#(watch us get a male director when my boss retires)

[cultivating-wildflowers]

🐓

[potteresque-ire]

🏳️‍🌈 Rec post!! A queer film + a queer TV series from Hong Kong ~

1) Twilight’s Kiss (叔·叔) (Dir. Ray Yeung 楊曜愷; 2019)

Twilight’s Kiss offers a very realistic depiction of two elderly, in-the-closet gays in Hong Kong, who have dedicated their lives building a conventional family before unexpectedly falling in love with each other. It is a quiet film, and the romance is told in the same subtle manner as love is expressed (and not expressed) in their generation. The actors were phenomenal at playing regular Hong Kong men of their age (Pak mentioned he “came to Hong Kong”, ie, he was a refugee from Mao’s China, as the vast majority of his demographics was), which added to the resonance of the story ~ they could’ve been anyone, and anyone could’ve been them. 

The director of the film, Ray Yeung, is an openly gay man.

(Long review: Hollywood Reporter) Streaming link to film (with English subtitles; pls ignore and close the pop-up window)

2) Ossan’s Love (大叔的愛) (2021)

The unlikely (and hilarious) love triangle between Muk (Left), Tin (Center) and KK (Right) in Ossan’s Love.

For those who found the name familiar, it’s because the series is a (faithful) remake of the popular 2018 Japanese series of the same name. The Hong Kong version is longer (15 episodes; ~ 40 min each) compared to the Japanese original, and its mood is cheerier, sweeter, and also ... more BL, with the lead characters Tin (Haruta in the original) and Muk (Maki in the original) played by two idols, Edan Lui 呂爵安 and Anson Lo 盧瀚霆, from the very popular local boy band MIRROR.

(Being idols didn’t prevent them from kissing. Not in Hong Kong, 2021.) (Yes, they kissed, and hugged and fought and bantered...)

Ossan’s Love is culturally significant in that it became the first gay drama to be aired primetime in Hong Kong, and by extension, in China. Beloved by the locals, it was also very much discussed—hk-queers expressed their (surprised) joy that finally, they got to see a respectful, dignified presentation of who they are and how they love. More importantly, they got to see HKers, older generations included, glued to the TV for their kind of love story, rooting for the lead male characters to get together. 

This signifies a broader acceptance of LGBT+ in the city than previously assumed; this is very important and comforting to the community in June, 2021, when the future of LGBT+ rights in the city is very uncertain. After the 2019 protests, pro-democracy leaders have been arrested and jailed in large numbers; newspaper that advocated for freedom has been shut down. Meanwhile, during the airing of Ossan’s Love , the (in)famous pro-Beijing politician, Junius Ho, claimed the series to have violated the city’s much feared, much abused National Security Law—the law that officially aims to catch “traitors”, but has been used as a “catch-all” excuse to arrest political dissidents and suppress the freedoms of the city. Ho was of sufficient prominence that his words could draw the attention of officials who have been sent from across the mainland-HK border to do Beijing’s bidding.

Also, Ossan’s Love was produced not by the powerful, once popular TVB (local TV station), which, with Chinese investors becoming its major shareholders like many other HK press and media companies, has become very pro-Beijing and conservative. The series was produced by ViuTV, a much smaller station preferred by young, pro-democracy Hong Kongers ... which means the future of the series, of its stars (MIRROR’s members are once-contestants of a ViuTV talent show), of even the station itself is also uncertain.

Hence, I’m recommending Ossan’s Love now ... even if the official version doesn’t have the best English subtitles. The full series is on Youtube (links below); the soundtrack is in Cantonese and (Traditional) Chinese subtitles are available, but English is only available via Youtube’s built-in Auto-Translate function. 

For those who would like to catch a short scene of two cute HK boys in love, the last 5 minutes of Ep 11 would be a nice place to watch. You can see how comfortable these two bandmates were with each other—Edan (Tin) had played two supporting roles before this series, while Anson (Muk) had never acted before. Edan and Anson have claimed that being close friends in RL meant their intimate scenes were easy to film (BTW, Anson is gay, Edan isn’t).

Edan Lui (Left) & Anson Lo (Right), Harper's Bazaar HK, May 2021. Edan was a uni student before joining hk-ent. Anson was a dance instructor.

(You can also see why, when I watched the Gg + Dd Happy Camp episode very, very early on in my turtlehood, I assumed Gg and Dd would have ample opportunities to work together again, to play and be happy in front of the camera ... just like how I remembered on-screen couples from my days in HK—the couples, the CPs of the time, would collaborate repeatedly after having demonstrated chemistry and become commercial success—in film and TV projects, in variety shows, in awards ceremonies as presenting guests etc etc. This multi-project collaboration was, and still is, viewed as a Very Good Thing, and not only for commercial reasons. The inter-personal fate (緣份) to play on-screen couples repeatedly, per the tradition of HK-ent, is something of a blessing, talked about as a small-scale version of having the destiny, the luck to be together across multiple lives, multiple incarnations. Actors treasure this kind of collaboration and the HK audience celebrates it, regardless of the marital status of the actors in RL. Entertainment news dedicate articles about it.) (There’s actually an example of that in Ossan’s Love: Kenny Wong 黃德斌, the actor who played the titular Ossan, KK, and Rachel Kan 簡慕華, who played his wife Francesca, had already played husband and wife three times before. Rachel had retired from acting in 2017 and moved to Canada; she told reporters that she returned to shoot Ossan’s Love primarily so that she could play Kenny’s wife again).

* Below is a small warning for Ossan’s Love ~ *

The humour of Ossan’s Love is often wild and zany, especially where it adapts from the Japanese original. Some of it, i-fandomers may find uncomfortable. Notably, the titular Ossan (Japanese, meaning “Older Man”) was Tin and Muk’s boss; and he and Darren, another superior of Tin and Muk, were also part of the romantic story line.

One can argue, therefore, that Ossan’s Love contains a *very* “Me Too” situation; however, this is also why I find Ossan’s Love interesting beyond being a Chinese-speaking gay drama—it is clear that the production team of this series meant no disrespect, and from the series’ reception, it’s also clear that hk-queers and other more progressive members among the audience didn’t see disrespect in the product. This series therefore offers a glimpse to the answers of some questions I’ve had: how does Hong Kong of 2021 translate respect for queers (as well as for older men and women) into day-to-day words and actions? How do these culturally-specific habits in speech and behaviour compare to the norms in, for example, the United States (that I’m familiar with)?

“Political incorrectness” was also found in some of Tin’s internal monologue. However, I thought, perhaps, that was why the series has proven to be disarming to the general audience both in HK and Japan, places with a tradition of homophobia stemming often not from malice, but from ignorance, from sex being considered taboo for so much of the places’ history. Tin, as someone who haven’t seemed to have spared a thought about homosexuality before the story had taken place, spoke the minds of the audiences who aren’t familiar with homosexuality. Muk, meanwhile, presented the perspective of someone who already understood what being gay was and wasn’t about. Tin, therefore, led the audience towards Muk and his views step by step, all the while without being judgemental—how could he be? He was one of them too during his journey. He was the student, and he was also the protagonist who everyone—and I mean everyone—loved (in a rather funny manner :D). 🌈

(Long review: BLwatcher)

Links to Ossan’s Love, official version uploaded by ViuTV: EP 1 EP 2 EP 3 EP 4 EP 5 EP 6 EP 7 EP 8 EP 9 EP 10 EP 11 EP 12 EP 13 EP 14 EP 15

ETA 2021/09/16: Streaming with English subtitles is available here.

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

17. Glass

At first, Susie assumes Norman is just some weird creep. At first, Norman assumes Susie isn’t anything as special as the others hype her up to be. But when he finds out that her discolored eye isn’t just some sort of medical condition of hers, and as the two talk, they realize that they have a little bit more in common than they thought they did. (Set during Susie’s first few days on the job.)

Susie was both excited to the point where she felt like she was walking on air and nervous to the point of nausea.

It was her first week in the big apple, and she already landed a job interview at the promising, brand new animation studio simply titled ‘Joey Drew Studios’. It helped that she had a very impressive vocal range, a lot of pep, and eagerness to work with new people.

And when she presented her resume to the Music director and he in turn offered the role of Alice Angel, she was completely over the moon! While naturally, female characters tended to be underwritten in personality compared to their male counterparts, the personality the Angel did have reminded her so much of herself! She was a friendly gal who loved to sing her heart out and dance, and according to Sammy, would be fleshed out more during the show’s run.

“While they might be reluctant to her at first, she’s really something special, maybe could even be more popular than Bendy someday.”

But as great as the job itself was, the people she worked with were pretty hit and miss, with the acceptation of the music director who was both at the same time.

Luckily, there were more hits than misses, but the misses really... well, missed. Like that projectionist that was often skulking in the shadows and pulling mean pranks on people. Admittedly, she was still upset by their first encounter where he spooked her into dropping hot coffee on her favorite skirt. How on earth could somebody that tall be that quiet?!

But aside from his... odd quirks, the projectionist seemed harmless enough and as long as she did her job and he did his and they didn’t bug each other, then they’d be fine.

-----

Due to Norman’s hobbies, he got good at judging reading people over the years and his new coworkers and bosses were no exceptions. Some were easier to read than others, but he got the gist of most of them down;

Joey? Friendly on the outside, but was hollow on the inside, perhaps soulless even. And not in a way where the man was drained of stuff inside him. He seemed that he was just always like that.

Sammy? Aggressive and weird on the outside, is less aggressive on the inside but only gets weirder the deeper you dig. Norman wasn’t saying that the man was an escaped loony bin patient... but he wouldn’t be surprised if he happened to be one.

Jack? A genuine and friendly fellow, seemed to go with the flow and had a high tolerance and or fascination for crazy. No wonder he seemed to be so close with Sammy.

Susie? A chipper, seemingly headstrong, and naive young woman from the south if he was hearing her accent correctly. She was a sweet singer and good at voices, he’d give her that, but she seemed to be over hyped if anyone was asking him. He wasn’t annoyed by her himself, he was just annoyed with how most of the musicians acted around her, they weren’t inappropriate, but they weren’t hiding their feelings either.

He tried to keep his distance from her most of the time, partly because he sensed he was still mad about the prank going wrong as he didn’t know she was carrying coffee, and partly because he didn’t want to get too close to her only to see the big bad city chew her up and spit her out once it was done fawning over her.

Watching that happen wasn’t as bad as watching what happened to people at his old job, but it would still tug his heartstrings the same way, even if it wasn’t as hard.

-----

It was by chance they met up late at night, Norman was fixing a stubborn projector and Susie was looking for a script that the Janitor accidentally threw out. At first, the former didn’t notice the latter, she came up on his blind spot and he was too busy listening to the projector’s weird sounds to notice the click clack of her high heels.

The machine he was handling was being unreasonable lately, and he was cursing under his breath because of it. He eventually figured out that the machine had a problem with itself AND it’s plug. If he left, he left his booth at risk of catching on fire again, if he didn’t then he’d be leaving the band room at risk of getting caught on fire.

“Too bad I’ve only got the one eye ta keep on yous, I could use another...”

“Oh! I can help with that!”

The man wasn’t sure what he was more caught off guard by: Susie’s presence or the fact that she had just popped her discolored eye right out of her head and set it gingerly on top of the projector. All this time he assumed that it was just infected or something, not made out of glass.

Norman doubled over in hysteric laughter and composed himself a few moments later.

“Well, I do appreciate a good eye for jokes, but I hope you’re bein’ serious about this here projector, I was startin’ ta worry which would catch on fire first...”

Susie gave a thumbs up as she put her eye back into her head. “No problem! I just always wanted to do that joke ever since I got my glass eye, but I don’t mind watching it for a bit for you.”

The projector between them sparked up a bit, making both of them back away.

“...I was starting to worry about that thing myself, actually...”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head no more, now that I know what the problem is, it’s good as done.”

As Norman handled the situation, he returned back to the booth to give her the all clear.

“Situation’s handled, hopefully it won’t make a fuss again for a while.”

“That’s good!” She chipped back, and her eye went to his name tag. “Wait a minute, your last name is ‘Polk’?”

“Yes? At least, last time I checked it, it was...” He looked over her own name tag and something clicked. “...And yours is Campbell?”

“Yes! You were the local undertaker back in Pineville, Louisiana, right?”

“Yeah, but as ya can see I retired from that a while ago.”

“You won’t believe this, but I think I used to live across the street from you!”

“Definitely knew some Campbells in my neighborhood.” He nodded. “All of them were read heads like yourself, so I wouldn’t be surprised. In fact, I think I met your brother a handful of times... ”

“Yep! He told me a lot about you! Who’d think we’d end up meeting up at the studio of all places?”

“Yeah, sure is a small world alright.”

“Well, enjoy your night Norman.”

“You too, see ya tomorrow.”

[mommymooze]

Grand ReOpening

Hubert x Reader 5,613 words

descriptions of violence, possession, Modern AU

You work at the newly remodeled and soon to be reopened Museum of History in Enbarr. A huge fire caused devastating damage to the old building, over half of the structure had to be rebuilt from the ground up. Donations pour in from private collectors in the form of money and items to replace those lost to the flames.

You finish arranging the items in the display finally locking the door on the huge glass case. Some items donated were questionable. Everything in this case is legitimate, you reassure yourself. You have already weeded out the fakes, the near perfect imitations. The director asks you how do you know? You explain to him the materials available for crafting such items, known specifics from inventories found in the locked away historical books, too delicate to be placed upon display. Sometimes you tell him you just have a feeling deep inside based on your experience and knowledge of the period. You can’t tell him the truth.

Whenever you touch one of these items, you close your eyes, the history of the item and its owners flash through your mind. It is easy to bypass the collectors, the ones that shove an item in drawers or hang it on a wall as a decoration for years at a time. The imprint left on the item when it was handled, touched, used is what you are able to see most clearly.

The small silver dagger in the upper left of the case. Its card reads: Dorothea Arnault owned this fine silver dagger. It is small enough to conceal in multiple places upon the body. Perhaps she may have concealed it in the curls of her hair for a ball or tucked it away in her corset or bodice.

They write the cards to romanticize the exhibit. People want a good story, not simply a display of stuffy items from long ago. Who would want to read a card stating she kept this particular dagger tucked into a pocket in her left boot for many years, which is exactly what you saw when you touched it.

Metal rimmed reading glasses belonging to the Imperial Spy Master, Hubert von Vestra. The card: Perhaps he wore them while brewing one of his poisons or when translating encoded messages during the war. Hah. He did not obtain these until fifty years old and mostly wore them when reading a book that struck his fancy prior to retiring for the evening.

Ferdinand von Aegir’s opera glasses. The Card: Fine mother-of-pearl covered opera glasses belonged to the Imperial Prime Minister, Ferdinand von Aegir. He may have used them when going to the Mittlefrank Opera house to watch Dorothea perform. Nope. Mother gave him these when he was but a child. Once he was older, after the war, he purchased a pair that much better suited his face, these were much too small for him as an adult.

Oh my, you’ve lost track of the time again. You scurry out of the building, making certain all doors lock behind you. Making it home just in time to change clothes, freshen up, you head back out for the Museum’s Grand Reopening Gala. Thankfully you are not on the front lines, that is the duty of the Curator, the Directors, those on the board and anyone responsible for schmoozing the rich guests, many who donated to the cause, keeping them happy. You put on your headset and have three laptops at your disposal, ready to answer any questions the staff has regarding particular items on display. You are literally fielding questions left and right. To the left are the searches for the director’s queries, to the right the Curator. In the center you follow on the security monitors where they are standing helping you to identify which particular item they need additional information about. Well past midnight you are finally allowed to leave. Security escorts you to your car and you head home for a well deserved sleep.

Two days later is the Grand Reopening. The tickets sold out three months in advance. The most devoted history fans always line up first to observe and breathe in the milieu. Listening to them mill about the displays, pour over the cases of preciously preserved objects is a joy for you.

“Look, this mirror belonged to the Emperor herself. I wonder what these items could say if they could speak. Did they reflect her face as she finished her makeup before one of the grand balls at the time, I wonder?” You knew the answers to some of their ponderings and could not hide your smirk.

A very tall dark haired male catches your eye. Dark suit jacket, black satin shirt, very nicely tailored. His jet black hair blocks the right side of his face from view. His fine leather gloves barely hover over the display case as he observes the items contained within. It suggests a hint of cosplay? Or perhaps he is attempting to channel the spirit of Lord Vestra? Your eyes sweep about the room regularly, spotting him in several different locations, each time it appears he is studying items that had belonged to the man he resembles. You wish you could see his face more clearly, however his back is turned or someone is in the way. You quietly move towards the end of the circuit the floor plan leads you through, close to the guard by the exit. There are three items of clothing belonging to Hubert this person would probably pause to examine, perhaps you can obtain a good look at his face then.

Finally, you glance through two panes of glass to see the face of the man. There is a strong resemblance to Hubert. Not exact, of course, but the cheek bones were close, the eyes are a similar shade of green. His skin tone is much darker, not nearly as pale. Your attention is taken away as the security guard a few feet from you is asked a question by an older woman.

Your focus is then called in front of you as a polite “Ahem” is noted. Standing directly before you and requesting your notice is none other than the tall dark gentleman that you have been secretively following for the last 30 minutes.

“My apologies. Not to be a bother, but I believe that you work here and would like to ask your opinion about something.” His long slender gloved fingers reach into his breast pocket, pulling out a golden box about the size of a cigarette case, barely a centimeter thick. His thumb activates a button on the case and the lid pops open revealing a dull yet clean looking folded yellowed cloth. The initials H.v.V. are sewn in black thread close to the bottom edge. The cloth is folded in a different manner than it normally lies in order to display the initials on top.

You raise your right hand up to the level of the box which is even with your chin. Touching the material with an index finger you feel the violence connected with the item, fainting straightaway.

You find yourself in the employee’s lounge with two security officers and the strange man. He is seated at a table nearby, you are located pleather covered chaise lounge, reclined. Bolting upright on the lounger, you gather your senses about you. The security officers called for EMT’s to check you out. Fortunately, you were unconscious for maybe a minute or less. You flush bright red and blame it on ‘female issues’. They insist that you remain and be checked out.

“I am terribly sorry. I assisted in bringing you back here and now that I know you are well cared for, I shall excuse myself.” The stranger stands to leave. You reach in your pocket, thrusting your business card toward him. He completes the exchange by handing you his. As he returns to the public areas of the museum the EMT’s arrive and begin their 1,000 questions.

After every possible vital statistic can be taken and recorded, they finally leave you to yourself and the security of the museum. They nod in agreement that it was most likely ‘female issues’ and you should increase your iron intake. Once you finally convince your boss that you are well enough to leave, you get in your car, grab some drive thru dinner and head directly home.

A warm cup of tea, comfortable clothing and your soft couch beneath you, you take a deep breath and begin to relax. You mull over what happened when you touched the handkerchief. That sort of reaction is expected when you touch weapons used in the war, used for self-defense, etcetera. You did not expect that from a handkerchief. The cloth was normally soaked in a strong smelling agent and held over the face of his target. Too early for ether, most likely mandrake root. Normally it would cause the target to quickly become unconscious, occasionally it would cause illness along with and possibly but not always death. One of Hubert’s weapons in the darkness, when silence was required.

You pull out the business card. Vincent H. Vestraegir. Hmmm. Possibly from the line of descendants. You enter his number and name into your phone, then text it.

You: I gave you my card at the museum. Do you still wish to discuss the

item?

Waiting for approximately 20 minutes you hear the notification tone.

V.H.V: Absolutely. Perhaps meet for coffee? Thursday or Saturday?

You: Thursday. Crown Café, 10am, after the morning rush has cleared.

V.H.V: Agreed. See you then.

Working on your day off, as usual. You log onto the Museum’s Employee website to check your email, the top notification is from your supervisor telling you that you will take a few days for yourself. The success of the reopening is greatly due to your hard work and you will take the rest of the week off. See you Saturday.

Well, well, you may get some sleep after all. After a fitful night of restlessness and strange dreams you awaken Thursday morning feeling overtired. It would be in poor taste to cancel the meeting, so you get up, showered and dressed. You decide that since you are doing this basically for free for this man, you have no obligation to him and refuse to dress up. Wearing your hair in a messy pony tail, GMU sweatshirt and jeans you head to the coffee shop a bit early. Hopefully you can get a full cup into you and wake up before he arrives.

You order a coffee double shot and finish it quickly. Bathroom, order new regular coffee, take a seat and it’s 9:50am. In the corner of your eye you see him walking past the café’s front window. This makes you smile, but you are not certain why.

He takes his seat across from you at 9:59am.

“Good morning” you greet him casually.

“Same to you.” He says, placing his phone face down on the table. He wears a long sleeve black turtleneck, fine dress pants, and black gloves.

“Please tell me what history you know of the handkerchief.” You request.

“Skipping pleasantries, straight to business, eh?” His lip curls at the edge of his mouth on the right side. “See if I pick you up off the floor the next time you faint.”

You roll your eyes.

He clears his throat. “There are several items that have been kept within the family. I do not understand the meaning behind them, why they are kept in separate or specific locations within the family residence or what significance they mean to particular members of the family. My family history appears to go through highs and lows, the most recent low is turning around, getting back toward recovery.” He pauses, enjoying his coffee for a moment. “My mother recently passed and I am now in possession of the family estate. I have not had much time to go through the property, my work is my priority. I have no intention of living there and have considered selling it. There are few things I plan on keeping for myself, the rest may go to the museum should you be able to find a use for them. I noticed at the exhibition there were some unusual items on display that I do not normally recall seeing in museum exhibitions.”

Quaffing your coffee, you take a breath. “I am sorry for your loss. The museum is changing its thought process. People are more interested in seeing the everyday life of those from history. The differences are always blown out of proportion, romanticized, too large to be true. The current exhibition is displaying the things of everyday life, to show these were not only persons held in high regard, but also humans with human needs, feelings, emotions. I agree with some of this, however there are personal items that I question if they would really want to have displayed.”

Mr. Vestraegir thinks on these last remarks, savoring the remainder of his caffeinated beverage. “Why are you concerned about the feelings of the dead? It is not as if they can come to you and complain.”

“Let us say this afternoon you are struck dead by lightning. The funeral is held in three days. Open casket. You are dressed in a white tuxedo, no gloves upon your hands. How would you feel about that?” You raise an eyebrow.

“Preposterous!” He blurts out. “I would insist on having gloves on and I have an ample amount of perfectly adequate black dress suits.”

“Why should be concerned with the feelings of the dead again? Why is it that you wear gloves? The weather is certainly warm enough they are not needed. You are extremely familiar with wearing them.”

“Hmm.” He nods in understanding, rubbing one gloved hand upon the other.

“You do have me intrigued. It is difficult to find pieces of history still standing today. It has been hundreds of years.” You wonder aloud.

“The original structure has been incorporated into the current structure. At one point walking through a corridor it feels as if you are stepping backward in time. Quite an unusual feeling.”

“When do you plan on returning there next?” You ask, thinking of your full calendar.

“In the next day or so. I want to go through some things personally prior to the movers bringing the more recently purchased furniture here.”

“I would like to accompany you to the estate. If you like, I can drive us there this afternoon. I need only to pack an overnight bag and a few items for research. My guess is you do not have internet there?”

“No.” He answers. You would have to use your phone. Not all of the house has electric, so you may wish to bring some flashlights or long extension cords as well.

Fantastic, less disturbance to the original structure you ponder. “I can pick you up in an hour if that suits you?”

He nods and it is a blur from there. Rushing home, packing, picking him up at the duplex at the address he provides. Stashing his items in the trunk you are headed to the highway.

Vincent as he prefers to be called, tells you what information he knows of the Vestra Estate. He had lived there for the first years of his youth. He and his father did not get along well and mother abided by fathers wishes. By the time he turns 12 he is sent to boarding school, graduating straight into college. Finishing his degree in law minor in accounting, he is an atty and CPA/Accountant.

There may be a few books at the property that have a bit of history in them, he’s never had much interest.

A brief stop at the store close to the house, you purchase groceries. Simple premade sandwiches, a few frozen dinners, drinks and snacks. As you wait in the car you suddenly realize you have driven far from the city with a perfect stranger, not even leaving a trail of where you are or who you are with. The perfect setting for a murder. How stupid! You quickly drop an email to your landlord, advising of your destination and how long you expect to be gone. You hesitate and do not leave Vincent’s name, that would only lead to more questions from her as she is determined to set you up with a nice bachelor.

Another 30 minutes and your car is pulling into the long driveway, the large house comes into view. He unlocks the door to show you in. He really doesn’t know much of the history of the place, it had never interested him. The two of you unload the car and he has you place your things in his mother’s old bedroom, located in a newer section of the house that has electric and running water. He goes back to the kitchen to work on groceries.

Beds are so personal. You take a breath and complete the touch. Trying to keep your mind focused on the edge of your vision. Fortunately, it is a newer bed and does not take long to complete. You will be fine sleeping here.

Vincent invites you to the more modern kitchen and the location of the food, coffee, and sundried items. He has a few things to attend to, leaving you free rein of the house to explore. He will get to specifics later tonight or in the morning.

He is absolutely correct about the corridor, they had built on to the house in multiple stages. You enter through the most recent and modern additions. The corridor seems to reach back further and further.

You slowly walk down the walls touching each section. Perceiving people passing through the corridors fill your vision, styles of clothing changing as you progress. You touch the doorframe of a small bedroom in an older portion of the house. The faces of the occupants quickly parade before you. You will the flow to slow, a young girl clings to a doll, nodding with tears in her eyes. Then the next owner, a young male perhaps ten years old with hair to his shoulders, citrine eyes. His brows are furrowed, and he is shouting, but you cannot hear what he says, anger written all over his face, his brows furrow deeply as if he argues with someone just behind you. The door appears as he is slamming it shut. Was that Hubert? Could this have been his room, you wonder. The room is decorated with old wallpaper with a feminine print. The coat of dust on the few furnishings reveals that the room has not been used or tended to for many, many years. The curtains on the window are of a thin lace, possibly being held together by the spider webs covering them, the bottom inches shredded threads.

The mantel of the fireplace and baseboards are the only pieces painted. The rest is left to the beauty of the original wood and bricks. Running your hands over the bricks at the edge of the fire box you see countless hands stacking wood, lighting the kindling, flames beginning to burn bright in the small firebox. Finally, you see older gloved hands, incredibly long fingers waving as fire bursts from their fingertips into the kindling. There are gaps until much younger but long spindly fingers cast magic into the wood creating flames.

Touching the firebricks making up the fireplace you reach out to the bottom bricks. On the right, the furthest one back is loose. A bit of maneuvering and you pull the block from its wedged in position. Three bottles lie on their sides. Without thinking you reach in to grab them. Hubert’s face comes into view, laughing with the bottles in hand. These are definitely his poison bottles, contents long dried. His handwriting on the side, coded of course, one is foxglove, the next mandrake and last is nightshade. A small paintbrush is also in the hollowed space. Removing the item provides visions of blades and darts being painted, and then the interior of a teacup.

Diabolical bastard. You admire him and hate him both at the same time. The Empire would not have won the war without him, however you did not need to firsthand witness his secrets. Sitting on the floor you catch your breath. The daylight is fading and you need to go back to your bag and set up lights and a flash light.

The room is different in the too bright halogen light. Rubber gloves in your pockets, in case something more lethal is found are at the ready. You begin touching the floorboards with your bare feet. You will notice if any has a special significance of course. Only after moving the bed and the rug that is beneath it do you find something. (the bed is approximately 300 years old, mostly for children, same with the rug.) A pocketknife blade at a corner edge and the board lifts quite easily. Several items are stashed between the supports for the floor. Gloves on and flashlight in hand you reach in and remove the items, placing them in a large clear plastic bag. You replace the floorboard and return the bed and rug to its normal position.

“Keeping yourself entertained?” Victor chuckles as he enters the room.

“Found a few things. Haven’t had a chance to look them over yet.” You say as you take the halogen lamp to the next room to inspect.

“I can make it easy for you as far as what few things I know.” He offers. “You’ve already been under the floorboard there. Next the master bedroom.” He turns that direction and you follow him with the light, dragging the extension cord behind you. He steps until he hears a hollow spot at a floorboard by the head of the bed, taking out his pocket knife, he lifts the board out of place, then steps back for you to see.

Bringing the flashlight you see a jacknife and several gold coins. You pick them up with your gloves on and place them into a separate plastic bag.

“That is all I know. I found the floorboard when I was much younger, so of course I had to stomp on every floorboard after that listening for hollow sounds.” He grins.

“Quite logical, actually.” You nod. “As a boy I am surprised that you left them here.”

He coughs. “There were more coins, I did leave some.” He looks away, the tips of his ears turning pink.

You both decide to stop searching for the evening. You’ve not had dinner yet and tomorrow is another day. Besides, you want to investigate the floorboard items further as well as show him the items found behind the fireplace.

Dinner is quickly tossed into a microwave, coffee brewed and laptops pulled out onto the kitchen table, connected to the internet via the cell phones. Both of you sit quietly, only forks scraping plates or fingers tapping on keyboards for an hour.

Closing your laptop, you place a soft towel on top and the first bag with the items from the fireplace. Wearing a glove on your right hand you take each item out of the bag, placing them on the towel.

“There were owned and handled by Hubert. I believe them to be bottles of his own poison. The brush is used to paint it upon his weapons, mostly daggers.” You relay to your tablemate.

Vincent’s eyes go wide. “You’ve just seen them. How can you swear to their authenticity?”

“The appearance matches what you would find from the time. The writing on the bottles closely resembles his handwriting from the samples we have at the museum, and the code is correct for three different poison types. The brush appears to be animal hair that would be used at the time, stuffed into the end of a tube and then crimped to hold the hair tight.”

Taking a small box of plastic bags, you pack each item individually. As you reach for the third bottle it tips over and rolls off of your laptop. You grab it with your left hand and read its history. Your eyes focus as Vincent’s fingers are snapping in your face.

“Come on, are you all right?” He questions.

“Um, yes.” You shake your head a bit, placing the item in a bag and back into the larger bag with the other items.

“Are you epileptic? You spaced out there. Please let me know if you have health issues.” Vincent pleads, the concern is heavy in his voice.

“It…it’s hard to explain.” You want to tell him something. You’re never this open with people, but he makes you feel like it is okay to let him know.

“Go on.” He says waiting patiently.

“I can see some things related to a history of an item just by touching it. I see who used it, how long ago it was when used. Yes. I must be crazy.” You nod quickly after your confession.

“I want to see it work.” He frowns, two wrinkles between his eyebrows get deeper. He stands and goes to a drawer, pulling out a large spoon and a knife. Both appear to be silver, one more tarnished and scraped that the other. He places them on the laptop.

You grab the spoon. You see his mother’s hand stirring long yellow beans in a pot before pouring a creamy sauce onto them, then it changes to different people, an older stove, another older stove. A black ceramic stove stirring gravy in a large heavy skillet.

“Your mother liked to use it for cooking yellow beans. It has been here for several hundred years, at least 300 based on the dress of the last man who had a beard was dressed.”

He looks down at the table and thinks a moment. “She loved wax beans. They look like green beans but taste a bit different. She would cook them in a sour and creamy sauce. She said the spoon was in the family for a long time. Now the knife.”

Taking the silver knife in your fingers it shows she used it nearly every day to put butter on rolls with jelly. There was a lot of time in the drawer, different users. Clothing styles changed. The age of the silver butterknife is closer to 450 or 500 years old.

You share your findings.

“I’m still not convinced.” Vincent reaches into his shirt, and pulls out a gold necklace with a ring hanging from it. A simple gold band with its necklace is placed with hesitation on the laptop. As he places it there your hand brushes against his glove.

“Your gloves are four months old, purchased at Baers and the saleslady had red hair. Just saying.” You clear your throat and take a sip of now too cold coffee.

Reaching for the ring your fingers touch it softly. Your mind is filled with its memories. He has it with him all the time, takes it off for nothing, then you see the crash, blood everywhere. You fall headfirst into the table. Vincent helps you sit back up in your seat as tears are streaming from your face.

“I…I am so sorry for your loss.” You choke and gasp as the tears fall from your eyes. “M-motorcycle crash. Five years ago. He would bring you little yellow flowers he picked from the side of the road.”

Vincent’s face lost all color. A tear fell to his cheek as he nodded. He took the necklace back and put it around his neck.

After a while he took the cups to the sink, “I think it is time to sleep.”

You nod and head to bed. For hours you lay there, unable to sleep as your mind plays back the last nine years of Vincent and his husband’s lives, together and apart. You should have refused to touch it, but you wanted him to believe. And now…now. You shake your head, turn over and stare at the wall again.

The alarm on your phone wakes you. You want to flee, leave this place. It is one thing when someone shares with you tragedies in the past, it is another to have them thrust upon you. You push yourself out of bed. You can make it through today. Once in the kitchen the coffee has just finished you reach to grab a cup. Seeing the two in the dish drainer, you carefully pick out the cup you used yesterday.

You find a note on the table that he has gone for a walk and to go through the boxes he has left in the living room. Grabbing a muffin from the counter you head to the boxes. Wearing glove you begin. A few interesting books, certainly a possibility to go into a collection, many of them simply too modern or of no interest to the museum in their current condition. A box of random items haphazardly placed into a wooden box. Some woodworking tools, chisels, a pocket watch that did not work but was several hundred years old. A coffee grinder, you would definitely need to check that out. Taking that and the watch you sit at the kitchen table. One by one you experience the history of the items. The pocket watch came from approximately 1300. The coins from the floor and jack knife were owned by Hubert’s father, Marquis Vestra. The coffee grinder, broken by a child, had belonged to Hubert at one time well after the war, during his retirement.

The bags from the child’s bedroom revealed two very different groups of items. Vincent himself had placed items in a pocket next to the ones he had originally discovered. Thinking they were a time capsule, he created one of his own including a letter about his 9 year old self, a green plastic army man named Lt. Schwartz, a yo yo and a few baseball cards. The other group of items were from a young girl. A cloth doll with a few wisps of hair still left on its head. A tiny gold ring. A slate and stylus used for writing letters and numbers, the wax long eaten away. A small carved wooden horse.

Deciding to see if there is anything in the last room as well as completing your inspection of the master bedroom, you take your half cup of coffee with you down the hallway. Coming to the end of the corridor, you hear a sound behind you. Turning slowly, you see the countenance of Hubert von Vestra walking toward you. Outfitted in his full Imperial dress uniform, his large stiff collar extends several inches up from his shoulders. A ruby red brooch holds down his cravat. You drown in the sound of leather creaking from his belts on his clothes and the swish of the heavy material of his jacket. His boots create a deep a thunking sound echoing down the hallway.

“Finally.” He says with great satisfaction. “It has been an eternity.” His right hand, void of gloves, reaches out to you, fingertips softly stroking your cheek. His pale skin is cool to the touch, it has always been that way, you think to yourself. He opens his arms welcoming you to be wrapped within them. Burying your nose in his chest you deeply inhale the familiar scent of coffee, parchment, ink and dark magic. How you have longed for this.

“What of Vincent?” you ask him, looking up into his beautiful yellow-green eyes sparkling down at you.

“We have come to an agreement.” Hubert chuckles.

The vibration of his chest, his deep laughter sends chills down your spine. After waiting nearly a thousand years to have him back in your arms the reward is so worth it.

Epilogue:

Each lifetime you searched for him, but your journeys were fruitless. This girl was the most cooperative, the most willing. You found her worse than Bernadetta in some aspects of her life, especially social. She shared this body, watching from behind, creating stories in her mind. You take control and immediately begin your plan. The museum holds his property, perhaps by touching these items you can call to him. Send a signal that you are here. But they would not let you touch the things that belonged to him. The display items you could reach, touch, were not his, only beautiful recreations. Even items held in storage at the museum were not his. You had developed a spell to obtain the history of an item by touch.

It was awful that you had to burn down part of the museum, but you needed access and you needed legitimate items. What people wouldn’t do to have their name on a placard as a donor. From the items donated several very real items were found. You found yourself touching them frequently, just to catch another glimpse of him. Your cohabitant could not take the violence, she caused you to faint so frequently. Perhaps now she may finalize her agreement with you, being released and then you and Hubert can finally have the lifetime together that was stolen from you during that horrible war.

You spoke often of death, war does that. Both agreed to move on and live the best life they could. Finding out Ferdinand was at his side made you happy, especially since it made him happy. Still, he had promised that no matter what, he would find you again and finish what was started. And so the rest of your lives begins…

[allhallowsreid]

just lots and lots of very long-winded, random thoughts about last night’s finale and the show itself...

so obvs no one has to agree with me on any of this, i just feel like there likely ARE ppl who feel like this and it’s easy to get shut down on tumblr for having different opinions, and i mostly just need to gather my feelings and thoughts in one place.

-ive seen a handful of ppl upset that the last ep centered around reid, but if you were to take 10 fans of this show, it’s a pretty good chance that 8 or 9 of them would say reid is their fave character. that isn’t me trying to insult any of the other characters, that’s just the way it is. whether it’s bc of his looks (and my lord was he gorgeous in this finale ep), or that he’s your typical cute white boi, or more organic reasons like he’s been there since day 1 and we were able to watch him change and grow, and he’s the opposite of the typical male characters we often see, especially on cop shows.. whatever the reason, he is a VERY popular tv character. and if it weren’t for that character, for better or worse, this show would have ended a long time ago.

-the ending itself.. i just feel like i don’t know what ppl were expecting?? this is not a show like supernatural or dexter or a show that has had a fluent overarching story to tell from start to finish. the story continues without us watching it. it’s another day at the office for them. was it a great ending? no, but it was fine. we see where all of them are headed. endings are so difficult, i’m just glad they didn’t kill anyone off or some garbage like that.

-so damn happy they hooked up luke and garcia. i have had such issues with garcia’s character since morgan left, i feel like she became a caricature, where she just overacts and i recently read an article with kirsten where she actually admitted that when shemar left she really didn’t know what to do with her character anymore. honestly? it showed. the obnoxiousness to luke was cute at first bc she obviously had a crush on him, but then it just became mean and out of character. this season i was happy to see her get a little bit more back to herself. all this being said, they were very clearly headed towards getting luke and garcia together this season with the overt flirting and one on one convo’s, i’m so glad they went through with it instead of leaving it open ended. and i will admit that of all the characters, i didn’t think garcia would be the one to leave, but it made sense. garcia is tough as hell, much tougher than she gives herself credit for, but like luke said, she can do this other job without the gore that she cringes over in literally every single episode of the show. also loved jj saying garcia was the glue of the team. so true, so well said. and side note, kirsten does a hell of a job writing these characters that she knows all too well, the other writers should’ve just let her take over in later seasons.

-prentiss... i love my emily so dang much, but man they give her the absolute worst dialogue. she gets stuck with all these long sentences that just.. they just don’t flow?? and it takes me out of the show so often. this has been since s12 when she became unit chief. there has been a handful of times since she became the boss that we have had flashes of old school smartass goth girl emily, and i cherished each moment, but it wasn’t enough. somewhere along the way they forgot how to write into the show that their characters had PERSONALITY. just as an example of the stupid dialogue she gets.. the end of the ep where it’s intended to look like rossi’s retirement party. then, idk who it was, emilys boyfriend maybe(?) says some dumb comment about oh gee i thought this was dave’s retirement! and then emily starts some awkwardly long line that could’ve been summed up in “dave decided not to retire afterall” and it was just soooo... weird?!!? if we are agreeing that A MONTH has gone by.. you are to tell me that it never once came up that dave said he was gonna retire and then changed his mind!??! that night, one month later, is the first that this discussion occurred!!?!?! and all of these dumb lines come out sounding so robotic, and i can’t blame paget, bc the lines are boring as hell. also unless i missed something i can’t rule emily out of being the next director, especially since their profile ended up being correct, lynch and the mom didn’t kill themselves, so i’m sure when that all came out, the next hurdle emily would have to clear is how they just blew up their very expensive jet right after having a budget meeting 2 episodes ago!!

- i’m gonna lump the newer characters together.. and just say that it was all too little, too late. they tried to give matt and luke more this season, and the ep’s centered on them were great, but it all felt forced to me. all this character development should’ve started as soon as they came onto the show. the relationships between the new and original characters also feels forced a lot of times, barring relationships like rossi and his boys, luke and garcia, tara and emily.. i mean that’s kind of all, right? we never saw much off-the-job, personal interactions between them and the rest of the characters, did we? and the way tara was treated on this show is inexcusable. aisha’s talents were so underused on this show it was criminal (pun intended). and actually, the above stuff i said about emily getting nonsense dialogue, you can throw matt in there too. his dialogue was friggin god awful at times on this show. in the words of early seasons reid, maybe try to be more conversational, writers!!

-man oh man was jj a badass and a half in this finale. tbh i always enjoyed liaison jj more than ssa jj, but when badass jj comes out i get all excited. i do feel like she would be the best fit to take over if emily left, she’d stepped into that role before and excelled. but she is another character that at times i think the writers just forgot how to write her personality somewhere along the way. i understand that the reality is that people change over time, but there were times that she was written like a typical high school mean girl, and that was just an insult to the character they created. the whole jeid thing was severely overblown and unnecessary. i don’t hate the idea of them being together, but why wait til s14-15 to deal with this? in the end i thought it was handled okay, i personally didn’t feel like it ruined their friendship or stayed awkward, which i appreciated, it was just a storyline that wasn’t needed and wasted time. also, ppl griping about “oh but she clearly loves will, if she loves spencer then she can’t love will!” i mean, actually, ppl are capable of loving more than one person at a time, hate to burst that bubble for ya.

-this seems like a good moment though to pause and just get this out about will lamon-fuckin-tagne jr... this guy is too good for jj lol, i am sorry but he is such a great guy. and can we review some things about will and his wife’s bestest friend, godfather to his children, spencer reid?? when will and spencer first met, it was during an unbelievably personal case to will, i mean his father died sending him a message about this case that the fbi was called in on. and his first intro with reid?? let’s see, reid spent that ep strung out on drugs, and full on abandoning the case to go hang out with his friend at a club/bar/lounge/whatever. ok, so that’s will’s first impression of jj’s bestie, and will STILL okay’d him being the godfather of his kids. not to mention, can you imagine your wife has been gone in the damn middle east for who even knows how long, then when she finally gets back and you think you’re gonna have her to yourself, but oh no, here comes jj’s friggin bestie again to come cry on the couch every night for several weeks!!!! and he gives zero indication of not liking spencer, in fact he seems rather fond of him. will is the most patient man ever, i swear.

-ok that was an unexpected side track. moving onto rossi. not sure why they were all like oh pfft this guy will never retire. the dude literally retired before the show started lol. if he retired once, when he was fairly young, why is the idea of it happening again so impossible? again, dumb dialogue. i loved the stuff with him and young gideon (i may be biased tho bc i’m just so damn proud of ben savage), i loved that rossi knew more about the jet than the others, however that was an inconsistency bc when rossi came back from retirement, he couldn’t believe the bau had its own jet. unless i just misunderstood what emily meant when she said it all started with rossi and gideon. i felt like lynch was a very underwhelming villain. super forgettable. there was no charisma like foyet or cat adams, there was no creep factor like mr scratch, there was no mystery like the replicator or the fisher king. his whole story just fell flat, and if there were anything interesting about him whatsoever, it’s bc of what rossi brought to the table, not the “chameleon”.

-my boy reid. he has several lifetimes of baggage to unpack, and i think of all the characters on this show, no one hates unpacking their trauma more than reid. i feel like it was so relatable that he could barely speak in this ep without sounding on the verge of tears, like every sentence was painful to even get out bc of how much hurt is stored up inside him. his trauma has defined him for years now, and if they had ended the show without addressing even some of it, the show would’ve been incomplete. i understand that actors schedules just don’t work out sometimes, but idk what the point was of having strauss and foyet be his devil and angel. and foyet’s long explanation of how bc he changed hotch, he changed the team was so convoluted that he may as well have just said “they couldn’t get james van der beek or the dude who played mr scratch, so im here instead”. i liked what they did with reid and maeve, and i actually don’t mind that there was no mention of max. they’re still very early in their relationship, and i feel like him coming out with some “wait i think i love max!” revelation would just be too fast and ooc. we already know that the relationship between them is growing, it doesn’t need to be said. and can i get an amen that maeve and reid didn’t kiss bc god that would’ve been weird as hell.

- i hate that we couldn’t have hotch or morgan or blake or elle or any of the main characters that helped make this show what it was, but i’m still grateful for the crumbs they gave us if the actors just couldn’t be booked for whatever reason. i’ve seen many shows at their end just try to pretend their previous characters never existed, so that we got some flashbacks with them was appreciated.

- RIP bau jet. i wiiiill reMEMber youuuuuuu.

-the song choice of david bowie’s Heroes was perfection. strangely, when i was driving home from work yesterday that song came on my playlist and i blasted it on repeat and performed a car concert for my fellow drivers on the road, and thought to myself that this song would be great for cm to end on. never thought they would actually do it since they had previously used the song in penelope’s ep. but what a great scene of all them dancing and singing and laughing like the bunch of nerdy idiots they are.

-i came late into the game with this show. ppl have been telling me for years to watch it and i only picked up watching in s13, after i read a spn/cm crossover fic and became super curious about who all these awesome characters were. with that said, i’m aware that since i haven’t invested years of my life in this show, that my feelings and thoughts about the ending will be different than those who have been hooked on this show for over a decade. i’m still just so thankful for the family portrayed by this show, and these characters i fell in love with, and episodes i’ll never forget.

[fluidityandgiggles]

Comeback of the Israeli Sides AU!!

Also known as, my addition to the Nationalities AU by @ierindoodles , @really-sleep-deprived-nerd and @anxious-mom

(...I think...)

Now I know that @broadwaytheanimatedseries already did Israeli Remy, but... smol smol country with big big differences lead to different upbringings, and so I present,

Israeli/Russian (well, it’s complicated) Emile.

His dad was in the Air Force for over twenty-five years by the time he retired when Emile was twenty, so they used to move around a fair bit. Not as much as others would’ve, but enough that Emile doesn’t know what it’s like to live somewhere steady.

He’s Russian/Ukrainian on both sides and his parents are surprisingly accepting. They changed his name to Emile immediately when he asked when he was a child and only truly refused him HRT in high school out of concern for his age...?

Started going to IGY meetings the second he could. To anyone who wants to know, IGY stands for Israeli gay youth, and it’s an overall great organization with some fundemental issues (as you do). He’s been out as trans since he was fifteen thanks to his IGY group, and he’s still in contact with some of them.

Was not raised in Tel Aviv and did not know jack about that city other than there’s the theater and Azrieli until he started high school. He was raised in air force bases and at his grandma’s. His grandma lived in Beer Sheva.

When he was young his parents used to drill into him that he needs to get into a good school and be a doctor, and he was so eager to do just that, but when he got older and found out about Thelma Yellin (the only performing arts high school in Israel - no kidding) and later Nissan Nativ (a fantastic acting college in Tel Aviv) he started begging them to go to Thelma so he could study theater.

He had to promise them it’s a very good school for things other than drama and showed them the school curriculum and all that before they let him. And he did spectacularly.

(For the record, Thelma is in a hellhole. Aka Givatayim. It’s literally the asscheek of Tel Aviv.)

His drama final was The Twelfth Night. He played Sebastian. He didn’t mind playing Viola really, but he wanted to be director.

Didn’t join the IDF, instead he did voluntary service at a school as well as in IGY, and right after that he went and spent all his salary from his service on studying in Nissan Nativ.

Moved to the US to get a second acting BA from AMDA, as well as a psychology degree from NYU and finally transition. Boi is busy as fuck, lemme tell ya.

Wasn’t such a big fan of the festigal growing up...? His parents didn’t really let him see those. But he is a big fan of several of them, that his friends let him watch at their homes, and he does know some of the songs by heart.

Is a big fan of compote (a sweet fruit soup thingy that’s not so surprisingly popular with Russian folk) and will make everyone he ever meets try the disgusting sweet brown liquid at least once. He swears it’s good.

Same goes to pickled watermelon. I don’t... I don’t even know, he just loves this shit. We don’t question the Russians. We just don’t.

His first time at Dizengoff wasn’t even at the center. He went to this one bookstore at the end of the street where they have all the plays at the top floor. He needed them for drama class.

He’s never been to the center but he has been going to pride since he was sixteen years old and has had a binder since he started his service to pass more as male.

His bosses still called him by his dead name (Evgenia) and misgendered him constantly, but then he legally changed his name when he was done with this bullshit, so he’s alright now.

Cusses in Russian more than he does in either Hebrew or English and has a mild Russian accent even though he was born in Israel. He was raised speaking Russian. Don’t worry, he is Jewish.

Or at least... his grandma on his mom’s side wasn’t born Jewish, okay, don’t judge him, it doesn’t make him a Christian or anything, she converted and all that crap, okay?! You happy?!

At one point in his life, his grandparents moved in to live with him and his parents. So it was six people in a two-bedroom apartment. Emile and his sister Vera slept on mattresses in the living room for a long time after that.

His favorite word is suka. There’s a reason why, y’all.

Used to be terrified of TV commercials when he was younger for this one very specific commercial that isn’t even scary. Please don’t ask why.

Is very tired of all the BDS/anti-Israel-pro-Palestine crap. He may hate Israel too, but at least it’s for reasons other than militant propaganda made by Hamas.

And more on his list of questionable food preferences, he actually likes gefilte and might try to terrorize Remy into eating it on Rosh HaShana and Passover. I say try because he’s not that kind of person. His grandparents were nobility and doctors and all that in Russia, blyat, he has more manners than that!

Thinks Tel Aviv is overrated and tries too hard to imitate NYC. And he’s probably right.

NEVER ask him why he didn’t go to Beit Zvi. Just don’t try to. He will go on a rant about how the school died alongside Gary Bilu in 2011 and how much better Nissan Nativ is.

(Though to be fair, that’s not any sort of school rivalry, it’s the truth. I’ve had teachers who studied in Beit Zvi who said the exact same thing. Emile isn’t exaggerating, he’s being realistic.)

I... might update this if I think of more shit, so... keep an eye out methinks!

[gibsongirlselections]

Trump’s Place in Pro-Life History

Life Is Winning: Inside the Fight for Unborn Children and Their Mothers, by Marjorie Dannenfelser, (Humanix Books: August 2020), 256 pages.

On May 22, 2018, President Donald J. Trump walked out onto the dais in front of a packed hall at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. to thunderous applause. He was comfortable and relaxed, and seemed almost taken aback by the enthusiastic reception. “Thank you. Wow. Thank you very much. Thank you, Marjorie. Thank you, Marjorie, for that wonderful introduction. All my friends are out here.”

He had just been introduced to the crowd by Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of America’s most powerful and influential pro-life organization, the Susan B. Anthony List. In the 27 years since the SBA List was founded, they have grown from a tiny pro-life organization trying to combat the influence of abortion groups on Capitol Hill to a well-funded juggernaut with access to the halls of power. In 2017, Vice President Mike Pence was SBA List’s keynote gala speaker—in 2019, it was Mitch McConnell and Nikki Haley.

In Life Is Winning: Inside the Fight for Unborn Children and Their Mothers (published last month with an introduction by Mike Pence and a foreword by former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders), Dannenfelser tells the fascinating story of how the SBA List, founded with a mere $2,485 in 1993, became the powerhouse that sent out 1,000 canvassers and knocked on a million doors for Trump during the 2016 election. It is the story of how the political pro-life movement not only remained relevant but expanded its influence during a time when the GOP elites assumed that abortion was a losing issue.

Dannenfelser writes that she is sympathetic to politicians changing their minds on abortion because she was once pro-choice herself—even when, as a young woman, she campaigned for Reagan in the 1980s. Her mind was changed on the issue by a confluence of deeply personal events, she writes—becoming Catholic and encountering the teachings of Pope John Paul II, the death of a childhood friend, and extensive personal research. Her involvement in the pro-life movement followed soon after, and she began working for West Virginia Democrat Alan Mollohan, co-chairman of the House Pro-Life caucus, working to organize pro-life Democrats.

The abortion movement had EMILY’S List, a political action committee solely dedicated to electing pro-choice women, but Dannenfelser soon realized that the pro-life movement had no equivalent. Thus, the Susan B. Anthony List was born, named for the pro-life suffragette whose newspaper, the Revolution, had once referred to abortion as “child murder.” A range of disparate pro-life feminist groups were behind the founding, and Dannenfelser was asked to serve as executive director. The Capitol Hill launch raised $9,000. The first two tasks were simple: Find viable female pro-life candidates and connect them with the donor cash they needed to get across the finish line. 

During the 1993-94 election cycle, SBA List raised $70,000 for pro-life candidates, while EMILY’s List raised nearly $6 million. Still, eight of the initial fifteen candidates endorsed by the SBA List won, a success rate of 53%. The following year, SBA List switched strategies—after an internal struggle within the organization, it was decided that they were a pro-life group rather than exclusively a women’s group. SBA List would endorse both male and female pro-life candidates. Meanwhile, Dannenfelser fundraised through coffee parties hosted by wealthy and influential supporters (such as Kathleen and Quinton McManus, Joanne Kemp, Susan Baker, Mary Ellen Bork, and others.) 

An essential first step was teaching GOP candidates how to campaign on being pro-life. Republicans were embarrassed by their pro-life supporters, didn’t know how to address the issue, opposed pitching pro-life policies in political advertising unless the ads were specifically targeted to a religious audience, and generally played awkward defence on the issue when it came up. The GOP saw abortion as an issue that was useful for procuring votes, but had no intention of prioritizing pro-life policy. In 1995, however, pro-lifers flipped the script: A bill banning partial-birth abortion was put forward, with seven female congresswomen endorsed by the SBA List as co-sponsors. It was a bill that drew attention to the horrific nature of late-term abortion, and it put the Democrats in the awkward position of defending something most Americans saw as barbaric. It passed, with some Democrats joining their Republican colleagues in voting for it. Bill Clinton vetoed it in April 1996.

Ironically, the politically savvy Clinton understood the pro-life movement’s strategy better than his opponent in the 1996 presidential election, Bob Dole. Clinton was livid at the bind he’d been forced into, growing red-faced and angry when asked about his veto. Dole, despite having run against an abortionist for the Senate in 1974 and winning narrowly by campaigning as a pro-lifer, refused to take advantage of the opportunity. He backtracked on pro-life commitments, signaled his desire to soften the GOP’s platform on abortion, and avoided talking about the issue. He had a “basically perfect” voting record, but like many Republicans of that era, abortion was a matter of political convenience rather than conviction. Many believed that Dole could have used partial-birth abortion as a wedge issue to deprive Clinton of Catholic votes—even Democratic pollsters were warning that the country was not with Clinton on the issue. He vetoed the ban again in 1997, and many Democrats joined the GOP in an attempt to override the veto—including, for a second time, Senator Joseph R. Biden.

In 2000, the SBA List spent $3 million and won 17 out of 22 races. George W. Bush was a genuinely pro-life president, but spoke vaguely about the issue at first—interestingly, Marvin Olasky told me that he met with Bush personally on pro-life policy, but that he suspects Pat Buchanan’s entry in the race led Bush to soft-pedal the issue to avoid the perception of being “pulled to the Right.” Dannenfelser lists Bush’s many pro-life accomplishments—but still, she writes, the “consulting class” kept the movement out and relegated them to the “back of the political bus.” Similarly, in 2008 John McCain had a nearly 100% pro-life voting record, but “had never made the issue a priority.” SBA List’s impact was growing nonetheless—in 2009, Ilyse Hogue of NARAL Pro-Choice America referred to them as “the NRA of the Anti-Choice Movement.”

During the Obama years, SBA List honed their strategy, going into districts or states and engaging the grassroots by strengthening existing groups and supporting them with resources. When Congressman Bart Stupak and 19 other pro-life Democrats caved on their commitment to insist on an amendment banning abortion funding in Obamacare, SBA List swung into action, launching a campaign to ensure that all politicians who had betrayed the movement would lose their seats. Through radio ads, direct mail, billboards, and even a bus tour, SBA List’s campaign had a brutally effective outcome. Stupak decided to retire, and twelve other pro-life Democrats were defeated—including Alan Mollohan, Dannenfelser’s old boss. The message was clear: SBA List could help candidates win—and they could also make candidates lose. They were playing to win. Dannenfelser is still convinced that if the pro-life Democrats had held strong, Obama would have buckled—instead, as of 2020, more than 700 subsidized healthcare plans directly subsidize abortion.

Election Night 2010, Dannenfelser writes, “was a turning point for SBA List.” They spent $11 million in 90 races, and won 62 of them. “[A] pro-life Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives,” she notes—and she wept with gratitude and relief at the results. But immediately afterwards, the GOP appeared to be up to the same old tricks, with Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels suggesting a “truce on the so-called social issues.” SBA List showed up at the Republican National Convention, and all GOP leaders recommitted to the pro-life plank. Still, Mitt Romney was a lukewarm supporter of the movement at best, especially as the infamous comments by Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock seemed to confirm his belief that the abortion issue was a losing one. At the 2012 RNC, it was made clear to the pro-lifers that they were on the outside looking in. At the DNC, on the other hand, NARAL and Planned Parenthood were front and center. Ludicrously, the conclusion of the GOP elites after Romney’s defeat was that he had spent too much time talking about social issues.

The 2016 election changed everything. As the primaries heated up, the SBA List took the same position held by nearly every pro-life leader in the country: Anybody but Trump. Dannenfelser writes that the race was packed with pro-lifers: Jeb Bush was “a true believer”; Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz had long committed to pro-life policies, and Carly Fiorina was pushing for an SBA List endorsement. Dannenfelser watched with mounting dismay as Trump, a Manhattan outsider with a long pro-abortion record, demolished the opposition. Trump was the nominee, and SBA List would have to play ball—especially when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died, raising the stakes. Dannenfelser began talking with Kellyanne Conway, who had done polling for SBA List, about what an endorsement might look like. SBA List sent a pledge to the Trump campaign committing to a series of pro-life policies, and promised that if he signed the letter, they would campaign for him.

Trump not only agreed to sign the SBA List’s pledge, but Conway wanted changes: “I’ve talked to Mr. Trump, and he wants to sign. But he thinks the letter should be stronger and begin with a description of how terrible Hillary is on life.” The SBA List was happy to oblige, and with the selection of Mike Pence—a long-time favorite of the pro-life movement—the campaign was underway. But it was Trump’s brutal description of late-term abortion at the presidential debates that persuaded Dannenfelser and other pro-life leaders that Trump might actually be for real: “Based on what she’s saying…you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.” It was a defining moment: For years pro-lifers had been begging GOP politicians to force their opponents to defend the barbarism of abortion. Finally, one was—and it was Donald J. Trump.

For four years, Dannenfelser writes, Trump has defied skepticism and governed like a pro-life president. He became the first president to speak at the March for Life. Behind closed doors, several sources tell me, he actually pushes pro-life policies. In response, many pro-life leaders feel that for the first time, they have a president who understands their strategy and knows what needs to be done. It may just be Trump’s character—going on the offensive, after all, is his modus operandi. But many pro-life leaders believe they finally have a president who is willing to do what it takes—and treating them like loyal allies to boot. With the Trump administration, at long last, pro-lifers find themselves walking through open doors and taking a seat at the table after years of political betrayals and lukewarm support. They are at the pinnacle of power, where the air is thin. It is heady stuff.

With the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the stakes are higher than ever for the pro-life movement. The SBA List is returning Trump’s loyalty by ignoring his character flaws and campaigning hard for him across the nation. Marjorie Dannenfelser, for one, believes that his convictions are genuine—as she stood behind him while he spoke at the March for Life, she writes that she was convinced that he was “truly speaking from the heart.” And who knows—she may be right. For better or for worse, many believe that the fate of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court, and the abortion debate in America seems, for the moment, to be tied up with that of Donald J. Trump.

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has appeared in National Review, The European Conservative, the National Post, and elsewhere. Jonathon is the author of The Culture War and Seeing Is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion as well as the co-author with Blaise Alleyne of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide.

The post Trump’s Place in Pro-Life History appeared first on The American Conservative.

[beninlife]

The End of an Era

Hello, loves! It is hard to believe that for 10 years I have wanted to join Peace Corps.  Not only did I finally join, but I completed my full 2 years of service!  I have exactly 4 days left in Benin and I am not sure where to begin on describing emotions or events that have taken place leading up to my departure.  So, I’ll start by describing my last two weeks in Bohicon.  Christiana, Pauline’s daughter, came by and took all my furniture a week before I moved out (I inherited all the furniture from the volunteer before me, so I figured I should pay it forward as I am not getting replaced in my house).  Once the furniture was gone, I sat there wondering why I had not gotten rid of things sooner!  It felt great to live a minimalist life with only a small mattress on the floor and a few items of clothing. 

It is part of the culture in Benin for the locals to ask for a gift when you get back from the market, when you travel to another city, before you leave for good.  My understanding is that due to the history of French colonization and missionary work – it has left Benin as a very “give me, give me” culture; dependent on handouts to survive.  So, having close to nothing in my house helped alleviate a lot of those demands for gifts.  My friend Jean told me to respond by saying “Je suis comme vous, j’ai rien.”  (I am like you, I have nothing) I did try this response on a few neighbors and they looked at me confused saying….” But you are white, you have money”.  So, all in all, a failed attempt to politely say I have nothing to give away.  This continued three times a day for the last two weeks, which left me feeling a bit frustrated. 

A less frustrating culturalism in Benin is going away “fetes” (parties).  Everyone in the invited fete wears matching fabric, food is prepared, and drinks are shared. Usually the one leaving pays for or contributes some money to the fete.  I happened to have three going away fetes my last week at site in the following order:

1.)    My Women’s Anti-Trafficking Group in Adjido:  I arrived in the small village on Tuesday around 9 AM and the food was not prepared yet, so I sat and helped peel garlic as the ladies danced around and teased me about leaving, asking if they could go with.  Finally, at 12, the women changed into their matching outfits and we began the short walk to the community center where we normally hold our Village Savings and Loan Meetings.  (The women carrying food and drinks on their heads) Once we arrived, the women began singing traditional songs and held a dance off!  Yours truly was pulled into the dance off against Christiana, which the ladies got a kick out of.  Then the President and Treasurer of the group had the final dance off which brought the house down with laughter, cheering and clapping.   We sat down and enjoyed my favorite meal that they had prepared: Pate rouge with soy cheese.  We each got a drink of choice (coke, sprite, or apple juice).  I had put 15,000 CFA ($26.00 USD) towards the fete and am glad I did.  It was worth it to see all of us dressed up so nicely with no place to go, laughing and stuffing our faces.  We eventually got around to holding our savings meeting and then I got back home around 2 PM, exhausted. 

  2.)    Pauline’s Family: Christiana and I had planned to have a fete at La Racine on Friday night, a restaurant in Bohicon.  I pre-ordered 10 plates of food for 20,000 CFA ($35.00 USD) and waited for Friday night to arrive.  I invited Pauline, her husband Julien, Christiana, her son Nehemie, Emile (my favorite moto driver), the school Director of CEG Sodohome, and three of my retired friends.  (Plus me, that would have made 10 people) The fete was set to start at 7 PM, but mother nature had other plans.  As we are in the rainy season in Benin, the rain started pouring at 6 PM.  Christiana called and re-assured me that by 7 it would be fine. Around 7:30 PM, guests started calling and asking if the party was still on.  I said yes, let’s just wait a little bit.  8PM, 8:30PM, 9PM, 9:30 PM…..finally at 9:45PM I called everyone and said the party was off as the rain still had not stopped!  As everyone uses motorcycles as transportation, it would have been impossible to drive in the rain.  I started to get ready for bed when I got a phone call at 10:30 PM from Christiana.  She said to run outside of my house, because she had found a friend with a car who picked up some of the guests! I quickly dressed, grabbed my rain jacket and ran outside.  When we arrived at La Racine, I was surprised to see Julien, my friend who we call Sancho (he is a security guard and helps Pauline around her house sometimes), Christiana and her son.  Julien and Pauline are hosting a student for an internship program, so the girl was there as well.  We called Pauline but she had gotten stuck in the rain trying to make it to the fete on a moto taxi so she was feeling very sick and was at home trying to stay warm.  The staff at La Racine had held the food and warmed it up so we had a nice feast, including a bottle of wine that the owner sent over to our table.  As I had already pre-ordered the food, I still had to pay for 10 plates and drinks but it was worth it.  All in all, it worked out but it was a final reminder from Benin that life does not go as planned and patience is key.

  3.)    Retired Patrons of CLCAM:  Jean, Telesphore and Sabine have all served as Directors at CLCAM over the last 20 years and are all retired now.  (The volunteer before me, Mike, had introduced me to Jean as someone I could rely on as he has worked with Peace Corps Volunteers for ten years) CLCAM is a microfinance and loan association and has been in business for 40 years in Benin.  As they were unable to make it to my fete at La Racine the night before, on Saturday they picked me up at noon wearing 40th Anniversary CLCAM tissue and had made me a matching dress as well!  We stopped at La Racine so they could see the venue and I bought them each a beer.  From there, we drove to Abomey to stop at one of their friend’s house for a whiskey.  From there, they took me to Hotel Bis where we had another beer each.  Finally, we ended up at a bar near my house for a final beer!  I am not a big drinker so I was pretty toasty after all of the bar hopping!  As you all are aware, the last two years have not been easy for me regarding interactions with males in Benin.  It was such a blessing to have these three men as my support and protectors the last two years! In Benin, usually retired, well established men are referred to as “Patrons” or bosses.  It was a hoot being driven around all day by these patrons, and getting only the best service at each place we stopped since they are highly respected in the community.  I thanked them for always being so kind to me and for their friendship since 2015, and then they dropped me off at home.  Feeling quite tired I took a nap and then had one last dinner with my friend Aviva who lives 10 minutes from me in Saclo (she will fly home a week after me)

Moving day!  On Sunday, I woke up and called my taxi drive to verify that he would arrive at 1 PM.  I organized everything that needed to be returned to Peace Corps in my living room (mattress, gas tank, lock box, fire extinguisher, water filter, helmet).  I still had not said goodbye to Pauline and her schedule did not permit a meetup that day, so I was pretty sad.  I then decided to burn my last stick of incense and walked through each room in the house, as well as the garden and bathing area outside.  I thanked each space for the memories and lessons I was taught over the last two years and then I cried a lot.  Tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of closing this chapter of my life. The more I travel, the harder the goodbyes are as I will always leave a piece of myself behind.  I enjoyed an hour of silence as the incense finished burning and then Aviva, Alex and Camille showed up with the taxi driver to help me move the Peace Corps items into the car. 

Surprisingly the move itself was very anti-climactic.  I was expecting neighbors and children to run after the car, waving and crying.  Instead, it was a quiet Sunday afternoon. No one was home.  I went next door to turn my keys into my landlord to find 15 children glued to a television watching a show.  I said, “Au Revoir” and they nodded, not taking their eyes off of the TV Screen.  We dropped Aviva off at her house since she was on the way to Cotonou and I cried a lot as we said our goodbyes! She was a great friend and saw me through me best and worst days in Bohicon, and accepted me just the same.  She lives in California so I am sure we will meet again someday!  I got back into the passenger seat of the taxi (Camille and Alex were in the back seat as they were going to Cotonou as well) and remained silent for the 2-hour journey.  I made sure to soak in all the landscapes, humor the vendors as they tried to shove peanuts and water through the window at every stop, and did not even mind that our driver stopped to urinate a few times.   I arrived in Cotonou around 3:30 PM, checked in my Peace Corps belongings with staff and showered. 

Now begins Close of Service (COS) in Cotonou.  Yesterday, all 11 of us who are flying home this week had to go to the medical office to get a TB skin test done.  We are all provided with a COS checklist, which entails running around to get signatures from different staff members before the day we fly home stating that we have paid any debts, we have returned Peace Corps property, our bank accounts are closed, and that we are medically cleared to leave the country.  The last step is an exit interview with our Country Director, which I have scheduled at 9 AM on Thursday morning.  Pauline surprised me yesterday!  She came to Cotonou and took me out to lunch one last time.  I was so excited that we had a chance to meet up and say a proper goodbye.  I thanked her for everything that she had done for her community and for me the last two years, including loving me as if I was her own daughter.  It was really emotional, as I have received more encouragement and love from her in 2 years than I did in 26 years from the woman who gave birth to me.  We took one last photo together and then Pauline said “go ! quickly! We will start crying! “ so off we went, both on different moto taxi’s going in opposite directions.

As far as luggage, I am ready to go.  My suitcase is exactly 50lbs and my small carry on backpack is stuffed full.  My flight is at 5:25 AM on Saturday, August 19th.  We have a quick stop in Lagos, Nigeria and then continue to Morocco.  I will have a 10-hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco.  As there are two other volunteers on my flight, we are planning to spend the layover walking around Casablanca, visiting the grand mosque and getting lunch.  From Casablanca, our flight will leave at 10:30 PM for JFK!  I am so anxious to land in the USA for the first time in 2 years!  We arrive at 1 AM in JFK on Sunday, August 20th.  I will try to sleep in the airport before boarding my 8:30 AM flight to Atlanta.  After 3 hours in the Atlanta airport, I will FINALLY take my last flight to Albuquerque, landing around 3:30 PM on Sunday, August 19th.  No doubt I will be tired, excited and full of emotions throughout my long journey back to New Mexico.  I will keep you all posted once I land safely and am enjoying New Mexican cuisine with my family!  What a wild ride it has been for two years living in Benin. 

It is the end of an era!  10 years of planning to join the Peace Corps is completed.  Thank you all for your continued support via phone calls, WhatsApp messages, emails and keeping me in your thoughts.  So thankful for my network of loved ones!  Looking forward to catching up with all of you stateside very soon!!!

[genderrise3-blog]

What Went Wrong at New York City Ballet - The New Yorker

Probably the most cherished old tale about George Balanchine is the one in which the mother of a girl who had auditioned for him comes up to him later and asks whether her daughter will become a professional dancer. “La danse, Madame,” Balanchine replied, “c’est une question morale.”

You could say that he dodged the question, but many of his admirers would say that he answered it directly and accurately. Dance, by virtue of its energy and its precision—and, often, its mounting intensity—brings us close to what many people in the world once looked for, and many still do, in religion. Music operates in the same way, of course, but most dance includes music, and it has something else as well: the body. On the dance stage, human beings place themselves before us much as, in old Italian frescoes, souls came before God: without words, without excuses, without much covering of any kind. They are more or less as they were when they came out of their mothers: flesh and energy, now with the addition of skill. That composite stands for what they are as moral beings, and what, in consequence, they tell us the world is. The better the dancer’s first arabesque penché—the more exact, the more spirited, the more singing its line—the more he or she will embody the promise of the ancient Greeks, lasting at least up to Keats, that beauty, truth, and virtue are inseparable, that we live in a good world.

Such thoughts, however, are unlikely to have occurred to Alexandra Waterbury, a nineteen-year-old model and a former student of the School of American Ballet, New York City Ballet’s affiliate academy, on the morning of May 15, 2018. She woke up in the apartment of her twenty-eight-year-old boyfriend, Chase Finlay, a principal dancer at N.Y.C.B., who was away at the time, and thought to check her e-mail on his computer. What she found on the screen was a series of photographs of women’s private parts, including her own, plus a brief clip of her having sex with Finlay.

According to the complaint in a lawsuit that she later filed, there were text messages, too. Finlay, sending someone a photograph of Waterbury naked, asked, “You have any pictures of girls you’ve f*cked? I’ll send you some . . . ballerina girls I’ve made scream and squirt.” The exchanges included several participants, notably two other N.Y.C.B. principals, Amar Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro, and a young donor, Jared Longhitano. “We should get like half a kilo”—of cocaine, one assumes—​“and pour it over the . . . girls and just violate them,” Longhitano wrote to Catazaro and Finlay. “I bet we could tie some of them up and abuse them like farm animals.” “Or like the sluts they are,” Finlay rejoined. “Yeah,” Longhitano wrote back. “I want them to watch me destroy one of their friends. And they know they’re next. I bet we could triple team.” Finlay also reported that he had just “fucked a 20-year-old ballerina and her sister! That was my first threesome with family members. It was incredible!” In another thread, a former student at the ballet school thanked Finlay for sending a picture of himself and Waterbury engaged in a sex act: “I can’t stop looking at Alex’s tits lol.”

Waterbury got herself a lawyer, Jordan K. Merson, one of the attorneys who had just obtained a settlement in which Michigan State University agreed to pay five hundred million dollars to young gymnasts molested by Larry Nassar. Merson sought a settlement for Waterbury, but N.Y.C.B. refused, and there the matter appeared to rest, until the end of August, when the company announced that Finlay had resigned, and that it had suspended Ramasar and Catazaro after receiving allegations of “inappropriate communications.” A week later, Waterbury’s lawyer filed a lawsuit seeking compensatory and punitive damages for the pain and humiliation she had suffered, together with the damage to her reputation and, therefore, to her job prospects. Soon afterward, Ramasar and Catazaro were fired. (A lawyer for Finlay called the claims “distorted and inaccurate,” and Catazaro’s lawyer said that he would be seeking to have the complaint dismissed. Longhitano declined to comment, and a lawyer for Ramasar argued that one of the women had consented to having her photographs shared.)

Furthermore, Waterbury alleged that New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet knew about this misconduct, or should have. The suit described a party that Finlay and other members of City Ballet had recently thrown at a hotel room in Washington, D.C., inviting underage girls, whom they “plied with drugs and alcohol.” The damage to the hotel came to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But, according to the lawsuit, the hosts of the party, though they had to pay for the repairs to the hotel property, were not otherwise punished; instead, they were simply advised to confine such behavior to New York City, where “it would be easier to control.” This, apparently, did not mean control of the behavior but control of the repercussions—that is, damage control. By means of such tolerance, the suit claimed, N.Y.C.B. signalled to a group of male dancers “that they could degrade, demean, mistreat and abuse, assault, and batter women without consequence.” (An N.Y.C.B. spokesperson called the lawsuit baseless and said that, far from having “condoned, encouraged, or fostered” the men’s behavior, it had investigated the matter and taken “immediate and appropriate action.”)

Losing these dancers was a serious sacrifice for N.Y.C.B. Before the scandal, it had had only fourteen male principals. Now, in one fell swoop, it lost three, and two of them, Ramasar and Finlay, were stars. Accordingly, some people speculated that additional revelations might be coming, and that the company was trying to cover itself. Sexual misconduct in a ballet troupe, just as at the Metropolitan Opera or at Miramax or in the Roman Catholic Church, may be judged less severely by the public than the failure of those in charge to punish or remove the malefactors. The one confronts us with a bad person, the other with a bad world.

In other ways, too, N.Y.C.B. tried to prop up its reputation. At the company’s fall fashion gala, in September of last year, the curtain rose not on a ballet but on a large, loose collection of the troupe’s dancers, in street clothes—people like you and me, people who presumably did not fantasize about tying women up like farm animals. Stepping out from among them, Teresa Reichlen, a seraphic-looking principal dancer wearing a dress that covered her from neck to ankle, delivered a speech, reading it, modestly, from a printout. “We the dancers of New York City Ballet,” she began, in an echo of the Constitution’s We-the-People, “will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass. . . . Each of us standing here tonight is inspired by the values essential to our art form: dignity, integrity, and honor.” That is, what happened was just the work of a few bad apples. Management totted up the donations that Jared Longhitano had made to City Ballet and gave the money to the organization Women in Need. The amount was only twelve thousand dollars, but the institution was doing what it could to assert that it still embraced the faith of Balanchine. Dance is a moral matter.

There was much at N.Y.C.B. to suggest that this was not true—above all the career of the man who had been the company’s boss for the preceding thirty-five years. Peter Martins, a Dane who was trained at the Royal Danish Ballet’s excellent school, joined City Ballet in 1969 and was a sensation—beautiful of face and form, and with big, wonderfully precise feet. He was also six feet two, which meant that he could partner just about any woman in the company, and he was superb at doing so. Women danced better when they danced with him. His partnership with Suzanne Farrell, many would say, was the starring act of N.Y.C.B. in the late seventies.

Ballet historians still do not agree on how, or whether, Balanchine, as his health began to fail, chose Martins to succeed him as the company’s artistic director. Martins says that Balanchine telephoned him early one morning in the summer of 1978, invited him to breakfast, and offered him the job. But Balanchine never anointed him publicly. After the great man died, a number of his close associates—including Betty Cage, the company manager—questioned whether any such offer had ever been made and said that Balanchine’s choice would have been Jerome Robbins, whom he had appointed as a ballet master in 1969. The board of directors diplomatically named both men “co-ballet-masters in chief.” This arrangement continued—with Robbins working mainly on his own ballets and Martins looking after the rest of the repertory—until 1990, when Robbins resigned from the company and Martins became its sole artistic director, a position that he retained until last year, when he retired during an investigation of his treatment of the troupe’s dancers.

People trying to assess Martins’s career should keep in mind that, in the history of ballet, he had what was probably the worst case, ever, of big shoes to fill. Balanchine was an artist on the order of Bach or Tolstoy, in the sense that he had a long career, an enormous range, and a kind of poetic force that made people, when they saw his ballets, think about their lives differently, more seriously. If, at the end of time, anyone ever congratulates us on being the human race, he will be one of the prime exhibits. By contrast, Peter Martins, however beautifully he danced, was, at best, a middling choreographer, until, in the late eighties, perhaps under the strain of being compared with Balanchine night after night, he became something worse, a very pissed-off person.

Even early on, there was a spirit of antagonism in his work. His first piece for New York City Ballet, “Calcium Light Night” (1978), to music by Charles Ives, was a severe, sarcastic, and also rather witty duet, with the woman and the man taking turns dragging each other around the stage on their bottoms. This was the opposite of Balanchine’s woman-worshipping duets. The element of aggression might have been put down to youthful iconoclasm, but, as the years passed, it did not diminish; it grew. In 1988, Martins premièred a new piece, “Tanzspiel,” to a score by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. In it, we see a lone man coming forward. As in a Balanchine ballet, a woman (or the ghost of a woman, or the memory of a woman) approaches him from behind. But then, instead of mesmerizing him, she grabs him, hangs on him, falls to the ground in desperation. He fleetingly responds, but mostly he recoils. Eventually, just to get rid of her, it seems, he strangles her, then dances around the stage with her lifeless body.

“Tanzspiel” was talked about long afterward. Part of what made it shocking was its apparent echo of the so-called “preppie murder,” two years before, which was given huge play in the New York press. In August, 1986, two private-school graduates—Jennifer Levin, who was eighteen, and Robert Chambers, Jr., a year older—were having sex in Central Park in the middle of the night when she died of strangulation. Chambers’s story was that she had pressed him for “rough sex” and was killed accidentally when he tried to stop her from hurting him. His defense team portrayed Levin as sexually rapacious, and, when the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of murder, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Less than two weeks before the first performance of Martins’s ballet, with its depiction of female sexual demands provoking male violence, Chambers received a sentence of five to fifteen years.

Presumably for ticket buyers in search of milder material, Martins later created versions of Russian classics. Each was curiously unsatisfying. “The Sleeping Beauty” (1991) was radically shortened, and it had a strange ending, in which the crowns of the King and the Queen are removed from their heads and transferred to the Princess and her consort—an action that was hard to interpret as anything other than Martins telling his audience that they should stop pining for Balanchine and get happy with his successor. In 1999, the company danced Martins’s “Swan Lake,” a ballet that traditionally ends with the Swan Queen and the Prince drowning themselves in the lake and, in many versions, going to Heaven together. Martins simply has the Swan Queen walk out on the Prince. The message seemed to be: Isn’t this the way it happens in real life? People get together; they have problems; they split up. So what? In 2007, Martins made a new, brutal “Romeo and Juliet.” In Shakespeare’s play, Lord Capulet, furious over his daughter’s rejection of his marriage plans for her, says, “My fingers itch”—in other words, I feel like hitting you. In Martins’s ballet, Capulet actually did hit her, delivering a slap on the face that echoed through the theatre. (Within weeks of Martins’s retirement, the slap was removed.)

But it wasn’t just the revised stories—people deposing their parents and smacking one another around—that made Martins’s work look ruthless. More serious was the tone of the dancing in the company’s storyless ballets. Balanchine ballets that had seemed to be about the most exalted matters in our lives now sat cold and dry on the stage. The dancers appeared to be concealing their performances, as if they were afraid that we would see them defacing these revered works.

The situation was worse in Martins’s own ballets. The dancers often looked like body snatchers. When Martins had a success, it was usually with something fast and furious—for example, his “Harmonielehre” (2000) and “Hallelujah Junction” (2002), both to frenetic scores by John Adams—where the steps were so hard that no one expected the dancers to do more than get through them. The company rose to the challenge, and it was quite a sight—you felt as though your face were being scraped off. The experience didn’t stay with you afterward, though. I remember having a conversation about Martins in the late eighties with one of N.Y.C.B.’s female stars, who told me, “He hates ballerinas. He hates beauty. He hates Balanchine.”

In 1982, Martins began dating Darci Kistler, almost twenty years his junior, a tall, sweet-faced blond dancer from Southern California whom Balanchine had plucked from the School of American Ballet and installed in the company two years earlier, when she was only sixteen. She and Martins were together on and off throughout the eighties, and they married in 1991. One night the following year, the police in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.C.B.’s summer headquarters, got a call from Kistler, reporting that, after an evening out, she and Martins had had a fight, and that he had beaten her and thrown her into the next room, cutting her ankle. Martins was charged with third-degree assault, and spent the night in jail. Kistler later dropped the charges, though she never withdrew her account of what happened that night. Readers should bear in mind that Kistler was not only Martins’s wife; she was one of the leading female dancers in his company, and was often described as Balanchine’s last muse. And Martins damaged her leg, the thing on which a dancer dances. That’s like damaging a pianist’s hand.

Before Martins married Kistler, he had a relationship of legendary storminess with Heather Watts, an N.Y.C.B. principal. “I saw him pick her up and slam her into a cement wall,” John Clifford, another principal, reported. Gelsey Kirkland, in her 1986 memoir, “Dancing on My Grave,” recalled watching Martins drag Watts up and down a flight of stairs.

Given the notoriety of such episodes, it’s remarkable that it was not until December, 2017, that N.Y.C.B. and S.A.B. announced that they had begun an investigation into Martins’s behavior. While this was going on, Martins took a leave of absence and a four-person committee was appointed to manage artistic operations. (He was also suspended from teaching his weekly class at the school.) Why was he finally being questioned? Because, the newspapers reported, S.A.B. had received an anonymous letter containing “general, nonspecific allegations of sexual harassment” by him. A good deal of Martins’s treatment of women was a matter of public record, so there was something odd about an investigation prompted by something as easy to discredit as an anonymous letter making unspecific allegations.

Soon, however, more dancers—and not only women—began to speak to the press about mistreatment by Martins. Jeffrey Edwards, a very refined soloist, told Robin Pogrebin, of the Times, that in 1993 he was physically abused by Martins. He said that he lodged a complaint with the company’s general manager and with the dancers’ union, describing the episode in detail, but that no real action was taken. Edwards soon left the company and now teaches at Juilliard. A former child dancer named Victor Ostrovsky recalled a rehearsal in 1994, when he was a twelve-year-old student at S.A.B. He was horsing around with some other children in the ballet when Martins grabbed him by the neck. “He’s yanking me around to the left and to the right,” Ostrovsky told Pogrebin. “I felt like he was piercing my muscle. I started crying and sobbing profusely.” He soon left S.A.B.: “I was depressed; I was embarrassed. He assaulted me onstage in front of the whole cast.”

In an interview with Salon, Wilhelmina Frankfurt, a tall, commanding N.Y.C.B. dancer from the seventies and eighties, recalled an incident, mid-performance, in which Martins, she said, “pulled me into his dressing room and exposed himself to me. And I had on a tutu. I mean, with an American flag on it, and I ran out because I had to do the finale.” Another encounter she had with Martins, she said, “is so big I don’t think I can talk about it.” The company had no human-resources department for her to go to, and, even years later, once the investigation was under way, she’d been unable to give her version of events. The investigators, she said, would not allow her to bring a witness unless both she and the witness signed nondisclosure agreements. (The company disputes her account.)

The accusations did not always involve force. A number of dancers have claimed simply that Martins slept around among the female dancers, and that roles were often allotted accordingly. This, alas, is a time-honored tradition in ballet companies—and Balanchine’s career was marked, even shaped, by serial infatuations—but it is no longer honored, and managements are now scrambling to institute codes of conduct.

N.Y.C.B.’s investigation had been in progress for only a few weeks when Martins, who was then seventy-one, seems to have tired of the whole business. (Or did the board finally tire of him?) In any case, on January 1, 2018, a few days after being arrested for drunken driving, he announced his retirement. He still denied all the allegations against him, and he expressed confidence that he would be exonerated, but he wanted, he later said, to “allow those glorious institutions”—New York City Ballet and its school—“to move past the turmoil that resulted from these charges.”

Six weeks later, N.Y.C.B. and S.A.B. issued a statement that the Martins investigation “did not corroborate the allegations of harassment or violence both made in the anonymous letter and reported in the media.” No report on the inquiry was ever published, so it is impossible to know how this surprising judgment was reached. And although certain important dancers stood by Martins, the news that he never did any of the things that others had reported was received with considerable skepticism. As Victor Ostrovsky asked, how was it possible that the rest of the cast could recall nothing of what Martins did to him, as a child, at that rehearsal? “They all knew what happened,” he said. Many people in the dance world were disappointed that Sarah Jessica Parker, the vice-chair of N.Y.C.B.’s board of directors and a vocal feminist, had remained silent throughout the affair. (She eventually texted the Times, saying that the safety of the company’s dancers “is paramount to me.”) It was a few months after all this that Alexandra Waterbury logged on to Chase Finlay’s computer and found the photographs of the dancers he had caused to “scream and squirt.”

After Martins left, the boards of N.Y.C.B. and S.A.B. formed a search committee to find a new artistic director. Who that person should be is a mystery, not just to observers but also, no doubt, to the boards. N.Y.C.B. is different from other large ballet companies—the Bolshoi, the Paris Opera Ballet, England’s Royal Ballet—in that it has almost no history of succession. The company was created by Balanchine and his patron Lincoln Kirstein for Balanchine, to show his work. And though Jerome Robbins was eventually given significant space—perhaps a third of the troupe’s stage time—there was never any question of whose ballet company it was.

What everyone would want now is a great ballet choreographer, aided, as Balanchine was, by a superbly capable executive director and staff. But there is only one absolutely first-class ballet choreographer currently working in the United States, Alexei Ratmansky, a Russian, who is the artist-in-residence of American Ballet Theatre, across Lincoln Center’s plaza, whence he is unlikely to be seduced. Ratmansky had his fill of managing ballet companies in the five years, from 2004, that he spent as the artistic director of Moscow’s hidebound Bolshoi Ballet. His contract with A.B.T. allows him to do a good deal of freelancing at other companies, and he seems to like this.

But, however gifted Ratmansky is, no one is claiming that he is the equal of Balanchine. Furthermore, many people, for obvious reasons, have recommended that the new artistic director be a woman. The company, to its credit, has recently mounted ballets by a number of female choreographers. The executive director, Katherine Brown, is a woman. Would the audience accept an N.Y.C.B. run by two women? Why not? In the past, it was often run by two men. Lately, female City Ballet alumnae who have gone on to notable careers as teachers or administrators have been revisiting the troupe’s halls, and various names have been floated, but not on the basis of choreographic achievement. Whereas modern dance has been dominated, in large measure, by female choreographers, classical-ballet choreography is a career that in most Western countries has been all but closed to women, and this is changing only very slowly. To my knowledge, only two twentieth-century women—Bronislava Nijinska and Twyla Tharp—regularly made ballets for major international companies. So if it is hard to find a topflight ballet choreographer who is prepared to move to New York, it is even harder to find a woman who answers that description.

But a distinguished ballet company does not need to be headed by a distinguished choreographer. The example always cited is that of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Serge Diaghilev was not a choreographer at all, but he had the energy and discernment to foster young people who were. After he died, the graduates of his troupe more or less staffed the directorships of Western ballet—Léonide Massine and Bronislava Nijinska in Europe and America, Marie Rambert and Ninette de Valois in London, Serge Lifar in Paris, and, notably, George Balanchine in New York.

This is no doubt the model that N.Y.C.B.’s search committee has in mind: someone with taste who is willing to share the throne or, periodically, to yield it. Peter Martins made no new ballets for N.Y.C.B. during the last five years of his directorship, and one of his virtues—they should be noted—was that he could spot talent in others. He was the first company director in New York to present a ballet by Ratmansky. He also cultivated Christopher Wheeldon, N.Y.C.B.’s resident choreographer from 2001 to 2008, who is now one of the leading lights of international ballet. Wheeldon’s successor as resident choreographer is the thirty-one-year-old Justin Peck, who, whatever his title, is increasingly emerging as the artistic face of the company. Peck, who still dances as a soloist with the troupe, is a man of great skill and productivity. He seems, however, to lack a subject. His casts, even when they are not wearing sneakers, and jackets emblazoned with protest slogans, as they did in his recent “The Times Are Racing,” often seem like teen-agers, a notion that is highly vulnerable to cliché and sentimentality. The audience claps loudly for his work. He was viewed by many people as a top contender to succeed Martins, but he told Gia Kourlas, of the Times, that he didn’t want the job. It’s not hard to see why. At this point, like Ratmansky, he can have pretty much any gig he chooses. Why should he narrow his ambit?

But the audience’s receptivity to Peck is touching. They like him, above all, I think, because he cheers them up and makes them feel, after all the scandals, that something good may once again come out of New York City Ballet. And if that something good is not, in addition, wise or profound—well, any port in a storm. After all, Balanchine never said what he wanted after his death, or how he thought the company should go forward. “Après moi, le board,” he once declared, and, boy, did he know what he was talking about. ♦

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/what-went-wrong-at-new-york-city-ballet

[its-lifestyle]

In the home kitchen, most mothers reign supreme. Tales of dads cooking are becoming more common but by and large, women still prevail over the stove.

But no two families are the same and in some homes, it is the fathers who have played a dominant role in producing cherished family meals, often cooking every day for their nearest and dearest – in the name of familial love.

Paying homage to his mother’s food

At the Nunis dining table, dinner is in progress. Dad Glenn Nunis, 48, has just cooked a huge meal and his wife Coco, 43, and three kids Matthew, 22, Shane, 18, and Hope, 17, are busy helping themselves to their favourite dishes. Smiles of joy are etched on everyone’s faces, none more so than Glenn, who is gazing down at his family with unfettered happiness.

“Seeing my kids eat what I have made is very fulfilling. Most of the time, there is nothing left,” he says, laughing.

Glenn cooks for his family every day. From left: Shane, Hope, Glenn, Matthew and Coco. Photo: The Star/Sam Tham

Glenn cooks for his family every day now, but interestingly he didn’t actually cook at all until leaving home as an adult. His late mother was a talented Eurasian home cook and it was his two sisters who were often in the kitchen with her.

“I think it was expected that my sisters would help her. I only helped cut vegetables during festive seasons, like Christmas.

“But my interest in cooking started when I left the house and wasn’t staying with my mum anymore. That’s when I missed her cooking so I used to call her and ask her how to cook this and that. And she would tell me over the phone, although she used the agak-agak method, so I had to learn as I went along,” he says.

After he married his wife and had kids, Glenn’s interest in cooking burgeoned and he inevitably became the main cook in the family, a role he continues to relish even while holding down a full-time job as an IT manager.

“He cooks mostly every day and I think it helps that we live five minutes away from his office. So he’s back home by 6.30pm and normally, he’s already prepared everything the night before, so the cooking process is much quicker. But cooking is really his passion – he even takes the time to garnish meals like a real chef,” says proud wife Coco.

Coco is so invested in Glenn’s meals that she has even gone through the trouble of photographing everything he cooks and uploading it onto an album she has created on Facebook.

“So now we have an album of everything I’ve cooked,” says Glenn, smiling.

Cooking took on an even more important role in Glenn’s life after his parents passed away unexpectedly in an accident in 2015. Since then, he has become even more determined to continue cooking the heritage Eurasian dishes he learnt from his mother.

One of his mother’s recipes that Glenn continues to make to this day is her prawn pineapple curry, a robust, spicy affair interlaced with plump cubes of pineapple and tender prawns.

Glenn is compiling an e-book of all his recipes in the hopes that his children will pick up cooking in the future. Photo: The Star/Sam Tham

“This is a recipe from my grandmother that was passed down to my mum. My mum made the curry paste from scratch and I do the same thing too. And it’s a hit – my wife likes it and the kids love it as well,” he says.

Glenn’s flavourful chicken pongtey was also trawled from his late mother’s recipe arsenal. “That is something that my mum used to make for us when we were growing up, especially when we were younger because we couldn’t handle spicy food at the time,” he says.

Because their grandmother played such a pivotal role in their lives, Glenn’s children also remember her cooking and have delivered the ultimate compliment to their father: “My dad’s food tastes exactly the same as my grandmother’s food,” says Matthew simply.

As his children are fast growing up, Glenn is now busy compiling all his recipes in an e-book, to ensure that his kids will be able to easily cook the meals he has prepared for them for years, should they ever want to.

The recipes in the book run the gamut from heirloom Eurasian recipes to meals he created himself as well as Filipino fare gleaned from his travels to the Philippines with Coco, who is Filipino.

“I am hoping that the kids will pick up the recipes and learn. I am actually compiling it the way I cook it, so that is something that I can leave behind for them one day,” he says.

Glenn says he knows he’s a bit different from other dads as most of his male friends who are also dads don’t cook at all. But to him, cooking is all about family anyway, which is why he loves doing it.

“I guess I am different from other dads in a sense, but it pleases me to see my family enjoying the food I make,” he says.

 CHICKEN PONGTEY

Serves 6

For pounding together to a paste 5 to 6 cloves garlic 4 shallots

For cooking 2 tbsp oil 2 tbsp heaped minced tauchu (bean paste) 1kg chicken thigh, cut into 4 pieces per thigh 1 tbsp thick caramel black soy sauce 2 chicken stock cubes diluted in 2 cups of hot water 1 small sengkuang, cut into bite-sized pieces 2 carrots, rolling cut 3 potatoes, cut into quarters salt and sugar to taste

To make In a pestle and mortar, pound garlic and shallots to a paste. Set aside. Heat oil in a wok and on low heat, lightly stir-fry the garlic and shallot paste; do not let it brown. Add the minced tauchu, stir constantly on low heat until fragrant. Add chicken and stir on medium heat for about 1 minute. Then add the thick sauce until the chicken is fully coated in the sauce. Add chicken stock. Simmer with lid closed for about 10 minutes. Add the sengkuang, carrots and potatoes, cover with lid and allow to cook on medium heat until the chicken and vegetables are cooked, about 15 minutes. Add salt and sugar to taste and serve hot.

PINEAPPLE PRAWN CURRY Serves 6

For blending into a paste 20 dried chillies, rinsed and soaked in hot water 4 medium red onions 4cm turmeric 2cm lengkuas 4-5 cloves garlic 3 stalks lemongrass 2cm young ginger

For cooking 2 tbsp oil 1 chicken stock cube, diluted in 1 cup water salt to taste 1 tbsp assam jawa (tamarind paste), diluted in 1 cup water 1 small whole honey pineapple, cut into wedges sugar to taste 1kg medium sized prawns, deveined, shells intact

To cook In a blender, blend all the ingredients for blending until smooth. Set aside. In a wok, add oil and stir-fry the blended rempah paste on medium-low heat until a layer of oil emerges, about 2 minutes. Add chicken stock and salt. Add the strained tamarind juice and cut pineapples and let simmer for about 2 minutes. Add sugar to taste and simmer for 10 minutes. Add prawns towards the end, stir to combine and allow prawns to cook until just tender. Once done, serve hot with white rice.

A lifetime of cooking

In his daughter’s sun-drenched kitchen, 72-year-old Henry Kok is cooking up a storm. His performance – and yes, it is indeed a sight to behold – is nothing short of masterful, like a ballet dancer gracefully alternating between different movements – deftness you will instantly see as he slices spring onions with precision, fries up some prawns and stirs the sauce for a dish.

In less than 30 minutes, Henry has whipped up three stunning dishes, barely breaking a sweat and maintaining his sweet, disarming smile.

In many ways, Kok’s prowess in the kitchen began at a very young age, as a child growing up in a financially-strapped family in Perak.

“I was one of seven siblings and when I was small, I used to help my mother in the kitchen. We were fortunate because my father’s boss let us stay in a wooden house with plenty of space. So to help ease the burden of buying groceries, we reared our own ducks and turkeys and planted vegetables and fruits, so we were more or less self-sufficient,” says Kok.

Kok learnt how to cook from his mother but adapted and changed many recipes along the way. When he moved to KL for work, he continued to cook for his siblings, many of whom had also moved to KL for job opportunities.

“When my siblings moved to KL, we all lived together and I was the only one who churned out all the food and everyone enjoyed it. Along the way, I experimented and came up with a lot of dishes myself. So that’s my passion,” says Kok, grinning.

Even after he married his wife Margie Chong, 73, (herself a talented cook) and had his two daughters – Wendy Kok, 48, and Mabel Kok, 45, he continued to cook.

“I’ve been cooking for umpteen years, my family enjoys my food. Even when I was very, very, busy, I would go home and cook,” he enthuses.

Kok is a devoted father and grandfather who believes that a family that eats together, stays together. From left: Darren, Wendy, Cassandra, Margie, Kok, Mabel and Steven. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong

This is made all the more impressive given that Kok is one of the co-founders (alongside his two brothers) of Bina Warehouse, Malaysia’s leading specialist retailer and distributor of luxury bathroom and kitchen brands.

So even as he was building a mega business, he still found the time to cook for his family every day!

“It was an experience from when we were young. My dad used to make us get involved in kitchen activities like going to the market, cooking and cleaning, so we learnt from there and it’s always been a memory from young that we are a cooking family. Having watched and learnt from my dad, I also cook every day for my family,” says Mabel, who is now the CEO of Bina Warehouse.

These days, Kok has semi-retired from the business, although he still serves as the company’s managing director and puts in regular half-days.

But his passion for cooking remains and Kok still cooks for his daughters, their spouses Darren Chong, 39, and Steven Chu, 49, and granddaughter Cassandra Chu, 15, at least three times a week.

“Sometimes I go to their houses in Seputeh and I’ll bring the food I’ve cooked for them and sometimes they come to my home in Ampang and I cook for them there. I strongly believe that a family that eats together, stays together,” he affirms.

Some of Kok’s signature dishes include his assam fish, a triumphantly buoyant, lively affair with fiery underpinnings and citrusy elements underscoring the entire meal.

“It’s a Nyonya dish and the conventional way of cooking it is to use tamarind juice but I thought ‘I want to give the dish some oomph, I want the sourness and sweetness to stand out’. So I began to experiment with kalamansi juice and also pineapple juice. I added it together with tamarind juice – so there are three types of sour juices – and it turned out so beautiful. I’m happy with it,” he says.

Kok’s zest-driven deep-fried prawns with honey lemon curd sauce is also a thing of beauty, as the crunchy prawns are coated in a rich, sumptuous lemon curd-honey-mayonnaise sauce that elevates it to a whole new dimension.

“It’s also my own concoction. I’ve got a nephew whose wife makes homemade lemon curd jam, so I bought some and thought ‘Why not come up with a dish by making use of lemon curd jam?’ So I experimented and came up with this,” he says simply.

Kok says he doesn’t really think of himself as an anomaly, despite the fact that most home cooks are – for whatever reason – often female.

“I think fathers have been cooking, just that it’s not made known. The perception is that ladies always cook, but I’ve been cooking all my life. I have always been the main cook, more than anybody else. And cooking makes me happy,” he says succinctly.

“To which, Kok’s only grandchild Cassandra pipes in, “I don’t think he’s unusual – we’re all just so proud of him,” she says, beaming up at her grandfather.

HENRY’S ASSAM FISH Serves 8 to 10

1 golden pomfret, about 800g (can be replaced with snapper) 7 to 8 okra, tip removed 10 tbsp cooking oil 3 stalks lemongrass, white part only, smashed lightly 15 to 20 shallots, blended 10 cloves garlic, blended 5 to 6 dried chillies, blended 10 fresh red chillies, blended 5 candlenuts, pounded 5cm belacan (6mm thick), flattened to 2mm and toasted over gas fire 6cm fresh turmeric, pounded 2 bunga kantan (torch ginger buds), sliced a bunch of daun kesum (Vietnamese mint), sliced thinly 2 tbsp tamarind pulp, soaked in rice bowl filled with 3/4 water 1 whole pineapple, halved (1/2 cut into slices for curry, the other 1/2 juiced) 10-12 kalamansi limes, juiced salt to taste sugar to taste

To make Steam fish until cooked; discard steaming liquid. Microwave okra until tender, then cut into 2cm slices. Heat wok with cooking oil. Fry lemongrass with blended shallots and garlic. Add blended chillies, candlenuts, belacan, turmeric, bunga kantan and daun kesum and stir to combine. Add tamarind juice, pineapple juice and kalamansi juice and stir to combine. Add salt and sugar, then put in pineapple slices and adjust seasoning to taste. Add okra and fish right at the end and stir to coat evenly for 1 to 2 minutes until flavours soak fish. Serve hot with rice.

DEEP-FRIED PRAWNS WITH HONEY LEMON CURD Serves 8 to 10

2 green apples, skin removed and diced 4 tbsp lemon curd 4 tbsp mayonnaise 1 tbsp honey 700 to 700g class A prawns, shelled and deveined salt and pepper to taste pinch of five-spice powder rice flour to coat a plate

In a bowl, mix apples with lemon curd, mayonnaise and honey. Season prawns with salt, pepper and five-spice powder and coat well in rice flour until batter is evenly distributed. In a frying pan, deep-fry prawns until cooked but still tender. Coat prawns well in lemon curd mixture and serve immediately.

from Food – Star2.com http://bit.ly/2XkRt0j

[gyrlversion]

Aintree racegoers show off their ensembles on day 1 of horse racing

It may not have the high society sheen of Royal Ascot, but today the ladies of Liverpool proved they can more than hold their own in the style stakes as they got the Aintree Grand National Festival 2019 off to a glamorous start.

Arriving at the three-day event in a flurry of towering heels, plunging necklines and thigh-skimming hemlines, they proved that chilly April temperatures are no barrier when it comes to fashion.

Some were seen doing battle with the elements, however, as revellers struggled to hold on to their umbrellas and covered their heads with their coats to prevent their perfectly coiffed hair being ruined.

More than 150,000 are expected at the three-day meeting, which is in its 180th year and hosts the showpiece Grand National race on Saturday afternoon.

The first guests brought with them a splash of colour, boasting bare arms and floral red ensembles, posing as they prepared for a day of festivities. 

Let the festivities begin! Glamorous guests kicked off day one of Aintree Grand National Festival 2019 in an array of head-turning ensembles on Thursday, braving the frosty April temperatures in a show of towering heels, plunging necklines and thigh-skimming hemlines

Getting the party started! A high spirited reveller showed off her dance moves in the bar, while sporting a stylish black and white monochrome dress

Later in the day the relieved guests were seen taking cover inside, enjoying a tipple as they watched the progress of the races unfold

I whip my hair back and forth! This reveller was certainly in the party spirit as she turned the bar area into her own dancefloor

Scarlet appeared to be the theme for the first arrivals, with one guest opting for a red floor-length dress with a high-low hemline and coordinating black accessories, while another went for a red floral dress and matching satin clutch.

Their companion opted for a more demure black jumpsuit, warding off the chilly temperatures. 

Meanwhile another woman was seen arriving in a bright orange jumpsuit and sensible heels, wrapping up with a black wool coat as the pre-drink temperatures proved too much to bear.

And ladies sporting more risque ensembles soon started to arrive, with one lady rocking a dramatic red hat and white mini-dress, while another went all out in a pink and gold ruffled tutu-style frock.

Elsewhere asymmetric necklines and high-low hemlines were on show, with the common theme of killer heels sure to leave the ladies with aching feet by the end of the day. 

And some guests opted for retro chic in Bardot-neck dresses, polka dots and oversized headgear, braving the windy conditions as they posed for pictures. 

Nude platform shoes and matching accessories appeared to be the underlying trend of the day, with the ladies letting their frocks take centre stage. 

Couple goals! Left: A proud gentleman gave his glamorous girlfriend a run for her fashion money in Gucci loafers and a checked suit as she struggled to hold her peach tutu inspired frock – which she matched with a pair of designer sandals-  in place; Right: A well-preened couple remained in good spirits despite the weather

Feeling merry! A group of high-spirited revelers got the party going as a crowd of suprised men looked on in the background – perhaps hoping to get in on the fun

Seeing red! These two ladies opted for dramatic red headgear and coordinating floral accessories as they injected a splash of colour to the gloomy day

Tonight, we’re drinking by the bottle!  One lady was seen toting a bottle of wine as she made her way through the rain, dressed in a sequin-encrusted mock dress

Surprise guest Princess Anne was seen looking cheery as she arrived in a green wool coat and matching hat, shielding herself from the rain with an umbrella.

Pregnant Beth Tweddle was also seen arriving at the racecourse, dressed in a summery red dress by Traffic People emblazoned with a bird pattern, which she teamed with flat sandals and a white blazer and envelope clutch. 

The 33-year-old retired British artistic gymnast, who tied the knot to finance director Andy Allen (pictured) last June, is eight months pregnant with their first child.

Meanwhile male race-goers put on a safer display, rocking their best three piece grey suits and navy outfits – with some pushing the boat out in tan-coloured shoes. 

Elsewhere other racegoers opted for more traditional race attire, with some couples spotted wearing matching tweed skirt and trouser suits and sensible boots, with tweed another theme of day.

Some attendees opted for faux fur and tasteful floor-length maxi dresses as they mastered the art of dressing for the unpredictable British weather.

Princess Anne beamed at the cameras, bringing an upbeat note to the gloomy day as she wrapped up in a scarf and gloves for the chilly temperatures

Princess Anne was pictured peering at her binoculars as she observed the races from the safety of a balcony as an aide took note of the progress of the horses

Elsewhere guests braved the cold and bared their legs in patterned dresses. Seen left: A woman opted for a floral ruffled thigh-skimming dress despite the chilly day, while – seen right- another attendee went for a plunging monochrome dress and killer heels

A group of glamours racegoers showed off their colourful array of outfits, opting for pastel tone suits and dresses, short ruffle multi-tier dresses, sheer blouses and dramatic headgear

Don’t get your heels stuck! This group of ladies put on a monochrome display in their black and white coats and coordinating umbrellas

Not raining on their fashion parade! Three women stayed in high spirits as they donned disposable ponchos over their monochrome ensembles 

Keeping the party going! Guests were seen brightening up the dreary day in white outfits as they made sure they didn’t let a spot of rain get in the way of a good party

While Aintree may not have the royal touch Ascot does, it certainly holds its own in the fashion stakes when it comes to flashing the flesh. 

As well as killer heels, thigh-skimming dresses and plunging necklines, the event is famous for its display of flamboyant headgear.

Soldiers of the Irish Guards were seen marching through the grounds as day 1 of the Grand National Festival 2019 at Aintree Racecourse kicked off. 

Tomorrow, day two of the event three-day event, is famously Ladies Day, where female racegoers get out their best outfits and put on an array of daring displays, with the ‘best-dressed’ receiving the coveted award. 

According to racecourse bosses, there’s no strict dress code for the festival as there is for Royal Ascot.

Celebrity spots! Love Island’s Chris Hughes looked dapper in a checked three-piece suit while singer Laura Wright was seen performing during Grand National Thursday of the 2019 Randox Health Grand National Festival at Aintree Racecourse, wearing Amada Wakeley

Soprano Laura wright was pictured wearing Amanda Wakeley, teaming a wide brim hat with a checked blazer for the glamorous occasion

British field hockey player Sam Quek looked sophisticated in a navy blue dress and a pearl necklace with matching earrings as she posed for a picture ahead of the races

Cheers! Elsewhere other racegoers opted for more traditional race attire in fedora hats, tweed suits, sensible boots and checked trouser coats

Prom ready! Two women certainly turned heads, opting for pale coloured strappy satin frocks, carefully contoured make-up and nails that matched their outfits as the posed for pictures

A touch of turbulence? A group of glamorous guests battled inconvenient gusts of wind as they debuted their best outfits on the Aintree runway

Grand National Festival 2019 at Aintree – Day 1 saw an array of racegoers dressed in their best glad rags descending on the racecourse

Guidance on the course website reads: ‘Although there is no official dress code, smart is preferable and is often adopted.

‘Aintree is a spectacle of colour throughout the year, with many using their trip to the racecourse as an opportunity to showcase their favourite raceday outfits. Hats are optional too, but are frequently worn.’

Fancy dress and ‘offensive clothing’ also make an appearance on the list of banned items this year.

However, in recent years event organisers have been trying to encourage a more conservative approach.

In 2015, an optional ‘style code’ was released in an effort to smarten up the event and encourage more sophisticated fashion.

The guide was devised by fashion writers from Vogue and Tatler in conjunction with Justine Mills, owner of Liverpool designer boutique Cricket – a favourite with WAGs such as Coleen Rooney.

Wrapping up! Other attendees opted for faux fur and tasteful floor-length maxi dresses as they mastered the art of dressing for the unpredictable British weather

Turning heads in red! The first arrivals brought a splash of colour in red floral dresses and killer heels, along with trademark headgear, seen left and right

Left to right: Red was the theme for these eager early birds, with one guest (left) opting for a red floor-length dress with a high-low hemline and coordinating black ensembles, while another went for a red floral dress and matching satin clutch (right). Their companion opted for a black jumpsuit (centre)

Twinning in checks! Elsewhere other racegoers opted for more traditional race attire in tweed, sensible boots and checked trouser and skirt suits

It was inspired by the Coco Chanel quote: ‘Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.’

At the time, John Baker, the northwest regional director for the Jockey Club, which owns Aintree, said he hoped to help give the event a facelift.

Security officials were seen making stringent security checks on Thursday morning ahead of day one of the much-anticipated racing event. 

Racegoers have always been subject to strict security procedures brought in after the IRA bomb scare in 1997, with only small handbags allowed to be brought into the event.  

Nothing will get them down! Two ladies puckered up for a selfie while another brought patterns to the dreary day with florals and leopard print

What a display! Floral was another theme for the day with ladies ignoring the bad weather and rocking an array of patterns

Not the make-up! One savvy lady kept her hair and make-up intact by covering her head with a newspaper – emerging looking flawless

Battling the elements! Unfortunate racegoers fell victim to strong gusts of wind – struggling to keep their umbrellas and hair in check

One woman ditched the heels for flip flops and donned a transparent cape as she used a bit of Dutch courage to brave the windy conditions

You still look great! Three women didn’t let a little wind get in the way of their appearance as they placed transparent ponchos over their outfits and continued with their day

Upbeat! These glamorous guests reached for their umbrellas and raincoats to continue their day of festivities on the gloomy day

One woman kept smiling as she placed her coat over head and held her ticket inscribed with the rather apt message ‘the world is watching’

Taking it in good spirits! Despite the less than ideal weather for the glamorous day, women were seen putting transparent disposable ponchos over their ensembles and continuing their glamorous displays

Little White Riding Hood! One lady looked ethereal in a pearl and feather encrusted dress as she shielded her immaculate make-up from the rain in a nude coloured hood

Later in the day the relieved guests were seen taking cover inside, enjoying a tipple as they watched the progress of the races unfold. 

Racegoers were seen letting their hair down as drinks flowed and the betting floor was transformed to a makeshift dance floor for some cheery guests.

Bets will be placed on the top racehorses getting in on the action, including Clan Des Obeaux and Bristol De Mai in the Betway Bowl. 

Chivalry isn’t dead! A gentleman in a well-cut waistcoat and crisp shirt was seen holding a blazer over his partner’s head in an attempt to shield her grey ensemble from the rain

One woman kept her smile as the wind bluew up her brolly and her hair, however she appeared to be in good spirits

Wrapping up! Others opted for more sensible attire, with one lady going for a coordinated fuchsia ensemble and matching scar, left, and another keeping it classy in a beautifully cut black dress and matching head piece, covering up in a camel coat

More than £1.5million has been invested in trying to protect the welfare of horses, following the recent deaths of horses Sir Erec and Invitation Only at Cheltenham, which sparked animal welfare protests. 

Aintree has said it has ensured the safest ground is available to be raced on at all times, regardless of the weather and climate conditions. 

The grass is cut to precisely four inches for the whole circuit to provide plenty of cushion. Even the species of grass, make-up of the soil and measured watering is considered to ensure the ground is safer for horses to run on while the take-off and landing areas around the fences have been created with greater spring in the ground.

Jockey Leighton Aspell, who won successive Nationals in 2014 and 2015, said: ‘There are two things particularly that have changed for the better. Firstly the core of the fences is now much softer and safer and secondly the bypass of the fences, particularly for the loose horses. Every year, Aintree takes another step in the right direction.’

Veterinary teams assess the health of horses as soon as they arrive to certify they are safe to race and not a danger to themselves or other horses.

Take cover! A lady is seen in a pretty blue summer frock, left, covering her head with a coat, while another woman, right, wore a brown polka dot dress and used her blazer to cover her face from the rain

Racegoers watch horses warm-down following the first race on the opening day of the Grand National Festival horse race meeting at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool

Keep smiling! Two ladies watched the races from the sidelines with a cup and paper straws in hand, not letting the dreary weather getting in the way

Popping bottles! Racegoers enjoyed respite from the conditions during the Grand National Thursday of the Randox Health Grand National Festival 2019

Here come the boys! Male race-goers put on a safer display, rocking their best three piece grey suits and navy outfits – with some pushing the boat out in tan-coloured shoes

Soldiers of the Irish Guards were seen marching through the grounds as day 1 of the Grand National Festival 2019 at Aintree Racecourse kicked off

Security officials were seen making stringent security checks on Thursday morning ahead of day one of the much-anticipated race event

A soldier of the Irish Guards with an Irish Wolfhound was seen standing in the soon-to-be packed stadium on Grand National Thursday of the 2019 

A security officer was seen using a scanning device to check the underneath of a car arriving ahead of day one of the big day

Pictures show general views of the opening morning of the Grand National festival at Aintree, Liverpool

 A sign warns visitors to look out for galloping ahead of the big day. Pictures show general views of the opening morning of the Grand National festival at Aintree, Liverpool

Visitors were seen having their bags checked as they arrived to kick of day one of the Grand National Festival 2019

A sign warns guests of the prohibited items, which include large bags, flags, flares and long lens cameras. Fancy dress and offensive clothing are also on the list of banned items

Making it rain? A group of racegoers cheered on the horses from the sidelines and appear to have had a flutter on the horses

More than £1.5million has been invested in trying to protect the welfare of horses, following the recent deaths of horses Sir Erec and Invitation Only at Cheltenham, which sparked animal welfare protests

  The post Aintree racegoers show off their ensembles on day 1 of horse racing appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[thetrumpdebacle]

President TrumpDonald John TrumpHouse Democrat slams Donald Trump Jr. for ‘serious box of amnesia’ after testimony Skier Lindsey Vonn: we don’t wish to paint Trump during Olympics Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans consider comparison Trump advisers had wanton exchange with Russia MORE’s initial year in bureau has constructed a relentless tide of controversies.

Trump’s eagerness to gibe domestic norms has angry his critics, even while it has gay his supporters.

In a pointer of only how scattered 2017 has been, some inclement episodes that would have been huge stories underneath other presidents do not even moment a Top 10 list below.  

We found no space on a list for a Trump debate to a Boy Scouts in Jul that drew widespread critique for a sincerely domestic nature; nor for his idea that TV anchor Mika Brzezinski was draining from a face due to cosmetic surgery; nor for his poke during Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenOvernight Regulation: Net neutrality supporters envision tough probity conflict | Watchdog to examine EPA chief’s assembly with attention organisation | Ex-Volkswagen exec gets 7 years for emissions intrigue Overnight Tech: Net neutrality supporters envision tough probity quarrel | Warren backs bid to retard ATT, Time Warner partnership | NC county refuses to compensate release to hackers Avalanche of Democratic senators contend Franken should renounce MORE (D-Mass.) as “Pocahontas” during an eventuality honoring Native American veterans.

Here are a 10 biggest Trump controversies of a year.

  The banishment of James ComeyJames Brien ComeyTrump: Dershowitz talk on ‘witch hunt’ a ‘must watch’ Comey after Trump tweet: FBI is honest, strong, eccentric Former ethics director: Trump’s twitter on Flynn would have finished past administrations MORE

The preference to glow FBI executive James Comey was a biggest self-inflicted wound of Trump’s initial year.

It led directly to a appointment of special warn Robert Mueller by Deputy Attorney General Rod RosensteinRod Jay RosensteinDOJ unsuccessful to talk FBI confidant before it filed charges in Russian arch temptation box Deputy AG Rosenstein: Charlottesville marchers advocated ‘racism and bigotry’ White House could use ethics sequence to bushel special warn on Russia: news MORE — and to a universe of pain for a president. 

Top aides have been indicted, a Russia examine has hung over his initial year in a White House and a boss himself faces questions about either he blocked justice.

Comey delivered thespian testimony to Congress after a firing. His difference were carried live inhabitant by during least a dozen TV networks.

The widespread guess — yet Comey did not categorically contend this — is that a FBI executive was dismissed since he refused to behind off an review into former inhabitant confidence confidant Michael Flynn.

“It’s my visualisation we was dismissed since of a Russia investigation,” Comey said.

Trump was reportedly suggested opposite banishment Comey even by some of his many brave aides, including then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon. He went ahead, and a reverberations dominated a rest of a year. 

They will relate into 2018.

  Charlottesville

Trump’s greeting to a convene by far-right activists in this Virginia city dominated August, and led to some of a strongest critique of him from within his possess party.

The “Unite a Right” convene stretched over a weekend of Aug. 11 and 12. Among those attending were unashamed white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. They had come to a city to critique a due dismissal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a park.

Predictably, there were clashes between those attending a convene and left-leaning groups opposite to them. A protester, Heather Heyer, was struck and killed by a car driven by a male reported to have far-right sympathies. According to police, a ramming was an conscious attack.

Trump essentially pronounced that there had been “hatred, prejudice and attack on many sides.” The response, suggesting a dignified equilibrium between neo-Nazis and those who protested opposite them, caused a furor. 

The debate deepened serve when, during a successive appearance, Trump pronounced there were “very excellent people on both sides.”

In further to a snowstorm of Democratic and magnanimous criticism, Republicans including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Sen. John McCainJohn Sidney McCainGOP strategist donates to Alabama Democrat Meghan McCain knocks Bannon: ‘Who a ruin are you’ to impugn Romney? Dems direct Tillerson finish State employing freeze, deliberate with Congress MORE (Ariz.) and 2012 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney all publicly dissented from Trump’s position.

  Travel ban

Trump had been in bureau for only a week when he sealed an executive sequence that led to protests in streets and during airports.

The initial chronicle of a transport anathema that a administration attempted to order criminialized many travelers to a United States from 7 nations with majority-Muslim populations.

Trump and a administration argued such a pierce was required to strengthen a United States from a hazard of terrorism. But it ran into evident authorised challenges. Lawyers argued there was transparent eremite animus and discrimination, a indicate that they reinforced by highlighting Trump’s campaign-trail guarantee to order a “total and finish shutdown” of Muslims entering a United States.

The initial chronicle of a anathema became bogged down in a courts, as did a second iteration.

But a White House finally got a feat in early December, when a Supreme Court authorised a third chronicle of a anathema to go into outcome while authorised hurdles to it are ongoing. 

  Taking a knee in a NFL

Trump has had a quarrelsome attribute with the NFL dating behind to a 1980s, when he was a distinguished banker in a opposition United States Football League.

But he kicked things into a totally opposite rigging this year, hammering players who opted to take a knee during a personification of a inhabitant anthem in protest of secular injustice.

Trump put himself precisely in a center of a emanate during a debate in Alabama in September. Campaigning for obligatory Sen. Luther StrangeLuther Johnson StrangeGOP sen: ‘Just a fact’ Moore will face ethics censure if inaugurated Trevor Noah: Trump contingency be ‘morally degenerate’ to behind Roy Moore Moore gets boost from Bannon in final days of debate MORE (R-Ala.), who would go on to remove a GOP primary, Trump pronounced people would “love” if NFL owners reacted to a actor holding a knee by saying, “Get that son of a dog off a margin right now. Out! He’s fired!”

The outburst essentially constructed a larger grade of oneness among a players. Trump, though, was retiring as ever to behind down, and strike a players and owners several some-more times, generally around Twitter.

It was not transparent who won a quarrel politically, yet Trump has regularly remarkable a decrease in TV ratings for a NFL.

  “Little Rocket Man”

Trump’s unusual proceed extended to a general arena. 

His supporters see his negligence for tactful niceties as a prolonged overdue pierce toward American assertiveness. His detractors courtesy it as forward and dangerous.

The many transparent instance came in Trump’s ongoing argument with North Korean personality Kim Jong Un. In a debate to a United Nations in September, Trump called Kim “Rocket Man” — a coexisting anxiety to North Korea’s barb module and a Elton John strike mostly played during Trump rallies during a 2016 campaign. 

During a same speech, Trump pronounced that a United States would “totally destroy North Korea” if it felt it had to do so.

In response, Kim called Trump “the mentally demented U.S. dotard” and threatened to make him “pay dearly” for his rhetoric. 

Trump called Kim “a ill puppy” — and mutated his nickname to “Little Rocket Man” — on successive occasions.

  A argumentative upraise call

Trump had already shown during a 2016 debate that he had no remorse about tangling with a kin of U.S. infantry killed in combat, if they criticized him.

Last year, it was Khizr and Ghazala Khan, a kin of a U.S. Army officer killed in Iraq in 2004. The Khans seemed during a 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonGrassley blasts Democrats over rejection to examine Clinton GOP lawmakers bring new allegations of domestic disposition in FBI Top intel Dem: Trump Jr. refused to answer questions about Trump Tower discussions with father MORE.

This October, it was a family of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of 4 U.S servicemen killed in an waylay in Niger.

The quarrel began when Rep. Frederica WilsonFrederica Patricia WilsonThe scarcely 60 Dems who voted for impeachment House rejects Democrat’s fortitude to cite Trump Mullen: ‘Sad moment’ when Kelly shielded Trump over call to depressed soldier’s widow MORE (D-Fla.), a crony of a Johnson family, told a internal NBC News associate in Miami that Trump had told Johnson’s widow, “you know, he must’ve famous what he sealed adult for.” 

Wilson indicted a boss of carrying been unresponsive and pronounced that Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, had pronounced that Trump did not seem to remember her husband’s name.

On Twitter, Trump insisted that Wilson had “totally fabricated” what he had said. Members of Johnson’s family, however, stood by Wilson’s account.

The debate followed on a heels of a associated Trump flap, when he claimed, inaccurately, that former President Obama and other past presidents “didn’t make calls” to bereaved relatives.

  Indictments

The Russian examine led by Mueller began delivering a many critical problems for Trump in late October, when former debate authority Paul ManafortPaul John ManafortJudge warns Manafort not to plead box with media Manafort concerned in drafting op-ed fortifying his Ukrainian work: probity papers Trump went off on Manafort for suggesting he should not seem on Sunday shows: news MORE and his associate Richard Gates were indicted on charges associated to income laundering.

A lower-level debate adviser, George PapadopoulosGeorge Demetrios PapadopoulosMueller group questions how many Trump knew on Russia contacts: news Papadopoulos lied to FBI out of faithfulness to Trump: news White House was not wakeful Clovis testified before grand jury: news MORE, was also indicted. The bigger hazard for Team Trump in that instance was a explanation that Papadopoulos was auxiliary with prosecutors.

The biggest news of all came in December, when Flynn, a former inhabitant confidence adviser, pleaded guilty to fibbing to a FBI. 

Flynn, too, struck a understanding with Mueller’s team. 

Flynn’s flip is a singular many dangerous component so distant for Trump and his closest confidants.  

   Kirsten GillibrandKirsten Elizabeth GillibrandDemocrats spin on Al Franken Report: Franken will renounce Thursday Minnesota’s largest journal calls on Franken to renounce MORE “would have finished anything”

The boss reacted explosively after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pronounced he should renounce in light of a accusations of passionate attack and other bungle that have been intended opposite him by some-more than a dozen women. 

“Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a sum attendant for Charles E. Schumer and someone who would come to my bureau ‘begging’ for debate contributions not so prolonged ago (and would do anything for them), is now in a ring fighting opposite Trump,” he wrote on Twitter.

The idea that Gillibrand “would do anything” for debate money was widely seen as a passionate innuendo. 

But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders shielded a president, arguing during a media lecture that “only if your mind is in a gutter would we have review it that way.”

Other womanlike Democrats, including Warren, came to Gillibrand’s defense, as did a series of media figures.

Gillibrand herself indicted Trump of “a sexist allegation attempting to overpower my voice.”

  Sean SpicerSean Michael SpicerSpicer: CNN ‘doing a disservice’ by boycotting White House Christmas celebration DNC attorneys authorised to overthrow Spicer over choosing night participation in Trump Tower Sean Spicer to decider DC dance-off MORE and a coronation crowd

Then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer set a tinge for many of what was to come on a initial full day of a Trump presidency, lambasting a media for their coverage of a prior day’s inauguration.

Among his criticisms was that a media had not famous that “this was a largest assembly to ever declare an inauguration, period, both in chairman and around a globe.”

The in-person throng during Trump’s coronation was significantly smaller than a assembly for Obama’s homogeneous eventuality in Jan 2009, as detailed justification done clear.

Spicer also got several other contribution wrong in his broadside, though he continued to mount by it as prolonged as he served in a White House.

After he left, he was asked by a New York Times if he regretted a episode.

“Of march we do, absolutely,” he replied.

  The Mooch is loose

There has never been a White House communications executive utterly like Anthony ScaramucciAnthony ScaramucciScaramucci labels Bannon a ‘loser’ Scaramucci slams contributor who available Bannon, Priebus tirade: ‘Very bad actor’ Scaramucci resigns from college house after lawsuit threats MORE.

The banker and Trump crony — “The Mooch” to fans and foes comparison — was allocated by Trump on July 21, and fired 10 days later.

Spicer quiescent as White House press secretary on a same day Scaramucci was tapped by Trump. Spicer was shortly followed to a exits by his crony and fan Reince PriebusReinhold (Reince) Richard PriebusScaramucci announces sum for news site Trump: ‘I call him chief’ John Kelly Scaramucci going on Stephen Colbert’s uncover Monday MORE, Trump’s initial arch of staff.

There had not been any time for that tumult to settle down before Scaramucci gave a scurrilous on-the-record talk to The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, in that he pounded Priebus and Bannon in wanton terms.

There was no approach behind from there. The attainment of late Marine Corps Gen. John KellyJohn Francis KellyMORE as arch of staff spelled a finish of Scaramucci’s brief and vigourous tenure.

The Memo is a reported mainstay by Niall Stanage, essentially focused on Donald Trump’s presidency.

  via The Trump Debacle

[houstonlocalus-blog]

The Bachelor in the West Wing: Happily Never After

Illustration by Honeybones

  For the first several months of the current administration, every day was an adventure in outrage. There were people being turned away from the United States under a travel ban that hadn’t existed when they boarded their flights. The administration threatened to strip grant money from Sanctuary Cities. Environmental and banking regulations were attacked. The Cabinet has been filled with some of the most unqualified people to ever hold their respective positions, people with the cruelest ideologies. Donald Trump did not select these people because he believed that they would be competent leaders and advisors; he picked them because they have the only thing that Donald Trump respects: money. In Trump’s view of the world, there is only one marker of success or competence, regardless of whether a fortune was earned stolen or inherited — net worth, his only true measure of personal importance. Jeet Heer wrote a column for the New Republic last week outlining Trump’s ethos and that of his almost-but-not-quite Communication Director Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in record time on Monday, just two weeks before his official start date. Heer calls this ethos “the New York Douchebag,” typically defined as a loud, brash, excessively confident man, with an exceptionally fragile ego. Texans of generations past used to call this type of man a “hot dog,” a personality more often signaled by expensive cowboy boots and an instinctive reluctance to tip. Money is indistinguishable from personal and moral worth for these men, and loyalty is something owed to them but never from them. The resulting application of this caustic ethos in the West Wing has been a revolving door of advisors with no real ideological lodestar (excepting Steven Bannon and his acolytes) other than to profit personally from the position they hold. And the only way to profit is to stay in Trump’s infamously fickle good graces.

  Twitter has been incessantly mocking Scaramucci with memes of Futurama’s infamous “’80s Guy,” a cryogenically frozen venture capitalist from 1980s New York City who wakes up in the future and tries to take over the first company that offers him employment, but this character has just as much in common with Trump. A National Review article on the state of Trump’s inner-circle succinctly explains: “Trump doesn’t want stability, he wants motion. He isn’t interested in details or arguments, he’s energized by accomplishments, achievements, placards on the wall. He doesn’t have a cabinet, he has employees. And the primary job of those employees is to protect their boss.” Or, as The ’80s Guy would put it, “Sharks are winners and they don’t look back ‘cause they don’t have necks. Necks are for sheep.”

  Unfortunately for Trump and his Cabinet, they’ve come to remind me more of a different kind of shark. I recently listened to a science podcast that described the reproductive process of certain tiger sharks: multiple eggs are fertilized by multiple males and grow at different rates. The fitter and stronger baby sharks hatch first and devour their siblings in utero to grow even stronger. This seems an apt metaphor for the Trump White House. Trump thrives on chaos, competition and attention. He wants to watch his inner circle fight among themselves to dictate who gets to kiss the ring and who doesn’t — so long as they don’t get more attention than he does in the national press.

  This was likely Scaramucci’s fatal mistake after seeming to gain significant influence in the West Wing so swiftly. After a very public feud with Scaramucci, Reince Priebus was unceremoniously replaced by former Homeland Security John F. Kelly and was left stranded by Trump’s motorcade on an airport tarmac. Kelly himself decided to fire Scaramucci after his crude comments to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza made headlines all over the country. Communications professionals seems especially difficult for the Administration to hold on to. Sean Spicer, whose tenure at the White House was marked by near constant humiliation, resigned over the decision to hire Scaramucci. Jason Miller, who served as Senior Communications Officer during the campaign, was supposed to step into the role of Communications Director, but left the administration before inauguration to spend more time with his family (everyone’s favorite euphemism). Miller was then replaced by Michael Dubke after a few weeks of Spicer trying to juggle both the role of Communications Director and White House Press Secretary. Dubke, whose hiring was considered a sign that the Trump administration was at least paying lip service to the Republican establishment, lasted only a few months, and he was supposed to be replaced by Scaramucci. With Priebus, Spicer, and Dubke all out of the administration, rumors are swirling that both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security advisor H.R. McMaster are so frustrated with the capriciousness and chaos of the administration that they too are considering resigning from their respective posts. The Republican establishment has been all but totally pushed out of the administration. On top of all this, there are Trump’s public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who Trump feels should not have recused himself from the investigation into the administration’s ties with Russia and potential 2016 Presidential Election interference. Odd as it feels to refer to a man deemed too racist to be a Federal Judge in the ’80s as an “establishment Republican” in 2017, that is where we are now.

  And as the establishment wing of the administration collapses, who remains to whisper in Trump’s ear? On one side, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and their ally, National Economic Council Director and former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn. On the other side are the ideologues: Steve Bannon and his protégé Stephen Miller. Bannon, former head of the ultra-right-wing publication Breitbart News, has infamously butted heads with Kushner, whom he sees as working against his nationalist “movement” within the White House.

  Which of these remaining gestating baby sharks will eat their kin first? Earlier this year, rumors spread throughout the Beltway and the media that Bannon was almost forced out. Portrayals of Bannon as the “true power” behind the Presidency on Saturday Night Live, coupled with a Time Magazine cover featuring Bannon with the headline “The Great Manipulator” reportedly infuriated Trump. Ever the reality TV personality, Trump is loath to share the spotlight, and he especially dislikes the notion that he could be a puppet of someone else’s ideology. Kushner, who was rumored to have encouraged the Time Magazine cover story, urged Trump to remove Bannon from his position in the National Security Council (a position that a political strategist with no military leadership experience should never have held in the first place), but Bannon managed to hang on to his role in the West Wing nonetheless. Shortly after this skirmish, it was revealed that Kushner had failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and is currently under investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. It’s anyone’s guess which of the two men will be first on the chopping block — but considering Trump’s lack of ideological beliefs and commitment to increasing his family member’s bank accounts, my money is on Kushner’s survival.

  As entertaining as the Trump show can be to hate-watch for the spectacular chaos and bitter infighting between corrupt and dishonorable figures, what does this mean for the rest of us? While Trump has spent nearly all of America’s soft power and international respect (which will require significant time and effort to rebuild once he and his cronies have finally vacated the Office), a West Wing in chaos is largely ineffective. After a series of legislative failures, Congressional Republicans are worried that these histrionics will prevent the administration from accomplishing anything meaningful throughout the remainder of Trump’s term. For all of our sakes, we can only hope they are right. During the campaign, Trump released a list of goals for his first 100 days in office — yet, six months into his tenure, he has accomplished almost nothing on that list. Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have failed despite shady tactics, secret bills, and despite the Republican majority in both houses of Congress. The most recent bill would have caused 22 million Americans to lose their health insurance and is deeply unpopular across the nation, including with many of Trump’s own supporters. The more time and energy the West Wing spends consuming itself in infighting, back stabbing, and chaos, the better off the rest of America will be. The less of Steve Bannon’s ethno-nationalist ideology can be put into practice, the safer and more secure we all are.

  Trump as the quintessential “New York Douchebag,” amassing an administration of wealthy sycophants instead of competent ideologues, is one of the better outcomes we could have hoped for in these dark days after Election Day 2016. As of last month, 384 of 564 White House positions requiring Senate confirmation had no nominee. While some high level Trump supporters believe that John Kelly could bring some semblance of order to the administration, it is highly unlikely that even a retired general could survive in the toxic environment of Trump’s West Wing. One false move, criticizing Trump or whoever his favorite advisor happens to be that day, too much media coverage, or attracting the ire of other courtiers could be his last. That is assuming Kelly will have any true authority in the White House, which is doubtful. Knowing what we know about Trump, that seems nearly impossible. Any other supposition assumes that Kelly has true authority and control in the White House, which is highly doubtful to say the least. Knowing what we know about Trump and his administration after the events of the last 6 months, allowing anyone else to brandish authority in the West Wing seems nearly impossible.

The Bachelor in the West Wing: Happily Never After this is a repost