#I’m trying to give her credit because she’s supposed to be from Haiti

[euphoricnyctophilia]

I will get to Mary Wardwell another day. But the fucking heartbreak, betrayal that Zelda Spellman suffered was grotesque, and uncalled for. They fucking broke her down again and again, and for what? Her family is shattered, she’ll probably never love again. The caos writers are so fucked for this. I hate them, and I hope that their careers fail. I want everybody responsible for this atrocity, abolished. Take them out.  there was no point in making her suffer the way that she did only for it to be for nothing. I don’t care where the fucking direction of the show was going. My baby did not deserve this.  seeing Zelda with Marie was so refreshing, and I was so excited for some fucking lesbian representation. 

[gayenerd]

These are “outtakes” from Billie Joe’s 2010 Out Magazine interview. The link is still up, but for some reason they took out his answers about masculinity and femininity????? And those are obviously the most interesting answers! Anyway, here’s the whole thing I had saved in a doc

March 19, 2010

Billie Joe Armstrong Tells All

Photo: Kurt Iswarienko

Our April Broadway issue features Green Day's front man Billie Joe Armstrong chatting about music, politics, and the new musical, <i>American Idiot,</i> based on the band's last two albums. The writer of the piece (and former Popnography editor) Shana Naomi Krochmal filed the following exclusive extras from her interview with Armstrong that didn't make it into the piece. In them, Billie Joe touches on masculinity, his queer influences, and meeting Lady Gaga:

ON MASCULINITY:

Out: Is masculinity important to you?

Billie Joe Armstrong: I think it can come in handy, if it’s used the right way.

What’s the right way?

I think you learn a lot from Little League baseball. Like how to be a good team player, what do you do in situations when you’re at bat and it’s just you and another person. When you lose, how do you deal with losing? When you win, are you a good winner? And a graceful winner? How do you contribute to a team situation selflessly? I think there’s a lot of leadership skills in that. I don’t know if that’s masculinity or just good leadership or just life lessons. I just used Little League baseball because it’s male dominated.

Do your kids play?

They did. My oldest is done now, and my youngest one does. It was a real good bonding experience. I think masculinity is a lot more feminine than people give it credit for. Or it can be. Jim Morrison seemed very masculine to me, but also completely feminine at the same time. That balance in between -- and it’s not those morons on the bus in Borat. That’s not masculinity, that’s insecurity at its worse. Masculinity is something that women can have.

What is feminine about you?

I’m not sure. Let me think. It’s all about being a well rounded a person. I think being a singer is very feminine. Being a singer is a very feminine thing -- performing is definitely. Women have a lot more courage I think than men do, in a lot of ways -- if you think about what Madonna does or Lady Gaga or Beyonce. Women have a much easier time of reinventing themselves than I think men do. Hmm, I think -- a little bit of eyeliner. [Laughs] But I think there’s a big difference between vanity and femininity. I think that feminine side has served me a lot more than my masculine side has in a lot of ways.

ON PERFORMING AT THE GRAMMYS:

That was such a great night. There’s a whole thing where you’re worried about the awards part of it, and it can make you kind of irritable, kind of stressed out. But the great thing is that we had a chance to play with the cast, which has never really been done before.

ON THE MOST EMOTIONAL PARTS OF THE SHOW:

When Rebecca [Naomi Jones] sings “Letterbomb,” that really blows me away. The scene where Tunny’s on the gurneys and they’re singing “Before the Lobotomy.” And “Last Night on Earth” is an amazing scene with the couple doing this heroin dance. Tony [Vincent] is singing the song -- the first verse while they’re slamming smack -- and then the next verse is Mary coming out with a baby that she’s had with a guy who turns out to be a loser father. I get chills thinking about it right now. The juxtaposition between the two scenes is like -- wow.

ON WRITING AN ORIGINAL MUSICAL:

I’d definitely be interested in it. I think we’re in a really rare situation where this is gaining momentum. I don’t want to screw it up by working on something else. I’d love to do something with Michael [Mayer]. I’ve always wanted to see what it would be like to score a film -- but this, this is even more special, I think.

ON KNOWING TOO MUCH:

When you start getting into politics, what I’ve realized is that if it seems to be black and white, it’s shooting off into so many different directions. You can’t really keep up with what’s happening in the House of Representatives. Things like Hurricane Katrina, Haiti, troops in Afghanistan, financial crisis -- even Tiger Woods. It seems to be one thing after the next.

ON HIS QUEER INFLUENCES:

My uncle. There were different punk singers, from a guy named Cretin Chaos in Social Unrest to guys like Morrissey. And also guys that would genderbend a little, like Bowie, or Mike Ness from Social Distortion wearing makeup. I’ve always liked music that was non-gender specific, like the Replacements song called “Androgynous.” It was just always those little things or people that were willing to make you think, whoa, that’s not what I’m hearing on the radio these days.

ON MEETING LADY GAGA AT THE MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS:

She had this outfit on -- she had so much shit on her when she walked by! She couldn’t move her arm because she was going on to do her performance, and it was like shaking hands with someone in a cast. She had this handler that was like, “Don’t touch the costume! Don’t touch the costume!” She said something about how she loved Dookie so much she used to lick the pages. I thought it was really cool. She’s influencing a lot of young people, and she’s doing it in a way that’s provocative. And a lot of people don’t realize that she’s an artist, and she’s been one for a really long time. She’s taking something that Bowie or Madonna did and taking it a step further.

ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “PUNK ROCK”:

That’s like a 10 part answer. I think of it as something that you need to have of your own. For me it’s about community. I think it’s kind of spiritual in its own way, because people fight over it so much and the meaning of it. It’s a sense of self-discovery. But also a new set of ideas and a new poetry, a new music that you discover that you notice that no one else is really into, or goes against what other people are normally into. It’s like you’re free to be an individual and taking on new ideas and challenging old ideas. I think it has a lot to do with burning down the establishment to create something new. But at the same time, you find relationships within that too. It’s something that’s supposed to empower you. It’s about starting something new. Part of the problem with a lot of punk rock is that people believe that it’s supposed to be one thing. Everything for me starts off with punk rock when I’m writing songs -- it’s almost like I’m stripped down to the bare bones of music again. It’s kind of in my DNA in this point.

ON HIS WIFE, ADRIENNE:

She’s great. She’s beautiful. Without her, I don’t know what I’d do. She empowers me to challenge myself in a lot of ways. She inspired the song “American Idiot” by playing me this Midnight Oil song that she really loved. She runs a store called Atomic Garden, all about sustainable living. She’s really active in NRDC, politically. Sometimes I think she’s a hell of a lot more interesting and a cooler person than I am.

ON HIS “MISERABLE�� HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE:

Academically you have to completely re-figure out how to prioritize your life. And suddenly you feel like the whole fucking world is against you because they’re prioritizing for you. And it’s forced on you. And if you don’t get it at that age, if you don’t catch it -- that’s what happened to me, I didn’t prioritize anything. I just got to a breaking point where it was like, by my later high school years, “You’re all full of shit anyway. Everyone’s full of shit. I know what I’m doing, and fuck school, and fuck schoolwork, and I’m not going to go to fucking college anyway, and I’m gonna play in a rock band, and you’re all gonna be sorry.” You get vengeful -- it’s a natural instinct, all those hormones going and shit.

ON BEING HAPPIER AT AGE 38:

I kind of feel like things are getting better. It goes in stages. I loved my early twenties. I hated my late twenties. I was a drunk. I was trying to figure out how to be a father, a husband, but I still wanted to live my life like a crazy punk rock rock star. You start noticing things about yourself. You have to change your health habits. But you don’t want to change. In your twenties, change is hitting you over the head whether you like it or not. Right when I got to about 30 I was like, thank God that’s over. But it gets complicated again.

[one-of-us-blog]

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 2008’s Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second James Bond adventure. We might have cashed out of the Casino Royale, but Bond’s still got some cards to play and some scores to settle. Bond finds himself caught up in the schemes of a supposed philanthropist, but M worries his hunger for vengeance will get in the way of him doing his job. Can Bond put his personal feelings aside long enough to stay alive, or will he be swept away in a wave of black gold?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I’m sorry you’ve been having such a rough time during your stay at the Golden Palace! I think the next episode you have to cover, “Tad”, is probably the best episode of the whole show, so hopefully you get some enjoyment out of that one. I’ve checked out of the Casino Royale, but I still have a lot of Bond adventures to go so I’m gonna get to it! 

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by Paul Haggis & Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, film directed by Marc Forster

PREVIOUSLY ON ONE OF US!

Bond got tangled up with a gambler named Le Chiffre who laundered money for a mysterious, conspicuously unnamed terrorist organization and got his balls whipped clean off by a rope. Turns out Bond’s new gal pal, Vesper Lynd, was being blackmailed by the organization into stealing money for them. Le Chiffre got shot in the dome by a member of the organization named Mr. White and Lynd drowned in a building. Bond, hungry for vengeance over the loss of Lynd and his entire dick, tracked down and confronted White.

AND NOW, THE CONTINUATION

Bond races through the streets of Siena, Italy with some goons hot on his tail. We were blessed in so many ways by Casino Royale, but one of my favorite things about it was the lack of ubiquitous vehicle chases that have plagued this franchise for far too long. I guess we all have to pay the piper at some point, though, and our check’s getting cashed today. After three straight minutes of driving, Bond loses his pursuers, pulls into a shady tunnel and opens the truck of his car, revealing a kidnapped Mr. White.

Onto the opening credits! Oh, no, wait a second! We can’t be at the credits already, can we? Something’s missing! I can’t quite put my trigger finger on it, but there’s definitely that’s supposed to go in between the opening scene and the credit sequence… Oh, well, I’m sure it’ll come up sooner or later. In a first for the series, we’re treated to a duet at Jack White and Alicia Keys belt out “Another Way to Die” as a CGI Bond makes his way through the desert from Journey. Another thing I loved about Casino Royale was how rad its credits sequence was, and its lack of silhouetted naked ladies flailing around. Once again the gifts of the past have been turned into a curse for the present as those shadowy, irrepressible vixens retake the stage. Honestly, there’s not a lot else I can say about this; Bond’s wandering a desert, shooting his gun at random intervals while the naked lady silhouettes do their thing. At one point there’s this bit where a whole gaggle of them spin around Bond as he falls through space or something and they’re animated like a zoetrope and that’s pretty neat, but other than that this one’s a bit of a snooze fest. The colors are nice, though, I’ll give it that.

Anyway, Bond delivers White to M. Bond and M catch up a bit; the Americans were supposed to get Le Chiffre after Leiter bailed Bond out during the poker game, so they’re not happy about him being dead. Also, Lynd’s boyfriend, Yusef Kabira (Simon Kassianides), the guy she was trying to save in the first place, is also dead as hell. Or is he? Turns out the DNA of the mutilated body that’s supposed to be the remains of Kabira doesn’t match the DNA M got from Lynd’s old apartment while she was out playing CSI. Bond surreptitiously snatches a picture of Lynd and Kabira while M lets him know straight up that she’s concerned about his reliability. Bond assures her he super absolutely for sure doesn’t care about Lynd and has no interest in tracking down Kabira or avenging what’s-her-name. M begins to interrogate White and puts on her best tough gal act, but White isn’t intimidated. If anything, he’s more delighted than anything at the clear ignorance MI6 has in regards to him and his mysterious, conspicuously unnamed terrorist organization. M learns a hard lesson when White reveals that his organization has people everywhere, including MI6. M’s bodyguard, Mitchell, pulls out a gun and shoots an agent before taking a shot at M. Mitchell and White both run for it and M is lying on the ground wounded, but Bond chooses to chase after Mitchell.

Bond chases Mitchell out of the cellar they’re in and onto a crowded street, resulting in a few innocent bystanders getting shot full of lead. It’s another balls to the wall chase scene, and it ends with Bond shooting Mitchell while hanging upside down from a rope after they both fell out of a bell tower. Bond returns to the cellar but both M and White are long gone. He finds her back in London where she and the other members of her Forensics Club are going through Mitchell’s apartment. She’s pretty shaken up, but not about getting shot; Mitchell worked as her personal bodyguard for eight years, and no one at MI6, including herself, had the slightest clue he was dirty. M wants to know what the hell this organization is, who the hell is in it and how the hell Mi6 doesn’t know anything the hell about them.

It takes a while, but MI6 finally gets a lead in the form of digitally marked bills that had been introduced into Le Chiffre’s money laundering operation. Some money found on Mitchell is tied to money belonging to one Edmund Slate (Neil Jackson) who’s currently living it up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. That’s enough for M, so Bond heads straight for Haiti and begins snooping around the hotel Slate is staying in. Slate and Bond fight in Slate’s room, but the fight doesn’t last long and Slate ends up bleeding out after slicing his neck on a widow and getting stabbed in the thigh by Bond. Jeez, this terrorist organization should really be paying Bond to clean up all their loose ends so efficiently! Bond steals some of Slate’s clothes and assumes his identity. He collects a briefcase Slate had stored at the front desk and makes his way outside, only to immediately be ordered into the car of a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko). The woman notices someone following them on a bike, and then both she and Bond find out that someone had hired Slate to kill her. Thinking Slate is Bond she pulls a gun on him herself, then kicks him out of her car and speeds off. The guy on the bike catches up and, also thinking Bond is Slate, chastises him for not killing the woman like he was supposed to. Bond steals the guy’s bike and pursues the woman, following her to a guarded compound.

The woman, whose name is Camille Montes, confronts her lover, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). He readily admits to hiring Slate to kill her, accusing her of trying to betray him. She tries to put his mind at ease, but he’s not having it and says the only reason she’s having anything to do with him is because she wants to get to General Medrano (Joaquín Cosío), an exile of Bolivia whom Montes has a grudge against. Greene and Medrano meet, and Greene promises to destabilize the Bolivian government enough to allow Medrano to seize power. In exchange, Greene wants a seemingly worthless patch of desert. Greene and Medrano discuss Medrano’s connection to Montes, specifically that he had her family killed before he was exiled, and then Greene gives Montes to Medrano as a gift. Gross! Medrano takes Montes and he and his posse set off in a yacht, but Bond quickly crashes into it with a speedboat he stole. He rescues Montes right before she can kill Medrano, much to her frustration, because Bond can kill as many people as he wants but heaven forbid a woman in this franchise be allowed to avenge her murdered family. We’re really making up for the chase scene respite we enjoyed in Casino Royale, because now it’s time for a boat chase. It doesn’t take Bond too long to give the General’s men the slip, though the chase does result in Montes getting knocked out on the floor of the boat.

Bond unceremoniously dumps the still-unconscious Montes onto a random dock worker and follows a signal from a tracker he managed to plant on one of Greene’s men. He calls MI6 and asks them to look into Greene. Greene is a much more common surname than, say, Goldfinger or Scaramanga, so you can imagine that this is not an easy task for the old HQ. M is pissed at Bond for killing Slate, but Bond refuses to give a shit about his actions or her frustrations. MI6 is able to put together that Dominic Greene is the CEO of a utility company called Greene Planet, which has been doing a lot of philanthropic work lately and has been buying up land under the guise of setting up ecological reserves. M calls the Americans to ask about their boi, and they send her to Greggory Beam (David Harbour). Beam assures M the American government has absolutely no interest in Greene, but M calls bullshit. Beam is the head of the CIA’s South American section, and how would they have known to sent M to him unless they were keeping tabs on Greene and knew he was in Haiti? Hot damn, the gals in the Forensics Club are gonna have a field day with this one!

Bond follows his tracker to an airfield, where Greene boards a plane. Inside Greg Beam and our old friend Felix Leiter are waiting, and soon the whole crew sets off for Bregenz, Austria with Bond following close behind. While in the air, Greene and Beam spell out their deal for us. The US won’t interfere with General Medrano’s coup in Bolivia in exchange for the US getting the rights to any oil found in Bolivia. Beam is tickled pink by the prospects of some black gold, but Leiter is pretty disgusted by all this. Greene has his man show Beam and Greene a pic of Bond that his man snapped and tells Beam he’ll need to be eliminated. Leiter, a true blue bro to the end, denies recognizing Bond, but after a second look Beam recognizes him and announces to the whole plane that he’s James Bond and that he works for British Intelligence. Way to go, Gregory. After the plane touches down Greene and his man depart and Leiter tells Beam this whole thing is an obviously bad idea. Beam doesn’t care and tells Leiter to keep his nose clean if he doesn’t want to lose his job.

In Bregenz, Greene goes to see Tosca and Bond follows him after pilfering a tux. While all patrons receive a swag bag upon arriving, Bond notices that certain attendees get super secret special bag. Assuming the bag contains invaluable collectables that any PucciniHead would die for, Bond relieves a man of his while they’re in the bathroom and is disappointed to find it only contains a pin in the shape of the letter Q and an earpiece. Greene also received one of these special bags, and during the opera, while all the real fans are being swept away by Puccini’s masterpiece, he and several other people in attendance communicate surreptitiously using the earpieces. Bond listens in while they discuss the various workings of their organization, which they refer to as Quantum, and then chimes in himself in order to spook several of the members into leaving the show. Once they’re up and headed for the exits Bond is able to snap pictures of them, which he sends to MI6. Mr. White, who is also in attendance, is unimpressed.

Bond makes a run for it before he can get pinned down, and runs right into Greene and his posse as they head for the exits. Greene sends his goons after Bond, which results in a shoot out in a fancy restaurant and the deaths of several more innocent bystanders. Bond manages to get his hands on one of the goons, only to drop the guy off a roof when he refuses to say who he works for. Man, Bond just refuses to bring anybody in for interrogation! This guy hates information! The guy lands on Greene’s car and Greene’s man shoots him to death. This is a real fly in the ointment, because that guy was a Special Branch operative working as a bodyguard for Guy Haines (Paul Ritter), a special envoy to the Prime Minister. Now it looks like Bond killed the bodyguard of the Prime Minister’s buddy, which is not a good look.

M calls Bond and tells him he needs to come in while this is sorted out, but he refuses. M cuts off Bond’s access to MI6 resources and puts an alert on his collection of passports while MI6 digs up the dirt on Haines. Being cut off from the family money instantly puts Bond in a tight spot, as he’s not able to buy a plane ticket he needs to keep tracking Greene. He’s able to make his way to Talamone, Italy, where he meets with his old, now-retired friend René Mathis. Keep in mind, the last time Bond and Mathis hung out Bond had Mathis branded as a traitor and he was locked up by MI6. His name’s been cleared in the days since all that happened, which is good, but now Bond is coming to him for help. Bond shows him the pictures he got of the Quantum members at the opera, and Mathis recognizes Haines and says he’s nobody to trifle with. Despite living the good life and having no conceivable reason for wanting to help Bond, Mathis agrees to join him on a trip to Bolivia.

At La Paz, Bolivia, Bond and Mathis are confronted by Miss Fields (Gemma Arterton), a consulate worker with orders to get Bond on a flight to London. The next flight isn’t until tomorrow, so Fields agrees to tag along with Bond and Mathis while they get up to trouble. Bond and Fields immediately sleep together, and Mathis later informs Bond that he’s been invited to a party hosted by Greene Planet. At the party, Greene gives a speech about ecological peril and discusses environmental issues with his guests while also sowing seeds of unrest directed at the current Bolivian government. A positively sloshed Montes keeps this from going smoothly by telling Greene’s admirers about how land he’d previously bought to use as an ecological reserve was sold off to a big company that stripped it bare. Greene drags Montes away, all the while being observed by Felix Leiter. Montes is still obsessed with getting revenge on Medrano, and Greene prepares to push her off the ledge of a balcony when Bond swoops in to save her. Greene sends a man after Bond, but the scrappy Miss Fields manages to trip him down a flight of stairs so Bond and Montes can put some safe distance between them and Greene.

Bond tells Montes he needs her to get more dirt on Greene’s secret projects, but they barely make it out of the party before they get pulled over by some cops. The cops are clearly dirty and they tell Bond to open his trunk, where an unconscious Mathis is found. The cops shoot Mathis in the back as Bond helps him out of the trunk, and Bond kills them in kind. Bond holds Mathis while he dies, following through with his plan to ruin this man’s life right up to the end. Mathis says he forgives Bond and asks him to forgive Vesper Lynd for betraying him. Mathis dies and Bond tosses his body into a dumpster after stealing some cash off him.

The cops blame Bond for Mathis’ death, so now M thinks he’s on a full-blown rampage, and after the whole Mitchell thing it’s easy to understand why she’d be ready to believe someone she trusted was dirty. Bond and Montes get their hands on a plane, which Bond flies while Montes guides him to the land Greene bought from Medrano. During the flight Bond causally informs us that Montes was formerly an agent of the Bolivian Secret Service. Bond spots some sinkholes in the desert, and then their plane is suddenly shot up by some of Greene’s flyboys. You guessed it, we’ve had car chases, foot chases and a boat chase, so naturally it’s time for a plane chase. Bond barely keeps his bird in the air, but the other plane is still coming for them and it shoots out one of their engines. Bond uses the smoke from the dead engine to blind the enemy pilot and trick him into flying into the side of a mountain.

Bond has Montes put on a parachute in preparation for abandoning the plane, but then out of nowhere a helicopter pops up and picks up the crashed plane’s shooting slack. This is too much for the plane, and it’s finally going down. Bond jumps out with Montes and only one parachute between the pair of them, and they fall into a sinkhole. They manage to grab onto each other and deploy the ‘chute just before hitting the ground, but they still hit hard enough to knock both of them out. M is called into a meeting with a government bigwig and informed that the British government is now preparing to do business with Greene. M protests and asks for time to gather evidence to prove Greene is a rude, crude dude. The official doesn’t really care if Greene is a bad guy or not, and tells M to pull Bond in before the Americans can kill him.

Back in the sinkhole, Montes tells Bond about her tragic backstory and her thirst for vengeance. Now that he knows how horny Montes is for killing Medrano Bond apologizes for stopping her earlier, and the two set off to find a way out of their hole. They discover that Greene has secretly dammed up an underground river, causing an artificial drought, and when they make it to the surface they see some Bolivians desperate for the water Greene is hording below the surface. Bond takes Montes to his hotel, where he’s informed that Fields has left a note for him. The note tells him to run, but he’s got to check his room first. In the room he finds M and a whole squad of goons. Bond and M are both mad at each other; Bond is mad at M for getting into bed with Greene over nonexistent oil, and M is mad at Bond for getting so caught up in his grief over the loss of Lynd and his thirst for vengeance. Bond finds out that Fields has been killed by being drowned in oil and that her oil-coated corpse has been left on his bed. M knows Greene is behind this just as much as Bond does, but she still blames Bond for her death. Fields was an office worker who was only in Bolivia to collect Bond and take him home, and she only got caught up in all of this because she had a crush on him. M suspends Bond and has him escorted away by guards, but he beats the guards up in an elevator. Bond catches up to M and points out Fields’ bravery before telling her that the two of them need to finish this. M says there’s nowhere to go and that there’s a capture or kill order out on him, but she doesn’t stop him from scampering over a balcony to escape the never-ending swarm of agents coming to collect him. She tells her assistant to have him followed because he’s onto something, and tells the CIA to piss off because Bond is her agent and she trusts him.

Outside the hotel, Montes swoops in to give him a ride. Meanwhile, Leiter and Beam are chilling in their hotel room when Bond gives Leiter a call. Leiter meets Bond in a bar, and the two discuss the ethics of oil, money and Greene. Leiter had to report making contact with Bond so some CIA goons are about to tear this place apart, but Leiter has enough time to tell Bond that Medrano can’t stage his coup until he pays off some officials and he has to get money from Greene before he can do that. Leiter tells Bond where Medrano is meeting with Greene to get his cash, and lets Bond get away before his fellow CIA agents can capture and/or kill him.

Bond and Montes prepare to storm the hotel as Greene arrives with Medrano’s spondoolies. Greene does indeed bring the skrilla, but he also brings a contract for Medrano which will make Quantum the sole provider of Bolivia’s utilities. Medrano’s pissed about this bit of extortion, but after some threats from Greene he signs the contract and gets his money. Montes infiltrates the hotel and finds Medrano’s room, where she hears him assaulting a woman who brought him a beer earlier. Bond, meanwhile, goes on a rampage in the parking garage to prevent Greene from getting away. Montes gets into Medrano’s room and the two start beating the hell out of each other just as Bond catches up to Greene and the two of them start beating the hell out of each other.

Bond set off a chain reaction of explosions during his rampage, so it should be noted that both of these fights are going on while the hotel is exploding around them. Bond gets the better of Greene just as Medrano gets the upper hand and shoots her family’s murderer. Bond chooses not to kill Greene, and instead rescues the trapped Montes from the burning hotel room. He sees Montes through her flashback to her traumatic childhood and then the two escape, catching sight of Greene limping away in the distance. It doesn’t take Bond long to track him down once he finds a car that hasn’t exploded yet, and after interrogating him offscreen Bond leaves him in the middle of the desert with only a can of oil to drink.

Bond drives Montes back to civilization, and the two make plans to dismantle Greene’s dams and get water flowing in Bolivia again. They give each other a kiss goodbye and Bond sets off for Kazan, Russia, where he’s able to track down Yusef Kabira. Kabira has moved on from Lynd’s death and has a new girlfriend who works in Canadian intelligence. Bond explains to the woman that she has access to some sensitive material, and soon Kabira will be threatened and she’ll be blackmailed into giving that information up. Kabira’s entire relationship with Lynd was built on this same scheme, and him getting her involved in the mess at the Casino Royale led to her death. Bond sends Kabira’s new gal pal off and allows MI6 to take Kabira into custody. That’s right, he didn’t kill the guy! Who’d have thought! Bond and M meet outside the hotel, and M lets Bond know Greene was found shot to death in the desert and Felix Leiter got a promotion. Bond lets her know he’s forgiven Lynd for betraying him and is finally moving on from his grief.

The –

Oh shit, just kidding, right before the final credits role we get our first real barrel shot featuring Daniel Craig! I knew something was missing from earlier!

The End

~~~~~

Phew, let me catch my breath after being so long winded! I know from my general understanding of the Bond franchise that this movie didn’t receive the same fanfare that Casino Royale did, but I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed it! I think Casino Royale is probably the closest to a perfect Bond flick that I’ve seen so far and I can’t say that Quantum of Solace reached those same heights, but it was still a very well-made movie. I think one of the things I appreciated so much about Casino Royale was its willingness to step away from established tropes and do something that felt fresh and new to me, and that’s one area where I think Quantum of Solace stumbled. There were so many chase scenes in this movie! Boats, cars, planes, you name it, Bond was being chased by it. Also, I know this is a weird thing to be so bugged by, but I was really disappointed to see the return of the naked lady silhouettes in the credits sequence. Let’s leave those in the past already! One thing I loved about this movie was the character of Montes, and her being able to claim the vengeance she’d more than earned felt like a personal apology from the franchise over the travesty that was Melina Havelock’s arc in For Your Eyes Only. But we still had to have a disposable woman character murdered in order to piss Bond off in the form of Miss Fields (to be fair, that’s one trope Casino Royale also used). I don’t think Greene was as memorable a villain as Le Chiffre, and even though I think Mathieu Amalric did a fine job in his performance I never found myself really digging his character. Maybe it’s the fact that oil as a motive has already been used in the franchise, I don’t know. One thing I really liked was how much screen time M got, and she even got her own little arc about learning who she can trust. I also just really love Jeffrey Wright as Leiter, and was glad we got to spend more time with him here. Also, this is just a frivolous aesthetic note, but I really loved the way the each location name was shown with its own bespoke font. There were plenty of things I didn’t like about this movie, but there were a lot more things that I liked and overall I think this is a standout entry in the franchise.

I give Quantum of Solace QQQQ on the Five Q Scale.

Check back soon to catch Eli’s recaps of the next couple of episodes of The Golden Palace, “Tad” and “One Angry Stan”, and after that believe it or not I’ll be covering the penultimate James Bond film when I recap Skyfall.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for that sweet, sweet vengeance and thank you for being One of Us!

[lalobalives]

*An essay a week in 2017*

Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net. A boat approaches. They think the humpback is dead. He begins to move. A last ditch effort to save its own life. The people on the boat radio for help. They know the whale won’t make it until help arrives. They must be the help. They begin to cut away at the net with what they have on the boat–a small knife. They cut and cut. The whale begins to move. He is still tangled. They keep cutting. Suddenly the whale gets free. For the next hour it dives and jumps out of the water. It slaps its enormous tail on the water. It hurls its body above the water and splashes back down into the depths. This is its freedom dance.

***

On Wednesday, in my high school fiction class, we started reading Gabby Rivera’s “Juliet Takes a Breath.” I got the students, three boys and five girls, to talk about people who have inspired them, like the protagonist Juliet is inspired by Harlowe. I ask: “Have you ever had someone make that big an impression on you? They go around sharing.

One boy says he has no big inspirations. I know him to be a huge comic book fan. He’s a burly fourteen year old with kind eyes and a big heart who is often biting with his jokes. He’s awkward. He’s been bullied. His humor can sometimes sting. I’ve had to remind myself that he is just learning how to be a brown man in this world. The world has already tried to crush him.

I ask: “Well, who introduced you to comic books.”

He smiles with no teeth. Says: “No one did.” Then he shakes his head. “No, my dad did but not through comic books. He introduced me to super heroes. He gave me a whole bunch when I was like five or six. He wanted to see which ones I liked.” I smile. Lean in closer. “And a few years later, I learned that comic books tell the stories of those super heroes.”

“And you were hooked,” I finish for him.

“Yes.” He smiles again. This time he shows teeth.

I move on to a senior I’ve known since she was a ninth grader. Before she went natural and now dons a head of tight brownish blonde curls. She looks at me and smiles with her whole face. “You,” she says and starts to turn the pages of her homemade journal. She folds white papers in half, staples them, seals the cover with clear packing tape. I imagine she has stacks of these at home. “I quote you all the time,” she says. “Last week, you told me…let me see.” She flips through the pages. I see lines of poetry. The beginnings of stories. Anecdotes. Musings about her day. Quotes from the many books she reads, some that I’ve suggested. She’s always reading. She stops on a page. Scans it with her index finger. “Last week I told you something shifted in me. I told you I think I’m more than a poet. You said, and I quote: ‘I’ve been waiting for you to see that. You’re a storyteller.’” She looks at me. Her eyes are welling. I blink hard. I can’t hide the heat in my face. I am all the colors.

“You’re the first person to tell me I’m a writer. To make me believe that I can make a life out of words.” I give her a high five.

I will hug her later. Tell her that I love her. Tell her that I believe in her. She is going to Smith in the fall on full scholarship. She is going to major in creative writing. I tell her: “You are light years ahead of where I was at your age. Just keep doing the work. Keep writing and pushing yourself. You got this.”

Later that evening, I cried at a comic shop after hugging and congratulating my sister friend homie Gabby Rivera on her first comic book outing, America #1, published by Marvel. There was a line out of the door for her signing, yo!

On Tuesday evening I went to a screening at the UN of the documentary AfroLatinos: The Untaught Story written by my Comadre Iyawó Alicia Anabel Santos, produced by Renzo Devia. The room was packed!

It hit me in the back of the comic shop on Fulton how very proud I am of these two glorious women who mean so very much to me and are amongst the best humans I’ve known. To say that I am proud does not suffice. I was moved to big fat tears, and just as I was about to apologize, I remembered what Lidia Yuknavitch said during workshop at Tin House: “Never apologize for your tears. My Lithuanian grandmother used to say that crying was the only language she trusted because it was the language of the body.”

I think of the inscription Gabby wrote in my copy of her novel: “We are the revolution.” Indeed.

***

I have a hard time accepting compliments. I have a hard time hearing that I have inspired and motivated and been an integral part of someone’s journey. I have seen these two talented women grow and evolve. We have gone through changes together. There were moments where it was too much to be in each other’s lives, so we weren’t. And then we came back. We’ve shared joy and tears. We’ve shared writing and stories. We’ve sat in classes together. We’ve workshopped each other’s work. They’ve both participated in my Writing Our Lives Workshops.

I tremble as I write this. I want to explain that I’m not say that I’m not taking credit for their accomplishments. I am acknowledging that we have been part of each other’s journeys. I want to say that I don’t know if I’d be where I am had I not met and loved them. I want you to know how much they feed and inspire me; that they are integral parts of my life and my evolution.

I remember when Iyawó told me she Renzo had invited her to tour Latin America and the Caribbean to work on the documentary. I remember when she started preparing for the months on the road and when she left. I talked to her from so many places across the globe. Me here in NYC, being a single mom, working and writing and trying to build a life for myself. Her in Haiti and DR and Brazil and Colombia and Honduras and…

I remember when Gabby told me about this book she was writing. I remember when she shared that Juliet came to her in my first Writing Our Lives class, in the petri dish class. I’ve often thought that that class was a failure. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was still figuring it all out. You learn so much in the journey…

***

In her essay collection Create Dangerously, Edwidge Danticat writes: “All artists, writers among them, have several stories — one might call them creation myths — that haunt and obsess them.”

***

Imposter syndrome has been sinking its claws deep into me this week. It’s nothing new. The feelings of unworthiness have walked with me for most of my life. If I look at the root of it, at where it comes from, I know it comes from my mother. Here’s the thing: a part of me feels guilt over this, over this writing I’ve done about my mother, over calling myself unmothered, over not being able to tell people that I have a great relationship with my mom, that she is my foundation and my church, that all things go back to the altar of la madre.

We texted a few days ago. It ended like it usually does: I am left reeling and questioning and wondering: if so many people love me, why can’t you? Why can’t you love me, mom? Why?

I am tired of feeling that. This shit is exhausting…and yet, here I am. Writing it. Again.

***

In her forecast for this week’s Venus retrograde, Chani Nicholas writes for Sagittarius:

Get to know what you are capable of. Don’t back down from it. Refuse to diminish it. Own it without arrogance, but with an unwavering acknowledgement of its magnificence.

Consider all that you have learned about your creative, erotic energy over the past 8 years. Which love affairs were your greatest teachers then? What did you learn from them? How have you healed? How do you approach this aspect of your life differently now? What were you learning about your creative energy then? What projects were your biggest teachers? How did you approach them then? How do you approach your creative work now?

The last two weeks of Venus’s retrograde ask you to sink deep below the surface of things. They get to the root of why you feel worthy and unworthy. Desirable and undesirable. Connected and disconnected. They scour the base of your energetic reservoirs, your creative wells, your oceans of imagination for clues as to what may have entered your streams of consciousness, telling you that you aren’t what you are. They ask you to heal the old wounds. Flush out the poisons from childhood. Cleanse the systems that were put in place by familial patterns so that you can better honor the gifts that you have received from the gods. ~ChaniNicholas.com

***

Over the past two days, I’ve found found myself searching for unmothered womyn like me. I’ve searched their names, their stories, their poems. I’ve been looking to feel less alone in the world. I need to see words like mine. Words that dare to speak our truths about our mothers. Words that chip away at the mother myth with a sledgehammer.

I reached out to folks on FB: Emily Dickinson’s poem Chrysallis inspired the title of my memoir. My sister friend Elisabet told me the other day that Dickinson was very much unmothered like us. I did not know this. There’s something about knowing I’m not alone in this that has gifted me much solace. All this is to say that I want to know more about Dickinson’s relationship with her mother. And if there’s any other unmothered woman writer that you think I should know and read, please do share. Yes this is me searching for roots. I am willing to be vulnerable and share that. There is no shame in our wounds.

In my research, I discovered that I am indeed not alone. There is nothing like learning that you are not alone in your ghosts and obsessions…

In a letter to her mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson wrote: “Could you tell me what home is. I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” http://classiclit.about.com/cs/articles/a/aa_emily.htm

Virginia Woolf’s mother died when she was thirteen years old. She writes in her autobiographical fragments Moments of Being: “Until I was in [my] forties”—until she’d written To the Lighthouse—“the presence of my mother obsessed me. I could hear her voice, see her, imagine what she would do or say as I went about my day’s doings. She was one of the invisible presences who after all play so important a part in every life.”…

And once it was written, Woolf noticed, “I ceased to be obsessed by my mother. I no longer hear her voice; I do not see her.” Why? The question haunted Woolf. “Why, because I described her and my feeling for her in that book, should my vision of her and my feeling for her become so much dimmer and weaker? Perhaps one of these days I shall hit on the reason.” Source: The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Woolf would later call her mother’s death “the greatest disaster that could happen.”

***

They call us unmothered. There are those who are unmothered because their mothers died. Then there are those like me, whose mothers are alive and still don’t mother us.

Merriam-Webster’s defined unmothered as: deprived of a mother: motherless <adolescent gosling that, unmothered, attached itself to him — Della Lutes>

Dictionary.com takes you straight to the various definitions of “mother” as if unmothered couldn’t possibly exist. As if nature would not allow that. God wouldn’t. The universe wouldn’t. And yet, I exist—an unmothered woman. ~excerpt from “They Call Her Saint”, A Dim Capacity for Wings, a memoir by Vanessa Mártir

***

I remember finding the term unmothered and how shocked I was by it. More than anything I was shocked by the realization that I wasn’t alone in my suffering and there were other people out there like me, who walked unanchored in this life. I wanted to read more work by and for us. I’ve searched high and low for it. I’ve reached out to mentors and friends for suggestions and recommendations. What has this made me realize? That I want to, have to, will one day compile an anthology of work by and for us unmothered women. An anthology of poetry and fiction and essays. I will create this for womyn like me to see that they’re not alone. That we see them. That there is refuge. There is something about seeing yourself in literature that is so profound and comforting. This is also true for the unmothered who have been living with the mother myth for so long, who have been told “solo hay una madre,” who have seen people gasp and clutch their pearls when they dare to speak of their mothers honestly, to show that she is not what the myth said, she wasn’t loving, she wasn’t kind, she broke you in so many ways… And here we are picking up the pieces. Let me show you how this shard glints in the moonlight. Let me hold up that mirror, sis. Let me show you what solidarity looks like…

***

In his essay “Finding Abigail” Chris Abani write: “Ghosts leave their vestigial traces all over your work. Once they have decided to haunt you, that is. These ectoplasmic moments litter your work for years. They are both the veil and the revelation, the thing that leads you to the cusp of the transformational.”

***

To be clear, there is no pride in me saying I am unmothered. This is a wound I walk with. I just decided that there is no shame in it either. This is my truth. This is me coming to terms with my existence. This is me seeing you. This is me telling you that for far too long we have carried this, telling ourselves that there must be something wrong with us because how could a mother not want to mother and be tender to her child? Mother is earth. Mother is the world. And to say that mother is wrong or incapable is to say that the world is wrong and incapable, and how could that be? It can’t…right? Wrong. There is nothing wrong with you now as there was nothing wrong with you then, when you saw your mother sneer at you, hatred pulling at the corners of her eyes. This was her pain. This was her trauma. That is not yours. You, I, we are worthy of love. We are lovable. It has been a journey to see that and own it. And some days I still struggle to see it and be it. But today you saw me. You said, yes. You said, me too. This healing ain’t easy but you must name your ghosts before you can tackle them. Mother is not the enemy. She just is what the world made her. What are you going to do with that unmothered wound? Me? Imma make art and I’m gonna love and Imma mother in resistance to how I was mothered. This is what I have and it is everything.

***

Kintsugi (“golden joinery”) or kintsukuroi (“golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates the artifact’s unique history by emphasizing the fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing the artifact with new life. Kintsugi art dates back to the late 15th century, making it more than 500 years old. It is related to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which calls for finding beauty in the flawed or imperfect. The repair method was also born from the Japanese feeling of mottainai, which expresses regret when something is wasted. Source: My Modern Met

***

I started therapy a year ago. My first words to him were: “I am an unmothered woman.” I am still in therapy, still digging into that wound. What I’ve come to is this: there are people who have mothered me in ways my mother couldn’t and still can’t. I am grateful for those surrogate mothers every single day. I had my Millie and I had my brother and so many others who reminded me that I am loved and lovable. They taught me that I can be different. That I can use these scars to make something beautiful out of this life I was given, that I have made. And, no, I didn’t do it alone. And, yes, I can stop the cycle. And there is also the bittersweet realization that I wouldn’t be who I am nor would I be able to do what I do, see you and be with you and be the mother and writer and teacher and student that I am, had I been mothered. See, it’s true in many ways que solo hay una madre, and that’s why I am still wounded by this truth of being unmothered. So the decision is: be broken by it or let it be my fuel. I didn’t know that I made the decision when I left at 13 and didn’t look back. I didn’t have the language then but shit, that girl somehow knew she had to save her own life. I’ve been doing it ever since. Even when I fucked up. Even when I repeated the “love me, please love me” cycle I learned from my mother. I was then and now still trying to save my own life. I was trying to see the glint of the moon in these shards. Today I want to say thank you to that 13 year old Vanessa. You are my hero, nena. You be the illest.

***

I have family on my FB friends list who don’t get why I write what I write or why I do the work I do. I see you. You’ve had a different experience with my mother or you don’t want to look at your own wounds or you’d rather I stay silent because you’re more interested in protecting the family name and keeping these secrets that don’t protect any us. I get it in many ways. I still won’t be silent. Don’t ask me to be. I’ve thought this through. I know I may hurt some people in my journey to heal and free myself of these ghosts. Yes, I think it’s worth all of it. Why? Because the cycle stops here. It has to. Silence already killed my brother. There can be no more casualties.

***

A little a while ago, as if to remind me again, a post came across my FB. The article starts: “How did Marcia Butler, the distinguished oboist, save herself from a detached, withholding mother and a sexually abusive father?… But Marcia was also hooked on trying to understand her mother. ‘I cobbled together weekly rituals through which I might pretend to be close to her and imaginatively pierce her thick veneer,’ she writes.”

So many of us are broken by our wounds. Some of us have somehow found a way to overcome and be fed by them. This is one story. I am writing mine.

[Woolf] was shocked by her [mother’s] death, but then again Woolf believed it was her “shock-receiving capacity” that “makes me a writer.” She thought the productive thing to do with a shock was to “make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.” The Day Virginia Woolf Brought Her Mom Back to Life

Relentless Files — Week 61 (#52essays2017 Week 8) *An essay a week in 2017* Today I saw a video of a whale caught in a fishing net.