#2012 Uber Cup

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literally years ago i started transcribing this and then never got around to finishing it but finally did with some help from oomf. pls tell me if you notice any errors!

below the cut:

5-3-21

AJ: We are so excited to have Ellen Hughes hop on the bus with us today. So Ellen, welcome. And to give a little background, you grew up in Dallas, which, a long time ago before the Stars, there were not- it was not a hockey hotbed, as maybe it is now. Played a lot of sports. You ended up playing soccer, hockey and lacrosse, three sports at UNH, made it to the NCAA semifinal game in Lacrosse in 1987, inducted into the UNH Athletic Hall of Fame in 2012. You ultimately pursued a graduate degree at UNH, and while you did that, assistant coached for both the soccer and hockey teams. Ultimately, you made Team USA for the 1992 World Championship, where with Cammi you won a silver, named to the tournament All-Star Team. Two years later, at the Worlds in ‘94, you served as an ambassador to Norway's national team, went on into broadcasting. You were in the booth for when Cam and I won gold in 1998 with CBS and then a sideline reporter for the 1999 World Cup of soccer. Your husband, Jim, is a former hockey player and coach, has worked for the Maple Leafs organization. And of course, you are the uber matriarch, hockey mom of North America because you have three superstar sons. You've got Quinn, drafted number seven overall, plays D for Vancouver. You've got Jack, who is number one overall with the New Jersey Devils and of course, Luke, eligible for the draft this year. So welcome, Ellen. We can't wait to catch up with you.

Ellen: Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for the nice intro. I know, AJ, you see Jack here and there with the Islanders, could you remind him of some of those things, that I actually had a life? And Cammi, I know you've been nice enough to have Quinn over for dinner, not this year because of COVID, but maybe you could give him that whole intro again that, I did something other than just being their mother.

Cammi: Well, you know, it's funny. There is probably, I don't know what it was, maybe four or five months ago, you had sent me a video that you guys found, which we have to post on our social media channel here. But it was you as this little cute, blond, tiny little voice hockey player being interviewed in Texas, of all places, for hockey. Right? A woman, a female playing hockey, let alone kids playing hockey in Texas is so rare. Right? And I remember Quinn texting me and being like, said something about your skating, how bad it was. And I was like, little do all your kids know is that their talent comes from their mom. I've nothing—taking away nothing from Jimmy, because Jimmy was a great athlete himself. But you and Quinn play almost identical. And I'm going to keep reminding him of that.

Ellen: I love it. I love it. I usually get like just one word, dust[?] with things like that.

Cammi: Yeah, well, thank you for being here.

AJ: Yeah, yeah. But I want to start back with the fact that you grew up in a nontraditional hockey market. I know. According to USA Hockey, we’re not supposed to say that anymore because there are all—they don't really consider that anymore. There are so many with the Coyotes and the Stars and the two teams in Florida and Southern California. But when you grew up in Dallas, hockey was not a mainstream sport. I can imagine you had to have been playing on the boys team. Can you tell us what it was like growing up in Dallas then?

Ellen: Well, it's so funny because you see, you know, it's so exciting to see where the women's game has gone. And, you know, you forget how old you are and you kind of forget like, wow, that was pretty unusual what I was doing back then. And, you know, I'm even older than Cammi, so Cammi's older than you, AJ. Sorry to age you there, Cammi. But you forget that what we were doing in those times as young girls and how… you know, unusual it was, because we were fortunate enough to have parents that encouraged us and led us and pushed us and created those opportunities to play with the boys. And it's amazing to think that we did that and it seemed so normal to me. And my dad's been gone a long time, like he used to coach us. But I think about the fact that as a young girl in Dallas, Texas, a nontraditional market, to have a father that said, “Oh, you want to play hockey? Okay, you can play with the boys and you can go do those things.” And just how lucky I was to have a father that created those opportunities and supported those opportunities. And so it's pretty great. But we used to play down at the fairground. So, so people that know Dallas know that, you know, there's a fairgrounds downtown and the Cotton Bowl is played there every year. And there used to be a CHL team. So the old CHL. And so for us, it was very normal. I have an older brother that played and then went off to prep school and played at Deerfield Academy and then played Division three college hockey at Bowden. He could have played Division one, very academically oriented, and that's what he chose to do. So you want to do everything that your brother did. So when we were really little, we moved from St Louis to Dallas, and when I was in St Louis, all I wanted to do was play hockey. But in the state of Missouri, and I may have this factually not correct, but this is what my parents told me, that the girls weren’t allowed to play on boys’ teams in the state of Missouri. So when I knew I was moving, it was on my eighth birthday and my dad said, Well, it'd be great because you can play on- you can play hockey when you move to Dallas. So that's when I was so excited about the move. Like I could go play on a boys team because there was no girls’ teams to play on. And so there's only one team, if you're good enough, you play on the best team. And we would travel to St Louis, we would travel to Kansas City, we would travel to Colorado a couple of times a year and we would go play the best teams that we could possibly play. I just didn't understand at that point that was the world that I was living in, that that was unusual or different. So every once in a while I look back on it and think how fortunate I was to have parents that really not only supported it but encouraged it and let me really sow my own oats.

Cammi: When you were in St Louis, you saw the game of hockey around you. You wanted to play, you couldn't play. Did you play off ice then to be ready for when you moved and were like able to play or did you just start fresh when you moved to Texas?

Ellen: You know, I don't even remember. I was eight, so I don’t- I don't- it I must have been- I must have learned how to skate, but I wasn't playing. I don't really remember playing, like I remember running around the rinks with your brothers. I mean, you know how that is. You play mini sticks at the rinks, y’know. But I always wanted to play. I wanted to play everything. So, you know, I was just… and then off I went and I just started playing and I loved it. And I was fortunate because, you know, Cammi, you never went to Bob Johnson’s hockey school in Colorado, did you, in Aspen?

Cammi: No.

Ellen: I know, because I know you have a close relations with that whole Wisconsin crew. But every summer we spent the month of August in Aspen, and I would do the Bob Johnson Hockey School. So I actually think I did that like, at seven, before I ever moved, and they would always let me play. So it was Bob, it was Grant Standbrook, it was Jeff Sauer, all these people that, y’know, were so supportive of the women's game, Art Berglund who just passed away. And so I would spend my summers there playing and being groomed by the players that played with Tony at Wisconsin. It would have been their generation of players that were the camp counselors and that was right around the ‘84 men's Olympics. And a lot of those guys went on to play in that. So I think culturally that was exciting for me and that's where my passion grew.

Cammi: And you played soccer as a young girl as well.

Ellen: Yes. So soccer: really competitive. You know, we won youth nationals. And I was, I mean, it's crazy to think that I'm going to be 53 years old. And when I was being recruited to play women's soccer, there were 31 Division one schools across the country offering scholarships. And so Wisconsin was one of them. And I really wanted to go there because of my allegiance with that. But they had no women's hockey. So when we— [...]

Cammi: That's where I- me, too. I wanted to go as well. We would have been teammates instead of rivals.

Ellen: Right, at least for one year. I think you were a freshman my senior year. Is that right?

Cammi: Either junior or senior. Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: [Laughs] So anyway, so the soccer side of things, you know, if you were an elite player, you wanted to go to UNC. My very best friend on the team growing up on my youth hockey, my youth soccer team was Carla Werden, you know her as Carla Overbeck, who became the captain of the team in the first World Cup team. Mia Hamm, I played with on my state team, so we were really good in those days. Brandi Chastain was my roommate at my first youth national team camp for soccer. So that was my, you know, generation of players. And I wasn't recruited by UNC, but I was recruited by some of the other top schools and I had this like, crossroads, where am I going to go to a school like UNH, where there are startup women's soccer programs, but yet I can play two sports. And they were offering me a full scholarship. And the crazy thing is there was no school in the state of Texas that was playing Division one Women's soccer. Think about that. Not a one. I mean, there was 31. I think there's 360 some odd schools, Division one programs at this rate for women's soccer. So that's how the landscape changed and that's how the lack of landscape really drove my next move.

Cammi: So you chose UNH. You played soccer and hockey, but then you also added lacrosse.

Ellen: Yeah. And the interesting thing about hockey is here I am, this girl coming out of Dallas and nobody knew about me. And as you know, Providence at the time, so all the Ivy Leagues were playing hockey and then we didn't have a lot of programs back then that were playing. So it was all the Ivy- it was the ECAC. So it was what, maybe 15 teams playing? How many, 22?

Cammi: Yeah, roughly 22.

Ellen: And so there weren't a lot of options. So there were so many girls playing that wanted to get on those teams. So I remember reaching out to Russ McCurdy who was the coach and saying, “You know, I'm being looked at by UNH for women's soccer, but I'm only coming there because I want to play women's hockey,” and he was like, “Oh, you know, you're probably not going to make the team. You know, we're a fully funded program.” I mean, you know how that goes, right? Right, right. Why would you take a girl out of Dallas you knew nothing about, playing in these, he asked if I was playing women's hockey at that time. And so I had- you know, I wasn't guaranteed a spot, but I'd watched them play, and my mom and dad watched them play. And I really, in my heart of hearts thought I'd be able to play. And they were a fully funded program and my scholarship was coming from soccer. And so, I decided that I wanted to do it. And he said, and I remember having Bob Johnson at the time call on my behalf. He called, he was at Wisconsin still, and he called and said, you know, she can play, she’s been with me every summer, and I really think you should give her a shot. So he said, okay. So the deal was, I was going to play soccer. Well all the women start with hockey, probably—when did we start, in the fall, like in mid-September. And they had the whole training camp, while I was still playing soccer until Thanksgiving. And so I said, when you get done with soccer, just come see me and I'll give you a week to try out, to get up to speed. So he really had no thought of me or like, there was no, like, ‘she's not making this team.’ So we finished soccer and then I went over to hockey and I remember after my first day he said, “What size states do you wear?” So that was like, that, that made me happy. Like that was it. I was on the team, so it was pretty good.

And then our women's soccer coach, Marge Anderson, was one of the most decorated women's lacrosse players in those days. She had played at UMass for soccer and hockey, and she was on the World Cup team for lacrosse. So she would take a couple of athletes a year because in those days you needed female athletes to play more than one sport, to really round out your depth of your programs. So she had encouraged me to come out and play lacrosse. I knew nothing about it. So our first year they had just won the national championship the year before, believe it or not. Did you guys know UNH won the National Women's Lacrosse championship? Different landscape in those days. So they had won the national championship. None of the Southern schools were playing. Nobody across the country was playing. It was a real Northeast-driven collegiate world. And so I walked onto this field and, um, let's just say… I wasn't very good. I could run, but my stick skills- and I learned and I did everything, and it was great, and we went to the Final Four, but I was out at that point. So everybody always says I played three sports like, I was on the team. I was, you know, three sports at that level. I was done at that point and I stuck with soccer and hockey after my first year. But it was a really cool experience.

AJ: Well, a kudos, too, by the way, to go back to something you just said, that McCurdy asked what size state you are. Kudos to UNH for giving you guys skates back in the 80s. I didn't get skates in college until my senior year, which was the fall of 1998. That was the first time I got skates bought for me. So that's, that's pretty good on UNH, I give the Wildcats props.

Cammi: Well, Ellen, you know what? So, Russ, I actually- I was. I was the same, a kid coming from Illinois. So, such a similar story where nobody wanted to talk to me really, until someone saw me play when I went out to the East Coast, I just played with a girls’ team for one game and I got seen by Providence. Other than that, I called Russ. Same thing. No interest, but I got to say, Russ, and I know what he meant to you, when I look at all the coaches that I've been coached with, he coached us at the — at the ‘92 World Championships where you were named best defenseman of that tournament. He taught me a lot, not about, not just about hockey, but just like how to organize yourself off life, how to make your bed every day. Like, there's things that stuck with me from Russ from that one or two, I think, seasons we had him. He was a special guy, you know. You know, I just— he never gets any recognition. He's very unknown. But did you remember that about him? Do you have that same sort of view of him that I do?

Ellen: Totally. And I'm still really tight with him and Sheila. And, you know, when you think about it, for what he did as a male player, you know, in that generation, he was a heck of a hockey player. And then, I don't know what he did, but he left the game and did something, you know, I'm not really sure what he did and came back to the game, but for his stature to come back and coach the women and do what he did, and he coached tennis as well, and he cared so much. He was so passionate about the game, and teaching the game, and teaching away from the game. And he cared so much about the people, you as a person. And I always laugh because, you know, Quinn had Donnie, you know, your brother, at the NTDP. And he reminds me a lot of Donnie. I don't know if you feel that way, but-

Cammi: I totally feel that way because as you say, first of all, from a mental standpoint, they're both like, they help you so much with the side, the mental side, and also the skill based stuff that Russ taught us. He goes beyond the game and I feel, yeah, it's really interesting that you say that because I can see that as well.

Ellen: And it's just the, you know, some people have their skills and then some people like, have different skill sets. And I feel that the best of the best try to cover all the different skill sets and really get to know the different human being and try to push the buttons. And it doesn't work for everybody. Not everybody would feel that way, but he was an amazing man and still is an amazing man. And I also think it's funny because one thing that, you know, I don't know how you are with the kids, but this sticks with me. And I don't know if you remember this, Cammi, but the interesting thing is, I've seen my boys be taught that same lesson from coaches at a younger level, and I can particularly say the NTDP level is: get up every day and make your bed. You've accomplished one thing. Do you remember that from him? And then it was either Donnie-

Cammi: No! Always.

Ellen: Or Wroblewski that I remember had Quinn and Brady, like, make your bed every day. And then I saw with, with Jack and Luke. Like, “we got to make our bed every day because that's orderly” and like, little things like that.

Cammi: Well, I got to say, Ellen, that stuck with me for— still to this day, I think of Russ when I make my bed. I'm not kidding. And I tell the kids the same, like if you just… and it resonated with me. So like, I don't know, it stayed with me. It resonated with me when he said it. And then his… just his stuff about practicing skill. And we hadn't really done that so much, as an, I guess where we were at Providence. Like we would just go practice, but like, he was working on skill-based stuff. He’s a very smart man. So I'm happy to hear that you're still in touch with him and you felt the same way. But I love that we're both making our bed because of Russ McCurdy. You taught your kids that.

AJ: I obviously didn't have Russ, I obviously didn't have Russ McCurdy, you can see behind me in my hotel room here. So I do not make my bed every day. And I know the value of it, but yeah, no, never had a coach who told me that.

Cammi: He was pretty special.

Ellen: Then. AJ, I was thinking about when you said about getting skates. I don't know how you guys were, but how would your shot be today? Like when I was playing, like, of course I couldn't shoot the puck because we would take the old men's sticks that were wooden and they would cut them down for us. Like, how would I have any flex on the stick?

AJ: Right? Right. So stiff. And it's like, it's crazy when you think about that, and the technology. And even when I did get a pair of skates, when I came back after the Olympics and played at Harvard, they were so much lighter. They were just… the material and everything, and then you look at the sticks and it's crazy. I mean, I never played with the one piece that they have now, that was just coming out when I was at the tail end of my career. But I remember I tried them, but the puck was all bouncy and I didn't like them. But you think about how quick the release and all the kick point on those sticks, that technology's insane.

Ellen: Right? You also think about how great the women are and where they're at. Like we didn't go in the weight room. We did not go in the weight room. The weight room was not for women's sports.

AJ: Our coach actually, my first year at Harvard before Katie Stone took over, he actually thought weightlifting was unbecoming for women. He didn't, he didn't book us. He wouldn't let us go in weight room. It was a, it was sort of an off limits thing. So he was a lovely man. But it was… not appropriate.

Cammi: Well, our Providence College coach, John Marchetti, who I love, I have always loved him as a coach. We had to beg him to just get us to get in shape. He thought women, that was just the way it was at the time. He was old fashioned and women would skate from the blue line in, so we would have half ice practices. And I was like, “We're out of shape. Like we got to skate!” “You guys don't need to skate full ice.” And it was literally all great intentions. Wonderful man. But that's what he felt. And I mean, think about that. Like I tried- it blows people away to think that that was the way it was. But that's how we were viewed as women. We can't exert ourselves the same way as men. And we were begging him to.

Ellen: Okay, now I know why we won, then. Why we beat you? Because we skated. [unintelligible]

Cammi: You didn't. You didn't beat me. Did you beat me when I was there?

Ellen: I don't know.

Cammi: We won. We won. I think we went the last year. You remember freshman year. I think you beat us in the finals. I think we[...]

Ellen: I think we met four years. Was just super cool, but I only — I was there five years. Much shorter. One year. But we went three years.

Cammi: Okay? We went three years. So we must have crossed over. And you beat us once? Yeah, you beat us. Let's get into the hockey mom stuff because I think a lot of moms are interested in the landscape of sport. Our kids that are passionate about anything. And it typically it's like, well, we know the sports world, but I mean, nowadays it's, it's everything. Like, whether it's music or some sort of non-sport, a passion that someone has. We're always trying to get our kids to pursue excellence. And AJ and I have talked a lot on this podcast, how sometimes things are flipped a little backwards and we're a little bit out of skew right now with the way we push our kids and just how fast they're put through the system. And you had three boys that you raised with Jimmy, who are now… two are NHL superstars. One's on his way. How, what was it like in your house? How did it start with the kids? What were you like as a mom and Jimmy as far as like, having, cultivating that for them?

Ellen: You know, it all seems like a blur. You know how that is, right? You're in the middle of it, both of you with young kids. So you're just day to day. I mean, you're day to day, right?

Cammi: Survival.

Ellen: Right? It's survival mode. So for me, you do things that you enjoy or you- you teach them things that you feel like you can teach them, Right. So it's kind of a slight on me that I wasn't more worldly and wanting to take them to museums. Or maybe like I felt like I had do those things because like, ‘Oh my God, what am I teaching them?’ But you tend to do the things that you - you're trying to find activities. Jimmy was off coaching a lot, I had three young boys that were really close in age. So what do I know? What can I do to pass time and keep them active? It was kicking a soccer ball. It was throwing a ball, it was doing rollerblading, it was passing the puck, it was taking them skating. So for me, those were mommy and me activities, right? And then every once in a while I'd be like, you know, I'd be like, ‘uh, we got to do Kumon, we gotta do like - we gotta read.’

You know, academics was really important to me because I felt like I was so driven the other way that like, I didn’t want to miss out on the other. So for us, it was never this grandiose plan, and I'm sure you guys were the same way. It was more like, ‘be the best at whatever it is you're doing, work your hardest at whatever it is you're doing.’ Working the hardest didn't mean scoring the most goals. It was playing the right way, whatever it is, being a great teammate and working really, really hard and we always felt like the other would come.

AJ: Do you feel like with your boys having you as a mom, Jim as a dad, did they feel pressure to perform on the rink?

Ellen: I don't think so, because we never put pressure on them. We would put pressure on them to work hard and play the right way. I mean, there were days I can remember with Quinn when we moved to Toronto, we were like “Ah, he’s doing pretty good, he’s a pretty good little hockey player. This is good.” Like, hmm. And we were coming from New Hampshire and Jimmy taking the job up in Toronto and we got there and I remember Jimmy going somewhere and he's like, “He is not even in the top 300 players in the city.” Do you know what I mean? Like he was, this thing was not—

Cammi: Was that what age? What age is that?

Ellen: He probably would have been… I'm trying to think when we moved. So Luke was born six, seven, eight, maybe? He was in first grade. What grade are you in first grade?

Cammi: Yeah, about seven or seven. Seven.

Ellen: And we thought he was doing great, but we never cared. What we would just say to him, like, and he was on a good little team and we would get beat by Ryan McLeod, who just played with Edmonton in and, and, Strome was on that team, Matty Strome, the youngest of the Stromes. And those two were like, I mean, I mean, they would score five, six, seven goals and I would be in awe how good they were at a little age - at a young age. So what we would do is we would just put them up against the best in the spring and in clinics and have them chase, try to be the best you can be. It was never like, “why aren't you that good” or “why are you scoring” or - and, you know, Jack was a little bit different. He came in and he was playing up a year with the older kids, you know. And Luke, we didn't even think about, like, third child, he's probably benefited the best because we were just trying to get the other two other places and we didn't even know how he played or what happened. And, and I think that was the other thing with them. You know, Jim was so busy working that we didn't watch ‘em practice. We didn't, you know, I might drop one at a the game and try to get to the other one to the game, to get to the other one to the game. So they had to self evaluate at a young age and really decide how they played. You know, you guys are probably the same way with your busy schedules.

AJ: Yeah, it's interesting. I look at it like I'm at the Nationals right now with my daughter Jamie, and talking to some of the parents last night and they were asking me like, what did you think of the game? And we were talking about it. But they don't watch far more than I do because I travel. So, you know, they're asking me, knowing that I have a hockey background. But it's to your point, I love coming to watch my kids play, but I really feel like I can just watch them and enjoy. I'm not coaching this year and it's a really- it is fascinating because I do feel like my kids have sort of they'll tell me how they played and, you know, usually they're tougher on themselves. I mean, I think most kids or most athletes are probably tougher on themselves anyway. But when- like as a hockey parent, I'm surrounded by people and you see all the studies about the low percentage of players that will make it from youth hockey to even D-1, let alone the NHL. You have three kids, three boys, two that are gone first round. Luke obviously is on his way to the NHL. So at what point did you think they were going to make it? Like, was there a time like you're talking about when Quinn was seven and you guys were just trying to have them compete? But was there a moment where you were like, wow, our - our kids are legit?

Ellen: You know, there was a point where I said, All right, this is good. Like, they're going to get to Division one college hockey. Like, I was pretty pumped. And at the end of the day, there's a point where you say you can only provide so much information and now they have to have their inner drive. Now that's gotta kick in. And I think for each one of them, that was when they got to the program. So for junior hockey, I guess, would be the equivalent. And I think it's the every day focusing on getting better, doing I mean, living it, eating it, not liking it, loving it. Y’know? And there's kids who get better from 18 to 20. There's, you know, you got to keep getting better. Doesn’t matter if you're the best at 16 or 15. So I saw my kids take different paths, you know, and just staying to have fun and having fun. Having fun is everything, as you know. You know, I mean, it's got to be fun. I mean, Cammi, you have two sons who are elite little soccer players, but if they're not having fun, that changes their drive for wanting to get better.

Cammi: Fully and if it's not cultivated as well, I mean, you have to have the right people above you and leading you and coaching you to believe in just playing and not just playing for- to be this best. There's a lot of pressure on kids these days and I think about your boys and knowing your boys and, and getting to know Quinn better since he's been out here as a person. Your kids are such great people. They're so well-balanced. They're such they get it. Like when they met Reese and Riley, my sons, they get it. They look kids in the eye. They joke around. They look adults in the eye. I mean, there's- they're just great kids. The other thing I noticed about them and and before I let you comment is when they play, when things are not going their way, they go straight ahead, like there's no pouting, there's no emotion. I mean, of course, we get emotional about the game, but as far as like, you know, what you taught them, like, where did that come from, that confidence and that humility and then that just that drive inside to just keep going?

Ellen: Well, you are awfully kind. And, you know, it's like, up and down. You know how parenting is right. And, you know, for me, it's the competitiveness. You both were uber competitive, Olympians, got to the highest level, accomplished so much, gold medals. So you know, that competitiveness. So you instill that in your children. You don't realize that you're doing it, but it just organically happens. Right? I'm sure. And AJ I see some of the fun things that you do, but I'm sure it's competitive at dinner, whether it's, you know, Boggle that you're playing or - I aged myself. But you know what I mean? Or Jenga that you're playing or if it’s a race, or- everything is a game at my house! Like, Luke and Quinn this summer. We had a lot of time together and they're creating a game out of nothing in the pool. We're like - Jack and I are looking at each other like, ‘What are those two doing?’ Like, it's games and there's a winner and there's a loser. So for me, I think it's more about they really care about winning. They really want to win. And in everything’s a team sport and they wanna - They take it personally. They want to be the best that they can be to help their team win. You know, whether it's giving something up and feeling bad about that and wanting to get it back. And that's probably the same mindset both of you had as Olympians. Is that fair to say? 

AJ: Yeah. I mean, I think that that is, you know, the ultimate drive to compete is something that I'm not sure can be cultivated. Right. I mean, I think you but what what is so impressive about your boys is that the balance that Cammi’s talking about. Right. That confidence and that drive to compete coupled with the humility and on seeing them being interviewed, seeing the way they carry themselves at a very young age, that that's what I think is, you know, you and Jim should be very, very proud of. But I do think that that drive to win and it's not win at all costs, but it's win whether it's the right way or as a part of the team. I think that that is something that can be very unique. And obviously they come from two very competitive elite athlete parents. So they were, they were given that at a young age. I was just reminded while you were- we were talking about Quinn, last year in the playoffs, do you remember getting a text from me Ellen, when I talked about in on the broadcast, I talked about Quinn, he was so relaxed playing the power play that it was like he was playing shinny hockey. S H I N N Y and I got blown up on Twitter that people thought I said he played S H I T T Y hockey. That I was like, ‘oh my God, the Hughes family hears me on NBC telling like’ and it was a compliment. I mean, it was like the utmost like, this is amazing how great he is that, you know, as a young player in the NHL playing with this sort of poise but also like freedom, he just plays with his freedom. And I'm sitting there thinking and my producer was like, “You can't use that term. That's such a hockey term.” Like, who doesn't know shinny hockey? But anyway, that was just so.

Ellen: So I laughed at that when I got your text and I think I wrote back like, “it's okay if you ever want to say he's saying the other - the S H hockey too.”

AJ: I would never say that.

Ellen: You know the game, you're allowed to say that and we would be just okay with it. We would probably agree with you.

Cammi: So when you're watching Ellen, when you get to watch your kids and I know I've texted you before, I'm like, I wonder if she's still up. But of course, you're watching the games when you're on the East Coast and you're watching them and  watching the West Coast games, probably late at night. Right, with Quinn. And... can you relax? Like, are you feeling like now? Like you can relax? Is it still, like, feel intense? Like, what's the feeling that you get as a mom? You know, I know Luke’s on his way, but like, do you get to see you get to enjoy it all? Do you get to sit back and enjoy it?

Ellen: Let me ask you this. When you watch Riley play and it's a big game and [unintelligible], how do you feel?

Cammi: So do you feel like at every game - do you feel like that every game?

Ellen: Well, your logic tells you it should change.

Cammi: Yeah. 

Ellen: But I think it's just your competitiveness. But I can tell you this. Now my oldest two are at a level where I don't get involved in the hockey anymore, I just really try to be a support system. They don't need to hear from me when they get to the next level. You don't know how many people are badgering them or bothering them or sending texts[?]. And you know, they got here because this point, they got here and they're driving their own business. They don't need to hear from me. Now, do they… Do they lean on Jimmy with hockey? Do I know a lot about hockey? But I just need to be a different support system for them. You know, I need to be an outlet for them and someone that's not going to talk about hockey unless it's something specific. Does that make sense? Like when I talked to Quinn today, it wasn’t about last night's game. It was about other things, you know, he's got enough of last-

Cammi: That makes sense.

Ellen: And he's got this - he doesn't need to hear from his mother, that that ship has sailed. Does that make sense? And I don't mean that in a negative st-

Cammi: Totally, because.

Ellen: It's just that's not what they need and, and that's not what I want to be that - be there for them. That type of support system.

AJ: I don't know how you got away without having one of them play goalie. I'm just going to leave it out there.

Ellen: Well, Luke. [...] Luke in net. and I was telling this to someone the other day, I mean, I got funny stories, like when you say, oh, you guys were great parents. I'm like, Oh, really? Like the time I showed up for this massive tournament with Jack and Jimmy's taken everybody's skates sharpened and I got everybody’s skate sharpened and he was off somewhere. I was going to meet him at the university. I'll tell you one story. So this is just typical. So their cousin was playing for B.C. and we wanted to go to a college game because we want to expose these kids that were growing up in Toronto to what college hockey was, so that that could be an option. So we took ‘em to see B.C. versus Michigan, their big cousin. We're driving down and Jack had this massive tournament, which we thought was massive as a you know, you always think these youth tournaments are massive and have grandiose importance, sorry, because you are at nationals and that is important with your daughter AJ. So Jimmy had said, I think Quinn was going to play in Michigan. And I said, okay, I'll bring the boys down I’ll get the skates sharpened and then Jack and I will leave after the game. We won't tell his coach that, like, we're getting into a hotel in London at one in the morning to drive around- around the lake to get to Buffalo for his 9 a.m. game. So I'm driving to Michigan first so he can see his cousins. And then whereas all the other parents are in Buffalo for that 9 a.m. game spending the night getting a good sleep right. Well I let him come watch his brother play. I left two hockey bags with Jim, of Luke's bag and Quinn's bag and I, Jack and I left after the game. We got into London at like one in the morning. We went to sleep. We got back up at six and off he goes for his game. When we get to Buffalo, I'm like, ‘This is great. I did it.’ And they're playing. I think they're playing Shattuck St Mary's and Oliver Wahlstrom is on the other team just to give you a few names. Right. So because he's an Islander, right AJ?

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had a goal last night.

Ellen: And it was a non parent coach. So you don't talk to these coaches. I don't think I had a conversation with them and they're young they’re- I don’t know Jack was an underager so he's playing up a year. And so the coach calls me. He's like, “ Umm... We've got a problem. Can you come back to the locker room?” So I go back to the locker room and he goes, “Ummm Luke skates are in Jack's bag.” You know what that means? Where are Jack’s skates? In Luke’s bag or God knows where, right? So I'm like, agh and they're like, “Where are Luke’s skates?” And like, I think he - I left his bag in Toronto. So at this point. So I look at Jack, I'm like, “What you want to do?” and he goes, “Find [buy?] me some skates.” and I'm like, “Okay, what size are your skates?” So I go around, I find the Chicago mission, and if he was in CCM some guy had a Bauer of a size four and a half or five or six or whatever he was in, and they're like, You can borrow these skates, but our game is offset from yours so you can only play until we need the skates back.

Cammi: Oh my God.

Ellen: Right?

AJ: I'm like, my stomach's dropping listening to this. I know.

Ellen: So he’s in these random skates and sorry to go off on a tangent here, but you saying you were great, You know, we do the same things that everybody else does. So it wasn't a completely tightly run ship. So. But maybe that's the adaptability. So Jack goes out and he plays two great periods, and all of a sudden I see this guy walk around and you see them take Jack's skates off. And this is a tight game and it's a big tournament. And he sits on the end of the bench with no skates for the third period. So here you are. We both have - we all have husbands. So Jimmy’s like, “How was the game?” I'm like, “He played great for two periods and let's just leave it at that.” He's like, I was. [unintelligible] But so anyway.

AJ: Yeah, I think that's building resilience. I think you're right. There is something to be in moment. It's- that's the worst feeling possible. But in retrospect, it's a great story, right? And it's one period of hockey that-

Ellen: [unintelligible] five like that running down the coach whenever Jack's hockey bag and his helmet was sideways like, I hope you guys have stories like that.

Cammi: Oh, man. You know what is funny is, those- that's just part of sport and part of the life where you have that happen. But I do as a kid, remembering, feeling like there was nothing more important. And I remember my brother Tony had just got his license. He was driving me over to a friend's house that was going to take me to an away game. It was about 45 minutes away. He went through a stop sign with just skated through a stop sign, hit the front of another car. I'm in the front seat. No seatbelt at that time. Right. And the first thing he goes, “You okay?” and the first thing I said is, “I'm not going to miss my game, am I?” And sure enough, we had to drive home. Somehow we got home. My mom is pregnant with my younger brother Joey, eight months pregnant, and I somehow cried my way into making my mom get in our trans van massive truck with Tony in the passenger seat, driving through snow to get me to the game, which I got there in the third period. But it was to me it was like, I know that feeling like it's- you cannot miss, you cannot. And I see with my kids too. So yeah, those are the best. Some of those are the best memories actually, right?

Ellen: I'll give you one.

AJ: We spent about five and a half hours driving down here to Philadelphia. My daughter, I think, checked nine times to make sure her stuff was in the bag because I had to. She was at school and I had to get it. She does not trust me at all. I'm like, okay, yeah, you just make sure you got two- a right and a left skate in there.

Ellen: I'll give you one last story. To just - to say, like, like here I am, a hockey mom, thinking I’m going to teach my kids to skate. So when Jimmy was coaching in Boston with Robbie Ftorek, I didn't have Luke yet, so Jack... Quinn must've been three. So I wanted to have some one-on-one time. You know, with your first child, you feel like you have your second child and you just need some one-on-one time. So there was free kindergarten skating at the Reading arena. And so we were living in.. in uh.. oh my god I can’t even remember - right around the corner from there. So anyway, so every Tuesday I would take Quinn to skate and that's how he learned to skate. Like it wasn't like I was teaching him strides, I was teaching him to skate. I was getting him on skates. So I was really proud of this kid. He’d gotten off his crates that he was pushing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And at that point Robbie's parents were still alive. Steve and Ruth and they were amazing. And we would go to the games and, and so they didn't live far from there. So they wanted to come watch little Quinn that they see at the Bruins games skate. And I was so proud that I’d taught this kid to skate y’know, he was standing up on his own, he was pushing, the whole bit. So Steve comes out who had taught Robbie how to skate and Robbie was a great skater and I'm like this particular day, Quinn is terrible. He must have been three. Like he just looked like he had two left feet. I’m like, “he's not skating like, I swear, like he could skate, like, something's not right.” And Steve goes, “Ellen, I think his skates are on the wrong feet.” And they were! Do you know how little skates are? Yeah. How would you know? Like [unintelligible]. So we laugh about that story. So, Quinn doesn't know. He can't communicate to tell me that his skates are on the wrong feet. We sit him down, like literally in the doorway. We switch his feet and off this kid goes. And he's pushing and like a little three year old and he's doing great. So that's one of my many [unintelligible] stories.

AJ: But just to make you feel better, I did that to my son Sam, when he was however old, probably five. We went skiing. It was ski boots on the wrong feet. He kept telling us his feet hurt. And we basically were like, You're fine. It's just ski boots they hurt. And the end of the day I was like, Oh yeah, no, they really hurt. That's actually a legitimate point. So been there!

Cammi: Before we wrap up here and get to our rapid fire, I just wanted to ask you about the couple of times where I've seen the boys play tog- Well they played together on the World Junior team and it was in Vancouver. Jack and Quinn played together. What was that like and what was it like when they played their first NHL game toge- against each other for the Jersey Devils and for the Vancouver Canucks? Can you take us through those two times and what it felt like?

Ellen: Yeah, that's great. I mean, the- we had the fortune of them playing together at the World Junior Showcase up in Kamloops the summer before, leading up, kind of the tryouts. So I think that was my first experience. It was great. It was great. Really competitive. They played together. They were on the same PP that was a ton of fun. They were on the ice together a lot. Then the World Juniors that- in Vancouver, that was great too. But Jack was injured, so he was kind of in and out of the lineup, but it was just really great for them to be able to, as- they're so tight, they're best of friends, all three of them. So I think it was more letting them have that experience together and you know, you're disappointed for them in the way that the outcome was because they were so close to winning a gold medal. But it was super cool. It was a lot of fun. And then when they played against each other it was super special, I think for our family, just because it was the first time we got to share something like that with our whole family, we had a huge crew there. The Devils were nice enough, they were amazing. They had a box there and we were able to have all Jim's extended family there from the Northeast, which is a huge group of people. And Jack happened to score his first goal that night. So that was a relief and great and exciting. And then the next time they played together Cammi we went with you. You had the boys and Ray, and that was a great game, too, right? That was a lot of fun. I think the biggest thing is I like it better when they're not on the ice at the same time, especially with one being a D and one being a forward. I prefer, and it's hard to watch them. I don't know who you guys are, but AJ, your daughter right now at Nationals, is a stay at home defenseman so you watch all the D and you have a good feeling. It's really hard to watch two positions let alone two teams play.

AJ: I agree with that when I think about what you're, what you went through, with that and it's not even allegiance of which team you want to win. It's more what they're doing individually and you can't focus. I think that must have been so cool. Was there added pressure on the boys? Did you notice any nerves that night playing against each other?

Ellen: No, but I don't know what kind of side bets there were. Like. I'm going to need [unintelligible] Haha I could have used a girl so I could get a little more information, a daughter y’know they’re a little more forthcoming. I think it was exciting. They were both very young. I mean, it's crazy to think they entered their rookie year together. I think as they, y’know, hopefully have a really long, sustained career. That's your greatest hope for all of these players that play in the professional sports is to be able to stay healthy and have a long, sustained careers. So I think as they age and- it'll be more and more fun to watch it evolve.

AJ: Now we're talking about Quinn and Jack. Is there. Do you think that there's added pressure on Luke right now because of the successes that his brothers have had?

Ellen: You know, it's funny because I always worried about that with Luke, like, you know, as a parent, you know, I want them to all be successful in their own right. I want them all to have their own passion. I want them to care about school and do well in school and so, you know, you're always like, which one needs what someone will, you know, whatever it is you want to try to support them. And so Luke was really small for a while and he was playing against kids that had already hit puberty. And- and you know, I know you dealt with that Cammi with Riley and then he took off and he blew them like his whole game was a new you know, as soon as that- the playing field was evened. And that's a hard thing to try to nurture them through, you know, like, “just keep going” and “it's okay,” and “you’re gonna have your man strength,” and “you’re gonna have more separation speed because of that,” so Luke was really young and I mean, it took him a while before he grew. And so I wondered in my heart, like, is there pressure on him? Does he feel bad about himself? Like, I didn't know, you know what I mean? So then he made the program, which he just kind of started to take off.

Never in a million years did I think he was going to be 6’2” like you could’ve- I would never. I mean, he was who would have thought he was going to tower over his brothers? He was so late. So we used to talk to him about it, you know, and I used to try to ask, but it's hard to get information. But he drove his own bus and he had his own inner desires and his own inner strengths. And it never seemed to faze him or bother him, which, you know, was- we tried to communicate about it like you guys would as parents.

Cammi: It's so wonderful. I just love your whole family. I love everything you guys have instilled in your boys. I love watching them. We're such you know, we've grown so much closer. We get to see each other more often. And I just yeah, I commend you and totally appreciate all the insight that you've given us today. We've kept you a long time on, but we have our not so rapid, rapid fire, if you don't mind answering some rapid fire questions you can answer ‘em slow or fast. It's up to you. AJ and I seem to go the slow way sometimes with our long questions. But let's put you in the hot seat.

AJ: So, yeah, this means you're coming to the front of the bus. So I don't know if that in the bus or trips that you went on that meant you were in trouble. But I'll say that just.

Ellen: Time out before you go. Where were you guys on the bus?

Cammi: I was in the back on the right, about maybe three seats from the bathroom, two or three seats from the bathroom, and  AJ was up front.

AJ: I was more like middle, but on the other side. So it was like.

Cammi: You were like two rows ahead. Yeah. Yeah, where were you?

Ellen: Cammi. I think I was right where you were.

Cammi: Yeah. Okay

AJ: Not quite far enough back for, like, all the crazy card games and everything like that, right? That was always our bus. There was a lot of shenanigans in the way back of the bus. Actually maybe our rapid fire should be called Go to the back of the bus. That might be a little I don't know, might be a little different. All right. So here we go. Let's start. What is your favorite youth hockey, or any sports since you played a lot of sports, memory?

Ellen: Probably winning the national championship with the Dallas Sting in soccer, which still today is one of the premier club teams in the country. 

AJ: Oh, that's a good one. How old were you?

Ellen: I was probably 15. And then one other thing is we went to China when I was 15. That was a pretty cool experience. Before women's soccer had a national team and they were playing, they were having their first international tournament. And since we had won the club championship they sent us, which is amazing to think they sent a bunch of women to China to play in an international tournament. You know. 

AJ: That’s very cool.

Cammi: How’d you guys do?

Ellen: We won it.

Cammi: You're kidding.

Ellen: There's actually someone that's trying to, I just get the emails, that’s trying to make a movie about it, because it's pretty unheard of.

Cammi: It's amazing.

AJ: That is amazing. So we didn't really get into this. The one thing we were carrying our time up for is that you had the good fortune of having all of your boys home during COVID. Maybe a silver lining to what was going on in the world. Everybody got to be back under one roof. But when everyone's home, what's your go to family dinner?

Ellen: Oh, our go to family dinners, steak. They are all about steak. So steak and pesto pasta with a spinach salad is the go to. They would eat steak every night.

AJ: Oh, that sounds good.

Ellen: Cammi, Quinn’s cooking [?]. Believe it or not, [unintelligible]. When they're allowed to go places next year in Vancouver over you and Ray should-

Cammi: I can keep him honest for that?. Yeah, I know I will definitely. If I know that now. What is he cooking in these?

Ellen: Cooking steak and lots of he cooks some, tuna ahi tuna and lots of peppers and veggies and that's a good thing about COVID. Is that most of these young kids have learned to cook, which is amazing.

AJ: That is amazing. That's actually that is another- that's a good silver lining. I know. Speaking of your three boys, Quinn, Jack and Luke, which one was most mischievous as a kid.

Ellen: And I mean, you know how it is, it's a three month cycle like, just like one needs your attention more than the other when they were little. But um… Quinn and Jack together? This is not rapid fire, but I can remember when they were really level and I don't know. And I've already taken up too much of your time. But I remember Jimmy had taken off to Toronto and, oh no, then he must have been littler than this and Jimmy and I, Luke was just born, maybe six months old, and we heard this rustling. You know, you have that in the baby room, on the other room. And I don't know if this has happened to either one of you. And I'm like, it was like six in the morning. You're trying to get sleep, and I heard something. I mean, “Jimmy, what is that?” You know, So we listen to the voice and they had this grandiose idea that they were going to throw the baby out of the crib, Jack was inside the crib, picking up Luke to hand him off to Luke- to Quinn, who wasn't big enough, it was going tobe a  drop outside the crib. So let's just leave with that. Right?

Cammi: How old were they? How old were they when that happened?

Ellen: Luke was under one because he couldn't get out, right? I mean, it was not a great plan. Then. Thankfully, we rescued them.

Cammi: So if you would have had that nanny cams that are the baby cams, that would have been brilliant to have that on video.

Ellen: Right.

AJ: Good. Some Hughes boy mischief. I like it. Now, of the three, who is the most competitive?

Ellen: Probably, I don't, I can't.

Cammi: Can’t choose, you’re a mom.

AJ: Yeah no I actually we were just talking about the drive to win and everything. I understand that. But it's all three, I guess. Now we you, you mentioned being nervous still, when you watch your boys play, what can you remember being the most nervous you've ever been as a sports parent?

Ellen: Mmm that's a tough one. Probably for me, it's not about the kids. It was more about the team. So, you know, having your kids go through the NTDP you want them to win these big tournaments. So you’re nervous for the group because you want so well, they're representing their country so the World Championships, the World Juniors, I mean, Cammie, you've sat with me and seen me between periods at the World Juniors, so that might be a fair one you can attest to, like, you're like, Really? You probably walk away from meeting with the boys between periods and me. Like, she's a little wacky over there. I don't know.

Cammi: Oh, they love you.

Ellen: You're stressed. Not for your kids. You're stressed for the team in your country. And you want so well, you want them to win! Their competitive side and they're tight. And you’re just on the edge of your seat. More like a fan, I would say, than a mother. So much too. Is that fair to say?

AJ: Yeah. Did you ever coach any of them? 

Ellen: Yeah,

AJ: I think they're so close in age. You. Oh, you did?

Ellen: Yeah. So I coached them in soccer. I coached them in lacrosse, but they played box lacrosse. I didn't coach them in hockey. They would do a lot of spring hockey. What I would do is get on the I would just buy outdoor ice like and I would run the skates. But when I say I would run the skates is, I would get out of the way. I would turn the nets. Three on three, three on three, three on three, no direction, just let them. And then it was more, you know, just playing, like the environment, the competitors setting up the competitive- competitive mini games. So that type of stuff as extras.

AJ: The last question we have for you is what advice would you have to hockey parents out there or what kind of motto did you guys, would you say you followed?

Ellen: You know, who gave us really good advice, especially as they got older were Keith and Chantal Tkachuk. They were amazing role models for us. Quinn was fortunate enough to live with them and, and Keith always. They always said it, just be a great teammate, be a great human being, great- be a great person and work hard, be one of the hardest working. Get out there and have fun. You know, I know it's easy to say, but there's so many great things you can do in this life. There's so many greater things you can do in this life. You know, you find your passion, find lots of passions and be you and follow your heart in whatever it is that your [passion is like, live it, eat it, drink it and be it. I mean, I think those are the same advice that both of you as past Olympians give your own children.

Cammi: That's wonderful.

AJ: That is, that's awesome. And you are so awesome. I love hearing the sort of inside scoop from the first family of hockey, the Hughes family, and everybody's favorite hockey mom, Ellen Hughes. But at the same time, I love also taking that little walk down memory lane to make sure everybody remembers what a stud you are.

Ellen: Well, I so appreciate it. And I'm having so much fun listening to you two on your podcast. It's amazing what you're doing. I think you're amazing human beings. You both know how I feel about you and my admiration for what you've done for the women's game and what you're still doing in the game of hockey is so cool and you're both trailblazers. And I love this podcast and I love the guests that you have on. I take myself out of that like I don't fit in the realm of guests. 

AJ: Yes, yes you do. 

Ellen: I'm just saying that in the heart of hearts, I love the guests you've had on, and keep rocking it. You two are amazing and I'm lucky to have you as friends. And AJ, I laugh. I think about watching you at the Olympics and Cammi and I already had a relationship because we played together. And then I think about you today. And it's incredible.

AJ: And you are. I do remember you paved the way for us, but I do. I'm glad. I think you're buttering us up just in case I say, I will say anything negative about your sons on the ice, which so far I haven't had to because they're such superstars. But, you know, don't hold it against me if I do.

Ellen: You know, And then and hopefully things will get back to normal and we'll be traveling and I'll see you guys one day.

Cammi: Well, Ellen, thank you so much for being here. We were so happy you joined us and we'll have to have you on again at some point. And when the whole quarantine is over, well, I'll be looking forward to when you come to watch Quinn in Vancouver here.

[badmintonstorefan]

In Focus: Danish Badminton Legend Viktor Axelsen

In sports, few names shine as brightly as Viktor Axelsen. This Danish badminton superstar of remarkable talent has etched his name into the sport's history and people’s hearts with his exceptional achievements and unparalleled playing style. His journey from a young prodigy to a bonafide badminton legend is captivating and inspiring.

Career Profile:

1. Men’s Singles World Rank: 1

2. Men’s Singles World Tour Rank: 13

3. First-ever European singles player to win World Junior Championships in 2010.

Personal Information:

1. Birth Date: 4th January 1994

2. Country: Denmark

3. Height: 1.94m (6 ft. 4 inches)

4. Handedness: Right

Viktor’s Recent Milestones: Notable Highlights from 2023

Over the past few years, he has consistently showcased his dominance and determination, securing coveted titles and leaving his mark on the world. Let’s gaze at his achievements and milestones from the current year that stand as a testament to his unparalleled prowess on the badminton court.

1. DAIHATSU JAPAN OPEN 2023 (Tokyo, Japan): On July 30, 2023, he won the 18th tournament of the 2023 BWF World Tour Super 750 against Indonesian player Jonathan Christie in straight sets of 21-7 and 21-18.

2. 2023 EUROPEAN GAMES (Tarnów, Poland): On July 2, 2023, the Danish shuttler defeated French badminton player Christo Popov in an exciting men’s singles elimination final match that lasted more than 1 hour and 20 minutes. He also won the round-robin tournament against Polish Dominik Kwinta in straight sets of 21-9 and 21-9.

3. KAPAL API GROUP INDONESIA OPEN 2023 (Jakarta, Indonesia): On June 18, 2023, Axelsen won the Indonesia Open HSBC BWF World Tour Super 1000 final match in Jakarta against Indonesian badminton player Anthony Sinisuka Ginting.

4. Yonex Swiss Open 2023 (Basel, Switzerland): As a part of the BWF World Tour Super 300, Viktor reached the semis and won third place.

5. 2023 European Mix Team Championship (Aire-Sur-La-Lys, France): Denmark won the championship with a significant contribution from their star shuttler, Axelsen.

6. Yonex Sunrise India Open 2023 (New Delhi, India): He was positioned second in the BWF World Tour Super 750.

7. Petronas Malaysia Open 2023 (Kualampur, Malaysia): By defeating Kodai Naraoka, he won the first BWF World Tour Super 1000 of the year.

From Child Prodigy to the Reigning Champion: A Long History with Badminton

At six, Viktor’s father took him to play his first badminton game at the Odense club. Later, the club named him the Player of the Year in 2004. He also won the National Junior Championship in the boys’ singles and doubles category. He won the 2009 German Junior and European U17 Championships. In 2009, he debuted in the international tournament at the 2009 Denmark Open.

In 2010, he won his first international senior title with Cyprus International. Axelsen claimed the gold at European Junior Championships in 2011. He also won the second-place at the 2011 BWF World Junior Championships.

From 2012 to 2016, he secured second and third positions in BWF World Tournaments and European championships. In 2014, he won the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold. He won the bronze medal against Lin Dan from China in 2016.

2017 was a big year for Viktor as he won the World Championships in Glasgow again against Lin Dan. The same year, he won the Japan Open and became the top-ranked player in the BWF world rankings.

He won the gold in the 2018 European Men's and Women's Team Badminton Championships. His team was placed second in the t2018 Thomas & Uber Cup after getting defeated by former world no. 2 Kento Momota in the semi-finals.

He won the gold medal in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, against defending champion Chen Long. He also won his first Denmark Open title and secured the “Male Player of the Year” award for 2020/2021 and 2021/2022. He won his second World Championship in 2022.

The Playing Style of Champion

Axelsen's playing style is a fine blend of power, finesse, and strategic insight. His height and physical strength bring aggression to the game. He employs his tall frame to intimidate his opponents. With long and agile limbs, his court coverage is excellent. Global coaches, professionals, and badminton enthusiasts have applauded his ability to switch between offensive shots and calculated defensive plays.

As an attacking player, Viktor has a strong smash, often the strongest in the game. His popular strategy includes forcing the opponent to lift the shuttlecock so that he can move back and smash it. His smashes are so fast it gets challenging for his opponents to react, and they lose the point quickly.

One can attribute his remarkable success to an unparalleled work ethic and dedication to his craft. With countless hours of practice, rigorous training regimens, and a tireless commitment to honing his skills, he has reached the pinnacles of the game.

Viktor’s Weapon of Choice

Axelsen's equipment of choice plays a crucial role in enhancing his game. You can see him wielding a Yonex Astrox 100ZZ racket and BG80 power strings, meticulously selected to complement his playing style and preferences.

He chooses his racket carefully and upgrades it constantly to maintain his competitive edge. In the past, he has been a fan of the Yonex Duora Z strike and Astrox 88 S. A few people know he also used the Yonex Arcsaber 11 in his early days. His favorite shoes are Yonex Power Cushion 65 Z3.

Inspiration from A True Badminton Legend

Viktor Axelsen's willingness to push his limits and embrace challenges head-on exemplifies his tenacity and sets a shining example for aspiring athletes. His unrelenting pursuit of excellence serves as a reminder that true greatness is born out of hard work and determination.

[bucksfucks]

           amorosa // steve rogers

         chapter two: seal the deal

    chapter one // chapter two // chapter three

                    chapter four // chapter five

              ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

                             main masterlist

summary || after setting up a date with steve you fight back the urge to bail on account of your nerves. an agreement is reached and despite all odds, steve makes you feel relaxed and calm before you’re welcoming him back to your apartment after the night is almost over.

pairing || sugar daddy!steve x reader

word count || 3,111 words

warnings || financial struggles, sugar daddy dynamics, undefined age gap, unprotected sex, fingering, oral, heavy daddy kink, praise kink, size kink, dirty talk — 18+ ONLY//MINORS DNI

     You didn't know what to expect. You had never done something like this before. 

     As you rummaged through your closet, groaning at the struggle of finding something decent for tonight. You didn't own anything that would match what Steve was wearing, you barely had time to go out as it is.

    Not to mention your financial situation didn't exactly let you splurge on the finer things in life, your phone screen had been cracked for over half a year. You'd been meaning to get it fixed, but you could never justify dropping more than a hundred dollars on something that still technically worked. 

    Your mind flashed back to when Steve dropped the hundred on the bar like it was nothing. Suddenly you felt self-conscious, knowing you weren't nearly good enough to be going out with a man like Steve Rogers, Vice President of Stark Industries. 

    Professional or not, people would be talking and giving you odd glances. 

    You settled on a comfortable, sleek pair of straight cut pants and a simple blouse. Steve had decided on a steakhouse, a steakhouse of all places for a single drink as he put it last night. Another groan as you slipped on the uncomfortable and only pair of heels you owned. 

    A simple black open-toed shoe matched your outfit enough before you grabbed your purse, slinging it over your shoulder. 

    The Uber would be here soon enough and while spending thirty dollars on a car ride to a place you'd have to try not to stick out like a sore thumb, the subway in heels just wasn't an option. 

    The entire ride there your leg couldn't stop bouncing, no matter how much you willed yourself to calm down, nothing seemed to help as you left the modest looking part of the city only to enter into an entirely different world. 

    Luxury brand stores lined the streets, expensive cars parked at their side as your stomach flipped at some of the sights. 

    You didn't fit in here, you were sure your driver was just as confused as you as they kept driving deeper into the city. 

    "Have a good night," he bid you as you thanked him, shutting the car door and letting the late summer breeze billow around you as you looked up at the restaurant in front of you. 

    Bluefin read in a fluorescent blue light as you shook your head, laughing at the ridiculous situation you were in. You pulled at the door, it was heavy and tall before a hostess prompted you. 

    "Do you have a reservation with us, miss?" She asked, eying you up and down as if she knew that you were a fraud, like you didn't belong; and she wasn't wrong. 

    "I uh, have one with Mr. Rogers." You stumbled over your words trying to sound as confident as possible. She nodded her head politely, asking you to follow her before she swiftly turned to lead you through the maze of tables. 

    You took in your surroundings, the dozens of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling to the gold plated booths and shimmering table legs. It was safe to say that this place was way out of your comfort zone. 

    "Mr. Rogers, your guest for the evening," she spoke sweetly, throwing you a small smile as Steve got up to greet you. He placed a kiss on each of your cheeks, the action causing your body to flush as his beard grazed your skin. 

    He smelled exactly like he did last night, though this time it wasn't as subtle. He smelled fresh and clean and you could get lost in those same dashing blue eyes again.

    "I'm glad to see you again." Steve smiles, helping you into the booth before sliding in beside you. It was a very intimate space, his shoulder pressed against your as you placed your purse beside you. 

    Two menus were already placed in front of you, two glasses of water alongside a pitcher in the middle as you fiddled with your thumbs in your lap. Could he tell how nervous you were? 

    "It's nice to see you too," you managed to finally spit out as Steve smiled sweetly, he turned his body slightly so he was facing you, "this place has great seafood, I really recommend the crab cakes." 

    Your eyes lit up at the word food, you had been so nervous that it had barely crossed your mind. A waiter soon approached the table, "can I get you guys anything to drink?" 

    You felt like it should be you serving Steve, instead you just shook your head, "I'm okay with just water." You answered truthfully before Steve smirked. 

    "We'll take a bottle of champagne for the table, preferably rosé from 2012." It sounded like he was speaking an entirely different language. To you, wine was wine, if it got you drunk, it was good. 

    The waiter nodded his head, turning around to leave you both alone. You took a sip of your water when you noticed just how dry your throat was. Steve opened his menu and you followed suit before your eyes ran down the various dishes. 

     Everything sounded good and you heard your stomach grumble at the thought of the crab cakes and maybe even the butternut squash ravioli. Then your eyes ran to the prices, your heart palpated at the thought of them. 

    "Dinner's on me tonight, get whatever you'd like." It's like Steve had heard your internal monologue and decided to put an end to it. You were thankful for that, a wave of relief washing over you as his soft features made you feel safe. 

    "Thank you, really. I don't think I've ever eaten anywhere nearly this fancy," you joked, hoping the humour would absolve you of your awkwardness. Steve chuckled, low and deep as the waiter came with the champagne. 

    It was popped then poured into the flutes and placed in ice before Steve picked his up. 

    "To new beginnings," he spoke. You picked up yours, "to new beginnings," you repeated his words, gently clinking the two glasses together before taking a sip. 

    You had never been a fan of champagne, but this one wasn't too dry nor was it too sweet. It was light and fruity and soon enough you knew it would be enough to quell the nerves. 

    When the food arrived at the table, the conversation seemed to flow much more naturally. Steve didn't say much, asking a question and letting you answer as he got to know you. You found yourself sneaking subtle glances in his direction, admiring his side profile or just how close he was to you. 

    As the bottle of champagne was nearly empty, you felt much lighter as giggles fell past your lips. You had leaned into Steve a little more as the night progressed, his large hand falling to your thigh. 

    "So," the faint echo of your giggle was still heard as Steve's expression turned to a much more serious one. "I think we should discuss our… business opportunity." And just like that, you had sobered up. 

    You nodded your head as Steve cleared his throat. 

    "I'd like for you to join me for things like these. Dinner, company events, fundraisers, yearly ski trips to the alps, you know, the boring stuff." You nearly guffawed at his words. The boring stuff? A trip to the alps? Boring? You could barely believe it. 

    Still, you nodded your head, a silent sign for him to continue. 

    "In return, I'll take care of all your bills and expenses. You'll have plenty of petty cash, we'll call it," he smirked. "All I ask is for your company." He concludes and you swallow, taking it all in. 

    "When you say company, do you mean… " You trailed off, not sure how to delicately ask him if he wanted to fuck you or not. 

    Steve leaned in, his face inches from yours as he squeezed your thigh, "that's exactly what I mean, Princess." 

    The pet-name caused your stomach to somersault as your breath got hitched in your throat. You're not sure if it was the alcohol coursing through your veins or if this was just the effect he had on people. 

    Probably a mix of both. 

    Whatever it was, it caused you to wring your hands in his collar as you crashed your lips onto his. He didn't hesitate, not even for a second as his hands went to cup your face. The kiss left you breathless, spinning, and feeling like you were floating. 

    "Is that a yes?" He asks cheekily and you can't find the words, all you can do is nod your head before Steve is forced to drop your face as the waiter brings him the check. 

    You readjust yourself in your seat, one leg on top of the other as you close your eyes to steady your breathing. 

    Steve grabbed his leather wallet, pulling out a flashy black credit card and handing it to the poor man doing his job without any regard. You bit your lip at the interaction, someone with his money and power, it made the throbbing between your legs only worse. 

    "Let me drive you home." Steve whispered meeting your eyes as you nodded, "oh it's okay, I can just take the train back." You said politely and while you didn't want to, you sure as hell couldn't afford another Uber trip. 

    It's not like you didn't want to take him up on his offer either, truthfully, you weren't sure how you were going to react all alone with Steve. 

    You don't fuck on the first date, but for Steve, hell you'd let him take you in the bathroom of this restaurant. God knows it's probably better maintained than your building. 

    "Please? I don't want you alone on the train at this hour, you'd have me worrying all night and I don't think you'd wanna upset me like that." There was a sultry undertone in his words as his lips twitched into a smirk. 

    You nodded your head, "yes, okay, thank you Steve." 

    When you stepped into the now cool late night summer air a shiver ran down your spine as the valet went to grab Steve's car. You stayed silent, kicking a pebble with your toe as you tried your best not to shiver. 

    You felt Steve drape his suit jacket over your shoulders, "chilly night, huh?" He joked, as you hugged it around yourself. This man was full of secrets, secrets you wanted to learn to lock away in your own mind. 

    "Here you are Mr. Rogers, have a great night." The valet said, acknowledging you both as he opened the passenger side door for you. You slipped into the warm car, an Audi, you recognized the four rings on the steering wheel as Steve got in. 

    The car was quiet, city nose becoming nonexistent as he put it in drive. 

    "Where am I going?" He asked, pulling out of the restaurant parking lot and into the bustling New York City streets. 

    "Queens," you said, admiring the lights outside of your window as Steve chuckled, "no way, I grew up in Brooklyn." Steve commented as you turned your head. 

    That surprised you. A guy like him? From Brooklyn? You guess you should've known by his subtle accent, but it made you smile as Steve continued his way to your apartment. 

    "Well, uh, thank you for dinner, Steve. Really, it was the best food of my life." You chuckled as he returned your smile. "It was my pleasure, you're good company." He joked, squeezing your thigh as a new wave of arousal running through you. 

    You both sat in somewhat awkward silence as you grabbed your keys from your bag, clutching them in your hand. 

    "Do you maybe wanna come up for a cup of coffee? Or tea? I don't really have much to offer." You chuckled, as he smiled, “that sounds lovely." 

    Steve followed you to the front of your building, the old, paint chipped door creaking open before you pressed the elevator button that only illuminated on good days. 

    Today was not that day. 

    You tapped your foot as you watched the numbers descent until the L appeared on the small screen, the bell dinging. You got into it silently, the only sound was your heels against the stained flooring and the electrical whirring of the elevator. 

    Steve kept a respectable distance, his shoulder brushing yours as the elevator car moved up to the eleventh floor. 

    You stuck your key into your lock, jamming it upwards as you fiddled to find the sweet spot before you managed to push the door open, "home sweet home." 

    The apartment was small, a little over five-hundred square feet, but it was more than enough for you. You decorated it with plants and art you'd find at your local markets. It felt cozy and like home, but you knew it was nothing compared to what Steve was used to. 

    You didn't bother turning on any of the main lights, a small light in the kitchen was all you needed as you were finally able to kick off your heels. You dropped to your true height, having to crane your neck upwards to meet Steve's eyes. 

    It was in this moment that you realized just how massive he was. Broad shoulders and long legs held him upright as his now darkened eyes looked you up and down. You had forgotten all about the coffee as you felt his gaze all over you. 

    "You look stunning," he whispered, stepping closer to you. "Words just don’t do justice." He added, snaking an arm around your waist. 

    "Let me show you just how beautiful you are to me." He breathed, mouth close to your ear as you gasped, nodding your head. 

    "Oh, Steve, please." You whimpered, your hands going to rest on his shoulders as he pulled you flush against his body. You could feel him hardening through his dress pants, pressed tightly against your hip. 

    "Call me Daddy tonight, Princess." Steve purred as your stomach flipped before his lips were back on yours. He tasted like the remnants of the champagne as his tongue explored your mouth. 

    "Daddy," you gasped, his lips working his way down your neck as he pushed you further into your apartment. You yelped when he tossed you onto the bed, the moonlight streaming through your curtains and onto the sheets. 

    "That's my good girl, you're bein' so good for Daddy." His praise sends goosebumps over your skin as his fingers begin working on your blouse. You can sense the urgency in his actions, both of your hands having one goal in mind; remove any and all clothing. 

    You barely have any time to stop and admire Steve's build. He's toned, lean and fit and you already love the faint chest hair as he works on your bra. It's discarded soon after, your panties being yanked off before Steve's standing naked in front of you. 

    "Fuck," it's a breath that falls from Steve's lips as he's right back on top of you. His nose traces down your chest, his mouth paying equal attention to both of your nipples before his mouth is floating above where you need him most. 

    Neatly decorated hair covers your mound as Steve places your legs over his large shoulders, spreading you open in front of him as he lets out a low groan. 

    "Princess, you're so wet. Is this all for me? Is this why you've been so squirmy during dinner?" He smirks, his question rhetorical as he uses his fingers to spread your lips open. 

    Your hips are bucking, fists around your sheets as you whine. Steve's tongue is wide and warm against you when it finally connects with you. A lewd moan slips past your lips when he swirls it tightly around your clit. 

    The attention to detail is mind blowing, his fingers slowly slipping inside of you as he works you open. There's nowhere in the world you'd rather be than right here with Steve's face buried between your thighs. 

    "You taste so sweet, Princess." He hums, moaning around you as your fingers tangle in his once neatly styled hair. You tug on the locks, a low groan in response that spreads warmth through your body. 

    "Daddy, pl-please, wanna cum." You're lost in the sensation of his fingers scissoring you open, his tongue flicking tight figure-eights over your clit. 

    "Cum for Daddy, Princess, cum all over my face." He growls, curling his fingers deep inside of you, breaking the coil as your back arches off the bed. 

    You feel like you've just ran a marathon, lungs aching for oxygen, and he hadn't even gotten his cock yet. 

    "Hands and knees, Princess. Show Daddy your ass," he growls, flipping you over as you prop yourself up on shaky knees. You're mewling, wanton and burning to feel how his cock will fill you up. 

    The bed shifts under Steve’s weight as his fingers dig lightly into the flesh of your waist, positioning your hips as his cock nudges your entrance. 

    “You think you’re ready for my cock, Princess?” He taunts as you wiggle your hips against him as he chuckles deeply from within his chest before slowly sinking into you. 

    You both moan at the sensation, your warm walls gripping around him as he stretches you out. 

    “Takin’ Daddy’s cock so well Princess—fuck, feels so good.” Steve grunts, his hips snapping against yours with a force that has you falling face first into the pillows. 

    His one hand goes to rest between your shoulder blades, keeping you planted firmly against the bed as he fucks you deep into your worn out mattress. 

    Your moans are muffled, you're thankful for the position considering your walls are paper thin and you'd rather not have your eighty-five year old neighbour Darleen hear about the mind-blowing sex you were currently engaged in. 

    "You gonna cum for Daddy again? Make a mess over his cock, hmm?" He whispers in your ear, voice hoarse and gravelly as your toes curl and you're cumming again for him. 

    Steve pulls out, fisting his cock in his hands before you're feeling his hot cum painting your back as you're reeling at the aftershocks of your orgasm. 

    You're pulled out of your post-orgasmic bliss when you feel Steve cleaning you up with what? You don't care, you'd do laundry tomorrow, throw it away, all you wanted was to feel Steve's arms around you. 

    He falls back into bed with you, his gentle eyes meeting yours as he chuckles, "if that doesn't seal the deal, I don't know what will."

tagging // @jennmurawski13 | @nakedrogers

any and all feedback is always appreciated! <3

[twoflipstwotwists]

Oksana Chusovitina stayed in gymnastics partly for her little boy, so it seems fitting that her son Alisher, now 20, is the one who has finally convinced her to step back.

Chusovitina, 44, is the doyenne of world gymnastics, a woman whose longevity has surpassed expectations, confounded statistics and delighted a legion of adult gymnasts. At her eighth Olympic Games this summer, Chusovitina will break her own record for most Olympics attended by a single gymnast. That she’s done it in an era where the sport has gotten progressively harder and globally more competitive only adds to her legend.

After three decades, five national teams and some tens of thousands of vaults, the end of the odyssey is in sight. Chusovitina has let it be known that Tokyo will be her final Olympics, though she has said the same before at past Games and then casually shown up at the next World Cup event. Others have focused on her age, on the fact that she’ll be the oldest gymnast in 100 years to walk the floor in Tokyo; Chusovitina herself generally shies away from such things, preferring to let her skills speak for themselves.

To Agence France Presse this week, however, she conceded that Alisher’s influence, namely his concern that she could injure herself, proved the deciding factor in the retirement that she always put off. “He worries about me a lot, that I might get a bad injury or fall,” Chusovitina said. She stayed in for the sake of her son; for his sake she will finally bow out.

It was for Alisher that Chusovitina continued at an age when most international competitors conclude their careers. When her then-two-year-old was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002, Chusovitina was 27, already ancient by elite gymnastics standards, and representing Uzbekistan, in whose ancient city Bukhara she was born in 1975. As one of the few mothers to return to high level international competition, Chusovitina was already an anomaly; the situation she found herself in made her even more so.

The lack of medical treatment available for Alisher’s illness in Uzbekistan pushed Chusovitina and her husband, Olympic wrestler Bakhodir Kurbanov, to look abroad for solutions. A friend connected them with a hospital in Germany, which agreed to treat Alisher for free.

The hand of fate so generously extended by the Germans floored Chusovitina, who could only express her gratitude in gymnastics. Instead of retiring, she took German nationality and repped the country at the 2008 and 2012 Games, offering Olympic silver in place of euros. Won on vault in Beijing in 2008, it was unified Germany’s first Olympic medal in women’s gymnastics since 1936, but the real prize was bestowed after the Games, when upon her return to Koln Alisher’s doctors announced that he was cured. “I think, as a mother, that is news you cannot compare any medal to,” she said.

Why retire when there was no need, especially when Chusovitina’s capability on vault, has kept her competitive? Rather than fading away quietly, she is as luminous as ever. For Tokyo, she has indicated that she may compete the uber difficult Produnova vault, something only three women (including her) have attempted at the Olympic Games. One day she will indeed retire — but she will not go quietly.

[aemonded]

3, 7, 9, 15, 18

booknet ask game (Apologies for the delay!):

3. what was the last book you rated 1/5? 

Probably this horrific and justifiably priced 0.25 cent paperback I got from the library book sale. I care so little about the title I’m not even going to bother getting up to look at it, but basically it was somehow involving a mystery on a liner heading to New York, and The Kennedys circa 1941 when Joe (’God what a terrible person’) Kennedy was ambassador to England (And casual Nazi supporter/isolationist, lovely).

But the book promises you that it will mostly talk about Rosemary Kennedy as a character. Which I liked, because in case you don’t know, Rosemary Kennedy was JFK’s sister who was considered the ‘prettiest’ of all the Kennedy girls, but also constantly was on a diet because she ‘put on weight easily’ (Poor girl), and because she was seen as ‘simple.’ Supposedly when she was in her early twenties, she had the mental capacities or a naive thirteen year old/ writing level of an eight year old. They kept basically shoving her into boarding schools to try to push her forward in terms of education, but obviously when she most likely had something like a severe case of autism, there weren’t exactly many programs that directly addressed those who were learning disabled, and being a Kennedy, they most likely were like PUSH HER THROUGH IT AND SHE’LL BE FINE (Great, thanks guys).

All this being said, there is proof in terms of letters that basically everyone was afraid, because once she became a teenager, she started running away from these schools or sneaking out late at night, and they were literally worried because of how ‘naive’ she was, that she’d end up getting pregnant by some weirdo guy forcing himself on her/ convincing her to have sex. What most normal people/historians think now, is that she saw her brother being John F. Kennedy, El Primo Playboy of the World 1941, dating movie stars and having a buttload of friends (As my older brother used to say), and she obviously wanted to be involved in this glamorous, fun life with the rest of her family, rather than shoved away at some crappy boarding school with nuns the age of time immemorial (Understandable). (Also, for what it’s worth, JFK basically WAS a great older brother, for what I’ve heard, and wanted his parents to loosen up on her. He involved her in his social groups if she was around and never pushed her into anything that someone with her ‘limitations’ might be hurt by).

So of course the natural thing would be to do is to give her a lobotomy so she doesn’t run away, and of course, it had some horrific side effects and basically killed her personality entirely from all accounts, making her basically a human vegetable with only a shadow of the person she’d been before. After that Joe ‘I’m the Worst’ Kennedy carted his daughter off, and debatably, depending on who you ask, she was basically ignored by most of the family for 60+ years of her living in a care home, or embraced in private (The Kennedy message/propaganda/nice try guys). There’s really only consistent public photos of Ted Kennedy visiting her, because besides the whole ‘I accidentally murdered a woman I was having an affair with’ thing, Ted was the baby and seemed actually like ironically the most ‘Christian’ in the most broadest sense of the word besides Bobby Kennedy (Yes, I know they’re Catholic, it’s an analogy).

So bringing this back to this awful book, the ‘mystery’ on the cruise liner shit basically seemingly revolves around Rosemary pre-lobotomy and how she wants to get married to a ‘coloured jazz man.’ BUT THIS NEVER FACTORS INTO THE PLOT. NONE OF THE HISTORICAL FIGURES ABOARD DO EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE ‘POV’ CHAPTERS ASIDE ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.

You heard me right. xD I KNOW IT’S THE 1940S IN THE BOOKS AND THERE’S FAR WORSE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE AND THE JAZZ MAN IS NICE AND ALL BUT DAMN IT’S SORT OF THE WORST, BECAUSE THEY BASICALLY MAKE THIS THE ENTIRE REASON FOR HER LOBOTOMY AND WHILE THEORETICALLY IT WOULD FIT IN WITH JOE’S MOTIVATIONS HISTORICALLY, IT JUST CAME OFF AS SUPER SKEEZY AND UGH. Mostly the book A) Actually did a considerable job giving Rosemary a sweet and loving personality that you like, but considering what you know if you’re probably reading this book and how they’re just dropping bread crumbs the entire way through, it’s just incredibly morbid and bleh. 

If you’re going to write historical characters and fiction well, at least have something more to back it up than ‘Racism was more (outwardly) prevalent back then so she was going to be in an interracial relationship so lobotomy.” It just came off as conflating two important issues (The rights of the learning disabled to date and have families of their own, and interracial romances versus status in society), and just came out to justify it for a lobotomy we never even see. (Trust me, I’m making it sound far more interesting than it is).

Plus the mystery on the liner is the main aspect of the story, and I think that’s what makes it the worst: This author just chose to have these random historical figures on BECAUSE, and considering Rosemary’s background and what we know happened to her, it just seemed like a pretty desperate ploy to reel people in (like myself), and have them go, “Wait, this is just a sub-par mystery book, not a historical mystery book: She used that whole actual living person who existed and who was screwed over by her own family as ‘shock value’ and a ‘hook’ for the audience.” Double EW.

7. what was the last book that made you cry? 

Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, who is unfortunately no longer with us but a BEACON of Canadian Literature, and I'm SO sad he didn’t get to write more books, because his writing style is BEAUTIFUL and poetic.

“Saul Indian Horse is an alcoholic Ojibway man who finds himself the reluctant resident of an alcohol treatment centre after his latest binge. To come to peace with himself, he must tell his story. Richard Wagamese takes readers on the often difficult journey through Saul's life, from his painful forced separation from his family and land when he's sent to a residential school to the brief salvation he finds in playing hockey. The novel is an unflinching portrayal of the harsh reality of life in 1960s Canada, where racism reigns and Saul's spirit is destroyed by the alienating effects of cultural displacement.”

What you also don’t get about the book from this review, is the role hockey plays as being central to the narrative. In that moment, and when Saul is young, inside his own head, he is just what we as the reader see him as: A young boy who loves a sport and finds it freeing. A PERSON. A kid who loves hockey. 

He’s so good that he has a chance to make it to the NHL. He’s good enough to play on the ‘white teams,’ but when he starts beating white players, grown men and women throw things at him, like plastic ‘Indians’ from a ‘Cowboy and Indian’ set. 

He is a skilled player. He has raw talent. But to make it to the next level, and because they won’t let him be on the team in any other role, because a Native man can’t become a skilled star in 1960s Canada, he has to become a ‘goon.’ There’s actually a moment in the book where he snaps, and it’s so well written and heartbreaking, where it’s like this Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde dynamic inside of him, where he literally just goes, “Okay? You want me to be a bloodthirsty ‘Indian’? Then I’ll be that for you.”

There’s also a movie I haven’t had the guts to watch all the way through, because I tried watching it on a plane ride from Australia to Canada without actually having read the book first, and having no idea what the movie was about aside from hockey and Indigenous culture, and Jesus Christ IT KILLED ME. I’m terrible at flying, had been throwing up and thoroughly miserable for about three hours at that point on the plane, tried to turn on a movie to distract myself, and within ten minutes, I was like “No, I think sticking to the vomiting is justified.” (To give you an idea of the directing style, it’s bizarrely produced by uber-Republican yet ‘weirdly-obsessed with Indigenous people’ movie star Clint Eastwood. If you’ve seen his other films and how sparse and depressing they can be, you can only IMAGINE what this material lends itself to. So I’d really stick to reading the book first. Because Wagamese’s voice is so much stronger within the book, and the pain and horror poor Saul is exposed to serves a purpose within the larger narrative much more clearly, and even when he is an alcoholic, he still is able to find hope within himself and returning to his people, and that’s a beautiful thing that I think was lost in the portions of the film I was able to catch.) Check it out: It was only written in 2012, but it’s already being heralded as a ‘classic’ in Canadian Indigenous Literature.

9. do you actually check out books that have been recommended for you?

I do. I might not actually READ them, but I’ll at least check out a snippet on Amazon to see if it’s my cup of tea. So if anyone has any recommendations, go right on ahead <3

15. how do you feel about reading buddies?  

I would love a reading buddy! <3 Feel free to message me if you’re keen. <3

18. what was your favourite book when you were 10?

Probably something by Roald Dahl or The Hobbit, if we’re talking sheer escapism or enjoyment (Or the original run of Harry Potter). My Dad is an English teacher, so I was always reading older books than were probably age-appropriate (I was placed at a college-reading level at twelve on an assessment test), so other than that, a lot of classic literature: Just name it, I’ve probably read it. 

I also was a nerd who decided to read the entire dictionary back to front somewhere around this time and copy down all the words I actually didn’t know on a list, so that was a hobby. xD I guess I could count that as a ‘favourite book.’ (-Insert Homer Simpson “NEEeeeRRRddddd” gif here-).

[pulp-diction]

God may be all around us, but his head of state, the pope, is typically seen from afar. The “supreme pontiff” is tucked away in the Vatican, perched up on a balcony, or else riding around in his popemobile. He is not untouchable, but he is close to it. 

“The Two Popes” allows its pontiff no such distance. Director Fernando Meirelles holds the camera in tight on Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins), as much a critical eye towards him as it can feel sympathetic towards Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), his debate partner (and future pope himself). The former represents a doubling down by the church leadership in the conservative direction. He believes there are to be no married priests, no homosexuals, and preferably every one of his cardinals would speak Latin; tradition uber alles. 

The latter is the new guard, beloved and forward-thinking. Benedict isn’t pleased about Bergoglio having either of those qualities, especially not when he was the runner up in the papal election, and now hopes to quietly resign as Archbishop. It’s a move that Benedict worries would undermine his authority, and make his papacy seem even more rocky. By 2012 (when this movie is set) his church has been rocked by the public revelation they covered up rampant sexual abuse, he struggles to connect with those around him and isolates himself for meals. His breathing is labored, next to fit and friendly Bergolio. He feels attacked from all sides.

Even the camera closes in around him. As Bergolio and Benedict banter, it hovers in close up, sometimes erratically zooming in tighter, as if to really back them up against a wall. The only time it gives ground is to place them at even greater odds with their environment—tiny, amongst the natural splendor of Italy; dwarfed by the Vatican’s artwork. 

“Two Popes” at its heart is about the way these two men shoulder the burden of those legacies. To Benedict, the church’s role is to be “infallible” in all ways. Bergolio knows that while piety may ennoble suffering, the love of the church is too great a thing to risk with punitive measurements. The fact that both men see themselves holding the line on this makes it that much harder to relinquish any movement. To those who are non-Catholics, it does not often feel like the most fruitful or even necessary discussion; what do we gain by watching church leaders debate stances within Catholicism? Why not interrogate how odd it is to live in a time with two popes? 

Sometimes it feels like there is another version of this movie that could’ve been more fun: By the end we have two men, who have both borne the brunt of the papal life, connecting over something as common as a World Cup match. It is a relationship born of mutual respect and understanding, if not agreement. Gone are their long soliloquies that sometimes strain under the weight of the conceit. And after their struggle to connect on anything before (finally landing on “inability to drink coffee late at night”) it is simple. 

In fraught times such as these it seems that our divisions matter a lot more than our similarities. Not just across party lines, but within our enclaves as well, a notion “Two Popes” intuitively understands; it is sometimes remarkable how easy it is to find no easy common ground with someone who agrees with you in almost every respect. When we finally get down to the nitty gritty of enacting policy, it becomes more important why we do what we do. Even a slightly different angle can ultimately bring a wildly different trajectory. 

In this way, the politicking of the church feels more organic and relatable: Even 2,000-year old institutions struggle with how to hold themselves accountable to those they serve. The differences of the men who would be pope can be found in the small things (their backgrounds, their musical interests), but those ultimately bubble up to inform their whole worldview. Their focus is tight because these are the inches with which a behemoth is turned. 

And so “Two Popes” is more intricate than initially meets the eye: What first seems to be implicitly siding with Bergolio’s liberal views—allowing him more moments of open introspection, holding on his face as Benedict pulls out yet another luxury of papal life—is a smoke screen for Benedict’s weary, erudite position. At its finest moments, “Two Popes” interrogates the crossroads these men find themselves at, cornering them in the blinding light of their institution, contrasting them even by the simple colors they wear. They have finally brought these larger than life figures down to men in a garden. These are the moments when “Two Popes” transcends the religious trappings of the thought exercise, or a patchwork of Catholic buzzwords. Whether that peace will also be with you–well that’s between you and your god.

[monika-396]

Things that marked the 2010s in no particular order

Nyah Cat

Bongo cat

Flappy Birdy

Gangnan Style

K-pop explosion

Avatar movie

Detective Pikachu live action

Frozen

Fifth Shades of Gray

Moana aka the first Disney princess with realistic body proportions

Slime

Fidget spiner

Old cartoons reboots

Gaga and her meat dress

Bieber fever

Steven Universe

Disney+

Nintendo Switch

Ash's Pokémon League victory

Pokémon Go

Friday

Vine

That fucking dress

Trump and all his bullshit

Smash Ultimate

Mario Odyssey

The begin and the end of MLP FiM series

The Brony Community

Amazon Rainforrest fire

Boku no Hero

Into the Spiderverse

Samurai Jack's final season

Stan Lee's, Steve Hilleberg's, Prince's, Robbie Rotten's, Amy Whinehouse's and David Bowie's deaths

The rise of the MCU

Baby Yoda

Tik Tok

Tumblr staff fucking everything up

Youtube staff also fucking everything up

One Direction

9/11 10 years anniversary

Bin Laden is finally captured and killed

The several 'end of the world' (specially after 2012)

Star Wars is back

Disney live actions

Syria's war

Lemonade

Moonlight

The Shape of Water

The Muppets are back

Pixar Sequels

Good Omens

American Gods

Stranger Things

One Day at the Time

Green Eggs and Ham

Gravity Falls

Bendy and the Ink Machine

It

Cuphead

Venezuela Crisis

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's return

Felix the Cat 100th birthday

The first world cup in the African continent

Brazil elects their first woman president

Papa Francisco the first latino Papa

Notre Dame on fire

The first official female world cup that recieves as much attention as the male one

Kim Jong-un

Haiti's earthquake

Japan's earthquake and tsunami

Hurricane Irma

Fukushima

Pulse tragedy

Several school shootings

Museu Nacional destroyed by a massive fire

São Paulo state suffer the worst drought in history

Ebola

Pabllo Vittar

Undertale

Despacito

Game of Thrones

The end of Harry Potter

Doctor Who 50th anniversary

The end of Adveture Time and Regular Show

Simpsons 30th anniversary

Gen Z

Millenials

Goodbye Oppy

The first picture of a black hole

3D printer

Netflix grows in popularity

Minecraft

Amazon Prime

Breathe of the Wild

Pokémon franchise 20's anniversary

Pokémon 20th movie

Pokémon anime 1000th episode

League of Legends

Overwatch

The Waking Death

7x1 (it still hurts)

Discord

Spotify

Smartphone

Tablet

SmartTV

Uber

Invader Zim and Rocko's Modern Life get specials on Netflix

The Siria refuges

Untittled Goose Game

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Titanic's sinking 100th anniversary

Disney bought Fox

Minions

The moon landing 50th anniversary

Fortnite

Scooby-doo's original series very first episode release on tv 50th anniversary

This is America

Representativity of minories on media slowly grow

For the first time two characters of the same gender share a kiss on the lips on a kids show in a kids channel with no censorship

Emara aka the first cartoon with a female muslin hero protagonist

[itsnicoggi]

The Corners of an Anxious Mind

Or how a visit to that mess-of-a-place we don’t like to call home feels.

Originally in: https://medium.com/@nicopoggi/the-corners-of-an-anxious-mind-74ec103175b6

Come on in… You’ve got the keys, don’t you? Well, what am I saying? It’s your place, you know your way!

Wait. Actually, do take my hand. We’ve made some changes. A little reshuffle you might call it. It’s not much, but let me give you the tour.

See? That thing’s here, there’s that, and that stuff you loved to revisit took a lot of room so we cut it in half and stored some of it downstairs. Neat right? I saw it on one of that ‘Feng Shui in five minutes’ videos…

That thing though, the one you seem to be looking is gotta be here… somewhere. Hey! There’s that quirky thought from July 2012, hah! Or was it August 2014? One thing’s for sure, it sounded a whole lot smarter back then.

Moving on… Moving on… Where were we moving on to? Ah! That’s right, the proper answer to the question you’ve just so urgently discovered. Yes, follow me.

Now if you open that red door and crawl through that empiric wall of useless rubbish, you should find the answer just under the paperweight. The green one. The one with the little frame on it? Try the blue one? No? Jeez, let me take a look…

Oh. I see, my bad. This is the room formerly known as ‘the conscious knowledge chamber’. Yeah, no, it’s not here, this is now the ‘obnoxious realizations collection’. I’m so sorry, I kept a record of all the changes, but I used it to light the stove last night because I couldn’t find those damn matches.

Let me take you there, I’m so sorry, I’ve been a dreadful host.

I haven’t even offered you some tea! Care for a cup? Biscuits? Not even a cup of coffee as we walk?

Come on, just a brew!

Like that one time, remember? We had about a dozen cups while trying to tidy this place up. Ha! Awful night, though you had quite the plan, yeah. Too bad it didn’t las…

Okay. Okay.

I get it, don’t give me that stern look. I’m trying to be nice, cowboy, you don’t visit that often and it gets boring. Let’s move up and get to it.

There, down the stairs. Into the cellar. Pass the three doorways, take a left if possible. If you can’t, take a right. Then, search for that familiar scent that reminds you of something… but you can’t quite point out what it is and take a sharp turn downwards.

…?

Are you there yet? Great! I’ll take a rain check on this one, sorry! It’s not really my territory, buddy. Oh, and there were a lot of thoughts and ideas there so I just shredded them and kind of piled them up to save up space… But you’ll be fine, I think they were color coded. So, you can probably put them pieces together, like a puzzle or something. It’ll be fun!

I’ll leave you to it then, there’s a mug of premium roast by the stairwell, my treat.

Happy thinking.

He-yo! Hope you enjoyed this one, it’s a little piece of empathy to everyone out there with an uber-busy mind that just can’t keep things in one order.

Tame what’s tamable, and learn to live with a lil’ mess. Maybe it’s Nick the journalist speaking, but piecing the pieces together always pays off. It just takes some more time (and maybe some more).

[billyagogo]

91 Minutes With Philippe Reines

New Post has been published on https://newsprofixpro.com/moxie/2021/02/11/91-minutes-with-philippe-reines/

91 Minutes With Philippe Reines

Photo: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images

If you come out in the next 3 minutes,” the e-mail reads, “just look for the SUV trapped in 1983 and rocking to ‘Gloria.’ ” Philippe Reines is BlackBerrying from an Uber car idling outside Union Station in Washington, D.C. Sure enough, there’s the black Suburban, shining in the afternoon sun amid many impatient taxis. Reines, Hillary Clinton’s most visible spokesman and the guardian of her public persona, is sprawled in the back passenger seat with the window a few inches down. “We’re going to drive in circles,” he says.

In person, Reines is none of the things his reputation for tenacity would suggest. He has, today at least, forgone the Brooks Brothers uniform of the D.C. Power Male in favor of a navy long-sleeved polo and chinos. His thatch of dark hair is not particularly styled. The BlackBerry sits in the armrest cup holder but, in another defiance of convention, Reines doesn’t check it at all. As the Suburban begins to roll down Constitution Avenue, he is relaxed and undefensive. If the air of casualness is itself a form of the image control for which he is so well known, then it is working.

Reines (pronounced RYE-niss), originally a product of the Upper West Side, has worked as Hillary’s chief personal defender since joining her Senate office in 2002, moving with her to the State Department in 2009 and frequently making news himself for his colorful and sometimes outlandish tactics. The latest example: In January, at an event with auto dealers, Clinton admitted that she hadn’t driven a car since 1996, which prompted a BuzzFeed reporter to e-mail Reines seven questions about other modern things that Clinton might not be up on. Had she ever bought anything on the Internet? Eaten at Chipotle? Swiped a MetroCard? Reines responded with a sneering e-mail that repeatedly referred to “BuLLfeed” and linked to various images of his patron appearing to do some (but not all) of the activities mentioned. BuzzFeed posted the whole exchange, which made its way to the scolds on cable TV. This kind of outing happens to Reines all the time, suggesting, perhaps, that he ought to know better.

“It’s not a great dynamic,” he says with a rueful smile. “I’ve gone way past one’s healthy shelf life” as an everyday spokesman, “which shows through on an annual basis in something that I do or say.” There is only thin traffic on the capital’s streets; soon we are speeding along I-395 and over the bridge to Virginia.* “I try to speak to reporters as little as possible, just for my own personal health and wellness,” he says. “I think that’s a shared feeling. It’s not a lot of reporters who are like, ‘Oh, great, I get to ask the Clinton organization a difficult question now; I’m sure this is gonna be the highlight of my week.’ ”

As any Washington spinmeister knows, the worst mistake is one that underscores the perpetrator’s key flaws, perceived or real, which is why the latest BuzzFeed episode stings: It echoes an exchange about Benghazi with BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings, back in 2012, in which Reines told Hastings—again via e-mail—to “fuck off” and “have a good life.”

“The ‘fuck off’ thing was terrible,” Reines says, not because he was aggressive with Hastings—who died in a car crash last year—but because “I could not have been more disrespectful of the tragedy” of the attack in Libya. “It was a Sunday morning when I wrote it,” Reines recalls. “Monday is when it hit. Tuesday, waking up and reading the clips of just headline after headline after headline that contained the words Benghazi, ambassador, four Americans killed, Reines, Clinton, fuck off. It was just so disrespectful,” he says. “I don’t mind telling people to fuck off. Someone wants to know, you know, ‘We hear her shoe size is really five and a half, not six.’ I mean, fuck off.”

The Potomac is visible through the roadside trees, and Reines grows quieter. “I’ve always thought that to the extent that I do a good job, it’s because I’ve got different speeds,” he says. “And it’s harder as life goes on. I feel like I’m a 42-year-old pitcher who should have left at 37, and now I’ve only got one pitch: That’s all anyone knows.”

Extremism in defense of Hillary is no vice, however, and Reines’s boss is sticking with him. He recently co-founded a consulting firm, Beacon Global Strategies, but he still works for Clinton as a second full-time job. And if she runs again—he claims he doesn’t know if she will—Reines will be onboard. We have reached the end of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and the driver turns around in front of the gates of Mount Vernon and heads back toward the District.

A 2016 campaign, if Reines has any say, will be run more sensibly than 2008’s: “I think she’d be better off not hiring anyone over the age of 35,” he says. “And I think they should all be on a barge or on some kind of orbital platform that can only transmit to the Earth and not receive from it. You just want a roomful of people having good thoughts and good ideas and then not knowing what happened. You come back to Earth the day after the election.”

A space-station-like campaign hub is the kind of radical efficiency Reines tends to go for. He has placed parental locks on all eleven of the televisions in his firm’s new headquarters, so that no one can watch MSNBC, the network that goes after him hardest. On Clinton’s foreign trips, he would travel with a foldable toothbrush that fit more easily into his pocket, elim­inating the need for a carry-on bag. And for nearly two years now, he has gone completely cashless. “I haven’t withdrawn a single piece of currency in any form” since June 2012, he says. Instead of a wallet he carries a card holder—but no ATM card. Cabs, one of the last services for which Reines found he needed actual banknotes, have been replaced with Uber rides, the most recent of which is now drawing to a close at the corner of 21st and L Streets, in front of Beacon’s offices.

The next day an e-mail arrives from Reines containing the electronic record of his final ATM withdrawal, at 3:57 p.m. on June 20, 2012. “1 year, 7 months, 17 days,” the subject line reads.* Just making sure the story is accurate.

*This article has been corrected to show that the author and Reines took I-395, not I-495 and that his final ATM withdrawal was on June 20, 2012, not June 12.

Have good intel? Send tips to intel@nymag.com.

91 Minutes With Philippe Reines

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[gokul2181]

Not thinking about Olympic qualification: Saina Nehwal | Badminton News

New Post has been published on https://jordarnews.in/not-thinking-about-olympic-qualification-saina-nehwal-badminton-news/

Not thinking about Olympic qualification: Saina Nehwal | Badminton News

NEW DELHI: Saina Nehwal is currently concerned with maintaining fitness for competitions and tournaments next year and not thinking about the long road ahead of her to ensure a fourth appearance at the Olympic Games. The 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist is currently ranked 22nd in the Badminton World Federation‘s (BWF) Race to Tokyo rankings and needs to be within the top 13 to seal qualification. The 30-year-old former women’s singles World No.1 is currently looking to get back to competitive badminton in January. “I have no plans as such,” Saina told IANS in an exclusive interview, when asked about her plans to approach the qualification period next year. “I am only trying to improve the fitness and [look after] my injuries during this period and would look forward to do well in competitions. I am not thinking much about qualifying for the Olympics,” she said. Before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the badminton calendar to a halt, and eventually forced the postponement of the Olympics itself, Saina was in a race against time to confirm qualification to the quadrennial event. The freezing of the calendar, and eventually the BWF rankings, meant that Saina could stop and recuperate. “I took a break probably for a few weeks. I had some issues with my ankle and shins and I needed a proper break so it was good. Once I started back, obviously, I knew that it will take a few months to get back in shape as I need to progress slowly for my fitness. But it was fun. We also knew we had enough time before tournaments would happen,” she said. Saina was earlier expected to stage a comeback at the Denmark Open that is scheduled to start on October 13, before she became one of several high profile players to pull out of the Super 750 event. She was also in the Indian team for the Uber Cup that was to be held at the same venue from October 3 before the tournament was indefinitely postponed. “In my case, I just didn’t feel I need to go all the way for one tournament; also ranking points won’t count towards Olympic qualification as of now, so I had a few reasons. Also, BWF left the decision to individual athletes to take a call, so they did the best they could,” she said. Saina and her husband and fellow badminton star Parupalli Kashyap are campaign ambassadors of Discovery Plus ‘The Big Learning Festival’. “Kashyap and I have always believed that it is important to develop learning as a habit which makes it an automated process and we start grasping things from even the smallest incident. The fact that we both are known faces to the Indian audiences is only going to increase the relatability,” she said.

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[fivestarjamz]

“Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean (2012)

I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of crushes over the year. Hell, I can think of four or five people I’m crushing on this very second*. But I’ve only been in love two times in my life. Or at least “in love” relative to what I now know as “being in love.”

The first time this happened was with someone we’ll call D**. I met D on OkCupid six or seven years ago; about halfway through my time in Boston. Our first date was pretty low key. We went to a BBQ restaurant, talked about music (he loved Phish--and I didn’t hold it against him), and his work (he was a high school principal at the time, but had previously criss-crossed the country in a covered wagon to teach kids and he was a published author!) At the end of the date, as I was walking him to his car, we stopped at a pet store and hung out with the dogs and cats for a bit. 

Strangely, we barely spoke for months after what I thought was a good day. I called him for a second date and he mentioned something about being sick. Knowing what I know now about him, he was probab...definitely lying. I carried a torch for several months until I wound up moving into the same neighborhood he lived in. This move was 99% coincidental...I can’t say that the thought of potentially running into him on a more regular basis didn’t cross my mind. And guess what happened? I began to run into D on a much more regular basis. He frequented the diner I lived across the street from. I’d pop in and he’d be sitting at a table. We’d say “hi” to one another and promise to hang out soon.

Within a few weeks, we were officially hang out buddies. We’d get together once a week or so. I took him to a Trey Anastasio show (the things I do for love.) Maybe six weeks after we started hanging, he was let go from his job, and our hangs increased to every other day or so. We developed a routine: I’d finish up work for the day, he’d come over, we’d smoke a joint, cuddle up on the sofa, talk, and watch Law & Order: SVU reruns for 3 or 4 hours. He’d then head home.

We fooled around a few times, but only actually slept together once, in the middle of our weird courtship. It didn’t go well (which is at least one reason it didn’t happen a second time(. We were both dealing with major anxiety and depression issues that led to both of us being hospitalized (separately) during our time as whatever we were. He was struggling to find a job. He also had something of a drug dependency (and I’m not talking about just weed). Even with that, though, we had fun, and believe it or not, it was the most functional relationship I’d ever had to that point even though he stopped short of calling it an actual relationship. When I went home for Christmas, I entrusted him with the keys to my apartment so he could watch my cat. When I got back to Boston, he’d made food for me and left it in the fridge. We’d get dressed up in button-downs and sport coats and go to fancy brunch. We paid thirty bucks each to see This Is The End in a deluxe theater where we ate chicken fingers and drank beer. We dropped acid together (the first and only time for me as I write this.) and I played with the hair on his arm while he laughed. He talked about me to his mom (although not in a romantic sense). He was responsible for my coming out to my folks. But what me and D had was some weird funhouse mirror kind of relationship. It wanted to be a “real” relationship. I wanted it to be one, and I think there was a part of him that wanted one too--he’d often speak about how we were “soul mates” or “kindred spirits”. He loved me, and maybe even loved me the way I loved him. I’m not totally sure whether that was the case. At any rate, distance put a cramp on whatever it was we had. About a year to the day after we started hanging out regularly, he moved about 2 hours West, having finally started another job. We haven’t seen each other since.

This unrequited love, to me it's nothing but a one-man cult...

And cyanide in my Styrofoam cup.

I can never make him love me Never make him love me Love me Love me Love me Love me Love me Love me Love

I may have been in love, but I wasn’t dumb. The writing was on the wall with D, and I didn’t stop trolling dating sites looking for something less complicated. I hadn’t yet fully come to terms with the idea that you could actually successfully love more than one person at a time. Anyhow, I soon began a friendship with someone we’ll call A.** A lived further out in Northern Mass, with his wife and kid. He and his wife were in an open relationship and she knew he was actively bisexual. Our “courtship”, if you could call it that, was long and drawn out, and we didn’t meet in person for probably a year after we began conversing. It was all over e-mail, text and Twitter. By this time, his wife was pregnant with their second child and the relationship was closed (by her, not with his consent). He came over to my apartment one night after his Uber shift was over the first time we managed to see one another in person. A few weeks later, I took the train out to his summer rental out in the sticks. I met his wife. And his kids. And his parents. It felt...not so weird that it was uncomfortable. But definitely weird. 

The weird face-to-face meetings didn’t push me away. They may have actually drawn me closer. I’m going to leave out a few things in the interests of discretion because I still think very fondly of A and I don’t think this story has wrapped up yet. In the time since those first couple of meetings, we’ve seen each other periodically (every few months or so), and I think we’ve both come to realize that our connection (just by virtue of having lasted for three or four years now) is more than a “hook-up” connection. I mean, the sexual tension is thick as hell, but there’s much more beneath the surface. And we’ve both acknowledged this with alternating amounts of hopelessness and regret.

This connection has led to some uncomfortable breaks in the friendship, because I think we both realize that we can’t be in one anothers’ lives the way we want to be and we have trouble trying to figure out how we can get past that without making a clean break. So I don’t know whether this love we both feel is unrequited more than it is unresolved. 

With D, there was a “kindred spirit/soul mate” (his words, not mine) connection that didn’t resolve itself for reasons I’m still not quite certain of. With A, there’s a “kindred spirit/soul mate” (this time my words) connection that distance and circumstance makes difficult to manifest. In both cases, I’m not getting what I want and have felt/am feeling deeply hurt because of it.

Earlier this year, I went to see A as his job at the time necessitated that he come to NYC a few times a week. As all of our face to face meetings are, this one was equal parts warm and awkward. We sat for about an hour and talked. He admitted that he had trouble listening to the podcast I occasionally contribute to (a recurring topic is open relationships/polyamory). He called it a “trigger”. Giving it some thought, I realized that his presence was actually a trigger for memories of a lifetime of unsuccessful/unattainable relationships. I also realized that, in a best case scenario, it was going to be years before I got anything even vaguely resembling the type of relationship I wanted from him (or we maybe want from another? I don’t really know.)

The exchange put me in a bit of a spiral. We both smiled as we took a photo together for Instagram, but I was in tears as I walked back to my office. 

Taxi driver I swear I've got three lives Balanced on my head like steak knives I can't tell you the truth about my disguise I can't trust no one

When D and I were hanging out regularly, he told me on several occasions that he wasn’t comfortable being out and that was one reason that our relationship couldn’t go to that next level. The last time he and I spoke, he’d mentioned that he was now in a relationship-with a guy. Via e-mail, I said that being aware of this development bothered me enough that I thought it would be good if we cut off all communication going forward. His response was “you mean good for you.” However, after that exchange with A, something compelled me to log onto Facebook and see what D was up to. As it turns out, he got engaged...to the same guy. 

I felt defeated, destroyed, robbed...I don’t even think those words together actually describe the hopelessness I felt at that moment. I stared at my computer screen, immobile and slack-jawed. My boss, who sat across from me at the time (we were back to back) walked over to my desk. I think he’d been calling me and I wasn’t responding. He looked at me and noticed that I had tears streaming down my face.

It's a bad religion To be in love with someone Who could never love you Only bad, only bad religion Could have me feeling the way I do

For the next week or so, I played “Bad Religion” religiously, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row. While I think both D and A loved me (and in A’s case, actively loves me), there’s a finality or limit to these relationships that could’ve changed if circumstances were different. It’s one thing, as a queer man, to develop crushes on straight guys. Somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s an awareness that this is never going to go anywhere (unless it does, which is a mindfuck we’re gonna need to dedicate to a while other song.) However, when those feelings are, to some extent, mutual; not being able to make them work is life-altering. At least it’s been for me. And maybe for Frank too. I don’t think a song like this could’ve been made if not.

*-conservative estimate

**-because that is his first initial.

Four-star songs between “Bad Girls” & “Bad Religion”: “Bad Girls” (Verdine Version) (Solange, 2012) | “Bad Habits” (Maxwell, 2009) | “Bad Luck” (Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, 1975) | “Bad Medicine” (Bon Jovi, 1988) | “Bad Moon Rising” (Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1969) | “Bad Of The Heart” (George LaMond, 1990)

[bigyack-com]

The Decade's Most Memorable Events In 10 Minutes

2010-2019: A Decade In Review - Highlights of events from around the world between 2010 and 2019New Delhi: While most of us have been busy on our phones, a decade has gone by. How significant has it been? Well, the manner in which the way of life has changed this decade has been the most significant in over a century. The way we live, work, eat, travel, and entertain has changed almost entirely - and our smartphones are what is leading the way. From getting a cab to ordering groceries, banking to making reservations, everything became just-a-click-away in the last ten years. But while we might have been busy in the virtual world, tapping away on our screens, a lot has happened in the real world too, and even out in space.Here is a comprehensive list of the decade's most memorable events for you to journey through, in nostalgia, thinking about the better moments fondly, learning from the mistakes made, celebrating the achievements, and remembering all those who won't journey on with us to the next decade.2010: The Year In Review Apple founder Steve Jobs unveils the world's first iPad; Instagram is launched; WhatsApp comes to India; Uber and Ola make debut; Netflix starts expanding its streaming service to the international market; WikiLeaks is founded by Julian Assange; Burj Khalifa becomes the tallest building in the world; Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruptions cause enormous disruption to air travel; Scientists in a South African cave discover 2-million-year-old fossils of a new species called Australopithecus Sediba, which are potentially the ancestors to Humans. India's BrahMos missile, jointly developed with Russia, sets the world record for becoming the world's first and fastest supersonic cruise missile; Arab Spring protests spread across the middle-east and north Africa; Pakistan is devastated by massive floods resulting in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the country's history as 20 million are affected, 14 million left homeless; Ireland and Greece face a grave economic crisis; BP oil spill, also known as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico becomes the largest maritime oil spill in history; 16-year-old Justin Bieber becomes the youngest solo male to hit #1 on the album chart since 13-year-old Stevie Wonder in 1963; Australia elects its first female prime minister; Indian-American Ajay Banga takes over as CEO of Mastercard; Dozens of asylum seekers drown as the boat they were in crashed into rocks near Christmas IslandThose who left us in 2010: Jyoti Basu 5-time chief minister, and arguably West Bengal's tallest leader after India's independence.2011: The Year In Review Operation Geronimo: Osama Bin Laden is killed; India wins the cricket world cup; Scientists discover Kepler-22b - An extrasolar planet orbiting within the Goldilocks zone or habitable zone of the Sun-like star Kepler-22. The planet is nearly 2.5 times the size of Earth and has a 290-day year; Formula One comes to India - Indian Grand Prix held at the Buddh International Circuit in Noida; Anna Hazare's Lokpal movement leads anti-corruption drive, protests; Royal Wedding: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge marry; Dominique Strauss-Kahn is arrested for assault in the US; Japan is hit be a massive earthquake and tsunami, which leads to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in the country; News of the World shuts down; Occupy Wall Street protests surge; SpaceX announces plan for the world's first fully reusable rocket; Swiss tennis ace Roger Federer becomes the second most respected, admired and trusted individual in the world after Nelson Mandela.Those who left us in 2011: Apple founder Steve Jobs; Elizabeth Taylor, one of Hollywood's most iconic actresses dies at 79; Grammy Award winner Amy Winehouse2012: The Year In Review Nirbhaya gang rape in Delhi; The rise of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party; Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab, who was one of the terrorists in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks hanged; Scientists discover the existence of the Higgs boson or God particle; NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft becomes the first human-made object to leave the solar system and venture into interstellar space; Facebook goes public, launches IPO; Barack Obama re-elected as US President; Vladimir Putin is re-elected as Russia's President; Elon Musk first mentions the concept for a "fifth mode of transport", calling it Hyperloop; Hurricane Sandy causes widespread disaster in the US; Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting leaves 27 dead in US; Red Bull Stratos: Millions watched LIVE as Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumps from the edge of space (128,100 feet) wearing a spacesuit - Records set: Balloon altitude record and sound barrier broken.Those who left us in 2012: Nirbhaya dies two weeks after the attack; American singer Whitney Houston dies at 48; Neil Armstrong, US Astronaut and first person to walk on the Moon, dies at 822013: The Year In Review Sachin Tendulkar retires from all forms of cricket; Commander Abhilash Tomy of the Indian Navy becomes the first Indian to complete a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the world under sail; Massive floods across north India leaves nearly 6,000 dead, becoming India's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami; Kedarnath flood: Large-scale destruction in surrounding areas, but Kedarnath temple unaffected; Video shows massive Chelyabinsk meteor entering Earth's atmosphere over Russia; Scientists study the air trapped in the Antarctic ice and find that 2013 is the first time in 800,000 years that we have over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere; Boston Marathon Bombing: 2 homemade pressure cooker bombs detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards apart leave more than 264 injured; Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum; Coup overthrows Egyptian government; Malala Yousafzai survives assassination attempt; Xi Jinping is elected as the President of China; Edward Snowden exposes US's NSA surveillance program; Bitcoin demand surges; Jeff Bezos buys Washington Post; Twitter goes public, launches IPO; Alibaba goes public, launches IPO.Those who left us in 2013: Former South African President and global icon Nelson Mandela dies; The Fast and the Furious star Paul Walker tragically dies in a high-speed car accident; 'Lawrence of Arabia' star Peter O'Toole dies at 812014: The Year In Review "Modi Wave" across the country; Narendra Modi is elected Prime Minister of India, forms a majority government after the World's largest ever elections held till now; MH370 disappears: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously disappearance mid-flight; India becomes the first nation to successfully reach Mars in the first attempt; ISIS takes Mosul, expansion of ISIS gains momentum; The Ice Bucket Challenge goes viral on social media, to promote awareness about ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis); Sydney hostage crisis: A gunman with an ISIS flag takes dozens of people hostage at a Lindt Cafe in Sydney; ISIS offshoot Boko Haram spreads across north Africa, especially Nigeria; Boko Haram kidnaps 276 girls from a college in Nigeria's Chibok; Over a hundred missing even today, many feared dead; India safely brings back 46 nurses from ISIS captivity in Iraq; Mount Everest Avalanche: Ice avalanche kills 16 climbing sherpas, injures 9 others; Satya Nadella takes over as Microsoft CEO; Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar found dead in her hotel room in Delhi; Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation; Rosetta's Philae lander becomes the first space probe to soft land on a comet (Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko); Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine; North Korea hacks Sony Pictures.Those who left us in 2014: Robin Williams commits suicide; American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou dies; Lauren Bacall, one of Hollywood's iconic actresses dies at 89; American comedian and actress Joan Rivers dies2015: The Year In Review Nepal is devastated by a massive 7.8 earthquake - nearly 9,000 dead, 22,000 injured, 3.5 million people homeless; Himalayan earthquake leads to avalanche on Mount Everest, killing at least 22 people, making it the deadliest avalanche to hit the world's highest peak; Operation Raahat: Indian Armed Forces and the Ministry of External Affairs evacuate more than 5,600 people, including 960 foreign nationals from Yemen during the 2015 military intervention by Saudi Arabia and its allies; Wing Commander Pooja Thakur of the Indian Air Force becomes the first female officer to lead the Guard of Honour at Rashtrapati Bhavan during the visit of then US President Barack Obama; Sheena Bora murder case: Indrani and Peter Mukerjea arrested; Volkswagen emission scandal - findings cover 482,000 cars in the US alone; US legalises same-sex marriage; Greece plunges into severe debt, pressuring EU; Dramatic visuals of the TransAsia Airways Flight 235 crash in Taiwan shocks the world; 'Je suis Charlie': Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in France condemned globally; India initiates the International Solar Alliance in major step towards green energy, 121 other countries join; Sundar Pichai takes over as Google CEO.Those who left us in 2015: Renowned scientist, teacher and former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam dies at 83; Grammy-winning blues legend BB King dies at 89; Leonard Nimoy, Spock from Star Trek, dies at 832016: The Year In Review Demonetisation in India; India carries out surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir; Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav abducted from Iran, held captive by Pakistan; Mother Teresa canonised posthumously as 'Saint Teresa of Calcutta' by Pope Francis at a ceremony in St Peter's Square in Vatican City; Brexit Vote: Britain votes to leave the EU - The British Exit is termed Brexit; 'Obama Out': President Obama drops mic on stage as a symbol of the end of his presidency; Donald Trump is elected as US President; Amazon Prime Video launches worldwide; The historic Paris Climate Agreement in signed to take effective measures against Climate Change; Scientists invent the Crispr-Cas9, a unique technology that enables medical researchers to edit and delete DNA, thereby allowing effective genetic engineering; Florida nightclub shooting: Omar Mateen kills 49 people and wounds 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando; Dhaka Cafe Attack: 5 terrorists take dozens hostage at the Holey Artisan cafe in Dhaka, kill 22 civilians, 2 cops; Scientists and researchers successfully detect the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO - The existence of gravitational waves was first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916; Pokemon Go, an augmented reality mobile game, got millions of people out on the street; Leonardo DiCaprio wins Oscar for The Revenant; Brangelina divorce: Angeline Jolie files for divorce from Brad Pitt.Those who left us in 2016: Tamil icon and former chief minister Jayalalithaa dies at 68; American singer-songwriter Prince dies at 57; English singer-songwriter George Michael found dead in his bed in his home in England; Singer-songwriter David Bowie dies at 69; Alan Rickman, who played Hogwarts professor Severus Snape in Harry Potter dies at 69; Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali dies at 74; Cuban communist revolutionary Fidel Castro dies at 902017: The Year In Review One nation, one tax - India adopts GST, biggest reform since opening of the economy; Kulbhushan Jadhav sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court - India, denied consular access on multiple occasions, takes Pakistan to UN court ICJ; India's ISRO set the world record  for the largest number of satellites ever launched successfully on a single rocket - 104 satellites; The India-China border standoff at Doklam lasts 73 days; SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket becomes the world's first reusable rocket to successfully complete a mission; Phase 1 of the Iran-India Chabahar Port opens; Indian priest Father Tom Uzhunnalil rescued from ISIS captivity in Yemen, returns safely to India; London's Grenfell Tower fire: 72 people die, 70 others critical in one of Britain's worst fires; Texas church shooting - 26 people killed in mass shooting by Devin Patrick Kelley in Sutherland Springs in US; Las Vegas Strip shooting: Stephen Paddock opens fire on a crowd of concert-goers, killing 58 people and wounding 413; Charlottesville white supremacy march gathers momentum; Australia legalises same-sex marriage; #MeToo movement spreads across the world; Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases - Dozens of women reveal they were raped, assaulted and sexually abused by Weinstein over a 30 year period; Oscars faux pas: La La Land was given the Best Picture award, only to be take away and given to Moonlight, causing a massive embarrassment at the Oscars;Those who left us in 2017: Legendary comedian Don Rickles dies at 90; Playboy founder Hugh Hefner dies at 91; Rock 'n' roll music pioneer Chuck Berry dies at 90; Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington commits suicide; American musician Tom Petty dies at 492018: The Year In Review Tesla Motors' sports car orbits Earth with astronaut at the wheel; India decriminalises section 377 - consensual homosexual sex between adults; India and Oman sign agreement under which India gets access to the facilities at Duqm for the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy; India completes nuclear triad (Air, land and sea, undersea ballistic missile capability): Completion of the nuclear triad with the first successful deterrence patrol by INS Arihant; Kerala devastated by floods: Nearly 500 dead, 140 missing, over 2 lakh people homeless; India brings back the mortal remains of 39 Indians killed by ISIS in Iraq's Mosul; Air India makes history, becomes first and only airline in the world to fly to Israel over Saudi airspace; India's 'Statue of Unity' becomes the tallest statue in the world; Roger Federer becomes the first male tennis player to win 20 grand slams; The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal; Royal Wedding: Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex marry; Indra Nooyi steps down as CEO of PepsiCo Inc after 12 years in office; California wildfires in the US; Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh faces sexual assault allegations; US-China trade war begins; Saudi author and columnist Jamal Khashoggi who fled in 2017, killed in Turkey; Tham Luang cave rescue: The miraculous cave rescue in Thailand - 12 boys of a football team, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old assistant coach enter a cave which gets flooded. The rescue ops take 18 days; US House of Representatives passes bill and allocates funds to build the US-Mexico border wall.Those who left us in 2018: Former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee dies at 93; Tamil icon and former chief minister Karunanidhi dies at 94; Bollywood actress Sridevi dies at 54; Legendary American comic book writer Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, and many more, dies at 95; Celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain commits suicide at 61; Swedish DJ and electronic artist Avicii (real name: Tim Bergling) commits suicide at 28; Former US President George HW Bush dies at 94; Former US Senator John McCain dies at 82.2019: The Year In Review World celebrates the 150th year of Mahatma Gandhi's birth; Narendra Modi is re-elected Prime Minister of India, forms a 2nd majority government after the World's largest ever elections till now; Supreme Court of India delivers its verdict on the Ayodhya land dispute case, settling one of the longest disputes globally; India sends its second lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-2; India-American Abhijit Banerjee wins the Nobel Prize in the field of Economic Sciences; Balakot airstrikes: India carries out pre-emptive airstrikes on a JeM terror training facility in Pakistan's Balakot; Parliament of India declares the practice of Triple Talaq illegal and unconstitutional; Kulbhushan Jadhav case: International Court of Justice rules in favour of India - 16-judge UN court bench ruled 15-1 in favour of India, stops Kulbhushan Jadhav's execution, tells Islamabad to give consular access; India revokes the "temporary" Article 370 from its Constitution; Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh become union territories; India successfully tests anti-satellite or ASAT weapon under the mission code-named Mission Shakti, becomes a space power; Sundar Pichai takes over as CEO of Alphabet - Google's parent company; Notre-Dame de Paris fire: Massive fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in France; Flight Lieutenant Bhawana Kanth become India's first woman air force pilot to qualify to undertake combat missions on a fighter jet; Sub-Lieutenant Shivangi of the Indian Navy becomes its first woman pilot; Pakistan-based terrorist Masood Azhar designated a global terrorist by the UN Security Council; Donald Trump becomes the first sitting US President to set foot in North Korea; Operation Kayla Mueller: ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed by the US military; India's fastest train - Train 18, also known as Vande Bharat Express, flagged off by PM Modi; India announces plan to launch its own space station; missions to Mars, Venus, and Sun; Sri Lanka Easter bombings: 259 people killed, over 500 injured after 3 churches and 3 luxury hotels are targeted in a series of coordinated terrorist suicide bombings; New Zealand's Christchurch mosque shootings: Gunman kills 51 people, injures 49, live-streams the attack on Facebook; American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein commits suicide; Walmart shooting: El Paso, Texas - A gunman shot and killed 22 people and injured 24 others; Families of illegal migrants separated at the US-Mexico border - Children separated from parents; Hong Kong Protests: Anti-China protests rock Hong Kong; First black hole image captured on camera, viewed by 2 billion people worldwide; Climate activist Greta Thunberg makes powerful speech at the UN Climate Change summit; Students across the world protest demanding climate action; Anti-CAA, Anti-NRC Protests: Protests across India over the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens; Donald Trump Impeached, becomes the 3rd US President to be impeached in the House of Representatives after .Those who left us in 2019: Former Defence Minister and Chief Minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar dies at 63; Former chief minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit dies at 81; Former Foreign Minister and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj dies at 67; Former Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley dies at 66; Renowned lawyer Ram Jethmalani dies at 95.   Read the full article

[sportzprime]

Top 10 Best and Famous Badminton Players of India

Best Indian badminton players: Since numerous decades India has been creating the best badminton players who have carried extraordinary delight and pride to the across the nation onlookers. Indian Badminton players have set their foot on every single worldwide platform of badminton, be it Commonwealth, Olympic, or some other significant global occasions.

The game that requires high stamina, wellness, exactness and readiness, has seen an extraordinary ascent in India after its match that was played in 1934.

Lets have look at the Top Indian Badminton Players

1. Nandu Natekar

Best Indian badminton players: Considered as the ‘Divine force of Indian Badminton’, Nandu Natekar was the masterstroke player ever in the badminton history. Natekar had an unprecedented authority over the game, stroke making style and an impeccable showcase of creativity. He was considered as the lord of his home court and was simply invulnerable.

With in excess of 100 national and worldwide titles added to his repertoire, Natekar was likewise the principal Indian to secure a global title in 1956. His class of game is high to such an extent that individuals used to go from outlandish territories to see his match, especially.

Natekar caries the pride of being the most casted a ballot sportsperson of India in the time of 1961. A top-well known Indian badminton player during his time, Natekar made his place in Top 8 in All Indian Championship. Nandu Natekar is likewise a beneficiary of Arjuna Award in 1961.

2. Pullela Gopichand

Famous Indian Badminton Players: There is one shared trait in the achievement of the expert badminton shuttlers of India – PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal, and that is their mentor Pullela Gopichand. This calm yet energetic being has without any assistance created a portion of the world-class competitors.

This previous badminton player who made his worldwide badminton debut in 1991 has numerous awards to his name. His brandishing accomplishments incorporate winning an individual bronze and silver in the group occasion, at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Gopi’s best outcome was winning the 2001 All England Open Badminton Championship.

Owning a ton of wounds, this celebrated Indian badminton player took retirement from the Indian Badminton very early. Gopichand claims a universal badminton foundation in Hyderabad and mentors top and well known Indian badminton players under the care of him. He is likewise a beneficiary of Arjuna Award, Padma Shri and Dronacharya Award.

3. Prakash Padukone

Best Indian badminton players: Prakash Padukone is a stupendous legend of a fabulous game. This top Indian badminton player was the first Indian to win the All England Championships title. Because of sheer coarseness, assurance and enthusiasm, the previous World No. 1, had won the gold decoration at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and furthermore asserted the Danish Open and the Swedish Open.

He was granted the Arjuna Award in 1972 and the Padma Shri in 1982 by the Government of India.

Previous Indian shuttler Prakash Padukone was additionally deliberated with the Badminton Association of India’s (BAI) first Lifetime Achievement Award. After the match, he was cited as saying, “Don’t state what badminton can give you, and rather approach what you can accomplish for badminton.”

4. Jwala Gutta

Famous Indian Badminton Players: Jwala Gutta is a standout amongst other Indian badminton players in the duplicates class. This power-pressed competitor has secured a great deal of Indian and International awards added to her repertoire.

Genuinely her sparkling star, her accomplishments incorporate a gold award in duplicates in Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010, a silver decoration in blended copies in Delhi Games 2010, a bronze award in London BWF World Championship 2011 and a silver award in 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Jwala was a top-class competitor directly from her young years. She lifted the Junior National Championship at 17 years old and there was no thinking back after that. Jwala collaborated with Shruti Kurien to win the Doubles National Title for a long time in succession, from 2002 to 2008.

5. Saina Nehwal

Best Indian badminton players: Saina Nehwal is one of the most observed Indian badminton players in India. Saina has worked a serious long route in her Indian badminton venture at national and global level.

She started winning competitions directly from the year 2004. She won the lesser badminton title in 2004 and later again in 2005. Saina was India’s first shuttler to win a decoration at the Olympics. She has been a world no. 1, and the main Indian lady to arrive at the milestone. Saina has more than 23 universal titles to her name. Off the 23, 10 are Superseries titles. Saina is a famous competitor who has given colossal commitment in making the game of Badminton very well known in the nation.

With endless honors to her name, Saina has additionally been a beneficiary of Arjuna Award, Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, and Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award.

6. Aparna Popat

Famous Indian Badminton Players: Another conspicuous and renowned Indian badminton player is Aparna Popat. She holds the record for winning the National Senior Women’s Badminton title for the most noteworthy number of times successively. She has additionally exceeded expectations in a few worldwide badminton titles.

In her solid nearness at the International badminton field, Aparna won a silver at the World Junior Badminton Championship. She verified a Silver decoration again at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games (1998). In that equivalent year, she shaped another record by turning into the main Indian female player to win the French Open title. She won a Bronze at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and arrived at the Semi-Final round of the Swedish Open Badminton Tournament.

Aparna has likewise gotten Arjuna Award for her exceptional commitment to the Indian Badminton society.

7. PV Sindhu

Famous Indian Badminton Players: PV Sindhu is the sparkling star of the Indian Badminton. At present, Sindhu is the No.1 badminton player according to the present rankings by BFI.

Pusarla Venkata Sindhu is the star badminton player of India. In 2016, she turned into the primary Indian lady to win an Olympic silver decoration, and second the Indian badminton player to ever win an Olympic award after Saina Nehwal. Sindhu then proceeded to win silver in Women’s singles at Commonwealth Games 2018. Notwithstanding that, she additionally won a silver award at the BWF World Championships in 2017 and 2018.

This badminton powerhouse is developing jumps and bound in her vocation. Sindhu is additionally a beneficiary of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and Arjuna Award.

8. PV Sindhu

Best Indian badminton players: Parupalli Kashyap is an Indian badminton player and as of now, the top-positioned Indian male badminton player. He is additionally number one positioned Indian player in male singles. Having arrived at the quarterfinal of the London Olympics 2012, he missed winning a decoration. In any case, Parupalli is one of the most grounded and a well known Indian badminton player.

His award count increases in a Commonwealth Games gold decoration also. What makes every one of these accomplishments even more uncommon is, Kashyap’s battling, making an ensuing triumph over asthma and denoting his direction right through.

Parupalli is additionally a beneficiary of Arjuna grant.

9. Srikanth Kidambi

This well known Indian badminton player from Andhra Pradesh is at present one of the top players in Indian badminton.

He was the most elevated prize cash victor in 2017, overshadowing even Lee Chong Wei and Tai Tzu Ying. Kidambi has won a lot of respects for India, including Gold Coast Gold (blended occasion), Silver in a similar challenge’s singles occasion among a lot of BWF titles. He is instructed by the incredible mentor, Pullela Gopichand.

An Arjuna grant beneficiary, Kidambi was additionally World No. 1 in BFI rankings in April this year. Kidambi Srikanth is additionally a beneficiary of Arjuna Award.

10. Ashwini Ponnappa

Ashwini Ponnappa Machimanda is a south Indian badminton player. She is the victor in the pairs Indian badminton circuit.

With her pair with Jwala Gutta, she has numerous decorations at the universal occasions. The pair has won numerous decorations together at different worldwide occasions that incorporate the Commonwealth Games where they won a gold award. The pair has likewise secured various bronze awards at the Uber Cup and the Asian Badminton Championships.

The team made history in 2011 when they turned into the primary Indian pair and ladies to win a bronze decoration at the BWF World Championships

[stevemoffett]

Putting yourself out there

Living near Philly, I would tell close friends and family that the places in which I felt most comfortable were: my apartment, whatever gym I was currently using, my parents’s house/childhood home, and my brother/sister-in-law’s house.

Nowadays, being far from my family and most of my friends, it’s easy to be very solitary. My comfortable places out here are: my apartment, and my apartment’s gym. End of list. It makes sense, but it doesn’t leave too much potential for socializing, making new friends, or trying new experiences.

I had a small epiphany when I went to a “pizza party” that my apartment complex threw, with beer and board games and, obviously, pizza. 

I spoke to a couple of guys who, like me, generally kept to themselves. They had their own hobbies, which didn’t really jive with my own, so during my conversation with them I realized that it would probably be our last. But, I mentally acknowledged the similarity in our general ways of being, if not in our specific interests. 

Then I wondered: am I a shut-in? Am I losing social skills by atrophy?

Later on, over a game of Jenga with two girls, meaning to make a self-deprecating joke, I said, “I came here partially because I realized I’m not talking to anyone over the weekends! Sometimes Monday morning comes and I realize I didn’t say a word since Friday!”

Not that I was looking for a date, but the room dropped a couple of degrees after that. Later, as I walked back to my apartment in the button-up shirt that I’d chosen carefully for the evening, I started thinking that the encounter might have been one of those critical moments, the beginning of a slippery slope to becoming a total reclusive weirdo. (You’ll notice that lately I’ve been worried about getting stuck in the rut of certain character flaws as I get older).

But the mid/late 30s memes are true: I revel in the not-my-fault canceling of plans. “A night downtown” to me is broken up into the choice whether to use Uber to get there, and whether wherever I end up will be loud enough to merit wearing ear plugs (a real social magnet, those ear plugs are), and whether I have enough cash to avoid starting a bar tab, and deciding what time is the absolute latest I will tolerate being out (and usually exceeding that time by an hour at least), and determining how many drinks I am willing to drink if I’m not driving (1-2: no effect, slight headache next morning; 3-4: pleasantly buzzed tonight, but after peak buzz, the drunkenness “breaks” into an unpleasant what-is-it-all-for mood until I get home, and ibuprofen will definitely be needed the next morning; 5+: full-body hangover with about 8 hours of acute clinical depression upon waking).

I also know, though, that nights alone tend to not be worth remembering. I can have an enjoyable night by myself at home in front of my computer or sitting at my electric piano, but I can’t remember any of them more than three days later. On the other hand, I’ll never forget a random moment one night in 2012 when I watched a bartender break a sleeve of quarters on the corner of the bar and felt the vibration go through the wood and into my knee. Whatever the rule is that determines why I keep some memories and let others fade to nothing except a vague sense of recognition is beyond me.

What I think I mean with all this is that I still have a social impulse, but I’m starting to feel weighted down by my growing urge to sit still. At home, I don’t watch and re-watch TV shows, or play video games--I usually just screw around and let the non-political Youtube algorithm serve stuff up. As a result, I’m mildly revolted by my machine-learned Youtube homepage/echo chamber. 

A video that the algorithm decided I would like: STRANGER THINGS SEASON TWO WAS A POORLY WRITTEN MESS (49:53). 

I don’t know guys, I thought Stranger Things season 2 was fine. Lately if I start a video and there’s narration over muted clips of a TV show or movie, especially if the narrator is a man with an English accent, I just X the tab out.

Sometimes, in my florist-refrigerated, table-for-none apartment, I’ll think up some melody or story idea that I like and try to develop, but those nights are few and far between, and lately, the ideas have not developed into much.

A friend at work invited me to join a social/soccer club with him. I said “yes,” following my head rather than my heart, which was screaming “no.” I paid the $60 fee for a team shirt and a 7-game season.

Now, in my signup survey that served to distribute people onto teams, I put a check next to the option that read, “I’m here to have a good game and make new friends!” I think a lot of others chose the same option but I also think, in this case, that the devil is in the details.

In the language of that survey option, what, to you, constitutes a “good game”? To me, non-soccer player who trips over my own feet that I am, a good game involves plenty of running, nobody getting hurt, nobody shouting in anger, and high fives all around at the end. As a result, I did not thrive in the league, on my team, the Kickstars.

Since the games all had to be played after work, this being an adult league, they were played on one of two fields reserved from 6PM-11PM. Due to some a-hole in the schedule making department, five out of our seven games began at 9:30PM.

The soccer field had giant stadium-style lights, which at 9:30PM blaze down on everything so brightly that they wash everything out into a monochrome, cinematic mood, like sports movie shorthand for The Big Game, where it all. Comes down. To this. As a result, at the first match, those lights primed me to try hard and dig it out on every run, but remember that I trip over my own feet.

During the game, I sucked. There’s no other way to describe it. Pass the ball to me? It’s as good as stripped. Get open, while I have the ball? The ball’s going to go somewhere, but not toward you. Somebody’s driving toward the goal, and I’m the only one close enough to defend? 

The score is gonna be whatever-plus-1 to 0 in about three seconds.

But I did all this sucking while running like my life depended on it, and at 10:15PM, when the last whistle blew, I felt like I was going to pass out. My kicking leg cramped up as I was prying my shin guards off. As soon as I got home I showered the sweat and bug spray off, but my heart didn’t calm down enough to let me sleep until around 1AM. I woke up at 6 like usual and limped around at work the next day feeling generally like a human joke.

This brings me back to how the devil is in the details. To the others who joined the soccer/social club, I think that a “good game” meant, “To get another taste of the victory high I got when I played on the varsity team in high school/college.” 

Their yelled advice--”Pressure! PRESSURE!”, “TRAP IT!”--fell on ignorant ears; I had to sheepishly ask a girl or guy next to me when I subbed out, “Uh, excuse me...so, when Jeffrey was screaming at me to, uh, ‘clear, for the love of God, CLEAR!’...what did he mean by ‘clear’?”

They were all nice before the game. And they were charitable after the game. But during the games, they mustered a spirit of competition that I simply could not. They were skilled players of the sport, and I was not even a soccer enthusiast--”I came here to make friends!” I could imagine myself shouting indignantly, if it were a reality show. 

I still ran hard for the ball, still tried hard to block passes and shots on the goal, but I decided that I was never going to dive into what I knew would be a gallery of ankle sprains and jammed fingers.

I didn’t get hurt during the season, but several people did, enough to put them out for the next few games. At the end of the 7 weeks, I was given an option to renew for another 7-game season, a prospect I simply laughed at. I had gone to every game save one, when I flew home for a week, knowing that I shouldn’t quit because that would mean there would be one less person to sub out, which would make it harder for everyone else on the team. But with that one commitment satisfied, my soccer career was over. 

Final scores: Games lost: 6 (we won the last one). Lessons learned: 1. Friends made: 0.

Even at that first game, I saw the writing on the wall. This was not going to be the venue where I would make deep and lasting friendships. Aside from what I’ve already mentioned, nearly everyone else on the team was a spry 23-27 years old. They were all at different stages of life from me: when, at 10:20PM, someone suggested we all go congregate at a bar, I groaned under my breath and said aloud that I had to go home and sleep.

After the next game, I went to the bar. Only two others showed up, one of whom was my friend from work. 

I could almost hear: “Aaaand the waitress is practicing politics...”

There is a library near my apartment. Libraries are great: if you have a library card, you might not need to buy books from Amazon or Audible if you just use the Libby app. And libraries sometimes have classes, or workshops, for cool things. I suggest you look the closest one to you up, because you might be missing out on something neat.

I decided that I wanted to join a book club. 

So, I looked into it, and found out that the library near my apartment has a monthly book club. They meet on Thursdays at 10:30 AM, right around the time that I’m buzzing on my second cup of coffee and heading back into the lab. 

I decided that I wanted to start a book club.

Surprisingly, the library had to do an official background check before they’d let me start one. In all, it took 4 months before I could even have my first general-interest meeting. A nice older lady came--a former librarian who moved here from a nearby city--and she kindly gave me some advice on how to run a book club (this was my first experience with one).

The next month, I decided I would have the club discuss Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, because it’s my favorite book. I know that it’s not a perfect novel--in fact, it has plenty of flaws--but no book has made me feel as connected to it as this one did. Close second, Jerry Spinelli’s Space Station Seventh Grade.

The day rolled around and when I arrived, two septuagenarians were sat at the table in the meeting room, arms crossed. 

They had not finished the book, they said. They had read only the first 100 pages, they said. Those 100 pages were “bizarrely sexual,” one of them said. They “wanted to get a look at the person who’d had us read this book.”

But an hour’s an hour, a hundred pages is an honest try at a long book, and I knew The Corrections very well, so I was able to drag an entire hour of conversation about those 100 pages out of them. I truly did not mind their disliking what they read, as long as they would elaborate on why. 

It was frustrating at times (”Chip was obsessed with sex,” one of them said, which made me want to respond like an old-timey comedian: “Lady? If you think that’s obsessed...”), but overall, it was a good conversation. I still left the library feeling guilty that they had not been entertained by what they read, and pessimistic about either of them returning.

But this month’s book club came, and one of them returned! And a different other lady came! And they’d both read the whole book!

As I stalked through the aisles at the library just after the last meeting, embarrassed, I had been thinking, “All right, you want a short book? I’m going to have us read the shortest friggin book I can find,” which ended up being the 200-page On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. I opened the cover and read, on the inner flap, the words “Newlywed virgins” and “sex-averse” and I figured, well, all right.

When I told the librarian to have the other library branches send their copies of On Chesil Beach for next month’s meeting, I thought that the book flap was advertising a story that would mostly feature two people in cable knit sweaters, standing on a jetty addressing the issue indirectly, like, “Darling, I feel a bit fretful when you rest your hand on the small of my back.” 

But I was so, so wrong. At least 66 of its 200 pages explicitly describe all of the details of the wedding night of the two main characters, with at least as many utterances of the word “penis” as in an article from a journal of urology. 

It was the opposite of an erotic story. It was graphic and clinical and, at times, difficult. But the story was good. The characters were well-drawn, and I cared about them a lot. It was a breath of fresh air after having read a lot of sci-fi on my own in the meantime, but I dreaded the next meeting--I figured I was going to be labeled the library’s resident pervert, the lord of the porn-watching bums in the computer section.

A wedding night of excruciatingly-detailed sexual misadventure is apparently not beyond the pale for the little old ladies in my book club. And this time, the hour went quickly. I used my old high school film appreciation teacher, Mr. Truitt, as a role model on how to keep the conversation going--he used to pepper in the usual literary theory type stuff along with other questions that took the story at face value, as if it had really happened, and wasn’t an intimidating puzzle of symbols and motifs and vocabulary. “Do you believe X when she says she loves Y?” “If you were there, would you have intervened when Z lunged for W?” “Is this a normal way two people in this kind of relationship treat each other?”

I left the library whistling, fortified by the approval of both ladies. I had brought cookies to the meeting, but there were a bunch left over, so I brought the rest into work on Monday and told everyone how it went.

[andrebearakovsky]

The Caps Lost and You Want to Cry Remedy Masterpost

EDIT: Hi there! I managed to get this post functioning again, but I have an updated list! I tried to update this post but tumblr’s a dick and won’t let me have as many links as I want on a post. So, to see the updated list, go to my blog, and click on the tabs on top that say “Caps Masterpost Pt. 1″ and “Caps Masterpost Pt. 2″ (I had to do it in 2 parts because, again, tumblr won’t let me have pages with that many links). Enjoy! I promise there’s a lot more to like in the updates!

So the Caps just lost and you feel ready to cry. What can you do to help remedy that feeling of despair? I present to you my magnum opus, a masterpost of happy and funny Caps videos and posts to make you feel better and forget about any bad hockey you just watched. In this post is everything you could ever want to watch related to the Caps. Of course, I don’t have everything, I’m not nearly as extensive as RMNB, and there’s a lack of actual hockey highlights (as the point of this post is to highlight off-ice hilarity). So sit back, pick what you want to watch, and enjoy.

Official Team Events

Segway Tour 2017

Segway Tour 2015

Segway Tour 2007

Family Skate 2016

Caps visit MedStar Georgetown University Hospital 2016 

Emoji Sentences - Barry Trotz, Unleash the Fury, More Cowbell, Backstrom, Dump and Chase, Poke Check, Ovechkin, Rock the Red, Faceoff, Power Play Goal

Emoji Impressions

Casino Night 2016

Casino Night 2015

Capitals Bobblehead Election

Justin Williams Bobblehead Concession Speech

Tom Wilson Meets the Holtby Bobblehead

Burky/Willy and Schmidty/Chorns play videogames

Ovi and Kuzy talk about their hair

2017 Canine Calendar Shoot - pics plus a video of Kuzy giggling, a feature on Taylor Winnik, Ovi’s dog maintenance

2016 Canine Calendar Shoot

Willy, Latts, Beags, and Schmidty go golfing

Swedish Food Tasting

Dads Trip 2016

History of Caps Mentors’ Trips

Caps visit Joint Base Andrews

Jay Beagle skates with his son

Caps at Six Flags 2015

Caps at Six Flags 2011

Rowing on the Potomac

Crab Cake Cooking Competition

Team Silliness

The Russian Bros have fun in front of a giant Ovi ad

Team bonding dart competition - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Halloween Karaoke - Zach Sanford, Alex Ovechkin, Andre Burakovsky

Ovi’s Smelling Salts - Mojo, Kuzy

Nicky pranks Mojo and Burky

The late-night fire alarm incident

Shenanigans on a plane feat. Green & Brouwer

More Silliness

Why did they give Locker a t-shirt gun

Ovi, Kuzy, and Geno dress as Russian mascots

Ovi and Carly discuss their pregame routine

“Hockey at its best”

Andre Burakovsky, Tom Wilson, Michael Latta

Burky explains the Uber incident

Burky is the MPP of the Caps

5 seconds of Burky looking cute

Cruisin with Willy and Burky on the way to Casino Night

Burky shames the cameraman for being a Penguins fan - the whole interview is good but this happens 15 minutes in

Interview with Latts - dolphins and Valentine’s Day

Cruisin with Willy and Latts on the way to Casino Night

Willy and Latts feature for Washington Life Magazine

Willy and Latts voted best bromance

Burky spooks Latts

Interview with Latts - nicknames, playoff beards, and Caps Roomies

Burky and Willy sing dubsmash together

Willy and Latts fill out their 2015 March Madness bracket

Willy Sings (Badly)

A good brobeans post

I meant to include the video of Tom and Latts’s apartment from the Road to the Winter Classic episodes but I cannot for the life of me find it, so as consolation I’m going to include a link to the Road to the Winter Classic episodes which you can watch if you have Amazon Prime here

Alex Ovechkin

Ovi delivers pizza - Part 1, Part 2

The Alex Ovechkin song

Behind the scenes with Ovi at the 2017 All Star Game - Video 1, Video 2

Ovi escapes his own home

Ovi makes a noise

Ovi DJs

Steve Dangle talks about Ovi’s 500th goal

Ovi swings away in 2015 Breakaway Challenge

Ovi dons a cowboy hat in classic 2009 Breakaway Challenge

Alex Ovechkin Funny Moments

Top 10 Ovi Off Ice Moments

Post with links to many Ovi quotes and videos

Nicklas Backstrom

Nicky hat trick quote

Nicky singing (there’s also some behind the scenes but the singing is the important part)

Cruisin with Nicky

Ovi & Nicky

All Star Nicklas Backstrom

Ovi and Nicky complete each other

Braden Holtby

Holts wants to bring the Cup back to his hometown

Holts has strong opinions on socks

Fetus Holtby video

Karl Alzner, John Carlson

Alzner does “Canadian or Nah” and makes a loon call

Carlzner test drive - Part 1, Part 2

Carlzner roomies - Part 1, Part 2

Carlzner Q&A at Caps Con Kid Press Conference 2011 - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Carlson at 2011 Winter Classic (segment from 10:50-15:47)

Evgeny Kuznetsov

Kuzy’s daughter drives the car

“It’s rivalry night”

Kuzy tells the story about meeting Brad Pitt and Orly getting cut out of the photos

Kuzy trolls the refs (mushrooms, baked potatoes, and medium rare steak)

Kuzy at the All Star Game

Kuzy’s most Extra celly possibly ever (with links to more cellys in the article)

Nate Schmidt

Nate Schmidt’s mohawk misadventures - Bonus: Holts calls Schmidty the best player

Schmidty sings Taylor Swift

Schmidty’s Chewbacca impression

Schmidty’s Interview Sabotaged by Teammates 

Barry Trotz Mishaps

Oshie bulldozes Trotz

Trotz gets hit in the head with a puck

Dancing

Mojo busting moves (feat. Taylor Winnik)

Lars Johansson victory dances - dance 1, dance 2

Justin Williams Dances to Cotton Eye Joe

Shaving Cream

Vrana 1st NHL goal

Kuzy hat trick

Willy 1st NHL goal

Nicky pranks Ovi

Mustaches

Movember trophy ceremony 2015

Top 5 Caps mustaches

Who has the best mustache?

Christmas

Christmas elf dancing

2015 holiday card

2014 holiday card w/ Wizards

2013 holiday card

Commercials

2017 All Star Game Audition Commercial

Paisano’s Commercial

Paisano’s Commercial Bloopers

Ovi as Caps Interviewer (feat. Nicky, Greener, and Brooks Laich)

Ovi Eastern Motors Commercial

2007 All Star Game Road Trip Commercial

Global Heritage Series

Nicklas Backstrom - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Evgeny Kuznetsov - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Tributes

John Carlson 500 Games Played Tribute

Karl Alzner 500 Consecutive Games Played Tribute

Alex Ovechkin 1000 Points Ceremony

Alex Ovechkin 1000 Points Tribute

Nicklas Backstrom 500 Assists Tribute

Nicklas Backstrom 500 Assists Ceremony

Braden Holtby Vezina Ceremony

Alex Ovechkin 500 Goals Ceremony

Alex Ovechkin 500 Goals Tribute

Karl Alzner breaks Caps record for consecutive games played tribute

Drafts

Jakub Vrana (phone call with Ovi)

Zach Sanford (interview)

Andre Burakovsky

Tom Wilson

Evgeny Kuznetsov

Marcus Johansson

Alex Ovechkin

Reference

Every butt slash article RMNB has ever written

Player reaction gifs

On-Ice Moments

Oshie’s shootout goal that wasn’t actually in the shootout

Ovi’s 1000th point (John Walton call)

Nicky’s 500th assist

The epic Orlov hit on Duchene

Edits to Orlov’s hit

Ovi’s 500th career goal (all calls)

Huge save leads to Ovi’s OT gamewinner

TJ Oshie Olympic Shootout

Oshie shootout compilation

John Carlson scores OT winner in 2010 World Juniors

Empty Net Fails

Best 1 on 1 Embarrassing Moments - Part 1, Part 2

10 Minutes of Bad Goals

5 Minutes of Happy Goalies

Hat Tricks

Oshie 04/28/2016 vs PIT in the playoffs

Williams 01/17/2016 vs NYR (I can’t find his hat trick from ‘06 so this’ll have to do)

Kuznetsov 10/23/2015 @ EDM

Oshie 01/03/2015 @ SJS

Backstrom 12/13/2014 vs TBL

Oshie 03/27/2014 vs MIN (hats)

Ovechkin 12/10/2013 vs TBL

Eller 01/04/2012 vs WPG

Backstrom 4/17/2010 vs MTL in the playoffs

Ovechkin 05/04/2009 vs PIT in the playoffs

Ovechkin 12/15/2006 @ ATL (I’m only including 3/17 Ovi hat tricks else we’ll be here all day)

Non-Caps

Goal Horns

Connor McDavid Rap

Auston Matthews Rap

Carpool with Cam - Nick Foligno, Seth Jones

All Star DJ Snoop

Baby Leafs in Road to the Winter Classic

Get Vladi some snow

Jamie Benn and Tyler Segin Head to Head

PK Subban wins breakaway challenge

“Fruit Salad” by Dylan Strome feat. Mitch Marner

Crosby and MacKinnon work at Tim Horton’s

Full Games/Events

2017 All Star Game

2017 All Star Game Skills Competition - Part 1, Part 2

2016 Heritage Classic EDM vs WPG

2016 All Star Game - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

2016 All Star Game Skills Competition (playlist)

2015 All Star Fantasy Draft

2015 Caps Winter Classic

Still not satisfied? Go check out some of my posts! They’re funny I promise. Karlsson/Carlson flowchart, Caps Drinking Game, Why Carlson or Alzner Should Have the A, Caps True Nicknames, Top Golf RMNB Insta Photos, New Caps Lineup, Caps Top 10 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), Caps Hat Tricks and 1st NHL Goals, Jay Beagle, Caps Family Tree, Caps Bromances, My Top Caps Moments of the Regular Season

[un-enfant-immature]

Ole Harms to talk about Moia’s mobility bet at Disrupt Berlin

Volkswagen Group wants to reinvent itself in the age of connected and electric vehicles. And it starts with Volkswagen’s Moia, a brand new mobility brand with services and vehicles built for the cities of tomorrow. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Moia CEO Ole Harms is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

Volkswagen has been covering all bases with Moia. Last year at Disrupt Berlin, the company unveiled an all-electric rideshare vehicle. Moia has been piloting this new vehicle in Hamburg. In addition to six individual seats, the car features USB ports, individual lights, Wi-Fi and storage space at the front.

In other words, this is the minibus of the future. With a range of 186 miles, it represents a viable alternative to traditional vehicles. It isn’t a self-driving vehicle as Volkswagen wants to put this model on the road right now.

In addition to this hardware strategy, Moia is releasing its own mobility service called… Moia. You can already download the app and order a ride in Hanover. It works pretty much like Uber and all the ride-hailing services out there. But Moia wants to own the software platform.

If you want to hear more about Volkswagen’s strategy to disrupt mobility before the company gets disrupted, grab your Disrupt tickets right now. The conference will take place on November 29-30.

In addition to fireside chats and panels, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield Europe to win the highly coveted Battlefield cup.

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Ole Harms

CEO, MOIA

Ole Harms (43) has been CEO of MOIA since December 2016. After working as a strategy consultant at Capgemini, Harms joined Volkswagen Consulting in 2008. As head of the Sales and Marketing division, he advised Volkswagen's top management. In 2012, he took over as Head of New Business Models and Performance.

From 2014 to January 2016 he was Executive Director and Head of New Business Models & Mobility Services. There he initiated the mobility partnership with the city of Hamburg and was responsible for the conception and development of MOIA. Ole Harms lives in Hannover and Berlin.