#21 years old is perfect for a mid life crisis. right?

[kyuoki]

Missing him...

[hello-nichya-here]

How do you feel about Monica and Richard's relationship? Do you think he was her soulmate instead of Chandler?

I think they were a pretty great, adorable couple (Richard trying to find a neurosis of his own to make Monica feel better about her OCD lives rent-free in my head), had a lot of things in common, did their best to work through their relationship issues and the actors had fantastic chemistry. Richard was THE perfect guy for Monica in my eyes... until I saw her fall in love with, date, and marry Chandler, her actual soulmate.

Now, I know a lot of people are creeped out not just by their 21 year age gap, and, more importantly, by the fact that Richard knew her since she was a child because was best friend's with her father (they even say they're like brothers, and at least here in Brazil she'd have absolutely grown up calling him UNCLE Richard).

However:

1 - They're not real, so who cares?

2 - I'm a degenerate and I'm into it.

3 - They did spend years without having any contact (to the point that he doesn't even recognize her at first) and it's very clear that Richard only ever started feeling attracted to her when she was an adult - and not in a "He was waiting to get on her pants the very second she turned 18" kind of way, but rather as "She's literally 27-years-old, she's been a fully grown, adult woman for a LONG time."

And even though Friends, like any sitcom, is known for having the characters in very unrealistic situations for the sake comedy, drama or both (and that's a feature, not a bug) the way Richard and Monica's age difference was handled was pretty realistic.

Monica clearly likes that Richard is this suave, cool older man - but unlike with the rich guy she dates after him, it's obvious that she actually does like him for who he is beyond the superficial stuff, and isn't just giving this relationship a shot because she wants to get married and have kids, and needs a guy to achieve that. I felt soooooo sad for Richard when he was feeling like "one of the guys" then Joey and Chandler let slip that they like hanging out with him because their DADS were not as cool, and Monica was super sweet to him after.

The entire episode of her parents finding out about them on her dad's birthday was freaking amazing, mainly because the writers took full advantage of literally every opportunity for a good joke. Monica is asked if she'll tell them that night, and replies with "Yeah, for my father's birthday I decided to give him a stroke." Their mother asks if they thanked Richard for the ride, innocently just acting like a mom making sure her kids are being polite to their father's friend, and Ross just says "I'm sure Monica thanked him for the both of us." And, of course, everyone awkwardly singing happy birthday right after they had a falling out.

And that episode was also an exemple of Friends, a show that both fairly and unfairly described as very sexist, actually being pretty ahead of it's time when it comes to pointing out the full on misogyny that people often give themselves permission to engage on the very second a girl dates someone much older.

All of the guys are talking about Richard banging a younger woman (that they don't know is Monica) in a really gross way, with her own father even comparing it to the time he bought a cool, expensive car to deal with his mid-life crisis, and, much to both Richard and Ross's horror, suggesting they trade for a day. Sure, it's painting Richard as at least a bit of a loser for dating a younger woman after a long marriage that ended in divorce, but they're still expecting him to brag about it, seeing it as something cool and worth envying him for, and quite literally treating the "mystery younger woman" as an object instead of a person that genuinely cares about him, and that he cares for as well.

The women at the party aren't any better either, making wild assumptions about how Monica is probably just a stupid slut with nothing to offer, and that maybe she's even ugly and the only reason Richard is into her is because she is "Just young enough that everything is still pointing up." They literally know nothing about her beyond "She's younger than him, met him after he got divorced and started dating him" and are all still acting in such a spiteful way that, hearing one of them talk without any context, people could easily assume something like "Oh, she was with Richard first, and this story about him meeting this younger girl after the divorce is bullshit. He met while he was still married, had an affair, filled for divorce, and now the ex-wife hates this girl"

Even Monica's own mother gets all condescending the second she hears her daughter say the word RELATIONSHIP. It all makes for great television because it's a conflict that is not at all forced, makes you really root for the characters' romance to last, and, again, the writers took ALL the opportunities to make jokes about it.

But more importantly, when it was time to make their age gap be the real why they broke up, they didn't do it by turning Monica into an immature moron that was not good enough for him, or retconning Richard's characterization to make him all condescending, arrogant and assuming he knows better just because he's older - or worse, adding a cheap twist that he actually IS a creep that only liked her because she was an adventure/trophy, would cruelly toss her aside the second he got bored, and that he had secretly been screwing younger girls all the time behind his ex-wife's back. NOPE! None of that.

Instead the writers did the smart thing and acknowledged that both Monica and Richard wanted to get married and have kids... but Richard already did it. He got married, had kids, had grandkids, and then got divorced. If he marries Monica now, even if she turns out to be the love of his life and his absolute soulmate he is simply not gonna do all of that again just for her sake, nor should he, because he is in a different state of life and just wants someone to grow old with. It would not be fair of Monica if she tried to force him to have kids again - and it would not be fair of Richard if he expected her to just skip a whole stage of life that she had been super excited for, all because HE already got to have it, enjoy it, and reach the stage where HE was done with it.

And sure, during the drama when Chandler is pretending he will never be interested in marriage and kids, just to surprise Monica with a proposal, they kind of retcon that a bit by having Richard say he regrets that decision and WANTS to have children with her, but I accept that writing choice because:

1 - Literally no one else could fit that role as Chandler's rivals for that storyline without it feeling completely, and it was one of highlights of the last seasons of Friends, aka part of why I'll defend said seasons forever despite the drop in quality.

2 - Richard doesn't seem to have had a truly serious relationship with anyone after Monica because he's clearly not over her, so the pain of seeing her happy with someone else could easily make him start seeing the absolutely correct, but still very difficult choice he made in the past look like THE biggest mistake of his life. When he hear of him later he is not becoming a dad again, so I'll just choose to headcanon that once he found the right person he realized he dodged a bullet when Monica chose Chandler.

3 - Monica did, in fact, choose Chandler. Over Richard. The guy he had been all insecure about, for good reason because Monica would have clearly married him if it wasn't for the not having kids thing, and they had lingering feelings for each other for a looooong time. Her being given the perfect chance to go back to him, and not doing so, is the best way to show to the audience that no, she's not just settling for Chandler because she couldn't have Richard.

4 - Chandler and Richard's talk in which Richard agrees that he already had his chance and that he needs to step aside now because what he is doing isn't fair, Chandler calls him a good guy, and Richard then brags about AND says he hates that is adorable and very funny.

So there you have it. Richard is not Monica's soulmate, but in an AU in which she never met Chandler, or in which they remained purely platonic forever, Richard would be the ONLY acceptable endgame for her because That. Storyline. Was. So. Fucking. Good.

[daleisgreat]

Speed

Today’s entry will mark the first official 4K home video release I am writing about. I already own a few other 4K UHDs, and a couple of months ago, I watched my first 4K video at home with 2001’s The Fast and the Furious. However, I already covered that movie’s BluRay release here several years ago, so I will not be dedicating another entry for it, other than to say that the 4K upgrade pops and makes it look like a new release. Today’s entry is for 1994’s Speed (trailer). Before diving into this movie, I noticed one of the tracks from this film’s score repeatedly used throughout sounds awfully like one of the main themes I primarily associated with the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I have no idea if this was pointed out before, and I just overlooked it all these years, or maybe I am grasping at straws. Click or press here to take a listen and decide for yourself. 1994 was a hell of a year for Hollywood movies primarily transpiring from a highway with The Chase, Speed, and the OJ Simpson Bronco chase….oh wait (although I highly recommend the ESPN 30 for 30 on it, simply titled: June 17th 1994). The majority of Speed has a straightforward premise: serial bomber and local madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) planted a bomb on a bus rigged to explode once the bus drops below 55 miles per hour. Police officer Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) is alerted to this by the bomber himself to exact revenge on Traven after successfully rescuing hostages from an elevator Payne armed at the beginning of the film.

From there, for the middle hour of this nearly two-hour film, the action almost entirely takes place on the bus. Traven makes a grand entrance onto the bus by commandeering a Jaguar and having its owner (Glenn Plummer) take the wheel so Traven could heroically leap onto the bus and save the day. It would not be that easy of a rescue mission as Payne has eyes on the bus, and Traven has to play by his rules and get him his $3 million ransom to disarm the bus. Without question, the middle hour on the bus is the best part of the film. The opening half-hour is an excellent appetizer with the elevator hostage crisis that Traven and his partner, Harry (Jeff Daniels), successfully foil. However, once the action shifts to the bus is when Speed takes off. Shortly after taking control of the bus, one of the passengers freaks and inadvertently shoots the bus driver, and a fellow passenger, Annie (Sandra Bullock), takes over the wheel. Throughout the film, Annie and Traven have wonderful chemistry, and I could not help but root for the duo throughout. Every couple of minutes, there is a new potential conflict to overcome to keep the bus going over 55mph. The film wisely peppers in brief dialog exchanges to let the movie breathe just enough before the next hurdle makes itself present.

The film's standout moment is the major obstacle for the bus to overcome when it encounters a stretch of unavoidable highway under construction and missing a hearty chunk of the road. Traven’s solution is that since that stretch of a road is on an incline, they may clear that gap if they build up enough speed! That epic stunt hits all the right notes, and I got goosebumps all over again re-watching it, and odds are, I bet you did too if you have seen this movie. If you have not, then watch this scene and see for yourself by click or pressing here. A lot of the critical discussion in the aftermath of this movie was if that jump was realistically possible. The best thing I can do is to compare it to another film, Road Trip, which is likely a better indicator of what could happen when attempting such a feat. Once the middle bus portion of the film is over, there are still about 20 minutes left where Traven tracks and chases down Payne in a subway station. The movie felt over once the bus portion had such a satisfying conclusion that it almost feels wrong to keep sticking with the film by this point, but I recommend you do since there is a satisfying payoff in the form of Payne’s demise. I have to share a story now when I first saw this film at around 13 or 14 on VHS. My dad’s VCR had what seemed to me at the time was a revolutionary feature where if I kept pressing the pause button repeatedly, it would slowly, frame-by-frame, play the film in super slow-motion. At that age, I thought this was a fantastic way to get the most out of the biggest stunts in action scenes. My favorite moment exploiting this feature was seeing Traven and Payne wrestle around on the top of a subway train until Payne was not watching his field of vision, and a warning light lead to his sudden beheading. I slow-motion replayed that sequence countless times in my awkward, early teenage years. Suffice it to say, Hopper plays the out-of-his-mind bomber perfectly, going so far as to make sure he receives his appropriate cinematic comeuppance.

The director ensures the many passengers on the bus maximized their minutes to the point I where it feels like you are right there with them!

Two audio commentaries are the only extra features of the 4K disc in this 4K/BluRay combo pack. One is with the director, Jan de Bont, and the other is with producer Mark Gordon and writer Graham Yost. Props are to whoever decided to subtitle the commentary tracks. I very much appreciate it! I first started to bounce back and forth between the two commentary tracks, but Bont was way too relaxed and had too many pauses to hold my attention, and I finished up with his track within five minutes. However, Yost and Gordon are very much engaged from beginning to end and have fun cracking jokes and sharing memories throughout. Some quick takeaways I got from them were how they wanted to film a major scene outside of a sports arena, dealing with critics poking holes at how unrealistic their stunts were, and how watching the movie felt very different at the time of the commentary recording just two months after 9/11. The BluRay disc contains the remainder of the bonus features. Inside Speed is a four-part feature lasting just under an hour breaking down the visual effects, stunts, and location sequences, but half of it also contains an HBO First Look special hosted by Dennis Hopper that hits all the right kinds of cheesy mid-90s EPK nostalgia that it is worth checking out. Aside from 12 minutes of extended scenes and a Billy Idol music video that seems totally off base with the tempo of the film, there are a couple of Action Sequences mini-features breaking down some of the stunts. I highly recommend watching the one dissecting how they did the bus jump, as it shows raw footage of what really happened when they shot it, and showed footage of some of the specific safety measures they instilled to make that stunt as safe as possible and had some eye-opening interviews with the stunt driver before and after.

After watching that old VHS copy nearly a dozen times, Speed wound up being one of my favorite action films I got burnt out early on and never bothered upgrading to a DVD or standalone BluRay. Watching it again in 4K all these years later breathed new life into it for me. I am not an expert at breaking down video quality by any means, but watching the 4K disc on my 4KTV gave the impression of this having far more current production values. The editors somehow managed to remove all the old film grain defects for a smooth 4K upgrade. If you have not seen Speed yet, then it has everything you could want out of a mid-90s action movie with explosions, gripping thrills and stunts, dramatic rescues, plenty of zinger one-liners…..and a Billy Idol theme song. Pardon me while I attempt my best Dennis Hopper impression here, “Pop quiz, hotshot, which 1994 blockbuster that takes place primarily on a bus is a perfect candidate for beer and popcorn movie night at home?” Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dirty Work Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Inglourious Basterds Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut) Last Action Hero Major League Mallrats Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Old Joy Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT Trauma Center The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

[crowdvscritic]

round up // JANUARY 21

New year, not-so-new Crowd vs. Critic! It’s another batch of films, TV, music, and reads that were new to me this month and think you would enjoy, too. As we cozy up inside for the winter, nothing warms you up like a good piece of pop culture.

January Crowd-Pleasers

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Does this sequel reach the heights of 2017’s Wonder Woman? No, but I wish more superhero movies were like this one. I explain why at ZekeFilm. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

21 Bridges (2019)

A solid action crime thriller with a solid Chadwick Boseman at the center. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

The Lethal Weapon Series (1987-98)

I watched the first Lethal Weapon in 2017 for ZekeFilm, but now I’ve a decade’s pleasure of progressively over-the-top action sequences and progressively more absurd ways to destroy Roger Murtaugh’s (Danny Glover) house. The Murtaugh/Riggs bromance holds this progressively sillier series together, and an supporting cast of charismatic actors (Jet Li, Darlene Love, Chris Rock, Rene Russo) are game for whatever comes their way. Joe Pesci is the true MVP. Series Crowd: 9/10 // Series Critic: 7/10

The High Note (2020)

Tracee Ellis Ross’s Grace Davis is a diva in every sense of the word. A high-strung and highly successful singer, she’s also highly demanding of her assistant Maggie (Dakota Johnson), who wants to step out of her shadow and become a music producer. This rom-com-adjacent flick is one of the most fun escapes I’ve had from a 2020 movie, and it’s perfect for a girls’ night in. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7/10

Double Feature—Rom-Coms With a Magical Twist: Just My Luck (2006) + When In Rome (2010)

Disclaimer: These movies are not good. In fact, they’re junk, but they’re my kind of junk. In Just My Luck (Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 6/10), Lindsay Lohan loses her life-long lucky streak when she kisses schlimazel Chris Pine. And When in Rome (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 6/10), Kristen Bell attracts unwanted admirers (Will Arnett, Danny DeVito, Josh Duhamel, Jon Heder, and real-life future husband Dax Shepard) after she steals their coins from a wishing fountain. To their credit, both of these movies know they’re silly, which means you have permission to just sit back and laugh along with (or, honestly, at) them.

WandaVision (2021)

I sometimes fear for the world of entertainment when I think of how much intellectual property Disney has gobbled up, but WandaVision is evidence the company is a benevolent dictator at least for now. This odd delight is a send up and a tribute to sitcoms like I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Brady Bunch, and Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen are so charming and weird I don’t need whatever mysterious sub-plot they’re building.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

If you want to make the most of watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights, first watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), an action flick I saw last February and didn’t include in my monthly Round Up. This Mel Brooks spoof is a direct response that self-serious Kevin Costner adventure, even down to copying its costumes. While I wish I could find a Mel Brooks comedy with any substantial female character (in every movie I’ve seen so far, the joke is either, “She’s got a great rack!” or “Wow, she’s an uggo!”), I still couldn’t stop laughing at this 104-minute version of the Robin Hood scene in Shrek. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/10

Aliens (1986)

Peak ‘80s action. Peak alien grossness. Peak girl boss Sigourney Weaver. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/.510

Big (1988)

After talking about Laverne & Shirley with Kyla on SO IT’S A SHOW?, I had to check out Penny Marshall’s classic. While a few moments haven’t aged so well, its heart is sweet and the script is hilarious. And that Tom Hanks? I think he’s going places. Crowd: 9.5/10 // Critic: 8/10

Unstoppable (2010)

I’ve laughed at SNL’s spoof of this movie for a decade, so it’s about time I got around to enjoying this action thriller very loosely based on the true story of a train that got away from its conductor. Denzel Washington (“You’re too old!”) and Chris Pine (“You’re too young!”) are our heroes in this over-the-top ridiculousness, and their chemistry is so extra it makes me hope they team up for another movie again. Crowd:  9/10 // Critic: 7/10

January Critic Picks

Double Feature—‘90s Space Adventures: Apollo 13 (1995) + Contact (1997)

I have no desire to join Tom Cruise as he films in space, but I know I’ll be pumped to watch whatever he makes because I love sci-fi and space  adventures. Apollo 13 (Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 9/10) tells the story of an almost-disastrous NASA mission in the ‘60s, and it taps into our hope for the human spirit to overcome obstacles. Contact (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10) surmises what might happen if we received communication from extraterrestrial life, and it taps into our struggle to reconcile faith and science.

McCartney III by Paul McCartney (2020)

I spent January catching up on the albums on Best of 2020 lists, and the one I listened to for hours and hours was Paul McCartney’s latest solo album. Catchy, thoughtful, and musically surprising, it ranges from pop to rock to folk in 45 minutes and still feels like it’s over too soon. Like Tom Hanks, this Paul McCartney guy is going places!

The Thin Man Series (1934-47)

Like Lethal Weapon, I watched the first installment of The Thin Man awhile back, and Kyla and I even covered the series on our podcast. But thanks to a full series marathon on TCM earlier this month, I’ve now laughed through all five. When you talk about great chemistry, you’ve got to talk about William Powell and Myrna Loy, who make Nick and Nora’s marriage feel lived in and romantic as they solve crimes together. Witty, suspenseful, and jaunty, this series is still sexy cool over 80 years later. (Also, Asta? Still one of the cutest dogs in cinema.) Series Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 8.5/10

The King and I (1956)

Here’s your regularly scheduled reminder Hollywood works differently now, and many casting decisions of the ‘50s wouldn’t fly today. What has aged well in this film: The Rodgers and Hammerstein music and the sumptuous costumes and set design. I love extravagant musicals of yesteryear—perhaps it’s time for Hollywood to revisit and remake The King and I for modern audiences?

Inauguration Day

In a year with no major televised events with celebrities in a room together, Inauguration Day felt like the most exciting cultural event in ages. We’ve been missing major fashion, but then we got Lady Gaga! We’ve been missing live performances, but then we got Amanda Gorman! And I got a lot of tears during that poem—not just me, right?

Good Reads

Writing that made me think and smile this month:

Steven Soderbergh’s list of everything he read, watched, and listened to this year, Extension765.com (2020) – An indirect inspiration for these monthly Round Ups!

“My Year of Making Lists,” NewYorker.com (2020) – I made a lot of lists in 2020, so I feel this author’s #mood

“Betty White Says She Will Spend Her 99th Birthday Feeding Two Ducks Who Visit Her ‘Every Day,’“ CBSNews.com (2021) - “Betty is a treasure,” I say as I watch The Proposal for the 99th time

“A Sculpture’s Unusual Journey to SLAM [St. Louis Art Museum],” SLAM.org (2020) – With a casual mention of an attraction I never knew about in St. Louis

“The Culture Is Ailing. It’s Time for a Dr. Fauci for the Arts.” WashingtonPost.com (2020) – An idea that occurred to me a few months ago: Why don’t we have an Arts Cabinet?

“The Arts Are in Crisis. Here’s How Biden Can Help.” NYTimes.com (2021) – Partly in response to that Washington Post piece, a historical look at how artists have made it through difficult times in the past and how we can revive artists’ livelihoods mid- and post-pandemic

“The Right’s Message to Silicon Valley: 'Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee,'” TIME.com (2021) – A more thoughtful and less reactionary take on a volatile moment in the history of modern technology

“'It Makes Me Sick With Grief': Trump's Presidency Divided Families. What Happens to Them Now?” TIME.com (2021) – A study on how politics has done damage to family dynamics in America

“Help, the Only Cinema I Can Handle Is Zac Efron Prancing Angrily in High School Musical 2,” Vulture.com (2021) - In a lot of ways, same

“50 Easy Things To Do When You are Anxious,” ShopTwentySeven.com (2021) – I especially endorse coloring, puzzling, and watching happy movies!

Double Feature—Miss Marple Mysteries: Murder at the Gallop (1963) + Murder Ahoy (1964)

Remember when I was all like, “Watch these Agatha Christie movies so you’re not sad Death on the Nile is delayed”? Remember when I said I was just a few movies away from becoming an Agatha Christie junkie? Well, I think I’m there because I can’t stop with the murder mysteries! Margaret Rutherford is a treasure whether she’s solving a murder at a horse ranch or on a boat, and a cast of colorful supporting characters (including Rutherford’s husband) makes these breezy instead of heavy. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 8/10

8½ (1963)

File this with 2001: A Space Odyssey—I don’t know if I really understood this film, but I think I liked it? Federico Fellini’s surrealist, male gaze-y drama blurs the lines between reality and imagination, love and dysfunction, and the past and maybe some future that involves clowns? What resonated with me was the story of a director with creative block, wondering if he’s already peaked and if he’ll create anything worthwhile again. Crowd: 6/10 // Critic: 9/10

Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay and Diaries by Emma Thompson (1995)

Sense and Sensibility is not just one of my favorite Jane Austen adaptations—it’s one of my all-time favorite films. One of the co-hosts of one of my favorite podcasts has raved many-a-time about Emma Thompson’s journals from the making of film, so it was only a matter of time before I read them myself. Witty, informative, and all-around lovely, Thompson’s journals are an excellent insight into the filmmaking process and how novels are adapted.

Also in January…

I reviewed the new-ish documentary Flannery for ZekeFilm, which is all about the writer Flannery O’Connor and feels a little like going back to high school English class.

In addition to the Lethal Weapon and Thin Man series, I rewatched all of the X-Men series this month. You can see everything I am watching on Letterboxd, including favorites I love returning to (i.e. X-Men: Days of Future Past) and the movies I try that don’t make my monthly recommendations (i.e. The Wolverine).

Photo credits: Paul McCartney, Zac Efron, Sense & Sensibility. All others IMDb.com.

[ladyreapermc]

Fic: This isn’t a rom-com 17/17

Author’s notes: So we finally arrived at the last chapter of this fic. I’m really proud of myself for writing something this long and actually getting to the end. I am already planning a sequel and I’d love to hear feedback on this chapter and what you think I could include in the sequel. I also would like to thank everone who stuck around and commented on this. You have no idea how happy you made me. Enjoy this last (for now) chapter!

Summary: Keanu and Lilah meet at the set of John Wick. Rom-com shenanigans ensues

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6  Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16

Wordcount: 3923

Warnings: bad language; smorking, fighting and some angst

Lilah woke up the next morning with the sound of her father’s car pulling up in the driveway. It made her stomach twist into knots, dread filling her chest because she knew there was no way to avoid it now, they would have to have that conversation. She untangled herself from Keanu and it was clear evidence of how exhausted he was because he barely stirred.

She exchanged her PJs for a pair of shorts and the first t-shirt she could find and went down the stairs. Lilah paused just outside the kitchen, listening to her parents talking in hushed voices.

“He’s out of sedation and breathing on his own,” Frank said with a sigh, weariness and fatigue coloring his voice. “I really thought… for a moment there…”

“Don’t,” Alba said her voice breaking a little. “He’s gonna be just fine. He’s strong.”

“I know, I just…” another sigh from her father. “He had a couple of cardiac arrests during surgery. Turns out amphetamines in his blood were reacting badly with one of the medications.”

“Amphetamines?” Alba’s tone was confused. “Like speed?”

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but yes. He’s doing drugs.”

“It’s not speed,” Lilah said walking into the kitchen and making her parents look over in surprise. “It’s probably Adderall.”

“Adderall?” her mom frowned. “Why would he take that?”

“To help him study for some tests. He promised to stop…” Lilah hated to break Jamie’s confidence like this, but they needed the full picture.

“And you believed him?” Frank snorted, his expression almost scornful. “All junkies say that!”

“Jamie’s not a junkie!” Lilah exclaimed. “He just…” she trailed off, at lost of what to say. “Had a lot on his plate and thought he needed a bust.”

“Oh please!” Frank snorted again. “I worked two jobs all through med school and never used drugs to pass my tests! He’s stupid, that’s what he is! And ungrateful! He was given a golden opportunity and just threw that away! Once the board of directors finds out he was on drugs while working for the hospital, that’s it! His career is over!” He slammed his fist on the table, making Alba and Lilah jump. “Stupid, reckless, idiot…”

“Stop!” Lilah shouted, making Frank’s angry gaze shift to her. “Just stop! Jamie’s in the hospital and all you care about is if he’s gonna have a job when all he gets out? How heartless are you?”

“Lilah…” Alba called in gentle warning, but Lilah was too far gone to pay attention. Between the terror of almost losing her brother and all of the soul searching she had been doing the past couple of weeks, hearing her father talking about Jamie like that made something inside of her snap.

“Do you even care about us? Aside from making sure we’re the poster children you can brag about at the country club?” she all but yelled in her father’s face, watching his blue eyes going wide. “Do you wanna know why Jamie was taking Adderall? Because he was working 80 hours a week in a hospital where everyone knew he was your son. He knew every action he took, every misstep he made would come back to you. He was working in a place that anything less than perfect would be unacceptable. I’m surprised he didn’t snap!”

“All there you go again!” Frank scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I’m the big bad villain because I want my children to succeed. How awful of me.”

“Not a villain. Just an asshole!”

“Dalilah!” Alba’s voice was like a crack of a whip, making her stand to attention with a start. “You will not speak like that under my roof! Especially not to your father.”

Lilah pressed her lips together and crossed her arms over her chest. She hated how her mom always took her father’s side of things.

“No Alba. Let her speak,” Frank said with a sneer. “Maybe that way she can work out through these daddy issues of hers! Because that’s the only reason I can think of for her to crazy enough to date a man old enough to be her father!”

His words made Lilah stumble back and straight into Keanu’s strong chest. He steadied her with gentle hands on her shoulders and she looked up at him, catching the somber expression in his face. She wondered how much he heard.

“And you,” Frank continued, getting to his feet and walking towards Keanu. Lilah made sure to keep herself between both men just in case. “I’ve been trying to figure out if this is some kind of mid-life crisis or if you’re just a creep who prey on naïve young girls.”

“I’m not a fucking girl!” Lilah shouted, making her father gaze snap back at her. “I’m twenty-nine, dad! A damn adult! Completely capable of making my own decisions about who I date or what I want to do with my life!” she declared stepping up at him and Frank actually backed away. “And you don’t get to criticize anyone about dating younger women. Wasn’t mom 21 when you met her? While you were 36? Don’t you think you’re being a little hypocritical?”  She saw her father’s eyes narrowing and the way he swallowed hard as he glanced at his wife. He didn’t have an argument against that. “You don’t get to judge my choice in boyfriends and you certainly do not get to bully me into being ashamed of this.”

“Is that what I’m doing?” he snorted, arms crossed over his chest.

“It’s what you always do!” she pointed out. “Darling, don’t you think that skirt is a little too small? You don’t want boys to think you’re easy, do you?” she pitched her tone lower, mimicking her father’s voice. “Baby, I’m sure creative writing classes are interesting, but what are you gonna use that for? Be smart about what you spend your money on. Film school? Are you out of your mind? Grow up! You need a real career!”

She could see her father’s eyes widening as she threw his own words back at him. Lilah always wondered if he even noticed how much they hurt. From the corner her eye, she saw Alba staring at them, her expression just as horrified.

“Truth is I do have tons of daddy issues. Jamie too,” Lilah said, her voice returning to normal. “Because you spent all of our lives making us feel worthless unless we were doing exactly what you wanted. You made us feel like unless we were your perfect children, you would never love us. I became a nearly pathological people-pleaser and perfectionist, while Jamie kept pushing himself so hard he felt his only choice was to take drugs so he wouldn’t disappoint you. So, congratulations! You did a great job fucking up your kids.” Lilah turned her back on her father, heading towards the door. “Oh, not that you care because it’s not a career you’d approve, but I got in film school. Starting next year, I’ll be getting a master's degree in screenwriting.”

She walked out the door, without a second look to her parents, but she felt Keanu following her like a silent shadow all the way back to her bedroom. She felt weirdly numb after that shouting match. All the words that had been stuck on her chest for so long finally out there. She dropped on the edge of her bed, staring unseeingly at her own hands.

“Are you ok?” Keanu asked, tone soft and gentle. He was kneeling in front of her, trying to catch her gaze. “Talk to me, please.”

“I don’t know,” she finally replied with a shaky breath. “I think I went too far. I overreacted and…”

“Don’t do that,” Keanu asked, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “You have all the right to be upset. Always. It doesn’t matter the reason; doesn’t matter if they don’t understand it or if they wouldn’t react the same way. It doesn’t make your feelings any less valid, okay?”

And those words hit Lilah in a corner of her heart that had been shoving all the hurt and pain of having her feelings invalidated and reprehended by people who were supposed to love her unconditionally, including herself. Lilah swallowed around the lump on her throat and hugged him tightly, hiding her face in his chest. Keanu maneuvered her until she was sitting on his lap and pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head and mumbling soothing words as he held her through it all.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, but after a while, Lilah’s tears finally stopped flowing and she just stayed cuddled in Keanu’s lap, letting him embrace her, keep her safe, away from the harsh reality of her brother being in the hospital or the epic fight she just had with her father. In his arms, none of that existed.

“Can I ask something?” Keanu started, voice low and gentle and Lilah nodded against his chest. “You’re really gonna go? To NYFA, I mean?”

“Yeah,” she replied, looking up at him. “I got the money and you were right; it is my dream. I’m tired of pushing it aside.”

“I’m very happy for you,” he smiled wide, kissing her forehead and Lilah grinned, some of the tightness in her chest loosening a bit. “But just so you know, if you decided to take that job at Oxford, I’d be happy for you too. I just want you to do what is best for you.”

“I know,” she replied, meeting his lips for a kiss as relief washed over her. It was good to know that Keanu would be supportive of her choice either way. “Thank you.”

There was a short knock on her door and Lilah got up to open it. She found her mother outside, her eyes red and puffy, she had been crying just like Lilah herself had.

“I’m going to see you brother. Are you coming?”

“Yeah. Just give me a moment to change?”

Her mother nodded and stepped away, letting Lilah close the door. She turned to Keanu and he just gave her a soft, understanding smile, still on his spot on the floor.

“Go. You need some time alone with your mom.”

“Thank you,” Lilah sighed, bending down for one last kiss before quickly changing clothes and meeting her mother by the car.

Most of the drive to the hospital was made in awkward silence, her mother staring straight ahead, shoulders and arms tense almost like a statue as she drove.

“Mãe (mom)…” Lilah started once they pulled the car to a stop at the visitor’s parking lot of the hospital. She just couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Desculpa (I’m sorry).”

“Não, amor. Eu que deveria pedir desculpas. Eu nunca soube (No, darling. I should be the one to apologize. I never knew) …” Alba choked up in her words, tears springing in her eyes. “Eu nunca soube que você se sentia assim. Nós te amamos, não importa o que você faça ou quem você namore. Eu sei que seu pai às vezes age como se isso não fosse verdade, mas é. Eu prometo (I never knew you felt like this. We love you, no matter what you do or who you date. I know sometimes your father acts like that isn’t true, but it is. I promise).”

“Eu sei (I know),” Lilah sighed, rubbing her face. “Mas saber e sentir são coisas bens diferentes (but knowing and feeling are very different thins).” Alba sighed too and pulled her into a hug.

“Vai ficar tudo bem. Jamie vai ficar bem e nós vamos encontrar um jeito de consertar tudo isso. Todos nós. (It’s gonna be ok. Jamie is going to be fine and we’re gonna find a way to fix everything. All of us).”

As Lilah stepped out of the car, she really wished she could find a way to believe her mom, but after everything that had happened in the last couple of days, being ok seemed like a very distant reality. She kept quiet and followed Alba through the hospital and to the ICU room where Jamie was being kept for observation.

The sight of her brother all hooked into tubes and wires looking small and frail was so jarring it made her freeze at the door. Lilah had always seen Jamie as a force of nature, unstoppable to the point of being annoying at times. But right here, in that hospital bed, under the harsh lights of the room, he looked anything but that.

“You’re just gonna stand there?” he asked, voice low and raspy, surprising Lilah. She knew he was out of the respirator, but she hadn’t been aware he was already talking.

“No, of course not!” she walked in, standing by the side of his bed, unsure of what to do, where to touch. “How are you?”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” he joked weakly, cracking a smile. Lilah snorted. Only Jamie would make such a terrible joke at such a time. “So, I hear you’ve got yourself a sugar daddy? Some famous old fart?”

“Seriously?” Lilah rolled her eyes, glancing at her mom, who just rolled her eyes too. “He’s neither an old fart or my sugar daddy. He’s just older and my boyfriend.”

“I wanna meet him. See if he’s good enough for you,” Jamie said, his eyes fluttering closed. Lilah could only imagine how much effort it took for him to stay awake to chat with them.

“You will. When you get out of here,” she said with a smile. “For now, just get better, ok?” Lilah pressed a kiss on his forehead and stepped outside to give Jamie and Alba a moment alone.

While she waited, Lilah emailed both NYFA, confirming she would be signing up in January, and Arthur Pierce, politely declining his offer. The action released what was left of the knot of doubt that had taken residence in her chest. Lilah was still terrified of course. It was a lot of changes in a short time. She had no idea where her life was going. But for the first time, she felt that, wherever it was heading, it was on her terms and no one else’s. Or so she hoped.

After visiting Jamie, they headed back home and Lilah made a beeline to her bedroom, expecting to find Keanu there, but to her surprise, the room was empty and his suitcase packed, ready to go. The sight of it made her smile fall. She knew he couldn’t stay, but she didn’t expect him to go so soon.

As she was coming down the stairs to search for Keanu, Lilah saw her father heading towards the kitchen. She went after him, knowing they needed to talk. She wasn’t gonna apologize for what she said, but she knew she had cut him deep and someone needed to take the first step.  

She followed him to the backyard, her heart hitting her throat when she saw Keanu was sitting outside, smoking. Her father loomed over him for a moment, but Keanu seemed unfazed as he looked up at the older man.

“Give me one of those,” Frank said, at last, taking a seat on the lawn chair next to Keanu’s. “It’s been ages since I’ve smoked.”

“Not a good habit to have when you’re a doctor,” Keanu commented, and Lilah thought she heard just a hint of tension as he handed one and the lighter.

“I googled you,” Frank said after he lit his cigarette and returned the lighter to Keanu. “Wanted to know what kind of man my daughter was dating.”

“What did you find?”

“You certainly have been dealt a shitty hand in life,” Frank said, and Keanu snorted.

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” he said, glancing sideways at the older man.

“This isn’t just some random fling for you, is it?” Frank asked, meeting his gaze.

“I don’t just jump in flights to Miami for random flings, Dr. Bennett. I love your daughter very much,” Keanu replied, his tone almost matter-of-factly and Lilah’s heart lunged in her chest.

“So, you knew about this film school thing?”

“That she got in? yes. That was decided to go I learned at the same time you did.”

“Tell me honestly, can she make it?” Frank asked his tone almost pleading. “I know she thinks everything I do is to control her, but all I ever wanted was to keep her safe. She’s my baby girl. I’m afraid of what the world can do to her. How it can hurt her, break her spirit.”

“Dr. Bennett, I can’t tell you if she’ll make it or not. There’s no way to know,” Keanu started, shifting on his chair so he was facing the other man. “I will tell you this: your daughter is amazing. She’s smart and stubborn and she’s stronger than you think. Tougher than you think. Even if she doesn’t make it, she’ll be fine. It’s not like she doesn’t have a backup plan. Knowing her, she probably already has a backup for the backup.”

“Yeah, that sounds like my Lilah,” Frank said with a chuckle.

“Trust your daughter, Dr. Bennett. You and your wife raised an incredible woman,” Keanu said with a smile and Frank snorted, eyes downcast.

“Didn’t you hear? I screw her up.”

“Only if you hold onto that image of who you wanted your daughter to be, instead of seeing who your daughter is and can be. That woman? She’s breathtaking.”

As Keanu said that, he glanced over at Lilah, catching her soft smile and smiling too. Frank followed his gaze, noticing his daughter was there watching them, before looking back at Keanu with a chuckle.

“How long have you known she was standing there?”

“A while.” Keanu stood up and offered him a hand. “It was very nice to meet you, Dr. Bennett.”

“You too, Keanu.” Frank stood up too and shook his hand.

With one final nod, Keanu walked up to Lilah. He paused in front of her, hand on her cheek, just watching her. There was such a sadness in his gaze that she felt her chest tightening.

“I’ll give you two some privacy,” he said, pressing a kiss on her lips and walking away before Lilah could say anything else. She thought about following him, but there was another man in her life she needed to focus her attention on right now.

Lilah took the seat Keanu had vacated, hugging herself and keeping her eyes away from Frank. Part due to hurt. Part due to fear. She wasn’t sure what to expect just yet.

“He’s sneaky, that one,” Frank commented, stubbing the remains of his cigarette and Lilah nodded. “But wise and very much in love with you.”

“I’m very much in love with him too,” Lilah said, glancing at her father to gather his reaction but he just sighed.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Frank said, his voice breaking, eyes welling up. “I never wanted to hurt you I was just trying…”

“I know, dad,” Lilah sighed too, struggling to talk around the lump in her throat. “But Keanu’s right. You need to trust me, let me make my own choices. If I screw up, then I’ll face the consequences. That’s how life works.”

“I know,” he replied with a shaky breath. “If I could turn back the time…”

“We can’t,” Lilah interrupted, taking his hand and squeezing it slightly. “We can try to do better from now on.” Frank nodded, drying his eyes on his sleeves.  

“He’s right, you know?” he said with a soft smile. “You already are an incredible woman and I’m very proud of you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she replied, letting him pull her into a hug.

Lilah knew this wound between them was far from healed, but they made steps in the right direction today and that was definitely something. She stayed wrapped in her dad’s embrace for a while longer before they both headed back inside. Frank stayed in the kitchen to help Alba, while Lilah headed to her room, finding Keanu sitting on her bed, all ready to go.

“How are things with your dad?” he asked before Lilah could even begin to speak.

“It’s… not good, but better, I guess,” she admitted, take a seat next to him and letting Keanu entwine their fingers together. “We’ll need to work on it. I need to work on it. Just another thing for the list.”

Lilah let out a long sigh. She didn’t even recognize her life at this point. Not after most of what she thought she was and wanted changed and Lilah didn’t even know if for better or worse just yet. Only time would tell. There was one thing Lilah knew, though.

“You can’t stay, can you?” she wasn’t just speaking about Miami.

“No,” Keanu sighed, voice so low Lilah barely heard it. “You’ll never be sure if you made these choices because of yourself or me if I stay.”

She let out a shaky, strangled breath, tears prickling her eyes again. She hated the fact that he was right. Would Lilah even have considered film school if she hadn’t met him? Would it even have been such a hard choice between NYFA and Oxford if Keanu wasn’t in her life? After everything, Lilah wanted to do this for herself and be sure she was doing it for herself.

“You know, if this was a rom-com, right now would be the part we make big declarations of love and kiss and everything would be magically alright,” Lilah pointed out, her tone a little bittersweet.

“This isn’t a rom-com,” Keanu replied, bringing her knuckles to his lips. “There’s no magic fix, Lil. Despite what The Beatles said, sometimes, love is not all you need.”

“I know,” her voice was cracking, tears making it hard for her to get the words out. “I don’t wanna do this.”

“Me either,” his own voice was rough and choked. When Lilah dared to look his way, Keanu had his head bent low, hair shielding his face. “But you’re figuring yourself, figuring your life and I’m afraid that if I stay, I’ll get in your way because I’ll want to help. Right now, if I could, I’d try to protect you from all harm. It took everything of me not to intervene when you were arguing with your parents. I still didn’t manage to stay out of it completely. I just wasn’t built that way. You need to know that it was all you. Your decisions, your mistakes, your wins… I can’t be part of it. Not yet anyway.”

“K…” her voice died as Lilah didn’t know what to say to that and Keanu let out a small snort, glancing her way, his eyes reddish.

“I like how you call me, K. Everyone else goes for Ke.”

“I’m not everyone else,” Lilah replied, and he smiled, that same sad smile from before.

“No. You’re not,” Keanu pulled her into his lap, hugging her tight, face buried on her neck. Lilah wrapped her arms around him just as tightly, nose in his hair, breathing in deep.

“What time is your flight?” she mumbled against his hair.

“In four hours,” he replied, and Lilah felt his warm breath tickling her skin.

“Can you stay until then?” She asked and Keanu tilted his head up, meeting her eyes.

“I’d like that,” he said, letting Lilah seal his lips with a kiss.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxthe end (for now at least)xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tag list (give a shout to be added or removed)

@toomanystoriessolittletime @meetmeinthematinee @theolsdalova @krazycags01 @beyond-antares @cumberbatchbaps @sgt-morgan @futuristic-imbecile @howtoruin-someones-perfect-day @a-really-bi-girl @fanficsrusz @nonsensicalobsessions @poisonedjoinery @soarocks @kindainlovewithkeanu @ficsnroses @weird-civilian​

[sebeth]

Young Justice: Denial, Cold Case, Hot Case

Episode 7: “Denial”

July 27th: Kent Nelson enters the parlor of Madame Xanadu. Madame offers to make contact with Kent’s deceased wife, Inza, if “fate be so kind”.

Kent responds: “But he so rarely is.”

Kent laughs at Xanadu’s attempt to contact his wife: “That was supposed to be my wife? Heck, my little spitfire would have kicked my can for throwing away good money on you.”

Kent criticizes Madame Xanadu for her fakery: “A shame, too.  You have the perfect aura for the work.”

An interesting choice on the writers’ parts to make Madame Xanadu a charlatan.  She would be tied with Dream Girl as the most famous pre-cog in the DC Universe.  They did allow themselves room to re-introduce her as a genuine pre-cog with the “you have the perfect aura for the work” comment.

Kent is kidnapped from the parlor.

We return to the comic book series for the 9th and 10th issue, “Cold Case” and “Hot Case”, a spotlight on the origin of Captain Atom.

August 13:

School is in session for the team as Captain Atom gives a lecture on subterfuge and infiltration. Kaldur is the only member actively taking notes.  Robin’s rolling his eyes, Superboy’s yawning and stretching, Wally’s stuffing his face, and the girls are polite in their expressions of boredom.

The team’s reactions ring true.  Conner and Wally are self-aware enough to realize subterfuge will never be one of their strengths.  Dick’s heard the same lecture a million times from the Batman. Kaldur is serious and a former military man – he knows the value of training and intel.  M’gann is most likely thinking to herself “telepathing, shape-shifting, can turn invisible Martian here – we wrote the book on subterfuge”, and Artemis is wondering why she signed up for the team if it involves more schoolwork.

Captain Atom, a man encased in shiny metal, may seem like an odd choice for a lecture on subterfuge and infiltration, until you realize his pre-hero background in military intelligence.

Atom stops his lecture: “This is boring, isn’t it?”

Megan attempts to reassure the Captain but the always blunt Conner interrupts with “Yeah, boring”.

Captain Atom proposes a field exercise: “This is a cold case. Vietnam era. Captain Nathaniel Adams, United States Air Force. Convicted in 1968 of murdering Air Force General Clement Lemar. Adams died in prison. But I’ve received a reliable tip he was framed. Your assignment: investigate. Prove Adams’ innocence or reconfirm his guilt and report back to me.”

Conner interjects: “Really? You need super-powered operatives for this?”

Atom offers to resume the lecture but the team decides on the field exercise.

The team doesn’t realize it but Captain Atom has revealed his secret identity and part of his origin story.  Nathaniel Adam was part of a secret experiment that transformed him into Captain Atom and catapulted him decades into the future.  The frame-up/died in prison was used as a way to explain Nathanial’s presumed death.

DC Comics purchased several comic book publishers during the 1970s and 1980s.  The most famous companies were Fawcett, Charlatan, and Quality. The purchases caused DC cast of characters to rapidly expand.  Notable characters from the purchases included the Captain Marvel Family, Plastic Man, Blue Beetle, the Blackhawks, the Question, and many others.

DC assigned the various companies’ characters their own earths in the multiverse: Earth-F, etc. Their villains, supporting characters, and continuing adventures each happened on their own earth.  The new to the DC Universe characters would occasionally interact with the mainstream DC earth.

DC decided the DC multiverse had become too complex by the mid-1980s.  I’m not sure why as I was between 6 to 8 years old during this time and I had no trouble following along with the various worlds. Sorry, reboots make me bitter.  We lose more than we gain in every time.  Any characters created in the reboots – Tim, Conner, Bart, Kyle – could have still been created without half-assed reboots.

Back on point, DC created the “Crisis On Infinite Earths”. Despite my dislike of reboots, “Crisis” is an excellent story and a must read for any DC fan.  Great writing, gorgeous art, and fabulous character moments.  

Post-Crisis, there was only one earth.  Captain Atom was re-launched into his own solo title.  He had notable romances with Nightshade and Plastique. Atom’s main foe was Major Force whose later actions would later name the “Women in Refrigerators” trope.  Captain Atom also served as the long-suffering leader of Justice League Europe. Atom was the inspiration for the “Doctor Manhattan” character in the Watchmen

Atom’s downfall would be known as “Armageddon”. He was intended to be the villain behind it. The plot reveal was leaked and the writers hastily changed the villain’s identity to Hawk (Hank Hall) – which made less sense than the choice of Captain Atom.

I dislike “hero goes bad” or “villain goes good” stories.  They are rarely done well.  In hero cases, the writers go to extremes – downfall of Hal Jordan, anyone? In villain cases, the bad guy has become popular, so the writers change him into a good guy and ignore the atrocities they’ve committed – I’m looking at you, Harley Quinn. Particularly the Harley in the Injustice universe.

Captain Atom never recovered from the “Armageddon” debacle.  He would make sporadic appearances but nothing too memorable until the “Captain Atom: Armageddon” mini-series that led to the decimation of the Wildstorm universe.

A disguised Megan enters the Pentagon to interview General Wade Eiling, the judge at Nathanial’s court martial. Wade sums up Adams as a “malcontent” who blamed his “victim Lemar for a Viet Cong ambush” and Adams “was caught in the act by an M.P. Sergeant Polk”. Eiling, a Colonel at the time, found Adams guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.  Adams “took his own life before a year was out”.

Robin easedrops from the ceiling.

Wally and Conner pose as journalism students in order to interview a Lieutenant Yarrow at a casino in Las Vegas.  Conner clearly doesn’t care about subterfuge – at all – as he is still wearing the Superboy shirt.  Wally is in his civilian attire.

The dealer reminds the boys “no one under twenty-one” is allowed in the casino.  Conner questions if “under 21” counts “in weeks or months”.

Wally’s excited by the “$4.95 all-you-can-eat buffet”: “My kind of town!”  Buffets are a true blessing for speedsters, their metabolisms, and their budgets.  Not so much for the owners of said buffets.

Lt. Yarrow was Adams’ defense council: “His friend too. Served together in ‘Nam. The only survivors of Hill 409.”

Yarrow continues “Nate worked Air Force Intelligence. He suspected a weapons smuggling ring and confided as much to General Lemar. Lemar claimed to have heard rumors too. Ordered Nate to take a squad to Hill 409. It was an ambush. Nate saved my life. The rest of Nate’s men weren’t so lucky. Nate became convinced Lemar was part of the smuggling ring and had sent us into the ambush. I tried to talk him out of it but Nate insisted on confronting Lemar only to black out moments later. Later, Nate would insist he had been drugged. And I believed him. Cuz there’s no way the Nathianel Adams I knew would murder a man in cold blood!”

“I took on Nate’s defense but the prosecutor Lieutenant Kevin Blankly proved Nate’s service knife was the murder weapon.  And the medical examiner, Major Shirley Mason testified there were no drugs in Nate’s system. So the judge found Nate guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. And that’s where Nate died. But get this…that judge, Colonel Wade Eiling, he married Nate’s widow and raised Nate’s two kids as his own!”

Wade Eiling would be a thorn in Nathaniel’s side throughout the Captain Atom series.  Wade didn’t transform into a full-fledged villain until the Morrison Era JLA where he merged with the Shaggy Man and ran amuck as the “General”.

Robin decides the next step is to interview Shirley Mason. Dick and Megan arrive at the Arlington home of Mason only to discover her corpse.

Dick notes: “She’s got something in her hand. I don’t want to disturb the crime scene, but we need to see what it is.”

Trained protégé of Batman speaking!

Megan levitates the corpse so Robin can view the picture in Mason’s hand. The photo is a group shot of military personnel.

Kaldur and Artemis meet with Nathaniel’s children in Honolulu.

Peggy firmly believes in her father’s innocence, as did her mother, but Randy does not: “Wade Eiling is our father. He raised us. Adams gave up any parental rights the day he betrayed our country and murdered his superior officer.”

It should be noted Randy has joined a military branch – possibly the Air Force.

Peggy was born after her father’s death so she must have learned her firm belief in her father’s innocence from her mother.

Angela Adams, Nathaniel’s wife, firmly believed in Nathaniel’s innocence but went on to marry the man that sentenced him to prison? Weird.

Artemis doesn’t empathize with Peggy’s belief in her father: “Biology hardly guarantees parental skills or even basic honesty.”

Kaldur tells Artemis of his parents: “My mother, Sha’lain’a, is a native of the Atlantean city-state of Shayeris. Her skin is nearly as golden as her hair and her gills are quite large and gorgeous. My father, Calvin Durham, is a surface-worlder like you, genetically altered by Black Manta to infiltrate Atlantis as a water-breather.”

“Your dad works for Black Manta?”

“He did. But his love for my mother caused him to switch sides.”

Kaldur doesn’t realize it but there are a few important details he hasn’t been told about his parents’ romance.

If you only watched the cartoon and never read the comic books, you missed the foreshadowing that justified Kaldur’s villainous role in season two.

Dick, Megan, Wally, and Conner are in Annapolis.

Dick has identified the people in the photo.

Megan has a question: “I know my grasp of Earth history is largely based on Earth sitcoms but why would a North Vietnamese General be in a 1968 photograph with U.S. personnel?”

Someone needs to hand Megan some history books!

The group is outside General Tang’s mansion. Conner realizes another man is in the mansion and he is carrying a sword.

Conner and Wally are ready to rush in but Dick holds the duo back: “This is a covert op. We keep to the shadows. We don’t take the offensive. Like in Captain Atom’s lecture.”

Wally is shocked that Dick was actually listening to the lecture.

An invisible Megan enters the home.

Trang converses with the man: “I know why you are here. I still have my sources. I know about Mason, and I know your work. But I am disappointed, Rako. I have protected you since you were a child. Have you no loyalty?”

Rako goes for the kill but is stopped by Megan.

Conner storms in and is shocked when Rako’s sword cuts him: “I’m…I’m bleeding?”

The group battle Rako but are unable to prevent Trang’s murder. Rako escapes in the confusion.

August 14, Metropolis: The reunited team meet in a Metropolis diner.

Superboy is still shocked over his wound but insists “It’s a scratch. I’m fine. Move on.”

Facial recognition software has identified the individuals in the photograph:

1)      Lt. Kevin Blankly, USAF

2)      Lt. Henry Yarrow, USAF

3)      Alec Rois, CIA

4)      General Clement Lemar, USAF

5)      Major Shirley Mason, USAF

6)      General Duk Trang, NVA

7)      Sgt. Ends Polk, USAF

8)      Unknown child

The group theorizes the “unknown child” is Rako and that’s he been sent to tie up the “loose ends” in the Adams case.

Kaldur divides the team in half – Dick, Conner, and Wally will head to Las Vegas to protect Yarrow while the rest remain in Metropolis to investigate Polk.

The trio arrive in Las Vegas only to witness Yarrow’s house explode. Yarrow was killed in the explosion. The boys identify Yarrow by a tattoo on his arm.

The team reunites in St. George to confront the trio behind the recent deaths: Rois, Rako, and a not dead Henry Yarrow. The team quickly captures the trio. Yarrow dies – for real this time – in the fight.

The team returns to Mount Justice to report their findings: The accusations and resulting frame-up of Admas was to cover a weapons smuggling ring. Wade Eiling was the only one involved in the trial who wasn’t a member of the smuggling ring.

Kaldur and Artemis fly to Honolulu to inform the Adams kids of their father’s innocence.

Nathan and Wade mend fences over their preconceived notions of the other’s guilt. Wade informs Nathan: “Let me reintroduce you to your kids”.

The issue ends with Rois and Rako escaping from prison and meeting up with Wade. Turns out, Wade was in charge of the entire smuggling ring. He wasn’t in the picture because he took the picture!

Wade: “Captain Atom is my new best friend. Which should serve us well in the days ahead.”

An intriguing plotline that never received any follow up.

We return to “Denial”:

August 19th: The team participates in combat training.  More to the point, Kaldur and a shirtless Conner spar.  Artemis tries to persuade M’gann to ask Kaldur out.  Good Luck, Artemis, Megan has her obsession locked in and she is not veering from the course.

Megan attempts to veer Artemis towards Wally: “You’re so full of passion, and he’s so full of..”

Artemis interjects with “It?”

I enjoy the competition between the girls over Conner and mostly for the fact that the ladies don’t let it interfere with their friendship.  

Why is Conner shirtless? Is he showing off for the ladies? Kaldur kept his shirt on!

Poor Dick, as the youngest, is left out of the hormone competition.  Don’t worry, Dick, you will grow up to become DC’s premier knockout.

Conner wins the round: “Black Canary taught me that.” Conner must be taking his training seriously as Kaldur would be one of the more experienced members in hand-to-hand combat due to his Atlantean military background.

Red Tornado enters. Wally wants a mission assignment. He mentions that Robin and Batman are in Gotham City doing the “Dynamic Duo thing”.

We’ll put “Denial” on pause as the next two issues of the Young Justice comic start at this point.

Up next: Batman, Robin, Ras’s al Ghul, Clayface and the most multi-faceted portrayal of Talia ever!

[bigskydreaming]

LOL in all honesty though I’m way too amused by my own Jack Frost joke and its literally from a Bobby/Christian fanfic I wrote like, twelve years ago or something. It was right after Morrison introduced the idea of Christian in his run for purposes of Emma angst, and then they had that Emma solo, and I took that and ran with that fueled entirely by Rage and Spite, as I am wont to do. I now have no idea where said fanfic is, sadly. This was definitely way before Ao3. I think I only posted it on LJ, on an account where my friends list was like....entirely people from an entirely different fandom soooooo probably why that fic never really caught on. Whatever, I write fic more for myself anyway lmao.

It was pretty good though, think it would’ve held up well. The basic premise had to do with Dark Beast, the AU version of Hank from Age of Apocalypse. See, in the comics, when the few survivors of the Age of Apocalypse reality ended up in the 616 reality after it was destroyed, not all of them ended up in the present. Dark Beast, for example, ended up like twenty years in the past. And he didn’t have most of his memories, amnesia from trauma from the cross-dimensional travel or something. Which is when he met a then teenage Emma Frost, who’d just run away from home after everything that happened with her dad and Christian, and she ended up restoring Dark Beast’s memories with her telepathy, so they actually have history in the comics.

So I went with the idea of, okay what if you let Christian have agency in his trauma instead of giving it to Emma, who lbr, has PLENTY of story material on her own. So my premise was that it was Christian who ran away from home and ended up meeting Dark Beast and restoring his memories. And then Dark Beast, who has always been just as obsessed with creating the perfect mutant as Mr. Sinister is, if not more, because he’s like....equally obsessed with proving he’s better than Sinister....well instead of experimenting on the Morlocks, which is what he went on to do in the comics, he looks elsewhere. He never went after Scott or Jean, because he’s also a coward and Sinister scares him shitless, and DB knew damn well there was no such thing as a reality where Sinister hadn’t already called dibs on Scott and Jean’s genes. BUT, Dark Beast also knew from his own reality who all the other most powerful mutants would end up being....years before their powers even manifested in this reality. And since I’m me, of course I wrote it so that like, DB decided to focus on the other one of the 05 destined to grow up to be an omega mutant. 

And so he had Christian, who was young and easily manipulated because Love Me, I Need External Validation, My Last Name is Frost as In My Family’s Credo is What If We’re All Frosty All The Time....he had Christian use his telepathy to like, prompt Bobby into running away before the actual event that led to Xavier and Scott finding him and saving him and him joining the X-Men. Where Bobby of course ‘happened’ to bump into DB, who took him in along with his other young protege Christian, so he could like, secretly conduct experiments on Bobby blah blah you get it. 

But eventually Christian and Bobby fell in lurv and Christian was like what no, this is wrong, bad, not doing this anymore, so they run away together, and then it was basically just me writing them as a mutant Bonnie and Clyde who are gay and do crime together and say like, fuck all the adult mutants who try and manipulate them and other kids like them. Like Xavier, who eventually tried to get Bobby to join the X-Men and Bobby was like lol no, hard pass. Or the Hellfire Club, who eventually tried to recruit Christian except he was like lol no, hard pass. And then they were basically like this Chaotic Good power couple that just popped up here and there fucking shit up in a well-intentioned way that made half the X-Men grind their teeth and the other half snicker, and same with the Acolytes and other various groups. And there wasn’t really anything anyone could do about it because its canon that Bobby’s only real weakness is to psychics and having a world-class psychic as your boyfriend really kinda nips that weakness in the bud. Unless you come up against like, a cosmic-class psychic like Jean Grey, but lucky for them, she just thinks they’re adorable and tends to go whoops, missed them again every time they slip through the X-Men’s fingers.

And ultimately they decided their real mission in life was to rescue really young mutants whose powers manifested early and put them in danger, and make sure they get a chance to grow up without the various factions going ‘we’ll protect you, but only if you grow up to support our agenda and be One of us, shhhh, don’t fight it, just sign your life away on the dotted line, all the cool kids are doing it.’ And also me being me, and it being like 2004 ish? I think? Maybe 2005. Anyway. So my other preoccupation of the time was the Academy X kids so of course we’re talking like Julian and Josh and Cessily and the like, who were all like, adorable little ten year olds at this point in time, but also V. Beyond the Capacity of These Two Hapless Gays to Handle Without Help. Like, apparently omega powers and world-class telepathy do not actually qualify you to effectively parent a mob of young mutant menaces when you’re only 21-22 yourselves, who knew. So they ended up just showing up on the doorstep of one of Emma’s properties, mutant menace mob in tow, as she was the White Queen by now, and Christian greeting her facepalm moment with ‘Hey Ems, remember how you always wanted to be a teacher?’

And then there was this bit where Emma was something like “I’m a bit busy trying to take over the world, darling, try me again after my mid-life crisis.”

And Christian was all: “You can teach and take over the world at the same time, y’know, some of us are capable of this little thing called multi-tasking?”

And Bobby helpfully piped up: “I can pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time.”

Cue Emma’s wrinkled nose and accusing stare at her brother: “What on earth do you see in him?”

But Bobby just turned around and was like: “Umm, for starters, my ass is amazing. Have you not seen it? Here, touch it. Go ahead, you can squeeze it.”

Emma: .....

Christian, shrugging: “Well I mean, he’s not wrong.”

Emma: “If I agree to this idiotic plan of yours will you leave immediately and never come back?”

Bobby, stage whispering: “Tell her we still want holiday visits, so we can be the cool gay uncles who show up and spoil them rotten and thus they love us more than her. But don’t tell her that last part.”

Christian, dutifully: “We want to still come by for holidays so we can be the cool gay uncles who show up and spoil them rotten and thus they love us but no more than you, an equal amount only.”

Emma: “I’m standing right here you imbeciles.”

Bobby, still whispering: “Make sure that includes Easter. I’m pretty sure if I show up in a bunny costume I can make her head explode.”

Christian: “Just to be clear, that includes - “

Emma, a vein in her temple throbbing: “Just give me the children already.”

Bobby, gathering up the kids in a crowd around him, all noisy and giggling and clamoring for his attention: “Okay kids, so here’s the plan. From now on, you guys are gonna stay here in this big old house with Auntie Em!”

Emma, appalled: “Oh. My. God.”

Christian frowns: “Emma, please stop trying to fry my boyfriend’s brain. I’m not going to let you.”

And then the kids swarmed through the door past her into the hallway and there were the sounds of stuff breaking, distracting her for a bit before she like, glared at Bobby and was all: “This is all your doing!”

Bobby, hurt: “Only mostly! Chris and I are a team. A united front. It was a 60/40 split.”

Christian: “Well....”

Bobby: “Okay, 70/30.”

Christian: “You said you were going out to get some waffles to make breakfast in the morning and you came home with waffles, ice cream, and Julian on your shoulders.”

Bobby: “He followed me home!”

Christian: “That’s not how he tells it.”

Bobby, whirling on the ten year old Julian Keller who’s playing a Gameboy and looking entirely unconcerned: “You little traitor.”

Julian flipped him off.

Bobby, scandalized: “He did NOT learn that from me.”

Julian, still not looking up from his game: “Yes I did.”

And that was when Christian started dragging his boyfriend back to their car, before Bobby can get into an actual fight with a ten year old, yelling back over his shoulder at Emma: “Okay, great, thanks so much for doing this, let us know if you need us to bring anything when we come back in a few days with the second batch.”

Emma, distracted and trying to do a headcount: “Yes, fine, be gone already. ...Wait. What second batch? DRAAAAAAAKE!!”

But it was too late as the car is halfway to her big mansion gates by then, Bobby cackling: “Hey, we should totally get a dog. Like a little foofy one.”

Christian, knowing better than to ask but asking anyway: “And why is that?”

Bobby: “Bet you anything I can get her to say “I’ll get you and your little dog too!’”

Christian: “I’d appreciate it for both our sakes if you never do or say anything to suggest to my sister you’ve ever compared her to the Wicked Witch of the West. I mean, not that she’d protest on moral grounds, but she takes her color schemes very seriously. And you do know you don’t actually have to provoke her quite so much...”

Bobby: “Mmmm....agree to disagree. It’s the principle of the matter.”

Christian: “What principle? What matter?”

That was the gist of that scene anyway. Dialogue’s probably different, but you get it.

Ugh, I probably have the whole thing sitting in an old email account somewhere because that’s always been my main way of backing stuff up, is emailing it to myself. Problem is, I think I had a specific fandom email account back then and I don’t know what it is anymore lol. 

[libraryofmegharoni]

The Heart's Invisible Furies [John Boyne]

started: March 21, 2021 finished: March 24, 2021 rating: 5/5

review:

its now been 2 weeks since i finished The Heart's Invisible Furies and tbh i still dont have the words to describe it.

first of all i've apparently wanted to read this book for at least 3 years. after i got it i found it on a random list of books in my notes of books i wanted that i made couple years ago. i have absolutely no idea where i heard about it the first time. i actually dont remember where i heard of it or why i put it on my list a couple months ago but evidently i did.

this was one of the (many) books that i intentionally didn't read the synopsis of and didn't want to know anything about it before reading. i knew bits going into it. i had the general info that it was about a boy born in Ireland who was adopted, it's set during The Troubles, and its gay enough to have the 'LGBT' tag on goodreads.

after a day of reading it my only comment i wrote down was: i think i cried 6 times reading the first 100ish pages.

which honestly sums up my entire experience reading the entire book.

the novel is organized so that each section is every seven years. there's a total of 11 sections so it covers 77 years all about Cyril Avery's life. the first section is about his mother dealing with being an unwed 16 year old pregnant woman in mid-1940s Ireland. and let me say: the actions of most of the 'adults' are absolutely horrific. the first chapter is Cyril's mother, Catherine, being kicked out of her village at Sunday Mass. her entire family and the rest of the village are against her and back the priest who tells her she has like an hour to leave the village and never come back.

when she gets on a bus to Dublin, she meets Seán who is also escaping his village to Dublin. they arrive and are greeted by Seán's 'friend' Jack who reluctantly agrees to let Catherine stay with them until she can support herself. its pretty obvious that Seán and Jack are a little more than friends but Catherine doesnt think anything of it until the end of the section. before the end tho, we meet the only valid adult / person of a previous generation, Mrs. Hennessy. i absolutely loved that she makes an appearance the the following section and gets name dropped throughout the rest of the novel. this first section is where we learn her general backstory and god fucking damn it i was appalled. at this point its less than 50 pages into the book and i was nearly full on sobbing. and the tears dont let up from there either! right after finding out what Mrs. Hennessy has gone through, Catherine returns back to the apartment she shares with Seán and Jack and once again there's adult and parent who is absolutely horrendous. this is finally when Catherine learns that the two boys are actually in a relationship because, who we later learn is Seán's father, who Seán was escaping from when he left his village, forces himself into the apartment. within the next few minutes, there is a filicide , someone left on the brink of death, and a birth.

this is literally all 50 pages into a nearly 600 page book. it sets the tone for the rest of it and gives a solid understanding of the mindset of Ireland in this time.

7 years later, we finally meet Cyril as as not just the concept that is causing issues for Catherine. we're introduced to the couple that adopted Cyril, who are odd to say the least. they are the type of parents that didn't really want a child because they were ready but instead as a show piece. the Avery's also constantly remind Cyril (and others) that he is 'not a real Avery'. hmm i wonder if this will have an impact on Cyril's future relationships?????

his relationship with Julian Woodbead is one of the most important to Cyril's life. i think its talked about later in the novel how their friendship is built on a lie. from the start Cyril is obsessed with Julian and Julian doesnt acknowledge it really. the perception of their friendship is so biased since we are viewing the world from Cyril's point of view and how he is effected. because of this perceptive, its so hard to believe that Julian didn't know that Cyril was in love with him. but i think Julian was such a product of the environment his was raised in and living by the acceptable ideas of the time. from an early age one of his defining traits is essentially being a womanizer. its hard to tell how much of him is just for show and how different him, and Cyril, would be free of a society with such strict exceptions and definitions of right and wrong. was Julian truly completely straight? or was he lying to everyone and himself to fit in with society?

Cyril deals with his repression of being gay in such a detrimental way the entire time he lives in Ireland. he constantly lies to everyone in his life and forces himself to live a lie. his inability to confide in anyone leads him to getting engaged to, sleeping with, and ultimately marrying Julian's sister, Alice.

oh my god the lead up to the marriage ceremony and the events after hurt so many people and i didn't know who's side i was on for them. Cyril ends up in a relationship with Alice and somehow engaged to her. he almost breaks it off with her but every time he cant say the words. its heartbreaking thinking about Cyril was just so fearful to tell the truth to people who loved him.

its finally on the wedding day that Cyril confesses to Julian that he doesnt love Alice in any romantic way because he's gay and is actually in love with Julian. Cyril wants to Julian to allow him to not go forward with the marriage but with Alice's past (she had a previous fiance that left her at the alter) Julian tells Cyril that he's going to marry his sister and be a perfect husband to her.

Cyril does it. partially. he marries Alice then flees the entire country. coming from Cyril's point of view, i was relived that he was free from lying to everyone. but on the other side -- he just left everyone hurt and unhappy in the wake of his actions. its so easy to see how Cyril feels forced into his decisions but understanding how those decisions affect the people around him make it hard to support Cyril.

7 years later we meet the most important man in Cyril's life, Bastiaan. after leaving Ireland, Cyril ends up in Amsterdam, where it is so much more acceptable to be gay holy shit. he meets and starts dating Bastiaan there. Bastiaan helps Cyril unlearn a lot of what he was forced to live by and accept who he is as a person.

he also meets Jack who opened an Irish pub in Amsterdam with the name of Seán's last name. when i realized it was Jack from before and Jack named his pub after Seán made me weep like a fucking baby.

i could list all the times i started crying but i would end up crying all over again and have to add more to the list.

anyway in Amsterdam Cyril and Bastiaan acquire a foster son, Ignac, who just like everyone else in this novel, has a tragic past. after some events (another murder, this time the dick head is the one killed instead of the one doing the killing) and the three of them end up in New York.

they are in America during the beginning of the AIDS crisis and holy shit. yeah more balling. thats the main takeaway.

in New York, Cyril volunteers to talk to AIDS patients who are dying but have no family visiting them. one of the patients is Julian. once again i turn into a fucking baby. Julian reveals to Cyril that he has a son back in Ireland from the one time he slept with Alice. im gonna cry if i think about Julian and Cyril talking anymore i stg. but uhh Julian makes Cyril promise that he'd be the one to call Alice when he died and once Julian does pass, Cyril has every intention on doing just that. but before he can, him and Bastiaan are jumped by a group of thugs who end up seriously injuring Cyril and killing Bastiaan.

7 years later, Cyril is back in Ireland with Ignac. this time he is in Ireland as an openly gay man and is attempting to build a relationship with his son.

there's so much more that happens that i can't even convey. but holy fuck was it so god damn fucking good.

finally when Cyril is in his 60s he figures out that he is the son of Mrs. Goggins, who has never really left the story. Cyril and Julian run in to her when they are 14 in boarding school, Cyril runs into her multiple times when he works almost with her, the morning of his wedding at a cafe, and when he returns he works in the same building that she does. so throughout his life his birth mother was right there but neither of them knew it.

after 7 years, they go together back to the village that Catherine was born, raised, and kicked out of. its finally here where we learn the identity of Cyril's birth father (Catherine's aunt's husband).

bro i gotta be done now. like there's much more that i want to talk about regarding The Heart's Invisible Furies but i just cant think of them rn.

tl;dr - ballin like a baby the whole way through. also society sucks.pls read its worth it

[rebeebit]

Alan Andrews-Katz 3.4.20

What follows is my remembrance of Alan. I’ve been piecing this together over twenty four hours, as soon as I knew Alan didn’t have much longer.

A recent picture taken in Seattle.

August, 1999. My Honda Civic was packed with my worldly possessions. Twenty-one year old me lacked direction in life, so I picked a cardinal direction in which to drive. West. Until I couldn’t go west anymore. So I drove to Seattle, found a place to live and job, and figured the rest would sort itself out.

I’d never lived in a city. I decided the most economical choice was to find a roommate situation, so I responded to a few ads and met some folks. I realized that cities were full of bizarre people that I didn’t want to live with. One house already had six people living in it, but to a 21 year old that sounds kind of fun. It’s denizens were: a quiet art student, a frat boy from the midwest, a woman with OCD who was on disability who said that if she didn’t take her meds she’d wash her socks in the washer one at a time, a guy studying to be a kindergarten teacher, another who performed with the Seattle men’s choir, and a German lady. (Later on the German was swapped for a boisterous Hawaiian. No offense to Germans, but it was a step up.) At least half the people in the house seemed sort of normal and the price was right, so I went for it.

Alan, the would-be kindergarten teacher, and I became fast friends. He was 13 years my senior but we connected immediately. As we were both single, we were often not around on weekend evenings, but whenever we were home together, we watched movies together, traded books, and laughed our asses off. He got sick a lot. I mean, an abnormal amount of time. So I’d always take care of him: bring him coffee in bed (I started work late), and get him anything he needed. We bought a Christmas tree for five dollars that year, and it was the saddest Charlie Brown Christmas tree anyone had ever seen. But for our budgets - him, a teacher in training, me a canvasser for the Sierra club - it was perfect. We loved driving our roommate Roy up a wall. Roy was the midwest frat boy, and since fraternity culture was anathema to Alan and me, this was a natural bonding point for us. We all liked each other, truly: I think Roy couldn’t figure out his affinity for a punk rock girl and her gay boy pal, but he did get really mad at us once when we pointed out to him how homoerotic all the flight scenes in “Top Gun” were. How could something so masculine, so American be so….gay? Roy left the room, and Alan and I giggled our way through the rest of the movie, high as kites.

Over the course of the year we saw each others’ boyfriends come and go. He always gave great advice and boosted my confidence, something I sorely needed at the time. We trusted each other. One day in the spring I was coming home from a visit to Chicago. As I walked in the house, Alan and another man came out from the kitchen. I looked the fella up and down and said I was pleased to meet him. They said their goodbyes, and I sat Alan down to dish about his date: of course, any man either of us dated would have to be vetted by the other. Alan really liked this guy Eric, and they saw more and more of each other.

I got restless. My visit to Chicago got me thinking about moving on, as canvassing wasn’t turning out to be the glamorous job I thought it would be. I found a job in Chicago and moved in August, 2000. Alan and I hugged and cried when I left, and we promised to keep in touch. I saw him in Chicago when he flew out for an interview, and then two years later when he and Eric  got married. They had a beautiful wedding in Seattle with a view of Puget Sound and Mount Rainier. I brought the guy I’d been dating for a year and a half - it was Alan’s turn to vet. When Alan and Eric were saying their vows, I heard a sniffling next to me. Andy was crying. I was pretty sure he’d get the approval.

By 2010, Eric’s writing was taking off, and they came down to do a reading in Denver. I took them on a tour of our Front Range mountains, and we stopped for lunch in Idaho Springs. Talk turned to Alan’s health. At this point, he was on peritoneal dialysis due to non-functioning kidneys, and he was blind in one eye as a side effect from an anti-viral drug. I commented that he struggled so much with his health, and seemed to get the most bizarre afflictions. “Do you know my whole story?” he asked. I was confused, no, I didn’t think so. “I’m HIV+, I have been since 1982.” I was dumbfounded. I’d had absolutely no clue. Then he said, “is it still OK if we stay in your house, now that you know?” I told him Eric could, but Alan was sleeping in a tent in the yard for asking such an idiotic question. We hugged and cried. 

I started worrying about Alan all the time.

Over the next 17 years, Alan, Eric, Andy and I would see each other. Andy’s work often took him to the Pacific Northwest, and he’d always visit “The Boys” if he had time. I went up for Alan’s 50th birthday. He told me once that in the mid-1990s, he was given three months to live. “Say your goodbyes,” the doctor told him. Alan thought to himself, “I’m not dying yet,” and he didn’t. He was down to 95 pounds and had AIDS, but he simply decided not to give up. He kept living - a few years after being told to say his goodbyes, he met Eric, the love of his life. So he told us he never thought he’d see his 50th, and he was just so happy to still be here.

Andy, Alan, Eric, and I became a great foursome over the past few years, and we would reunite at least once a year for Pride, and then other times as luck would have it. Over time, we developed those hilarious in-jokes and secret languages characteristic of the best couples. Most of my friends have probed the limits of my vulgarity, and I thought I had a pretty high bar for what was offensive. Alan and Eric would regularly vault right over that bar, leaving the four of us in hysterics. We also had a constant shifting of allegiances: Eric and I would sing the “Monorail” song from The Simpsons, prompting Alan to tell us that we should get married; Alan, Andy and I would harangue Eric for doing stupid things while playing board games; the boys would gang up on me for being a girl; Andy and I would make the boys faux vomit when we commented on certain decor items in their home that appeared vaginal. We always left our visits with Alan and Eric giggling for days. In recent years, that laughter was coupled with concern. Would Alan get a kidney transplant? When would the next crisis be?

One thing I always admired about Alan was that he never complained. He was always exhausted, he had to be careful with his diet, and despite a fierce desire to work he could never work full time because he always got sidelined by illness. I’ve never met anyone with so many interests and passions: he was a voracious reader, and amazing pastry chef, he was a pharmacy tech, he would have been a teacher but he realized the pay was idiotic...the list goes on. And for so many of the years I knew him, he never complained. Insomnia from dialysis? At least we have coffee. Loss of appetite from his meds? Great weight loss program. Nausea? Well, that one wasn’t too fun, but at least I’m still alive, he'd say, and I have marijuana. And for so many other complaints, he’d always say anything was better than being dead.

I really started to worry the past few years because he started to struggle. He admitted that his life was challenging. He started doing hemo-dialysis two years ago, and this meant going 3-4 times a week, for almost half a day, for dialysis. He told me that dialysis took an equivalent toll on your body as running a marathon (to put things into meaningful perspective for his runner friend), and afterwards he usually crashed for a few hours before dinner, and then having an early night. But he still said that he’d rather be alive and dealing with all of his problems than be dead.

It sounds cliche, but that’s how I want to honor Alan. He got mad at me once for making him cry on the bus (we were texting), because I told him he was the toughest human I know. When the going gets tough, I’m going to remind myself to remember Alan. That no matter how terrible things are, they really could always be worse. When life is good, I’ll remind myself that this is what I’m living for. And if I’m really trying, I’ll top off my PollyAnna (Polly-Alan?) with a sweet smile and a witty joke.

[funface2]

The Area 51 meme and the strange, winding tale of Matty Roberts – Vox.com

RACHEL, Nevada — For the mess he’s found himself in, Matty Roberts is surprisingly calm.

One night in late June, Roberts was up late scrolling on Facebook. That is his wont; a 21-year-old college kid who lives with his parents in Bakersfield, California, he spends a lot of time online in anime and video gaming communities. And most of all, Roberts is into shitposting, trading in a genre of particularly silly memes that’s especially popular on Facebook. The posts can range from a SpongeBob screenshot that makes a joke about the cartoon character getting stoned, to a fart noise-laden remix of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” video.

Roberts runs a small Facebook page called “Shitposting cause I’m in shambles,” which scratches his meme-seeking itch. He not only shares posts he sees and likes; he creates his own. And that June night, he posted something different than just an image macro-referencing a cartoon or existing online goof. He decided to create a Facebook event as the stage for his joke; it went on to strike a chord with millions.

He called it “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.” Inspired by the covert Nevada military base that many have long believed to be some kind of alien testing ground or site where the government is investigating unidentified aerial phenomena, he proposed gathering as many people as possible on September 20 to cross the fenced-off land. “Let’s see them aliens,” the event description implored.

Within days, nearly a million people had signed on — either in jest or in earnest. Not long after that, the military got involved.

Roberts’s shitpost had quickly, surprisingly, caused a stir that was at once hilarious and very serious. To date, 3 million Facebook users have showered Roberts’s prank event page with international attention, playing into its tongue-in-cheek recognition of the government secrecy and extraterrestrial ties that Area 51 represents in popular culture. But as online jokes spread about bringing home aliens from a locked-down military base, “Storm Area 51” bled into real life. A spokesperson for the Air Force ominously warned people against approaching the base’s borders. Media outlets fought to interview Roberts and reported on his meme as if it were an impending catastrophe.

It has also triggered preparations for a state of emergency in two Nevada counties and generated more alien merch than anyone could ever want. Most of all, the meme has thrust Roberts, a long-haired, laid-back bro, into a national spotlight he probably didn’t deserve — or into the center of a debacle involving a rural town, the federal government, a business partner, a cease-and-desist order, and frequent evocations of Fyre Festival. Depends on who you ask.

“It’s not daunting at all,” Roberts says, with no small amount of hubris. As interest swelled, he took it upon himself to put on a legitimate Area 51 event — 148 miles away from Rachel, back in Las Vegas. “There is a little bit of pressure, but at the same time, it’s an exciting kind of pressure. It’s amazing.”

In the two months since he posted his open invitation, Roberts has become the self-proclaimed face of a live festival dubbed Alienstock. This weekend, real people are showing up for it.

Storm Area 51 was an obvious joke — one that tapped into the internet’s love for memes and easily repeatable humor and coalesced into something much bigger: competing festivals for UFO conspiracy theorists, fans of shitposting, and small-town Nevada locals.

By boosting Roberts’s profile, the event has become more than a gag. It is now, as Roberts says, a “brand.” Not to mention a potential crisis. (Alienstock may not be this year’s Fyre Festival, but rampant opportunism is threatening to bring it close.)

And Storm Area 51 has become emblematic of the cycle of fame in 2019: It was born of the internet, turned a random college kid from Bakersfield into a national figure overnight, and is so meta that it can barely be understood by those outside of it and the world it was born of.

“It plays perfectly into the shitposting culture, and it also plays perfectly into the genuine conspiracy theorists,” Roberts says. “I think it created the perfect storm.”

The inspiration for Roberts’s event was a Joe Rogan Experience interview that Roberts watched this summer, featuring Area 51 obsessive and self-proclaimed whistleblower Bob Lazar, a supposed ex-government engineer who has dubiously claimed to have worked on alien technology near the Air Force site. On the show, Lazar recounted what he claims is the extraterrestrial history of the base. But Roberts wasn’t taking Lazar too seriously: “First and foremost,” he says of his Facebook page, “It’s a shitposting page.”

Barbed wire and signage border a gate of the Nevada Test and Training Range, commonly referred to as Area 51, near Rachel, Nevada, on September 13, 2019.

Bridget Bennett/AFP/Getty Images

After his meme went viral, Roberts saw an opening to take the event’s notoriety and turn it into offline fame. He could become more than a screen name; he could become the face of 2019’s biggest meme. Better yet, maybe he could even make money off it.

“The whole Alienstock, Storm Area 51 thing is something that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I feel like not taking advantage of this diving board that I’ve been given is just wasted,” Roberts says. “So I might as well move forward with it.”

Moving forward in this case initially meant directing people to the town of Rachel, Nevada, home to just 54 people, most of them retirees. Rachel’s claim to fame is that it lies just 30 miles north of Area 51, making it the closest possible gathering point for potential Area 51 raiders. (“You really won’t need a map to find places in Rachel,” the town’s slightly cynical website notes.) Roberts hooked up with the town’s sole local business, a lodge called the Little A’Le’Inn, to plan Alienstock as a Burning Man-style EDM music festival. As many as 30,000 attendees, who had already booked rooms nearby or expressed interest in driving up, were expected.

The seams started to show soon after Roberts announced Alienstock in late July. Selling tickets to an event loosely inspired by a meme suggested a shift from the ironic and self-effacing to the self-aggrandizing and profiteering — Alienstock was to be a weekend-long experience in the middle of nowhere, with parking and camping spaces costing between $60 and $140, all in order to see unnamed EDM acts and … get stoked about aliens? Roberts and the Little A’Le’Inn’s proprietor, Connie West, made few other promises.

Comparisons to Fyre Festival, the 2017 music festival-turned-criminal case, came fast, including from the citizens of Rachel itself. In mid-August, they presented a list of concerns to the commissioners of Lincoln County, Nevada, in an emphatic plea for help in preventing Alienstock from happening:

The main event organizer is a 20-year old kid. The media already likens this to the 2017 Fyre festival disaster where people paid a lot of money for a concert weekend that never happened. There are still many open law suits from that event.

An event with that many people typically takes 6-8 months to plan. The county and Rachel had 6 weeks.

Commissioners, please ask yourself: Do you really think sufficient planning has been done to be ready for this event? This can potentially ruin our county if it goes bad. It certainly will ruin Rachel.

Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee told Vox in early September that the cash-strapped county was looking at spending as much as $300,000 providing additional law enforcement to support Rachel and other nearby towns during the weekend, all for an expected influx of visitors who might be looking to tempt fate by charging into Air Force territory.

“My staff has been inundated with phone calls and working on this,” Lee said. “We had to work on a law enforcement plan, communications plan, medical plan, mass casualty plan, active shooter plan — all these plans we have to put into place before this thing happens.”

He sounded exhausted. “I spend almost 100 percent of my day doing Area 51 stuff.”

A sign about the joke event Storm Area 51 hangs outside the Little A’Le’Inn information center and inn in Rachel, Nevada, on September 13, 2019.

Bridget Bennett/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, Roberts and West still hadn’t offered concrete details on what visitors could expect during Alienstock, which was then set to take place September 20–22 in Rachel. Roberts had shifted away from encouraging a security breach at Area 51 and instead began offering Alienstock as counter-programming to storming the military facility. (Thankfully, he recognized the dangers of trying to raid the base. The Air Force is not playing around.)

Roberts drove to Rachel from Southern California two weeks early and posted selfies. He tweeted about anime and UFC. And he insisted that Alienstock — and he, Matty Roberts — was a brand Area 51 believers would want to buy into.

“Alienstock has always been more of a cultural movement,” said Roberts. “It was born out of the curiosity of the internet and the curiosity surrounding aliens, UFOs, everything like that, and just wanting to gather and throw cool parties.”

It’s that desire to “throw cool parties” that has inflated Roberts’s profile to troublingly unstable heights. Days after arriving in Rachel, Roberts announced that he and Alienstock had parted ways with West and the Little A’Le’Inn. He blamed a lack of “critical infrastructure” and a fear that, in West’s care, the event could become “a possible humanitarian disaster.”

“I had to try to remove any kind of association from it because I don’t want my brand, and I don’t want my face, to be associated with something as disastrous as Fyre Festival 2.0,” Roberts said. “And it could have been even worse than that with the location, the military base right there, and just the sheer controversy behind the thing. So with everything presented and not enough security or anything like that, I had no choice but to kind of try to wash my hands of the whole thing.”

Despite weeks of warnings that Rachel, Nevada, couldn’t handle an event of any size, a pre-signed state of emergency declaration (another one soon followed), and a non-existent event schedule, it took Roberts until the eleventh hour to move the event to a safer location.

He signed on to co-host an Area 51-themed party at the Downtown Las Vegas Event Center on September 19 with Bud Light as a sponsor. Alienstock — or at least, the spirit of Storm Area 51 that had driven it — was dead.

Instead, the party featured hula hoopers in neon outfits, and a few signs and shirts referencing the meme. The attendees — who could best be described as scattered — clutched cans of watery beer emblazoned with alien imagery. Though he reportedly made a brief appearance, a reporter attending the event noted that Roberts was nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, West, of the Little A’Le’Inn, insisted she would still host some kind of event in Rachel, however, with bands who will play for free. Roberts has served her with a cease-and-desist notice.

The breakdown in West’s and Roberts’s partnership is just a sliver of the drama that has ensued from the moment that Roberts declared his intent to prolong the Storm Area 51 meme. And it’s not just between Roberts and West; alien and UFO enthusiasts see Roberts as a negative presence in their communities, too.

Matty Roberts moved his Alienstock festival from its original planned location in Rachel, Nevada, to the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center at the last minute.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

One of Roberts’s most vocal critics is the documentarian Jeremy Corbell, who happened to be a guest on that Joe Rogan podcast episode Roberts first watched. Corbell, who had spent the last seven years following Bob Lazar and spreading what they say is the word of truth about Area 51, is a passionate believer in UFO technology and greatly distrusts the government. For Corbell, the interest in Roberts’s Storm Area 51 meme reflects a huge moment — for his work, for ufology, for anyone who will entertain him or Lazar.

But Roberts, he says, is undermining all of that.

“When you’ve got the microphone, you have a responsibility to act in the same way that you talk,” Corbell says. “And if you are really concerned about safety, then you need to inform people and put aside personal gain.”

Corbell and Roberts’ relationship, according to Corbell, is a tenuous one; Corbell says that the kid from Bakersfield created Alienstock “on the sly or to the left.” And he thinks Roberts is turning this flashpoint for discussion of UFOs into a potential train wreck. Days before Alienstock was set to take place, two YouTubers jumped the gun and were arrested for trying to reach Area 51 on their own.

“This is far beyond a meme and alien Budweiser [beer]. This opportunity is far beyond that,” Corbell says. “It’s a cultural and social movement that has been going on for 30 years, since May 13, 1989,” the date that Bob Lazar first spoke out about the existence of Area 51. “Period. Full stop.”

Yet were Roberts and West really the only ones acting in their own self-interest? Corbell is also benefiting from Roberts’s mess. The more we talk about Storm Area 51 — positively or negatively — the more we push the names of Jeremy Corbell and Bob Lazar, as well as Connie West and Matty Roberts, into the public’s consciousness. Rachel, Nevada? At one point, the town was selling Storm Area 51 T-shirts on its website.

Perhaps that’s why Matty Roberts is so calm despite the chaos he’s created. No matter what happens, he’s coming out of this as someone greater than a kid with a shitposting Facebook page and fewer than 1,000 Twitter followers. He’ll be that Area 51 guy, for better or worse.

For now, he’s taking a semester off school to work on Alienstock’s future, but when he goes back, he says, he might switch his major to marketing. He’d probably be darn good at it, too.

An Extraterrestrial Highway sign posted along State Route 375 in Rachel, Nevada, on July 22, 2019.

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[closetofanxiety]

50 wrestling questions

I answer these burning questions here, below the cut:

1. What got you into wrestling?

I don’t really know. I’ve gone through three phases of being a wrestling fan in my life. The earliest was probably just because all the other kids in the neighborhood liked wrestling, and I was a people-pleaser even then, so I wanted to fit in. I remember the older kids like AWA or NWA because they were “real,” while us littl’uns thrilled to the exploits of Hulkster Hogan in the WWF. I like nothing else that I enjoyed as a child, not the movies or the TV shows or the books or whatever, so there was something about wrestling that stuck with me.

2. What is your favorite wrestling promotion?

ECW, if I’m being honest. A lot of that stuff has not held up well, but I got into it at the perfect age, when a lot of my friends were getting into it, and I have very fond memories bound up with ECW. For better and for worse, the most influential American wrestling company of the last 30 years. 

3. Favorite male wrestler of all time?

Gorgeous George, but if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, then Dusty Rhodes. 

4. Favorite female wrestler of all time?

The Fabulous Moo- no. I don’t know. I don’t have the background in Japanese grappling that would allow me to make an informed answer here. Women’s wrestling in the USA was pretty terrible between the mid-1950s and the mid-2000s, and I mostly know American stuff. Let’s say Gail Kim, though.

5. Favorite current male wrestler?

Joey Janela

6. Favorite current female wrestler?

Su Yung, obvs

7. Favorite theme song?

"Psycho Killer,” when that was Ciampa’s theme song. One of my favorite wrestling memories is Americanrana ‘16, when the PA system died and the crowd sang the song a capella for his entrance. If we’re talking songs written specifically as wrestling entrance music, then Steve Austin’s music. With Shawn Michael’s “Sexy Sexy Boy Ooh La La” or whatever it’s called as a close second. That song makes me laugh every time I hear it.

8. Least favorite theme song?

I hated Ballz Mahoney’s ECW theme song, it just encouraged the worst meathead elements of the crowd, and it always heralded a crummy match. For wrestling-specific theme songs, Lana’s, while new, is almost unbelievably shitty. It’s like incidental music from an episode of “Night Court” where they go to a jazz club.

9. Favorite gimmick?

Gorgeous George, which is still being imitated to this day. Again, if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, the Road Warriors. They were almost 100 percent gimmick, and they were massive stars for years. They were the only non-WWF guys us WWF-loving kids would buy action figures for, because their look was so good.

10. Least favorite gimmick?

It’s hard to choose from all the racist and gay-hating gimmicks that have been used over the years. By sullying the image of the immortal Prince Rogers Nelson, fucking Velveteen Dream is making an impressive run for this designation right now.

11. Best entrance (either their usual entrance or a special one, like a Wrestlemania entrance)?

Again, Gorgeous George had the best entrance of all time, it was 70 percent of his act and it made him a fortune, and everyone has copied it since. In terms of more recent stuff, I liked the Sandman’s entrance. It was 90 percent of his act. Pretty much everything Sandman did except his entrance was so-so to terrible, if we’re being honest.

12. Best Undertaker Wrestlemania match?

The one where he got his ass beat by the savage god Roman Reigns

13. Most overrated?

The Undertaker. I acknowledge that he made a massive, unthinkable success out of a truly ludicrous, sub-Memphian gimmick, but he was never a real draw, and I was never a big fan of his at any point in his career. Maybe no one in WWE history benefited more from protective booking, where he was always billed as an unstoppable, supernatural monster even when he had a mid-life crisis and decided he wanted to be a motorcycle man instead. 

14. Most underrated?

Pretty much anyone who had their entire careers, or the bulk of their careers, prior to the 1980s and the attendant explosion in wrestling’s popularity. It’s hard to properly rate someone like Nick Bockwinkel, when so much of his best work was done in the 1970s, let alone Gorgeous George or Buddy Rogers. Of guys since then, I’ll say Ted DiBiase, who is fixed in the public mind as the cackling rich guy caricature, but who was a phenomenally talented wrestler who could effortlessly pull off being a charismatic babyface or a cheating, despicable shitheel. Ted’s Mid-South run is amazingly good stuff.

15. Have you ever been to an event? If so, which one?

I have been to many pro wrestling shows. Last year I averaged three per month, which is, I’ll have you know, Too Much Wrestling Shows. My mother took me to my very first one, and since she died when I was five, I must have been very young indeed. I remember almost nothing about it, except that Bob Backlund was there.

Since then, I’ve been to a lot of ECW shows, including the 2000 Living Dangerously PPV with the famously hideous New Jack scaffold bump; many WWE shows, ranging from Raw and Smackdown episodes to house shows to Backlash 2003, where Goldberg met the Rock in the ring FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE; and lots and lots of indie shows, which are my favorite. I’ve sort of limited my show-going this year to Beyond Wrestling, Blitzkrieg Pro, and Northeast Wrestling, and I don’t go to all of their shows. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I used to go to shows with big crews of friends, but these days it’s usually me and one or two other people, or sometimes just me. It turns out most people my age are not down to drive to West Warwick, R.I. to see Zack Sabre Jr vs. JT Dunn! I enjoy it, though, it’s been a nice thing to have in my life at a time when there isn’t much else going on.

16. Who has the best merch?

The Young Bucks have something for every aesthetic.

17. Do you own any merch?

Yeah, I mean, too much. T-shirts, 8 x 10s, DVDS, loads of old wrestling magazines. I have a Young Bucks foam “Too Sweet” hand. I have a little plaster sculpture of AJ Lee where she’s a zombie, because WWE Shop was selling it for five dollars. I’m a disgrace, as a grown adult man.

18. Best nickname?

"The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

19. Worst nickname?

I’ve always thought “The Cerebral Assassin” was the dumbest goddamn nickname. Is the assumption here that assassins are typically stupid?

20. Best mic skills?

Bobby Heenan. He could do screaming and angry, he could do calm and menacing, he could do blustering and funny. He had the timing of a professional comedian and the verbal dexterity of the Midwest’s best used car salesman. People hated this man so much that a member of a Chicago crowd shot a pistol at him. 

21. Most annoying?

All-time: The Ultimate Warrior. Currently: Bray Wyatt.

22. Most attractive male?

Roman Reigns. The WWE is leaving money on the table by having him wrestling in a shirt/vest and long pants.

23. Most attractive female?

I really like Hikaru Shida’s complex aesthetic, which combines “hard-hitting Japanese wrestling” with “elaborate theatrical strangeness” and “Hey, check out my ass.” 

24. Favorite faction?

The first two incarnations of the Four Horsemen. If pressed, I prefer the Flair/Arn/Tully/Windham lineup. 

25. Worst faction?

It’s easy to pick one of the five million here-and-gone WWE factions like the Union (ugh) or the Social Outcasts or the League of Nations, but they didn’t really last long enough, or have enough of an impact, to be truly wretched. Same deal with, like, the Aces & Eights: they just stunk up TNA, which was already bad to begin with. The answer is the nWo, from January, 1998 onwards: until that point they had been the most compelling thing about American wrestling, but after that they became a bloated, tedious, airtime-gobbling monstrosity that helped drag WCW down into depths it never recovered from. 

26. Best ring gear?

Su Yung and Penta El Zero Miedo. I like the spooky stuff.

27. Who do you think would be the nicest in real life?

I’ve had very few interactions with wrestlers beyond the standard “Hey, great match, how much is that DVD,” but among those I have had more substantive encounters with, JT Dunn, Swoggle, Gangrel, Su Yung, and Santana Garrett stand out as particularly nice. I’ve also heard people from all walks of life praising Little Guido as the nicest dude around, and universal praise is vanishingly rare in pro wrestling. I like to imagine Kevin Owens is a good egg.

28. Who would be the rudest in real life?

Like anyone else, I’ve Heard Things, but I haven’t had a really bad encounter with a wrestler beyond this one guy who works local indie shows and who is a rude chud in real life. It seems unfathomable to me that Matt Riddle is the kind of person I’d want to share a cab ride to the airport with, but maybe that’s just the strength of his brand working. 

29. Favorite heel?

The Dudley Boys in ECW. I legitimately hated them, and bought tickets in the hopes of seeing them get their asses beaten. 

30. Most hardcore?

I bet the real answer to this is like the answer to the great “Who is the most legit tough guy” question that everyone asks. Like, it’s someone we’d never suspect. It’s not Nick Gage, it’s Eva Marie. That woman has seen some shit that would turn your hair white, I bet. I honestly don’t know the answer to this. Probably a guy in Japan who blew himself up in a volcano. 

31. A wrestler you could beat?

At wrestling? Absolutely none of them. Eva Marie would destroy me, Goldberg style. It’s like sports: the worst fucking guy on the worst fucking NBA team would beat the best pickup player in your town by a hundred points in a one-on-one matchup. Once-a-monthers who have office jobs and still wrestle in singlets and are 30 pounds overweight could put me in a coma without breaking a sweat. But what about ... trivia regarding papal history? Ah, now the worm has turned, Eva Marie! You’re on my turf now.

32. Best story line?

Have to agree with Tape Machines, it’s the Freebirds vs. the Von Erichs 

33. Biggest missed opportunity for a story line?

The WCW Invasion angle didn’t work for a lot of reasons, and some of those reasons were probably beyond WWE’s control, but holy shit did they bungle what could have been a gigantic machine that spit out money. 

34. Worst story line?

I can’t pick just one. The 1990s were an absolute golden era of terrible storylines, from Cactus Jack getting amnesia and thinking he was a sea captain to the terrible saga of Katie Vick. I’ll say the Chuck and Billy storyline, because it somehow managed to be insulting to people who had never heard of wrestling in their lives. 

35. Which wrestler should turn heel?

Matt Riddle. I mean, I guess he is a heel, in the sense that his act today is the exact same as it was when he was breaking into the business in 2015 and was hated by indie audiences. He hasn’t done anything differently, but the smug choads from the Internet Wrestling Community have decided he is their savior because they can chant the syllable “bro” in public. 

36. Which wrestler should turn face?

Kevin Owens. I’d love to see what he could do as a fearless asskicker with witheringly sarcastic putdowns on the microphone. 

37. Who would be the worst to room with?

If you’ve ever had close friends or relatives with drug problems, you know the answer to this is Jake Roberts. On a more lighthearted note, sharing an apartment with the Ultimate Warrior would have been a mindbending ordeal, since he was pretty much like that all the time.

38. Who would be the best to room with?

Candice LeRae is a former professional baker, so as a fat guy, I would be very happy to be the person she tests out new cakes and stuff on. But most contemporary wrestlers are people obsessed with the gym, video games, and meal prep, so calibrate your roommate expectations based on those parameters. 

39. Who would be your best friend if you were a wrestler?

I like to imagine it would be Kevin Owens, and I would constantly joke about him betraying me like he always does with best friends, until finally he’d stop responding to my texts. AND THEN I’D KNOW.

40. What would your job be in a wrestling promotion?

I would be styled as “Engagement Director for New & Emerging Media and Content Outreach,” and my job would be taking tickets at the door, applying wristbands to people old enough to drink, and keeping my fucking mouth shut when the wrestlers were hanging around.

41. Favorite wrestling podcast/Youtube channel?

AIW’s “The Card is Going to Change” is the best wrestling podcast in the world. I recommend it to people who don’t even like wrestling, mostly because it’s three dudes telling picaresque tales about restaurants getting trashed and bizarre exploits in northern Ohio. Their recent episode about being paid to put on a show for a child’s 10th birthday is amazing. My favorite wrestling YouTube channel currently is Rassle Reel, which is constantly uploading obscure shit from the 1970s and 1980s.

42. Favorite finisher?

Mr. Perfect’s Perfectplex, a thing of artistic beauty

43. Least favorite finisher?

The Pedigree

44. Favorite match?

Taz vs Sabu at Barely Legal in 1997

45. Favorite PPV?

I’ll always have a soft spot for the first Survivor Series, which is the first PPV I ever watched (we didn’t order it; the neighbors did, and a bunch of us crowded into their den to watch). I don’t know if the first Starrcade was technically a PPV, but that’s one I can watch over and over.

46. Guilty pleasure wrestler?

I don’t like the concept of guilty pleasures, but if we mean which wrestler do I like that some vague critical consensus insists I should hate, I’ll say Honky Tonk Man. 

47. Favorite submission?

THE KATA HA JIME, otherwise known as the Tazmission. 

48. Most entertaining to watch?

Randy Savage

49. Best spot?

Anyone spitting mist into the unsuspecting eyes of their foes 

50. Who do you most respect?

 I respect you, booker man. 

[cathrynstreich]

The Luxury Market Mid-Pandemic: A Bird’s Eye View

In high-end real estate, life goes on.

A six-acre Southampton compound just a two-hour drive from New York City sold for $57.5 million in April, and Tyler Perry’s old 35,000-square-foot mansion on the banks of Atlanta’s Chattahoochee River sold for $15 million in May.

In less rarified but still pricey destinations, such as Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a $5.5 million co-op stalled mid-transaction amid early pandemic fears but sold at a slightly adjusted price in June. Some Florida mansions that languished for more than 1,200 days on market pre-pandemic are now seeing multiple offers as the wealthy seek spaces large enough to house their multi-generational families.

Diane Hartley, ILHM

“Early in the COVID-19 crisis the affluent, like most people, hit the pause button on real estate, opting essentially to stay safe by staying put,” says Diane Hartley, president of the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing (ILHM).

Hartley notes, however, that the high-end market is a want market, not a need market—after weeks or months of sheltering in place, wish lists began to emerge.

Mike Miedler, Century 21

“The pandemic had people at every level spending more time within their walls and re-evaluating, ‘what home means to me,'” says Mike Miedler, president and CEO of Century 21 Real Estate. “As their priorities shifted, the wealthy began to pursue what they wanted—more space, more privacy and more at-home amenities: a home gym, his-and-her offices, a private dock or helipad, even space to homeschool their children if it came to that.”

  For high earners with workplace flexibility, there was an instant surge of interest in homes outside crowded urban areas.

Paul Boomsma, LeadingRE

“Bedroom communities on trainlines into urban destinations are seeing renewed popularity, especially larger homes with tennis courts and swimming pools, which were previously waning in popularity,” notes Paul Boomsma, president and CEO, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LeadingRE). “In many of the nation’s most desirable destinations, the market today is outperforming last year’s numbers, with second or third home purchases also on the rise.”

REALTORS® contemplating a dormant spring were more than pleasantly surprised.

Chris Kelly, Ebby Halliday, REALTORS®

“If demand in the upper tier in March and April were at a veritable standstill, May lit a match under it,” says Chris Kelly, president, Ebby Halliday, REALTORS® in Dallas, Texas. “Unlike the last recession, when real estate lost value, affluent consumers today see real estate as the answer to privacy, on-site amenities, a safe place for the family and a stable place to park their cash.”

With inventory low as demand continues to surge, most high-end properties are selling for more than 90 percent of their list price, Kelly says, and multiple offers are becoming more commonplace, especially for homes in move-in condition.

That’s a statistic from the July ILHM report, which shows the inventory level of single-family homes in greater Dallas’ Collin County region in June down by 58 percent—barely changed from May figures. But the number of sales is up 22 percent from a year ago and 60 percent over the prior 30 days.

Leianne Messina, Coldwell Banker

Numbers like these come as no surprise to Atlanta agent Leianne Messina, a top producer with Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate who specializes in the upscale market.

“The clients I serve are at the top echelons,” Messina says. “They can afford to live wherever they wish and fly private planes where they need to go—and they are flocking to the lake areas of greater Atlanta from states like New York, New Jersey and Florida, where prices for similar properties are much higher.”

Just a weekend ago, she says, she fielded 25 offers on a $1 million-plus property that sold for well over the asking price.

Messina says she is also assisting investors who are flush with cash, or who are taking advantage of rock bottom interest rates to buy tired properties, have them renovated and reap huge profits turning them over to buyers for whom price is not a concern.

Lennox Scott, John L. Scott Real Estate

“The luxury market is definitely back,” says Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO, John L. Scott Real Estate, serving four Northwest states. “For Seattle homes listed at $1 million and above, where there is a shortage of inventory and surging interest, we are seeing intense activity—perhaps the highest in our history—and we expect that trend to continue as travel restrictions ease and buyers feel safer coming in from other states.”

June figures for the Seattle area, reports ILHM, show inventory levels down by 25 percent, but sales up by 43 percent over the last year and as much as 73 percent over May’s sales.

“Other hot spots are emerging across the nation,” says Hartley. “In Palm Beach, Fla., June sales were up 18 percent over a year ago and 87 percent over May. In the most active price band—between $4.5 million and $5 million—sales might have been higher had there been more available inventory. The same could be said of some areas in Arizona, California and in the wide-open spaces of Idaho and Montana.”

Mark Pessin, ONE Luxe

REALTORS® specializing in upper-tier properties were ready to meet the delayed spring surge, says Mark Pessin, chief learning officer for Realty ONE Group’s new ONE Luxe upscale division and designated broker for the group’s San Diego offices in California.

“In many ways,” Pessin says, “the luxury market was better prepared for COVID-19 than other sectors because high-end agents have been using 3D video tours and similar technologies with great success for some time—and the wealthy often depend on long-standing relationships with trusted real estate advisors to guide them toward the properties that best meet their needs without expending a lot of time or energy.

In today’s environment, he notes, when seeking the right property is more of a health concern for wealthy buyers than an economic concern, brokers who have developed such relationships and mastered the art of the virtual sale have been more than ready to meet the challenge.

Bess Freedman, Brown Harris Stevens

“In the New York City market, summer rentals in the Hamptons are always brisk,” says Bess Freedman, chief executive officer, Brown Harris Stevens, which serves the Manhattan, Hamptons, Palm Beach and Miami markets, and recently folded Halstead Real Estate into its ranks. “This year, those summer rentals filled up faster and earlier because of COVID-19, and the competition was super-heated.”

With changing tax strategies that impact the wealthy making it problematic for New Yorkers to change permanent residence, Freedman says, interest has increased in finding the perfect second home within easy reach of the city.

“Not all square footage is created equally,” she says. “Buyers today are looking for privacy and updated luxury in a location that offers peace of mind, and our tech-savvy brokers are using virtual means to help clients find what will suit them.”

Price is often no object, says Freedman, although as sellers who took their homes off the market early in the pandemic slowly come back, most properties are fairly priced.

“Our index confirms that the higher the price point, the slower the turnover,” notes Hartley. “And while changing priorities are fueling interest, a $20 million home is not flying off the market or met with the same buyer frenzy as homes at lower price points.”

The basic principles still apply, she notes, especially in a low-inventory environment: A renovated, well-priced house in a desirable location will sell at close to asking price.

As fall approaches, valid concerns make it difficult to predict the path forward: school re-openings; stock market volatility; new surges of coronavirus cases and/or the emergence of a vaccine; and, not least, the state-by-state patchwork of rules, restrictions, regulations and requirements that make relocating a challenge.

“Many months into this pandemic, we are still trying to get a handle on what the new normal will be like,” says Kelly. “But if present demand is an indication, luxury real estate will see a strong second half and momentum going into the New Year.”

Barbara Pronin is a contributing editor to RISMedia.

The post The Luxury Market Mid-Pandemic: A Bird’s Eye View appeared first on RISMedia.

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This Fall, we are counting down the 100 best tracks of the 2000s with a new article every Monday. To learn more about the project and why the 2000s were amazing for music, click here.

After what felt like forever, we finally made it to the end: this week, we present the top 10 positions of the countdown. To listen to every single track listed in our top 100, you can head to the Spotify playlist we created at the bottom of the page.

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Intro   100-91   90-81   80-71   70-61   60-51   50-41   40-31   30-21   20-11   10-1

10. The Strokes - Hard to Explain

True, it is a little easy and inaccurate to say that The Strokes single-handily saved rock music in 2001. But during the summer of that year, the new band felt like a breath of fresh air, no matter how much they smelled like cigarette. Hard to Explain sounds easier than it is with a metronome-like drum beat and an endless stream of downstrokes. The track keeps moving forwards and forwards until it reaches its climax two minutes in and, just like that, disappears completely. The band then reels it right back and goes for the ride a second time, as exciting as the first. It is the track that rightfully set the expectations rocket high for the band’s first album Is This It and it’s a miracle they managed to reach them.

9. Amy Winehouse - Rehab

If America wasn’t already sold to Amy Winehouse yet by the time Rehab was released, it took only about 30 seconds to get it all hooked. On the biggest single of her cruelly short career, Amy wastes no time belting out the chorus in the opening seconds, backed by soul band the Dap-Kings and immaculate production from Mark Ronson. Don’t get it twisted though; it truly is Amy’s presence at the center stage that infuses the song its magnetism, with her defiant and relentless personality, giving it enough character to live long after she’s gone. With Rehab, Amy Winehouse kicked the door wide open for women to sing their imperfections with sass and break from the picture perfect plastic mold.

8. Radiohead - Idioteque

Radiohead truly became immortals in the 2000s, thanks in no small part to key tracks like Idioteque. After all, only a rock band in full grace mode could ditch its guitars for 1970’s computer music samples and end up with such a compelling piece of music. Thom Yorke’s falsetto, which ranges from delicate to plain manic as the song progresses, clashes with the robotic and cold background provided by a highly compressed drum machine and a Paul Lansky chord progression. The result sounds both like a virtual nightmare Yorke tries to wake up from, and a real dream to IDM-trained ears.

7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

As punk as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were on their début album, no track they would ever release would reach the height of the tender ballad of Maps. Propelled by Nick Zinner’s rapid strum and secret weapon drummer Brian Chase’s thoughtful performance, the Fever To Tell highlight remains a love song for the ages. Meanwhile, Karen O’s feelings can’t help but burst out the iconic track, helped by its iconic “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you” line.

6. Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

By the end of the decade, indie pop was still interested in bedroom aspirations, making delicate, intimate pieces of music. Grizzly Bear, however, was ready to make the most grandiose track they could with Two Weeks, and it sure feels like they reached both the moon and the stars. Starting with a bouncy piano motif and cartoonish whoa-ohs, Two Weeks builds upon a drum loop that would make Vampire Weekend jealous before crashing into a confetti convention in the chorus. The dizzying layers of synths and celestial backing vocals elevate the track to outer space for the band’s finest hour.

5. The Knife - Heartbeats

In the 2000s, few choruses felt as vital as the one The Knife cranked out on their synthpop masterpiece Heartbeats: “To call for hands from above to lean on/Wouldn’t be good enough/For Me, oh”. What is magical about the track, however, is the way Karin Dreijer Andersson sings. Channelling her inner Björk, she injects a duality of emotions in her delivery as she tiptoes between pure joy and pure nostalgia. Instead of “hands up above” though, she leans on a colourful yet robotic wall of synths and steel drums, one that is trying to rationalize her confused feelings. Heartbeats might not have been exactly a hit when it first came out, but such an ageless track can only win in notoriety through the years.

4. Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

With its first album Funerals, Arcade Fire launched nothing less than an indie revolution in the mid-2000s. This rings especially true with Rebellion (Lies). The cathartic single is a deep journey to the grandiose. The real tour-de-force here is how natural it sounds; how Win Butler and his friends manage to create such a resonating piece, such an emotionally heavy track without ever sounding fake, forced or cheesy. Instead, the band wears its feelings right on its sleeve with an attitude that would inspire thousands of alternative rock bands for generations to come. Sung from the point of view of a child, Rebellion (Lies) pleas for the listener to stop hiding underneath the covers and to be who they want to be and to dream outside of their bed, an advice that isn’t as naive as it sounds.

3. M.I.A. - Paper Planes

The Clash started as a punk band but quickly incorporated elements of funk, reggae, hip-hop and world music to its core. It is therefore fitting that an artist like rapper M.I.A., one who was born from DIY and punk ethos, would end up sampling a song of them. On Paper Planes, the Londonian celebrates globalization one cash register noise at a time. Migrants, refugees or stoners, there was something for everyone on this global track, even if the visa trouble that inspired the song come from M.I.A.’s very own personal experience. In a decade with so many male rappers using girls as props in their videos while literally calling themselves P.I.M.P. in the process, it is telling that the most essential rap single of the 2000s came from a woman.

2. The Rapture - House Of Jealous Lovers

If you can scream the title of this track and count to 8, you can already sing 90% of House Of Jealous Lovers. The Rapture forms here the tightest rock unit making the nastiest, sweatiest, slickest disco song possible, one that could make CBGB and Studio 54 burn simultaneously. The quintessential dance-punk number gets its power from a groovy bass for the ages, funky drumming, an incisive guitar sound, epileptic vibratos and a stupid amount of cowbell. In the 2000s, there was simply no other song that managed to channel such frenzy as effectively as House Of Jealous Lovers.

1. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends

Growing old is scary as fuck, which is why our culture is so obsessed with staying young. Pop stars rarely survive long after they reach 30 years old, either because newer stars replace them, either because they literally die before they get old. James Murphy was, therefore, a bit of an oddity when he first came out of the New York scene with his début single Losing My Edge at 32 years old. Sure, his indie dance tales are a little too weird for him to truly become a star; he only got a number one album in the USA on his comeback album in 2017 on an especially slow chart week. But for a generation of well-informed music fans, he was the best-kept secret of the 2000s.

It also helped that, with LCD Soundsystem, Murphy wasn’t especially singing about being young. He preferred to sing about inviting an A-list electronic band to play in his basement, about death or about being the fat guy in a t-shirt doing all the singing. Losing my Edge, in fact, addressed this very situation, exposing a narrator who was starting to lag behind the cool kids, but who wanted to show he was still cooler because he “was there” when it started.

This all leads to All My Friends, without a doubt the greatest single track of the 2000s. Starting with a shivering piano riff, the song builds on as Murphy adds years to his odometer. All My Friends isn’t exactly a party track as much as it’s a song about trying to live the life of the party, about doing everything to get as much from our younger years, surviving the tomorrows and ruining our bodies just trying to fit in and live. Soon, the piano riff becomes drilling, it feels more and more urgent. The rapid-fire hi-hats open more and more often. The guitars and the synths are more and more present, leading to a mid-thirties James Murphy pleading to “see all my friends tonight”. As LCD Soundsystem reformed itself in 2016 after a five-year hiatus, Murphy’s words bear more and more weight, with the idea that each stupid decision, each thrill could be the last. All My Friends is more than a song about the midlife crisis: it touches themes of nostalgia, friendship, growing old and trying to make it work out in the end. And just like a lifestyle of partying, the song never puts the breaks on, drifting at 140 beats per minute before crashing seven minutes and a half later. 

In the end, All My Friends is scary. It’s frenetic, it’s wise, but it’s also so brutally honest in its statement and subject matter that it ends up intimidating. In a decade that saw the increase of the influence of the internet, of social media, of phones and of everything else that would make our parents cringe, All My Friends arcs back to the universal idea that you are probably missing out, that you are missing your friends more than you think, that your life is getting empty and that your youth is slipping away. Goddammit, do something with it before it’s too late. Check the charts, figure it out and go out there. 

(Note that Jay-Z’s 99 Problems and Primal Scream’s Kill All Hippies are not available on Spotify)

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Intro   100-91   90-81   80-71   70-61   60-51   50-41   40-31   30-21   20-11   10-1