ stage instead of crawling this year (young me crawled so I could walk... I get it now!), and the panel was amazing. 

“Great minds unthink alike.” It was the company 15th anniversary theme and one I felt throughout the entire week. Connection remained a personal running theme for myself. I felt myself connect in New York City. This was a city that used to scare me during previous visits because I didn’t think I had a place there. It was different this time. I have friends, I have work. I have a network that I did not have years ago. I can walk anywhere. Everything is open 24/7, there’s something new to explore, and new faces just waiting to be met.

I saw a similar monarch butterfly a week ago. It made me smile. I knew it was him. Don’t ask me how I knew something like this. I just do.

Sam came into my life at a time when I needed a new perspective. He taught me that there are men out there that will love me for who I am. He also taught me to go out there and chase adventure. I’m 30. I’ll be 31 soon. It sounds like it’s a little late in life to learn lessons like these, but I don’t think it is. 

I wonder if this is just the beginning.

For the rest of my life, I will be thankful to have known him. A little bit of time is better than no time at all and he was, and will always be, a teenage dream to me.

[forget-me-knots-behind-our-eyes]

I’m putting this here as my brain is refusing to let me move on with my morning until I say shit and my private journal isn’t helping right now. 

TW for generally abusive parents, mentions of suicide, and probably more that I just can’t think of right now. 

I don’t know my parent’s version of events and I probably will never know, I’ve pretty much decided against talking to either of them ever again. When I was very little (less than 6), we lived in a few little suburbs in Chicago. The last one we lived in was your stereotypical, white picket fence, doctor and lawyer neighborhood, complete with a chandelier house. The first house I remember living in, I had a terrible dream about an “evil cat lady” that tore out my baby brother’s eyes and killed the rest of my family. The dream terrorized me for a full week before I stopped dreaming altogether. The woman looked distinctly like my mother, but I have left that out of every single retelling I have ever had. 

My mother was a stay-at-home mom during that time, and she spent a good portion of her time with me showing me how to be booksmart and get A’s in school while also telling me exactly how to care for a baby and cook and clean. This started when I was 3. My first ever F was on a spelling test in first grade and I remember bringing it home and thinking nothing of it, after all, it was just a letter. I remember getting relentlessly spanked and from then on I was required to write my spelling words 10 times each and an extra 10 times for every misspelling. I didn’t find out I had dyslexia until I was in college. 

My dad lost his job due to his work cutting his department and on his way out, he shared information with the company that was hiring him, which sparked an entire court case and ended with him being blacklisted in Chicago. I don’t know if this is when he started drinking heavily or if it was before. My mother claims he was drinking excessively long before she met him and my brother has said that my dad’s new girlfriend (T) was told that dad started drinking because he couldn’t deal with my mother. 

My mom managed to find a job in NY, working at a nuclear power station and she found my dad a job at the same plant. So we moved north to live near my grandparents so they could watch us during the day while my dad worked. The commute was over an hour one way. This was one of the few times I could not be a mother to my three siblings as grandma was there to do it for me. I do know my dad was drinking heavily at this point and there were a few times I had to stand up for my siblings so they wouldn’t get beaten. 

On one occasion, we had taken some photos with a disposable camera. My dad went to have them exposed so we could see the photos. Apparently, some of them were revealing (I think it was a butt). Obviously, we should have known that doing so could have my parents thrown in jail and we deserved to be beaten for that. (sarcasm) I’m not sure about other adults, but when you hear a child crying and saying “no don’t hurt him hurt me instead” the thought should be “wait, that’s fucked up” not “okay, I’ll hurt you both.” 

We later moved to a nicer house, closer to our parent’s work. I was told to help out the babysitter as she wouldn’t know what to do and they just needed her there because I couldn’t drive. I was 10. I cooked, I cleaned, I did first aid when the babysitter cut off the tip of her thumb, I did my homework, I looked after my siblings and made sure they stayed out of the way and did their work. Since it was usually just my dad, we could just hide and we’d be fine during his drunk escapades. My mother would come and find us if she didn’t have my dad to scream at. 

10 years old and I had the responsibilities of an adult. And then our school decided to tell us about drug use and suicide. I didn’t even think suicide was an option. I knew hurting myself made my brain feel better, physical pain was easier than emotional and I was careful so that no one would ever see or be able to tell. Suicide was an entirely new concept. And fucked up 11 year-old me decided it was a good idea. I tried, I survived, and I was alone. The only reason I am still here is because my baby sister would have been the one to find me and I couldn’t stand the idea of her handling what I was handling. I told my mom about it years later and she told me I was an ungrateful bitch and that she was suicidal too and had picked a corner to crash her car into. 

I only have snapshots, most everything prior to college is a complete blank. It is blocked out and I am not sure I want it back. 

We moved again. And again. New house same bullshit. I started high school. I was alone most afternoons as I went to a public school and my siblings went to a private Catholic school. My parents, mostly my mother, kept trying to force me to conform with religion. It was something I’d been dealing with my whole life and I had learned to just roll with it and say what they wanted to hear. 

One sunday, my mother gets into her head that Jesus was telling her to send her kids to this private Catholic school 45min away that she saw a billboard for. She had promised me I could stay at the same school for all of high school. I was making friends for once. I was doing sports and enjoying it. I wanted to be left the fuck alone. Saturdays were my rest days and Sundays were the days I finished up any leftover homework. I had a paper due. She knew this. She agreed to let me stay home to finish it before we went to church. Afterward, she demanded that I go to the open house with them. That Jesus told her I had to go. There was no other option for me. She said I hadn’t told her anything and she hadn’t promised anything. 

I finish High School at the Catholic one. Spend the last 2 years in an abusive relationship then getting shunned by the school because he was one of the popular kids and the friends I had made stopped talking to me because I wasn’t gay. (I’m bi and apparently that didn’t fucking count) My one friend left is my spouse now and I love them to pieces, but I still regret attending that school. 

I go to college and the family fucking falls apart. No one knew what to do without me. My dad started going after my siblings more, as did my mom. I came back one summer and said I was going to a party. I was 20 at the time and they said okay, let us know when and where. I told them both. I wrote it on the whiteboard we kept in the kitchen. I reminded them of it every damn day. Day of the party, my mother is out of town and my dad is alone with my siblings. He can’t remember or read the board and interrogates and threatens them. Calls my mom freaking out. Does not text me even once. 

A relative I cared for died and I wasn’t told until after the funeral. My brother became suicidal and I didn’t find out until after they institutionalized him. My parents started divorce proceedings and I wasn’t told until they were halfway through it. 

I stopped talking to my dad after I finally moved all the way out. I had planned to stop talking to my mom as soon as I had my own phone. But then she started going to therapy and taking her meds. She was doing well, so I stayed in touch. She was acting like a mom for once. She had boasted for years about her hitting us to stay in line and that she really only needed to slap me once for mouthing off. She had complained for years that she never wanted kids. 

This past year, she complained more about having kids, and how she was horny and wasn’t fully attracted to the men she was dating. She either didn’t like their mind or didn’t like their body and couldn’t do even a one-night stand if it wasn’t the full package. Well she met Rick a month ago. He’s basically my dad. None of us like him. She’s relapsed into the person she used to be. She got into a fight with my brother and told him that she didn’t care if all of her children left her as long as one person still loved her. She said this in front of my sister who is 15. Who was taken off of her anxiety, depression, and adhd meds because “she didn’t need them” after she forgot to take them for a week and “seemed fine.”

On our vacation a couple of weeks ago, my sister was being a typical 15 year old and my brother was a typical 18 year old and she snapped at my sister. I had told my brother (I have 2 the other is 20 and was the one having the fight) and he told my mom that the reason I had told her to calm down was that she snapped at her and was being a bitch about normal 15 year old behavior. My mother then turned to my sister, who clearly wanted to run away and said “I didn’t snap at you. Right? “ and then didn’t listen when she said kinda. 

My brother was kicked out of the house at the end of the night. She texted my dad saying she was concerned for her safety and had thought about calling the cops. She wouldn’t let him pick up his stuff unless she was there. He had to send my sister. She now won’t let my sister get her stuff unless she goes alone. My dad, who was always a violent drunk, is the safer option right now.

I trust my brother and he says dad ha sobered up and is doing better. The depiction my brother paints of him is the exact opposite of what my mother says he’s been doing. Apparently my dad is being a dad for once. He apparently wanted to reach out and apologize to me, but didn’t because my brothers told him I was still pissed. 

My mother, on the other hand, has left guilt-trippy messages, and tried to message me in ways to get me to respond to her. (Voicemail : Hey just wanted to see how you were doing since I haven’t heard form you in a while and wanted to make sure you were okay. (She had previously said that she wasn’t going to talk to me until I apologized for telling her to calm down after she snapped at my sister) Apparently I have been put on the “do not talk to” list. Don’t know how I got there. If you’re not answering I guess that’s true. (She called me on my busiest night, I wouldn’t have answered anyway) I love you.) A snapchat of “Hey are you okay?” and finally a text of “Do you want me to mail you the dollhouse” (Which was made by my dead Popo).

I’ve decided not responding is better for my mental health since nothing I say will change the outcome of this scenario or undo the damage that she had done. Talking to her will only make it worse. I’m just a bit disappointed that it came to this. But, she always said she never wanted kids. Now she doesn’t. 

[bountyofbeads]

All the President’s Thugs https://nyti.ms/2RqLbHE

"By going public, Parnas has probably done nothing to sway Republicans toward removing Trump from office, not because they don’t believe him, but because they know Trump did what he’s accused of and don’t care" And that America is the real problem !

All the President’s Thugs

Of course Lev Parnas is unreliable. He worked for Trump.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist | Published Jan. 17, 2020, 4:06 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 17, 2020 |

One good thing about surrounding yourself with tawdry gangsters and grifters is that if they flip on you, you can claim they have no credibility because they’re criminals.

Now that Lev Parnas, a key conspirator in Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s plot to shake down Ukraine, is singing, Trump’s defenders are pointing out that he is a disreputable person who can’t be trusted. “This is a man who is under indictment and who’s actually out on bail. This is a man who owns a company called Fraud Inc.,” the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said on Fox News, the only network on which she regularly appears. (Parnas’s company was actually called Fraud Guarantee, though that’s not any better.)

Grisham is obviously correct that he’s a shady character. He’s certainly not someone you’d want, say, threatening foreign officials on behalf of the president of the United States, as Parnas claimed he did during an extraordinary interview with Rachel Maddow that aired on Wednesday and Thursday on MSNBC.

Trumpists similarly dismissed Michael Cohen, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer before Giuliani did. The day Cohen testified to Congress that Trump is a “racist,” a “con man” and a “cheat,” a Trump campaign spokeswoman blasted him as “a felon, a disbarred lawyer and a convicted perjurer.” (Some of his felonies, of course, were things he did for Trump.) When Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, testified against his former boss Paul Manafort, Manafort’s lawyer grilled him, asking, “After all the lies you’ve told and fraud you’ve committed, you expect this jury to believe you?”

Giuliani himself is under federal criminal investigation. In a 2018 text to Parnas recently released by the House Intelligence Committee, Giuliani seemed to joke, apropos of Robert Mueller, “I’m no rat,” but should the prospect of prison ever change his mind, expect Republicans to make a similar case against believing a crooked and paranoid barfly. A willingness to associate with Trump is a sign of moral turpitude, so most witnesses to his venal schemes will necessarily be compromised.

Thus nothing that Parnas said in the Maddow interview should be taken at face value. Important questions remain unanswered, including who was paying all of the bills. (Remember — he was paying Giuliani, not vice versa.) Parnas’s decision to go public in the first place is hard to fathom.

None of that, however, means that his dramatic interview on the eve of Trump’s impeachment trial shouldn’t be taken seriously. That’s because much of what he says has been corroborated, and because the very fact that a person like Parnas was carrying out high-level international missions for the president shows how mob-like this administration is.

You don’t have to take Parnas’s word that he was working at the president’s behest. Last fall, when House impeachment investigators asked for documents and testimony from Parnas and his associate, Igor Fruman, they were initially represented by John Dowd, formerly one of Trump’s defense lawyers in the Mueller inquiry. Dowd, in turn, wrote to Congress that Parnas and Fruman would not cooperate with the impeachment investigation because some of the information the House sought may have been privileged. “Be advised that Messers. Parnas and Fruman assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump,” the letter said. (Documents that Parnas later provided to the House Intelligence Committee show that Trump signed off on Dowd representing them.)

Some of the most disturbing and clarifying information Parnas has provided since turning on Trump involves the administration’s fixation on Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine. It’s true that people around Trump saw her as an obstacle to getting Ukraine’s government to open a politically motivated investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, but that doesn’t quite explain the scale of the animosity toward her.

Trump didn’t just fire her. He told Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, that she was going to “go through some things.” We learned this week that Robert Hyde, a deranged Trumpworld hanger-on and Republican congressional candidate, sent a series of messages to Parnas suggesting he was stalking Yovanovitch. (Ukraine has opened an investigation into Hyde’s activity, and on Thursday he was visited by the F.B.I.) A lawyer and Fox News regular named Victoria Toensing — who has represented a Kremlin-aligned Ukrainian oligarch who is, according to the Justice Department, an upper-echelon associate of Russian organized crime figures — texted Giuliani saying, “Is there absolute commitment for her to be gone this week?” Why the obsession with Yovanovitch?

Parnas added to the evidence that when it came to Yovanovitch, Trump and his crew willingly allowed themselves to be manipulated by Yuri Lutsenko, a disgraced former chief prosecutor of Ukraine who loathed her for her anti-corruption work. (As the State Department official George Kent said during the impeachment hearings, you can’t fight corruption “without pissing off corrupt people.”) In WhatsApp messages to Parnas, Lutsenko expressed fury that Yovanovitch hadn’t been fired yet. He spoke of all he’d done to push the spurious Biden scandal, adding, “And yet you can’t even get rid of one fool.”

“In that text message to you,” Maddow asked on Thursday, “is Mr. Lutsenko saying, in effect, listen, if you want me to make these Biden allegations, you’re going to have to get rid of this ambassador?” Parnas replied: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”

A few months ago, I wrote a column arguing that when it comes to Ukraine, Trump is at once a con man and a mark, and the information Parnas has provided backs this up. Having promised Lutsenko that he’d get Yovanovitch fired, Parnas told Trump, falsely, that Yovanovitch had bad-mouthed him. His text messages show that he pushed Donald Trump Jr. to tweet about her.

Parnas was the vehicle through which a dirty Ukrainian politician pulled Trump’s strings to take revenge on an American official who’d tried to uphold the rule of law. She was threatened, smeared and fired in part because Trump is easily influenced by the goons and bottom feeders in his orbit.

By going public, Parnas has probably done nothing to sway Republicans toward removing Trump from office, not because they don’t believe him, but because they know Trump did what he’s accused of and don’t care. Writing to Politico’s John F. Harris, a Trump supporter recently described the president as “our O.J.,” an apt analogy for Republicans’ vengeful determination to give a guilty man impunity. (As it happens, Trump will be represented by one of O.J. Simpson’s old lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, at his Senate trial.)

But Parnas is worth paying attention to because he’s shown us, once again, what Trumpism looks like from the inside. It’s part “The Sopranos” and part, as he put it to Maddow, a “cult.” The qualities that discredit Parnas are the same ones that let him fit right in.

*********

If we think it's bad now, think of the tyranny that would characterize a second term. It would be difficult to exaggerate the danger. That it again is likely to turn on a relatively small number of voters in three states is a reminder of how fragile our semi-democracy is, how susceptible to the winds of Fortuna.

Being eligible to vote and not registering is a vote for Trump. Being registered to vote and not voting is a vote for Trump. Voting for a third party candidate is a vote for Trump.

Trump’s Evil Is Contagious

The president has shown us exactly what happens when good people do nothing.

By Timothy Egan, Contributing Opinion Writer | Published Jan. 17, 2020 | New York Times | Posted January 17, 2020 |

It passed with the usual shrug by the usual handmaidens of hatred when the president of the world’s most powerful democracy threatened to commit war crimes by bombing Iranian cultural sites — the kind of barbarism practiced by the Taliban and rogue-state thugs.

After being told that he would be in violation of Geneva Convention rules that the United States had helped to create back when America was actually great, President Trump relented, but still wondered: Why not?

The warlord in chief had already gone out of his way to protect a Navy SEAL member who’d been accused of committing war crimes. And what kind of man did the president upend the military code of justice for?

“The guy is freaking evil,” one fellow SEAL told investigators, referring to Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, who was convicted of posing for photos with the corpse of a teenage boy who’d been killed in his custody. After the presidential intervention, the formerly shamed serviceman was posing at Mar-a-Lago.

On any given day, Trump is vindictive, ignorant, narcissistic, a fraud — well, his pathologies are well known. But it’s time to apply the same word to him as the brave Navy man did to the renegade in his unit. Under Trump, the United States is a confederacy of corruption, driven by a thousand points of evil. And that evil is contagious.

We all grew up hearing an ageless warning about public morality: that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

The presumed outcome is reassuring, a story we tell ourselves. But in the last three years, that homily has been proved right, in the country where it was not supposed to happen. The Trump presidency has shown just how many ostensibly good people will do nothing, and how evil, when given a free rein at the top, trickles down.

When Trump retweeted a fabricated image of the two most important Democratic leaders of Congress dressed in Islamic garb in front of the Iranian flag, there was no chorus of condemnation from his side. Here was a graphic lie, a cheap defamation, the kind of dirty little trick that politicians usually give to the felon operating under the radar. For Trump, it was just another Monday.

Was it politics, or evil, when candidate Trump smeared a Gold Star family in 2016? Was it a mere shift in public policy, or evil, when Trump allowed people acting in our name to put children in cages and separate them from their mothers?

Was it mere theatrics to revel in a chant of “Lock her up,” about Hillary Clinton, who has now been exonerated, twice, by federal investigators? Was it normal for the 44th successor of a president who could not tell a lie, to lie more than 15,000 times?

Trump has so desensitized us that a day without a round of blunt force cruelty from the White House is newsworthy. And now it all comes to a boil in the impeachment trial. The facts are not in dispute: Trump tried to force a struggling democracy into doing his political dirty work for him. He tried to squeeze a foreign power into meddling in our election. What is very much in doubt is whether enough good people will do something.

In the process of this high crime, Trump broke the law, as a nonpartisan congressional watchdog reported Thursday. The greater evil is the violation of the lofty purpose written into this country’s founding documents. The smaller evils are the Republican senators who know the president violated his oath and deserved to be impeached, but don’t have the guts to say so.

“Do not, as my party did, underestimate the evil, desperate nature of evil, desperate people,” writes Rick Wilson, the Republican operative and witty Never-Trumper, in “Running Against the Devil,” his new book. “There is no bottom. There is no shame. There are no limits.”

As for the contagion of evil, you need not look far. In Texas this month, Gov. Greg Abbott said his state would become the first to refuse to take in even a small number of legal, fully vetted refugees. These are people who’ve been approved by the federal government for asylum, after being displaced by war, famine or persecution. In the past, people from Vietnam, Cuba and Africa have been welcomed, and have gone on to become some of our finest citizens.

A handful of citizens, the Catholic Church, some members of Congress, objected. “Accepting refugees with open arms — giving without keeping score — is who we are as Americans,” tweeted Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, herself an immigrant.

Sorry, that’s not who we are as Americans in the Trump era. When the hate flag is flying, most of Trump’s followers have stood up and saluted.

Here’s the two-step that all good people must take now: First, realize the level of depravity that has taken over the White House, and second, fight accordingly.

“Do not come to this fight believing that the Trump team views any action, including outright criminality, as off limits,” writes Wilson. This doesn’t mean you have to cheat, lie or coerce. But it means you do have to fight, or be counted among the do-nothings who allowed evil to flourish.

*********

TOO LITTLE TO LATE, Rubio and his Republican colleagues created this monster it time to put your money where your mouth is and vote to impeach this SOB!!!!

Marco Rubio: Investing in China Is Not a Good Deal

It will result in American capital flowing to a regime that undermines our country. This is not a win.

By Marco Rubio, Mr. Rubio is a Republican senator from Florida. | Published Jan. 17, 2020 | New York Times | Posted January 17, 2020 |

It’s no secret that Wall Street hated President Trump’s aggressive trade tactics toward China. But its executives are very happy with the financial services section of the recently signed “phase one” deal that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin negotiated with China.

Instead of holding China accountable for exploiting American capital markets, “phase one” of the deal will make sure American capital continues to directly fund China’s state-run economy. American financing will increase to state-owned enterprises like China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, which produces about 80 percent of the Chinese Navy’s main equipment, and Hikvision, whose products Beijing uses to surveil Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Another appalling example of how good this part of the deal is for China is the provision authorizing American financial companies to purchase Chinese nonperforming loans. These are loans that the borrower is struggling to pay off. This makes them a favorite of Chinese state-owned enterprises and other companies with large capital expenditures but little revenue growth expected in the near term.

A majority of Chinese nonperforming loans go to state-owned enterprises. In the past, when a Chinese bank struggled with financing nonperforming loans on its books, Beijing had to bail it out with Chinese money. But now, under this deal, American savings can do it.

The rising number of nonperforming loans has been a problem in China’s economy; last year ended with almost the highest percentage of loans outstanding in over a decade. President Trump’s tariffs were having a real effect on the Chinese economy. It brought its leaders to the table to deal with vital issues like China’s theft of American intellectual property and its blocking of market access for American manufacturers. But now this part of the “deal” with China throws open the gates to American capital. They now get to keep up their exploitation, with our money.

For decades, China has used Wall Street’s hunger for profit to lure American capital into a trap: the Communist Party’s clear intent of displacing the United States as the world’s economic and military superpower. This “deal” will result in American capital flowing to the government-owned companies that China props up to undermine our country. This is not a win.

Investing American capital in China may earn better returns in the short term. But it will come at a tremendous cost in the long term.

American dollars aren’t being invested in Chinese companies that succeed based on their honest business model and ability to grow. They are being invested in companies that exist to serve a Chinese Communist Party intent on undermining America, human rights and religious liberty.

Allowing the savings of Americans to be linked to the success of the Chinese government and Communist Party is a grave error we will come to regret. Beijing’s state planners couldn’t have written the financial services section better if they tried. They’ll get to finance their industrial ambitions with the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world — our own.

Policymakers in Washington, who were once naïve about China’s exploitation of our capital markets and the American-led global order, are now giving the financial relationship between the United States and Beijing the scrutiny it rightly deserves. For instance, the bipartisan Equitable Act, which I introduced, would delist Chinese companies that do not comply with American laws and regulations for financial transparency and accountability from United States exchanges.

Finding a peaceful and workable path forward for United States-China relations is the defining geopolitical issue of this century, and President Trump deserves credit for getting the Chinese to the negotiating table. However, the financial services section of the “phase one” deal could undermine the significant progress the agreement makes on other priorities.

As the Trump administration negotiates “phase two,” we must grapple with this challenge by enacting a pro-American industrial and financial policy that puts American capital to work for American workers, their skills and our development.

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The Real Risks of Republicans’ Burying Their Heads in the Sand

G.O.P. senators will harm Congress if they turn away from new testimony and information relevant to impeachment.

By Margaret L. Taylor, Ms. Taylor is a senior editor at Lawfare and a fellow at Brookings. | Published Jan. 17, 2020 | New York Times | Posted Jan 17, 2020 |

Just as President Trump’s impeachment trial is getting underway, the Senate is facing a highly charged, unusual situation. New, directly relevant information and evidence is spilling across the internet and the airwaves.

Documents and statements from Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer Rudy Giuliani, implicate the president directly in efforts to obtain dirt on and investigations of the Bidens.

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office issued a legal decision finding that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld from obligation the portion of Ukraine assistance funds appropriated to the Department of Defense.

This follows a previous New York Times report that detailed the haggling by executive branch officials over the legal consequences of the president’s decision to hold back $391 million worth of military assistance for the Ukrainian military. It makes clear that the decision to withhold the aid came from the president himself.

Established by statute in 1921, the G.A.O. is an independent, nonpartisan agency that helps Congress monitor executive branch agencies’ programs and spending. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 was written to ensure that the practice of reserving funds did not become a way for reckless presidents (like Richard Nixon) to further their own policies and priorities at the expense of Congress’s.

The G.A.O. decision goes to the heart of both the impeachment inquiry and our constitutional system of separated powers — and puts congressional Republicans in the hot seat. A violation of the Impoundment Control Act in connection with the Ukraine funds is directly relevant to the first article of impeachment because it is a mechanism by which the president executed the alleged abuse of power. The question of access to information about that violation is directly relevant to the second article of impeachment — obstruction of Congress. What is at stake is the status of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Much as Senate Republicans seem eager to, they — indeed, the entire Senate — cannot turn away from testimony and documents relevant to the articles of impeachment, however inconvenient the timing.

The G.A.O. decision addresses a rather narrow appropriations law issue. In short, what the president did here was precisely the type of adventurism the Impoundment Control Act was designed to prevent. The O.M.B. had no authority to withhold the funds because the act permits it only under specific circumstances — and in this instance, those weren’t met. The O.M.B. argued that the funds were withheld because doing so was necessary to ensure that they were not spent “in a manner that could conflict with the president’s foreign policy.” But the G.A.O. decided the withholding was an “impermissible policy deferral.”

The decision also renders a judgment that the withholding was not a mere delay, as the O.M.B. argued. Program execution was “well underway” when the O.M.B. held back the funds, and “there was no external factor causing an unavoidable delay.”

More broadly, the G.A.O. decision represents an assertion of Congress’s constitutional power of the purse. The G.A.O. is well respected, and historically the executive branch has given substantial deference to its opinions. In any other administration, this decision would have been an earthquake reverberating across the executive branch.

In this administration, the import of the decision is unclear. A Nov. 5, 2019,  memorandum instructed federal agencies that they are under no obligation to comply with the legal decisions issued by the G.A.O. because those decisions are part of the legislative branch and are therefore not binding on the executive branch. As a technical matter, that is true, but the president must faithfully execute the laws, including the Impoundment Control Act. Instead, executive branch machinations in the Times report indicate that O.M.B. lawyers were working up an argument that Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief would allow him to override Congress. Such thinking is consistent with Mr. Trump’s unprecedented stonewall approach to Congress more generally — like his assertion that he has “an Article Two where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” his lawyers’ direction of total noncooperation with Congress’s investigation into the Ukraine matter and his refusal to participate at all in the House impeachment proceedings.

These positions are so absolutist as to be a danger to the country, and Congress needs to respond forcefully.

On the spending power, there is substantial overlap among the branches: Congress has the power of the purse, and the president is responsible for running agencies and implementing programs. Rather than adhering to a strict separation of powers, in disagreements, the branches have traditionally engaged in a back-and-forth competition. As the G.A.O. points out in its decision, faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. Some amount of cooperation — in addition to competition — is needed to make the system work.

The real question going forward is whether Congress will act to protect its constitutional role. Reactions so far are not particularly encouraging. On Thursday, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, dismissed the decision as a mere legalistic dispute between agencies.

The G.A.O. decision suggests a further deterioration of the separation of powers. The decision applies only to funds that were appropriated to the Defense Department and not the State Department, because the O.M.B. and the State Department “have failed, as of yet, to provide the information we need to fulfill our duties” under the Impoundment Control Act regarding State Department funds. In what was, for a nonpartisan agency like the G.A.O., a blistering conclusion, it states that its role “is essential to ensuring respect for and allegiance to Congress’ constitutional power of the purse” and pointedly reminds readers that “all federal officials and employees take an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution and its core tenets, including the congressional power of the purse.” The consequence of Congress abdicating its right to information about the spending power could have the effect of eliminating Congress’s very control over that power.

Finally, the Senate must take seriously its role in the impeachment trial of President Trump. On Tuesday, when impeachment presentations start, these troves of new information will almost certainly begin to be aired in the chamber as senators listen to the presentation of the House managers.

The Senate must demand and obtain all documents and testimony of those with knowledge of the president’s actions who refused to obey lawful subpoenas issued by the House in the impeachment inquiry, like the administration members Mick Mulvaney, Robert Blair and Michael Duffey — as well as documents and other information that is directly relevant to the decision before them.

Clearly some are feeling the heat. Asked by Manu Raju of CNN whether the Senate should consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial, Senator Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, blithely responded: “Manu, you’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you.” Attacking reporters who ask fair questions won’t solve their problem. Only a thorough and honest reckoning with the oaths they have taken as senators and as impeachment jurors will do that.

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What is wrong with this administration? Under MIchelle Obama, our kids were offered a healthy variety of food, and now they want to go back to the good old days of hamberders and french fries? I am so tired of watching the positive moves made by the Obama administration to make our lives more healthy be rolled back by an administration whose main goals seem to be to destroy anything with Obama's name associated with it.

What's next? Reintroduction of lead paint? Banning seat belts and airbags? Suspension of food inspections? As his ability to shock and dominate headlines wanes, expect more, and more, and more, and more. Peak Trump must be just around the corner, or have we just passed it?

Trump Targets Michelle Obama’s School Nutrition Guidelines on Her Birthday

The Agriculture Department proposed a rule that would further unravel nutrition standards set by Mrs. Obama when she was first lady.

By Lola Fadulu | Published Jan. 17, 2020 Updated 3:43 p.m. ET | New York Times |Posted January 17, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration moved on Friday to roll back school nutrition standards championed by Michelle Obama, an effort long sought by food manufacturers and some school districts that have chafed at the cost of Mrs. Obama’s prescriptions for fresh fruit and vegetables.

The proposed rule by the Agriculture Department, coming on Mrs. Obama’s birthday, would give schools more flexibility in how much fruit is offered during breakfast and in the types of vegetables offered in meals. It would also broaden what counts as a snack.

The rule was applauded by food companies but condemned by nutritionists who predicted a comeback for starchy foods like potatoes and the return of daily hamburgers.

“Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals,” Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement. “We listened and now we’re getting to work.”

The Agriculture Department said the changes reflected requests made over the past two years by those who serve meals to children and teenagers throughout the school year. The department plans to release a regulatory analysis and open the public comment period on Jan. 21.

The proposal is the department’s second attempt to roll back nutrition standards promoted by Mrs. Obama through the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required schools to serve children fruits and vegetables every day and to offer more whole-grain foods and fat-free or low-fat milk. It also required school meal providers to limit calories and reduce saturated fat, trans fat and sodium.

The department finalized a rule in December 2018 that gave school meal providers permission to serve flavored low-fat milk in the national school lunch program and school breakfast program. That rule stipulated that only half of the weekly grains must be whole grain, and it gave providers more time to reduce sodium in meals.

Friday’s proposal goes further. It allows schools to adjust fruit servings during breakfast, to reduce waste, it said, and to make room for “meats and meat alternates.” Under current regulation, providers must provide one cup of fruit during breakfast for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The new rule would also relax current vegetable requirements, which say providers must offer a variety of vegetables, like leafy greens and starchy foods. A department official said the goal was to give more flexibility, not change the amount of vegetables offered.

The proposal would also allow schools to offer lunch entrees for à la carte purchase, in order to reduce waste.

Child nutritionists said the proposed rule could lead to school meal providers turning away from healthy foods, instead of coming up with ways to make the food more appealing. More flexibility on the types of vegetables offered could lead to meals dominated by starchy foods, like potatoes, which are cheaper than green vegetables.

The National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity said allowing lunch entrees for à la carte purchase would create a “giant junk food loophole.” It could also lead to children frequently turning to meals that are meant to be eaten once a week, like hamburgers.

But conservatives applauded.

“The school breakfast and lunch programs have been riddled with waste for a long time, plate waste, being one, and that turns into financial waste,” said Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

He added that “clearly, no one wants kids to be served unhealthy foods,” but if nutrition requirements lead to children not eating the food offered, the standards are pointless.

The School Nutrition Association, which represents cafeteria workers and the food companies that provide schools with food, applauded the proposal and looked forward to more details.

“Updated nutrition standards for school meals have been a tremendous success over all, but a few of the requirements contributed to reduced lunch participation, higher costs and food waste,” Gay Anderson, the president of the association, said in a statement.

This rule is one of two the Agriculture Department plans to propose next week. The other rule would give meal providers more flexibility under the summer meal programs.

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Guest Blog: Spokesperson / Video Production and On-Camera-Talent Coach Larry Becker

Checklists, Formulas, Learning, Socializing, Spotting Emerging Trends, and Feedback — Stuff That May Sound Boring but Makes You A Better Photographer (PLUS It Can Improve the Bottom Line)

The title says it all, but let’s dig in a little, so this stuff makes sense.

Whether you’re a working commercial photographer, or simply an enthusiast who enjoys the art and craft of photography, there is a huge benefit to improving and staying on the leading edge of the craft. In the business world, it means you can make a better living. And if you’re an enthusiast, it keeps things fun and keeps you learning and growing. The tools I have used as the manager of a video production team, and now as a solopreneur, can be adapted and applied to just about any photographer or videographer to improve your skillset, and speed up your workflow.

Checklists

Really? Checklists? Everybody knows about checklists. But that’s why they get ignored so often. We used checklists when I managed my team filming video segments for commercial clients. That’s because it was easy to forget something small, like a camera setting, and then the video would have to be reshot. But the problem happens when we do something often enough that we think we remember everything, and we don’t need to take the few seconds to go through a checklist. I fly small planes, and one thing you learn very quickly is that, no matter how many times you’ve flown a plane, or how often you fly, you ALWAYS go through an actual checklist. Because if you miss the wrong little checklist item, you die.

Now, nobody’s gonna die if you forget to set your white balance correctly, but it can cost you at least some time. Maybe that’s extra time you have to spend post-processing your images or reshooting. And I don’t know many photographers who enjoy the idea of going through all the necessary setup to do a shoot, only to have to redo the exact same shoot. We want to move on and shoot new things.

You should have a checklist for each kind of photography you do. For example, one for senior portraits, one for daytime landscapes, one for products shots, etc. And if you do any photography on the road, you’ll want a checklist of all your gear. If you do commercial shoots which require model releases, be sure to include those kinds of things on your checklists too.

I suggest you create all of your checklists on your smartphone. That way they’re with you all the time. I use an outliner program called CarbonFin Outliner. It’s iOS, but I’m sure you can easily find an outliner for Androids too. The reason I like this approach is that with an outline layout, I can show or hide sub-categories, and all my photography checklists can be in one small place, rather than having some giant text file somewhere, or trying to make them fit in my Reminders app.

Formulas / Recipes

These days I’m doing video production and teaching photographers how to add simple video productions as a part of their photography. Beyond checklists, simple formulas have been a key to helping my clients understand what they need to do without getting overwhelmed. That’s because most still shooters want to be still shooters who are capable a little simple, professional looking video production.

They don’t want to know everything about cinematography and filmmaking and camera moves. If you want that kind of thing, then you want full blown film school. So, without going to film school and learning all about various kinds of shots so they can plan out and visualize a project for a client, with a few simple formulas, it’s much easier to plan the project and capture the necessary footage.

For example, a lot of commercial photographers and wedding photographers have clients ask, “Do you do video too?” While most photographers have shot some video with their cameras, they understand that there’s a lot that goes into professional video productions, and since they haven’t been through film school, they usually say no. But if they can learn how to create a few simple kinds of projects, then that ‘no’ becomes a ‘yes,’ and that means a better bottom line.

It’s fairly easy to learn how to capture interview style footage for a testimonial video, or product footage for a product demo video. And if you shoot weddings, Justin Wojtczak has some great training on KelbyOne about how wedding shooters can capture great footage for their clients while shooting stills at the same time. By the way, if simple video recipes sound interesting, I have a free eBook for still shooters you can download here.

Learning

Here’s another one of those things we all know intellectually, but we tend to not follow through like we should. It’s like diet or exercise. We understand the benefits of learning, but we don’t always follow through. Then when we do, a lot of the time, the results are beyond what we had expected.

I saw it for years when I worked at Kelby and I still see it every single time at Photoshop World. Attendees, especially first timers, come up to me and say how excited they are to have learned something new about Photoshop or photography that will save them hours or that sparks a whole new creative interest.

When I was the Executive Director of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and Photoshop World was planned for Orlando, I invited my brother (who lives in Orlando) to be my guest for the event. He’s a designer and uses Photoshop daily as a part of his job, but he couldn’t convince his boss to let him off work for the event. We were both kind of amazed because this was free training, in his field, with no travel expenses, and even the cost of admission was covered!! Wow! — So the next year we started planning a few months early and did a bit of a campaign to get the boss to let him go to the next Photoshop World.

We could tell the boss wasn’t totally on board, but my brother was finally able to convince his boss to give him the 3 days needed to attend. But the big victory happened 2 weeks after Photoshop World. My brother’s boss dropped by his office one afternoon and said, “When is the next one of those conferences? Ever since you got back from there you’ve been cranking out great designs and getting things done so much faster!! I want you to keep going to that conference every year!”

Socializing

Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, there are good things that come from socializing. And you’ll want to keep your photography business in mind when you socialize. I’m not saying you should be pushy and obnoxiously ‘always selling,’ but if you are thinking about your business while you’re doing something social, you can learn from others or possibly find prospects. Socializing might get you in front of a prospective client you never knew about, or it might just push you in a direction you had never considered. As my friend Rick Sammon points out, there are things you can learn from non-photographers that you can apply to your photography. The bottom line is that some of your best ideas, inspirations, and connections could come from people outside the world of photography.

Spotting Emerging Trends

It takes a lot of work to be on the “Bleeding Edge,” but it’s not so hard to be on the Leading edge, and it’s just as effective. If you can spot a new look and master it before everybody else does, that can give you an edge in the photo world. And if you look in the right places, it’s relatively easy to be ahead of the curve enough that you can leverage a new technique or style to your advantage.

Over the years I’ve seen some really amazing things happen with emerging styles, and I’ve also noticed that new looks are happening faster and faster. Back when I was NAPP’s Exec Director, things like selective color images or photos that had a painterly look and feel (created in Photoshop) were really compelling. But back then it was only pros and advanced amateurs who were creating these images. And when a pro was known for a particular look in their local market, they could get a lot of business because people hadn’t seen that look all over the place.

I specifically remember when HDR photography started to roll out. Everybody who was a NAPP or Kelby Training member wanted to know how it was done, and the best tips and suggestions for workflows that allowed for variations to deliver images from slightly wider dynamic range images to extreme, supernatural looking pieces. The Photoshop Guys did countless tutorials and classes on best practices and tips and tricks for nailing the effects people wanted. But these days, most DSLRs can do in-camera HDR, and social media image filters can recreate just about any kind of HDR look, not to mention everything from antique photos, to line drawings, with a click or two.

So that leads us to a couple of important questions… Where do you find out what new looks and image processing techniques are emerging so you can capitalize on new trends? And, how can you even find something new today? Something that that people can’t already do on their smartphone with simple apps?

The answer is far easier if you aren’t a Photoshop or photography instructor. In my view, people who work at KelbyOne (like Scott himself) have it really tough because they have to consume a LOT of images to see new looks and emerging trends. Then they have to determine how people are creating those kinds of images. Then they have to create training to pass along these emerging styles to their customers. They stay relevant to students by constantly helping discover and teach the new trends. So that’s the answer. Pay attention to what the leading trainers in our field are teaching and you not only learn what’s new, you learn easy ways to do it yourself.

And it turns out, that’s the answer to the second question too. For example, there’s an image animation process that allows most of your image to be frozen, while a part of the image, like the flowing hair or gown of a model, billows softly with a smoothly repeating animation. The term I’m familiar with to describe this is “Cinemagraph.” But as I learned from a Trey Ratcliff class that came out on KelbyOne six months ago, Cinemagraph is a term that refers to something that was originally a movie that has parts frozen in place with other parts that move around it. The new technology is called a “plotagraph,” which starts as a still image and has things within the image animated so they appear to flow or wave. And Trey points out, these get 20 to 50 times more engagement on social media than still images!! If you’re a photographer who’s looking to capture people’s attention on social media and get some jobs as a result, you should definitely look into plotagraphs!

Feedback

There’s a reason people hire coaches and pay professionals to critique their work. That’s because our friends and loved ones usually just tell us what they think we want to hear. And unless your significant other is a photographer as well, you probably won’t gain too many helpful insights to improve your work. But a good, honest critique, from a true professional, can push you in new directions and reveal shortcomings in your work that you don’t even see yet.

Critiques are available in all kinds of places. Taking your portfolio to a tradeshow or local photography meetup group is a good start. Online groups (maybe Facebook groups) are another place to go for insights. The challenge as the artist whose work is being reviewed, is that you have to consider the skills and the agenda of the critic. If you’re at Photoshop World and you’re a landscape photographer and you have a sit-down critique session with somebody like Rick Sammon or Matt Kloskowski, you’ll probably get some really solid insights and instruction for what to do next. On the other hand, if you post your work in a Facebook photography group, you might get a few helpful tips mixed with some awful, hateful comments, or some random BS that’s totally irrelevant. Throw away whatever doesn’t serve you to grow your craft. Ignore the trolls!

And even when a “professional” reviewer has your best interests at heart, their suggestions might not line up with your style or your goals. You might very well find that their insights don’t direct you where you really want to go. Listen. Consider the advice. Then do whatever YOU think you should do next. Even the best in the industry might not see what you see.

Grow

I have a photography podcast with my friend Rick Sammon called Picturing Success, where we talk with the best photographers in the world.

We talk about the business side of things, the emotional impact, the technical skills, and the things that influence our photography. And in my regular conversations with Rick, as well as our interviews with leading photographers, I’m constantly learning. And when I talk with photographers I admire, and who I consider to be at the top of their game, they readily admit that they are constantly learning and improving too. So whoever you look up to and admire… whoever you think is at the top of the photographic world… they’re still learning just like you and me. So use these tools: Checklists, Formulas, Learning, Socializing, Spotting Emerging Trends, and Feedback, and keep growing.

That’s where the fun is!

Working on both sides of the camera, Larry Becker is primarily known for this on-camera presentations for Fortune 100 companies, as a spokesperson, as well as a camera reviewer. Larry hosts Photoshop World annually, he has hosted countless web based photography shows, live webcasts, authored camera and software tutorials, and served as an official NAB Show Live anchor again this year.

Larry spent years managing a video production team in a multi-million dollar studio, with clients including Canon USA, B&H Photo NY, and others. These days, when Larry isn’t on camera as a spokesperson, he coaches still shooters wanting to learn video, and on-camera talent, helping them produce quality business videos.

According to Becker, “Video is exploding as a communications tool for business online, and I help photographers and other business people understand how to maximize profit using video, with very little extra effort. For presenters, I help beginners craft their message and develop their persona, and I help pros adjust their style to connect even better.”

Keep up with Larry at LarryBecker.tv, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The post Guest Blog: Spokesperson / Video Production and On-Camera-Talent Coach Larry Becker appeared first on Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider.

from Photography News https://scottkelby.com/guest-blog-spokesperson-video-production-and-on-camera-talent-coach-larry-becker/

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Times Journalists on Covering the Toronto Attack: The Canada Letter

This week was a potent reminder that even in a humanistic liberal country that tends to shy away from global conflicts, we are not immune to violence. In some ways, Toronto, long seen as a cleaner and far gentler version of New York, lost part of its innocence this week. But the response to the tragedy — epitomized by the courageous police officer, Constable Ken Lam, refusing to shoot the attacker, even after he claimed to be armed — also reinforced the city’s oft-repeated motto: “Toronto, The Good.”

Catherine Porter: I went to high school four subway stops from the scene of the attack.

While I moved away from Toronto for a time, I settled back there. It is my hometown.

But I wasn’t there when one of the city’s worst mass murders was unfolding. I was on a plane headed for Calgary.

I learned the news like most readers, when I finally turned my phone back on and was overwhelmed by news alerts.

On the cab to my hotel, I worked my phone to report. If I couldn’t be in Toronto, at least I would contribute to the unfolding story from afar.

When I returned, the city already seemed to be healing. The radio newscast mentioned the victims, and moved on to local parking regulations. The world’s interest moved on, too. But I’m on my way to the memorial sites — not just as a journalist, but as a Torontonian.

Megan Specia: As soon as we heard the news about Toronto, eyewitness videos began pouring in on social media. Hundreds of miles away in our New York office, we watched the harrowing scenes play out in real time. Despite the physical distance, they demanded our attention.

Photo

Ontario’s premier and Toronto’s mayor vanished into a crush of cameras when they visited the informal Yonge Street memorial on Tuesday. Credit Ian Austen/The New York Times

Part of my job as an editor on the International Desk is to help weed fact from fiction in the deluge of graphic imagery and to determine what we can, and cannot, say about an attack like this as seen through social media.

Continue reading the main story

A day after, I was struck by the response of Constable Lam. Bystander video put the viewer in his shoes as he de-escalated the situation and arrested the suspect without firing his gun. I worked with Catherine and the video team in our New York headquarters to break down his response moment by moment and show the concrete steps he took. It was a lesson in how police are trained to turn down a heated situation.

Rick Gladstone: I knew coming into work on Tuesday that my assignment would be stitching together material provided by our reporters in Toronto. I was ready for a day of chilling details from the police, witnesses and experts about a terrorist conspiracy, in which we explained how a radicalized suspect named Alek Minassian had replicated the mayhem we had seen in vehicular attacks by Islamic State disciples in Europe and New York.

Instead, we learned that the suspect appeared to be a sexually frustrated, woman-hating loner who had paid homage to a misogyny netherworld in a Facebook post, either before or during the attack. I never had anticipated Canada would be the country that led me to become familiar with misogynistic code words like incels, Chads and Stacys.

So what began in the morning as a news story about Mr. Minassian’s appearance in court, where he was charged with 10 murders, soon morphed into a profile of him. We also used the expertise of our social media reporters in New York, who helped us connect the dots between Mr. Minassian’s last Facebook posting and a 2014 killing rampage by a 22-year-old man in California that had become a perverse beacon of inspiration for misogynists.

Writing the story became an exercise in filling in the blanks without going beyond what we knew. It took a barrage of email exchanges, phone calls and text messages to nail down Facebook’s confirmation that the misogynistic posting was Mr. Minassian’s. It took at least three phone calls and reporting in Toronto to specify what we could say about the genders of the victims.

It was only after the adrenaline and tension began to ease toward the end of the day that I realized we had assembled a real-life horror story.

Continue reading the main story

Read: Toronto Van Attack Suspect Expressed Anger at Women

Read: Toronto Van Driver Kills at Least 10 People in ‘Pure Carnage’

Read: ‘Get Down or You’ll Be Shot!’: Videos of Van Driver’s Arrest Captivate Social Media

Read: When Toronto Suspect Said ‘Kill Me,’ an Officer Put Away His Gun

Read: What Is an Incel? A Term Used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained

Read In Opinion: Is This Toronto?

Centre Ice

Andrea Barone, who is originally from Montreal, is someone rare in hockey: an openly gay man. But as Jason Buckland writes in a finely detailed profile, Mr. Barone, a minor league referee, has found that being a hockey man and a gay man is a formula for pain.

Trans Canada

—Xavier Dolan is an actor, a model, the voice of Ron Weasley in the French Canadian versions of the “Harry Potter” and, to top things off, he has directed seven films. He is 29.

—The answer to why Pope Francis will not apologize to Indigrneous people for the church’s involvement in the notorious residential schools system may lie with Canada’s bishops.

—President Trump’s administration is pushing to quickly conclude a new Nafta deal. But the United States Congress may have other ideas.

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[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[rachelsmithson]

The Best Friends and the Half-girlfriend

No this is not a story about a three-some.

Helllooooo ladies, boy do I have stories and gossip to share with you. Scandalous tales, only the best, of course. But god where to start...

So I’ve been loving my new life down here in Miami. Seriously, this city has done its work to earn the name “The Magic City”. It is magical, in quite a fantastic manner really. There is an aire of confidence that everyone walks around with, a sort of ballsy spunk, with a bit of spire and sexual fiestiness that maintains a slightly electric, yet incredibly laid-back environment. And you come to crave it, after a while. You probably won’t show up craving it but give or take a month and a half or two months and you find yourself sporting a desire for what is famously known as the Miami vice. 

Now before I continue, I should remind you of a few things. I change names, so everyone is ultimately anonymous-because if not, then what is the point of an anonymous blog. Secondly, reality check, I’m fucking bloated af. Like dying. I’m about to get my period but this past week I swear I’ve just ballooned. Like fuck me. But all in the natural cycle I guess, and I just am going to have to wait this one out. I eat like a freak so I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with me eating like shit because I honestly don’t eat. Unhealthy, sure. But you have your problems, and I have mine. So let’s just be accepting and move on. But my point with that whole thing is that I’m human. You’re human. So I’m going to tell you my stories, and draw you in. I want you to be right there with me. Seeing it through my eyes, experiencing it through my body. As someone who wants to go into film, I want to know that I can not only tell the story, but create the entire essence of it. But remember, at the end of the day, I’m a writer, and part of the beauty of being a writer is you get to create the truth. Yes, you heard me. You don’t simply copy down your stories. If you don’t like the ending, or you don’t like the part in the middle, you, as a writer, have the ability to create your own story--the one that you tell the audience. I’m a big believer in not twisting the truth. I see it as lying to my audience. But as you sit there and read this, you should be questioning me. Aww see, now I’ve got you thinking, wondering, skeptical. I guess you’re just going to have to take my word for it. But if I’m making you think, I’ve done my job.

So, on to the best friends and the half-girlfriend. Yet, because there are the shitty situations I get myself into. I’m telling you, it’s that Miami vice. 

On August 17th, I picked up my life from my beautiful studio apartment in Midtown and moved myself into Unit #3902 in what I am going to call for the sake of this blog, the San Maritz Brickell, on Brickell Bay Drive. Damn I’m going to miss that studio apartment. All the windows, facing west. Watching the sunset almost every evening. Yeah, I’m really going to miss it. But I can’t think of a better place to have stayed for my introduction to Miami. I think it truly set me up for success.

Mandy, the sweetheart that she is, helped me move all my things. We were exhausted by the end of the day. I also had literally zero furniture. I started work on August 21st and since then, it’s been a crazy slew of working really hard and attempting to slowly fill my apartment with furniture. 

The Sunday after moving into my place, I had Oliver’s friend Zach follow me on Instagram. Not realizing who it was at first, I followed him back. As I was looking at his insta, I realized this was the guy who my friend Samantha had hooked up with when we visited the 305 in April. I also realized that a lot of his photos were tagged at the location “San Maritz Brickell”. I saw there wondering and finally said fuck it and dm’d Zach. “Hey sorry this is a bit weird but do you live in the San Maritz Brickell?” Came to find out that indeed, he does. Last I had remembered, he had told my friend he would be moving to NYC and working for a large enterprise corporation there so I was surprised. We exchanged phone numbers and low key texted throughout the weekend. That Sunday before I started working the following day, he messaged me being like hey want to go to the hot tub. I said yes, and thought nothing of it. 

Now allow me to delve for a minute into the nature of the friendship between Zach & Oliver. Zach is like Oliver’s older brother. He’s one of the few people that Oliver actually looks up to and trusts and listens to and even, leans from. And that’s saying something because Oliver is one stubborn, hard-headed boy.

That night Zach and I hung out for almost 5 hours. I don’t think I thought anything of it until later, but that’s a long time to hang out with anyone really especially the first time you’re hanging out. Oliver was going to be returning to Miami that evening and I was low-key excited. This was our chance, we were finally in the same city, and this was really honestly our last shot at making this work. However, when he texted me back he was clearly not happy about his friends and i living in the same building and felt it was “sketchy”. Of course. Here we go again. In the following days after Sunday, Zach and I hit the hot tub on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. On Friday, Zach turns to me and asks if I’ve talked to Oliver or told him we had been hanging out. “No, not at all” was my response. Oliver and I had started to text that day but he would take 4-5 hours to respond to me, which is just pure bullshit. As I came to find out, apparently that same day Zach had liked one of my photos on instagram of me with my dad and Oliver texted him being like, “Oh so are you a big fan of Rachel’s dad?” Greatttt... Zach showed me the conversation that had back and forth although it wasn’t anything particularly interesting. Just typical Oliver being petty and Zach being like yo what’s your issue tho. Zach continued on to tell me how Oliver wanted to go out, but Zach wasn’t feeling it. At one point he started joking about showing up with me and I was like, “Could we not do that though? That’ll just be so awkward for both me and Oliver”. That night Zach and I were in the hot tub until 10:30pm when it started to downpour. We grabbed our stuff and raced into my building. Oh, I should add, there are two towers in my building. Zach lives in the other one. We get inside and agree that we will keep drinking at my place and then he can go back to his building and change and then we can go out. That way, if it was raining, I wouldn’t have to get my hair wet (Zach’s quote, you know I don’t give a damn about this).

Once inside my apartment, he turned to me and goes “Hey, do you have a towel or something I can use for now? I don’t really want to just be sitting around in a wet bathing suit”. I obviously respect that, because that sucks, so I gave him a towel and he changed out of his bathing suit. So in the back of my mind, I’m like great, now this guy is pretty much naked in a towel walking around in my living room. Which at the time had zero furniture in it anyways. I had also just assumed because Zach and Oliver were such good friends and Zach had hooked up with my best friend Samantha, that there was no way anything would ever happen between Zach and I. Too many reasons not to.

But there we are in my apartment, and at this point I decide that if I’m going out, I’m drinking tequila. So I pull out the tequila I had bought that day and cracked the bottle. I made myself a drink and then he started sipping on it. 

“What’s in this?”

“Tequila, lime juice, and club soda”

“Oh man”, he laughs. “Tequila makes me horny”.

However, he keeps drinking mine so I make myself my own. We sit on my floor, joking around. Him playfully slapping my ass once or twice, but it was all in good fun. I truly had no concept of just how much we had drank until I went over to the bottle to make more, and realized we had finished the entire bottle of tequila. Like...whattttttt. But one thing lead to another. First, he was rubbing my neck because it was sore from kickboxing. Then, he turned me around so he could “take care of it properly” and started massaging my neck and shoulders and back. At this point, I was obviously dying inside and really enjoying this. Then he asked me if I would mind doing the same for his. Being drunk and in an incredibly flirty mood (thank you tequila), I straddled his back and sat on his butt and started rubbing his back, shoulders, head and arms. Occasionally he would list his hands to try to feel my butt and my legs, and I would push them down and massage them instead. But then at one point, I Started to run my nails up and down his back. I could feel him tensing up whenever I ran them over a certain part of his back and I kept doing that. Slowly, smoothly, in long strokes. 

And all of a sudden my world was flipped upside down and my mind was blown. Lol, well that’s the short version of the story anyways. One moment, I am on top of him and the next I am underneath him and we are making out. And our clothes are coming off. And we are in my living room on the carpet with the whole of Miami out there able to see it for whoever is fortunate enough to have a view of 39 floors up. He firmly pushes me up against the wall with my back to him before reaching around and very literally ripping my bra off. We left our phones in the living room that night and made it to my bed before tackling each other. He’s on my neck and biting my lip and I swear my life had turned into a dirty fantasy. I can’t make this shit up. He likes in in more ways than one so got to have some fun with that. Firm, slightly rough, without being aggressive. Now that’s a gift. After it was done, he grabbed us water and we ended up passing out. When we woke up at 5am, we had sex again, took a shower together, and then he showed me the show Rick & Morty till 7am. Then, he talked to me outside on my balcony from 7am to 9am. It was really nice, he’s actually an amazing guy. From Chicago, was in the armed services, incredibly discipline and work ethic, 26, down to earth, and these crazy crazy green eyes. So after he left that morning, I did the only thing I know how to do. I told myself it was never going to happen again. 

But that didn’t stop me from dreaming about it for pretty much all of the beginning of last week. Literally, I’d be at work and all of a suddeen I was being pulled into some dark erotic corner of my mind, and having to snap myself out of it. My only source of relief came from the text I got on Wednesday that confirmed I hadn’t been the only one thinking about it. I’m not going to go into detail about what this text said but it referenced the bottle of tequila and what came after it made me turn as pink as the dress I was wearing. I literally couldn’t even finish reading it or respond to it until I was completely out of work. This flirting over text went back and forth till Thursday afternoon. I had to grab drinks with a guy, a pity date if you will because he fucked up once and is still trying to make it up to me and I was not having it. So we grabbed drinks and I was outta there by 7:30pm. Zach asked if I wanted to hit the hot tub so we ended up doing that until 11pm and then went back up to my place and ordered pizza. We kept drinking and stayed up till about 2am, but slight catch. We were genuinely talking about shit. IVY social, the Wells Fargo crash, the incident with Morgan Stanley. And when we went to bed, he very much came to bed with me. But not without a bit of sex first :) We both slept about 3.5 hours that night, but I honestly would say it was worth it. I was dying to have that happen again and really needed it. I felt so much better afterwards. However, I do need to look into numbing lube. Yes, apparently this is a thing and the only way I know about it is through him. He got a bit weird earlier on me this weekend, but I think he’s just making sure we both keep some distance between us since we are both also seeing other people. I’m cool with that, it’s probably healthier.

But the amount I’ve been thinking about him isn’t and I gotta watch that. Oliver and him got in a bit of a spat the other night over me, but the problem is I haven’t talked to oliver since last saturday. He doesn’t even reach out. So like bro, what you hollerin about. I can tell that Oliver is super suspicious though. His intuition is incredibly strong and he knows something is up. I feel bad but at the same time I’m like “dude you’re fucking up”. Like it would at least help his case if he reached out but he won’t. And I know that. And I guess I’m going to be okay with it because I need to get over him. Zach is a fucking genius and strategic af so he used the situation to his advantage to be like dude, all bets are off with any of your past girls. If I want to hook up with Rachel, I will. So that way if we ever ran into him out, Oliver couldn’t say anything. Meanwhile, I’m over here just basking in my Miami glory. Living a life of spice with a side of drama.

That’s all until next time. Don’t get into too much trouble this Labor Day. XxR.

[junker-town]

Eight types of college basketball coaches you’ll meet during March Madness

Coaches are our barometers as fans.

March Madness is perhaps the most emotionally destructive annual event in America. Across the country, thousands of people stake their money and their happiness to 18-20-year-old amateurs. They will pretend to know which sets of amateurs are better at basketball than other sets of amateurs, then fall apart when those amateurs do unpredictable things like blow a 12-point lead with 35 seconds left.

For a team to win in March, players have to be able to suppress the raw feelings that wreak havoc on us all. Whereas players stand out for keeping their cool, coaches stand out for losing it.

Coaches are the most nakedly emotional people in the NCAA tournament. They need to keep track of the odds, they need to yell at the referees for every injustice, and they need to understand the ebb and flow of momentum. They need to make themselves vulnerable, and when the stakes are as high as they are during the NCAA tournament, we get to watch these men enact the most extreme ends of human joy and agony.

All of this is to say that coaches are our barometers as fans. They are our signal that it’s OK to freak the hell out. They are our beacons, our guiding lights, our surrogates on the court. We want them to act in our interests. We want them to scream when we want them to scream, calm the players down when we need them be calm, call timeouts exactly when their opponent seems to be taking the upper hand.

It isn’t hard to relate to a college basketball coach. Look around the sidelines and you’ll probably recognize these bench-minders’ personalities in the people you’re watching the games with. Or worse, in yourself.

1. THE SO EXCITED

Virginia Tech head coach Buzz Williams doesn’t even attempt to contain his emotion. His body is an overstoked furnace. He is constantly expelling energy, by clapping his hands, and moving his mouth, and flailing his limbs.

He’ll dance. Oh, he’ll dance.

And it’s not even clear he knows he is dancing. No one consciously moves like that. He is absolutely, and mostly wonderfully out of control.

Buzz Williams is all of those who can’t sit still — the pacers, worriers, shriekers, jumpers, and dancers. Anyone for whom March Madness is a workout. These people are wonderful to be around in the good times, and awful in the bad.

2. THE CHRONICALLY INCREDULOUS

Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo is aggrieved. I don’t know where he is or what he is doing right now, but somebody isn’t doing their job as well as they should be, and Izzo is so disappointed in them. Their burden is now his, and he believes this is so unfair. Poor little lamb:

Mike Granse-USA TODAY Sports

Tom Izzo doesn’t much like taking responsibility for his team’s struggles. Some external force is always acting against his team to try to keep it down, whether it’s the announcers, or injuries, or the referees — actually, it’s probably the referees.

There is no better coach at perceiving slights, and it has worked incredibly well for the Spartans — Michigan State has been to seven Final Fours and won one national championship in Izzo’s 19 seasons as head coach. He is absolutely the type of person who would write out a long, conspiratorial message board post when his team loses by two in the Sweet Sixteen. It’s probably fortunate, then, that Michigan State doesn’t lose all that often (all-time upset notwithstanding).

3. THE PERSON WHO REMINDS EVERYONE THAT ACTUALLY THIS IS ALL MEANINGLESS

Kentucky Wildcats head coach John Calipari is incredible at recruiting, and pretty good at winning basketball games. The fact that the Wildcats aren’t also incredible at winning basketball games — and only have one national championship and two Final Four appearances in Calipari’s eight seasons — has been a weird source of criticism against the coach.

Or at least it was. Then Calipari proclaimed in 2015, after the Wildcats won 38 straight games before losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four, that his goal has never been to win national championships, anyway.

I hate to drive you traditionalists crazy, but I'll say it again: our goal at the beginning of the season was to have eight players drafted.

— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) May 21, 2015

And boy did that make people angry. Just as it might when that friend whose title pick gets eliminated in the second round doubles back and reminds you that amateur sports athletics are a modern form of indentured servitude.

Which — you’re not wrong, man, but killing our buzz.

4. THE PROFUSE SWEATER

Arizona’s Sean Miller will look like this at some point during the tournament.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, but know yourself, please. For everyone’s sake. From everybody’s pal Ryan Nanni:

That's ABSURD. If you know you are prone to this level of perspiration, you can't just decide to get frisky and not wear an undershirt. "But one layer fewer will help me stay cool!" Sean, it obviously didn't, and now we're a camera operator's whim away from learning entirely too much about your nipples. Your miscalculation was thinking you could avoid being a sweaty-ass mess. The reality is you just have to manage it.

5. THE PERSON WHO MAY OR MAY NOT UNDERSTAND BASKETBALL BUT KNOOOOOOOWS HUMAN NATURE

Villanova delivered one of the most dominant NCAA Tournament runs ever last season, capped by a buzzer-beater in the national title game that will go down as one of the greatest shots in the sport’s history. Head coach Jay Wright saw it happen, and he didn’t even flinch.

Wright doesn’t play by anyone else’s rules. He helped turn a pretty good program with pretty good talent into a powerhouse by eschewing coaching mores. A recent GQ profile described how Wright struggled at Hofstra when he “obsessed over the game strategy.” Then Wright got to Villanova, put a zen master on his bench, and stopped sweating the small stuff.

On the court, Wright is interested in how his players relate to one another, which means practicing things you might not expect. If a Wildcat takes an offensive foul or dives for a loose ball, the other four players are expected to run to him and help him up. Similarly, if a player hits a big shot in a game and gestures in celebration to the crowd, he'll incur the wrath of Wright, who spends as much time policing his kids' public displays as Duke's Coach K might spend diagramming backdoor picks.

Wright is exactly the same as the person who will be winning your bracket pool this year — cool, calm, and focused on the important things: Anything but basketball itself.

6. THE BUSTED BALLOON

Nobody seethes like Rick Pitino seethes. The Louisville head coach may seem calm on the sideline, immaculately coiffed and composed in pinstripes. The pressure is building beneath that facade, however. And every once in a while, the facade breaks.

It’s kind of scary, to be honest. Don’t be like Rick Pitino.

7. THE MID-MAJOR COACH WHOSE PLAYERS ADORE HIM

Every year, America falls in love with Cinderella’s head coach. In 2013 it was Andy Enfield, the multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur/architect of Florida Gulf Coast’s “Dunk City” basketball team that upset Georgetown and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. In 2014, a then-35-year-old Archie Miller, younger brother of noted PROFUSE SWEATER Sean, took the 11-seed Dayton Flyers to the Elite Eight. Georgia State’s Ron Hunter wore a cast and had to coach from a stool while the Panthers upset 3-seed Baylor in the opening round of the 2015 NCAA tournament. His son, R.J., hit the game-winner, and Ron fell out off his stool and into our hearts.

There are plenty of candidates to be that beloved person this year. Miller is back, and so is Kevin Keatts, head coach of trendy upset pick UNC-Wilmington and potential hot commodity after the tournament. There is also Pat Kelsey, head coach of a Winthrop team that won 22 of its last 25 games and has made a habit of challenging all comers.

Every year, these coaches and their teams represent what’s best about the NCAA tournament, and how much fun it is when we’re not invested in the outcomes. There are people in this world who are just happy about the thing itself, to be a part of it for the first time or once again, and for whom anything that happens after the first Thursday or Friday is a gift beyond the supreme joy of being there.

These people are thoroughly wonderful to associate with and you should surround yourself with as many as you can.

8. THE DUKE FAN

Mike Krzyzewski and Duke are perfect for each other, and they can both go kick rocks.

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

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[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver

I guess you could call Dabo Swinney a visionary. Forward thinkers can see people for what they are before we even see it ourselves. That's what happened with Dabo and me. In a sense, I owe my NFL career to him. And having known the man since he was just an anonymous position coach, since before Clemson became a national powerhouse and then national champions, I can't say that I'm surprised by any of it.

Before the Russell Wilson, 6-foot African American quarterback became a phenomenon, but well after Mike Vick dazzled us with his jaw-dropping plays, I was cemented in the thought that I could be a star quarterback in the NFL—a black, 5'11", 185-pound star quarterback. I grew up playing high school football in Warner Robbins, Georgia, and watching Woody Dantzler play at Clemson. When it came time for recruiting, Clemson's coach at the time, Tommy Bowden, sold me on the vision that I could be the next Woody Dantzler.

At the time, Dabo wasn't even on the Clemson staff. He had been fired from his previous job at the University of Alabama and was working at a real estate firm. That's where he was while I was a freshman, redshirting while I watched Charlie Whitehurst and Willie Simmons take the snaps at quarterback.

My first encounter with Dabo was at the beginning of the next year, 2003. He was replacing somewhat of a "legend," or so we thought, as the coach of the wide receivers. Rick Stockstill was a great recruiter, especially for the state of Florida, and was responsible for many of the great players at Clemson up to that point. Clemson was known for wide receivers back then—still is. In our minds as players, for the first practice, all eyes were on the new coach.

This guy is gonna be roadkill, we thought. I know that's what I thought as a backup QB. There were some highly touted wide receivers already on the roster. No way a new coach was going to be able to come in and establish himself. And yet that's exactly what Dabo did. He got after guys from the opening practice. He yelled, he screamed, and he challenged guys. The thing with Dabo was that you knew he loved you, and you knew that's why he was coaching you so hard. He had that charisma. I found myself gravitating toward him and I couldn't understand why. I watched him take ordinary guys and make them really good and really good guys great. He had a knack for the details and being better prepared than anyone I had ever met.

Chansi Stuckey with Clemson teammates after a touchdown. Photo: David Kalk-USA TODAY Sports

The quote these days is "best is standard." That's the motto on the t-shirts at Clemson. The one written on the walls in the locker room. But that was the case for Dabo even before he wrote it down. From the outside, everyone saw the receiver group as a bunch of primadonnas. But internally, they became the locomotive that drove the team. They held themselves to a higher standard. Slowly, everyone else started to do that too.

When I was being recruited out of high school I was dead set on staying at the quarterback position. First of all, it was the only thing I'd ever known. Second of all, I wanted to avoid the stereotype. There was a player from nearby named Jaquez Green, who I grew up watching on Friday nights in Fort Valley, GA. He played quarterback in high school, and ended up being recruited by Steve Spurrier to play for the University of Florida where he had a great career...as a wide receiver. Spurrier, at the time, loved to turn athletic black QBs into wide receivers. They usually turned out pretty good. (Even if he did try to recruit Cam Newton as a tight end.)

Yes, I was 5'11". Yes, I could throw. But I could also run, which at the time was an automatic qualification for a position switch. Back then, there had only been a few black quarterbacks who could throw well enough that it could overcome both their own running ability, and the ingrained stereotypes of NCAA and NFL coaches about what a quarterback should look like. Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham come to mind. So when Dabo asked me about switching positions, I was reluctant. Was it personal? Of course not! I knew that in Charlie Whitehurst, there was a really, really good QB ahead of me by one year who just had great season.

But in that moment, I had a couple choices I could make. I could sit behind him for three years. I could transfer to another school and sit out a year. Or I could make the switch and begin playing ball. I trusted Dabo. I had seen his body of work. Looking back, after a five-year NFL career, it was an obvious decision. At the time, as an immature and stubborn 19-year-old, it was a lot tougher.

I was exceptional in the open field running with the football, I had good ball skills, and decent anticipation in tracking the football in the air after it was thrown. Naturally, I thought the transition to wide receiver would be seamless. I also felt that I had an ace in my hand in Dabo himself. He was the wide receiver coach, and he recruited me to switch positions. I saw myself as an instant All-American. Not so fast. Imagine your dad is coaching the team, and you're the best player. You're thinking, Wow, this is going to be so great, but then you show up to practice, and suddenly your dad is a totally different person and you have it harder than anybody else. Or maybe you love dogs and always wanted a South African Mastiff. At first, he's a cute and clumsy ball of fun as a puppy, but then a few months later he's 180 pounds and reality sets in. That's what it was like for me and Dabo.

My initial thought was Do I know this dude?! Yeah, you know him, his name is Dabo Swinney and he's your new position coach. And wide receiver is a grueling, grueling position. There are so many intricate details that go into the preparation. This was stuff that, when I was playing quarterback, I took for granted. Understanding your body, how to start and stop, body lean, showing your hands at the last possible moment to catch the deep pass so the defender doesn't knock it away, depths of routes, timing, catching the ball in traffic etc etc etc. Wow this is going to be so great quickly became What did I get myself into?

Wasn't this the guy that vouched for me? Had he been lying to me? Was Dabo bipolar? Whatever it was, it worked. I worked harder than I ever even knew I was capable of working.

A classic selfie with the championship trophy, and Nick Saban. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

To understand this you have to understand Dabo. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. He survived as a walk-on on a national championship team at Alabama. He went from sleeping in his car to coaching the best college football team in the country. Dabo always leads with love and compassion. That's why Clemson keeps winning now, and that's why players keep playing for him.

When he got on me, which he did often, I never once thought it was personal. As I got to know him more he began to remind me of my father (except a lot louder). He was teaching me to be a better man. Success in football, whether as a wide receiver or a quarterback, is a byproduct of being a responsible, intelligent, and trustworthy person. Understanding those things off the field helped me on the field. I think that's how I began to see him as a father figure away from home and I believe that's what today's recruits see in him. The authenticity is there. The kids he's recruiting now are coming from a place where everybody wants something from them—to make a buck, lift their program, whatever it is. I believe Dabo stands apart because he's willing to put his players' success as people over wins for the program.

If you asked Dabo about the process of my switch from quarterback to wide receiver now, he would probably have a million stories about how hard it was turning a little scrawny quarterback into a two-time All-ACC, polished NFL-caliber wide receiver. I'm sure he would have one of his patented one-liners ready. Dabo and I talk and text often to this day. Writing this article means a lot to me because through all the years and all the players, he still has a picture of me up in his office (Coach, if you took it down put it back up). I know that if any of his former players, or players remotely associated with Clemson need something, he'll do everything in his power to make it happen. In my case, he already helped give me an NFL career.

Dabo Swinney Yelled and Screamed and Turned Me Into an NFL Wide Receiver published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv