#New Grit: Art & Philly Now

[aestheticvoyage2024]

Day 273c: Sunday September 29, 2024 - "Coney Dog Day"

When in KC, its always Arthur Bryants, and when in Bellingham its the Oysters. St Louis has their Imos, and Milwaukee has its wine- but when in Detroit, for me, its not any deep crust and pepperonis - (though I am pretty equal opportunity on pie no matter where I am). for me, its the coney dogs. The finer things in life enjoyed by a city with Grit and today I took the "over" on Dave's odds on 4.5 coneys; I mean the guy is wearing a shirt that said "stay loose and sexy" - he could easily do 12 of these, extra mustard! Thats a baseball dude right there and one of my very favorites. He started the day off right, assisted with fork and knife to try and see if such a gritty plate could be eaten sophisticatedly. Breakfast at Leo's Coney Island in the Burbs Baby. - we're like Bourdain meets Guy, with life (or at least digestive track) hitting the fast lane in Motor City. Genius move Dave. Well played.

A fitting encore would be found from National Coney in Comerica, enjoyed with mustard beside the Tigers Carousel. "Could you imagine this place lit up at a night game in late October?" Primetime hopes and dreams found in that "coney sauce" - yea, yea, because when a town is down, the artists move in, and this my friend is art.... Its in the 'Snap' - just dont put any mustard on it. It already has everything it needs in the sauce. read: I am allergic to mustard, but enjoy chili on a koegels vienna like we're in the backroom of Silers learning what its like to eat like a man. This is Macho food. I explain, as we visit the Joe Louis fist, that Detroit has always represented toughness for me. I grew up on Bill Laimbeer, and Darren McCarty. If Clubber Lang ever embodied a city and its charm, it would look and smell and taste, a lot like Detroit. And that is my kind of town, in my DNA. - it romances me up under my blue collar, and here we are with a baseball team to match. Coney Dogs and Tigers Baseball. I was glad to help wire that in for Dave on his new ballpark day here in my home park....and it made me really want to do the same with him in Philly next year. The Finer things, the important things, the important places.

Later - after we'd blown the afternoon and evening in some deep getting-to-know-you conversation over long drawn out cigars, with some of the cooler cats in the D (I mean seriously, there were some dudes in here watching the NFL game - chains, well dressed, dudes - out of our league, exactly what you'd want from down here in the D - what an awesome idea Dave had!), we meandered our way to Lafeyette St and the beating-coney-heart of Motown. We reveled in the last Coney order of the day and finding Lafeyette open after it got so late on us on a Sunday night. "Soon we'll be asleep, lets live while we're awake!" Took our seat at the community table where we all learned through broken english that the open face burger was indeed a Coney with ground beef - brilliant!! Dave had covered the spread! Dad and I put down 2 more coneys of our own bringing our own totals to 4 for the day, and the total for the weekend to be more than enough. "Stay Loose and Sexy" I imagined advising my butt tomorrow morning. It was worth all of it. My only regret will be not eating one for breakfast like my good friend Dave - what a Champion!

I really enjoyed going back to Detroit and staying downtown - really grateful that Dave helped pull that together and wingman along with me. That Dad stayed and came along. I had a really great day - and baseball ended up being the least of it. So many stories, continuing to go down on pages yet to be imagined and I am blessed to have good ones to tell my stories with.

Dave would say he was here eating coneys today because he lost a bet. The way I'll always tell it, is that it was because he made the bet. Its all because we made the bet. I love that and the way the world works.

I understand now.

Song: Kenny Chesney - Back Where I Come From

Quote:

"Every time I visit Detroit, somebody asks me if I've had a good Coney yet.

Apparently, I never had a great one.

I finally got one.

I understand now."

~Anthony Bourdain

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

News/Announcements: Shoutouts to Patreon Patrons, Creatives Rebuild New York and Asian Art Initiative Philly 2023 was one of more embittering, infuriating and maddening years in recent memory for me. And it doesn’t help that with this line of work, it’s all too easy to battle and endure feelings of loneliness, despair and failure; to feel and believe that you’re an imposter. I’ve personally found it to be a brutal, unforgiving and wildly interesting life and career path that can’t — and will never — compare to most other jobs I’ve ever previously had. And I’ve had quite a few of them in my life!  The Joy of Violent Movement turns 14 in June. 14 years of doing anything is a very long time. It’s close to a quarter of my life. And for the blogosphere, that’s roughly somewhere between 10-139 lifetimes. Now, it hasn’t always been easy. There have been moments, where it felt impossible to manage this thing and to keep it going. To be frank, as the kids say “the math ain’t matching.” But for the most part, I can say this: I’ve felt and believed with every fiber of my being that I needed to be brave and bold, and go out on my own, because I didn’t believe that I’d really get a fair shot to do this work for anyone else.  I’ve said this for many years: I’ve long felt strong desire — and need — to create something similar to the wildly eclectic, dynamic and global sort of environment I grew up immersed in as a young Black boy in Corona, Queens. Unsurprisingly, whenever I remember I read my favorite music magazines and sites, I never saw the world I grew up in being covered or represented in any significant or meaningful way.  From my own experiences working in book publishing and as a music journalist, I’ve learn that as much as you can demand fairness, diversity and inclusion, it’s still ultimately up to the powers in control to see it, hear it, understand it, take it to heart and actually do something about it. So what do you do when those in power don’t get it — or don’t want to get it? Well, then it might be time to grit your teeth and try to do it your own damn self.  When I started this site back in 2020, I din’t — and just couldn’t have — imagine the majority of the things I’ve experienced, seen and covered throughout its history to have ever happened.  I’ve covered roughly 1,500 shows in NYC, with a handful of shows in Chicago, Baltimore and Philadelphia.  I’ve covered a dozen or more festivals, including traveling to Montreal for M for Montreal twice — in 2019 and 2022.  I’ve been a panelist at Mondo.NYC Festival, New Colossus Festival, and for a Music Managers Forum Canada Webinar speaking about PR, promotion and press for indie artists, giving my perspective as a indie blogger and journalist.  I made a cameo in a JOVM mainstay’s music video. It’s a very noticeable spot towards the end of the video.  I’ve photographed George Clinton, Patti LaBelle, Buddy Guy, Snoop Dogg, Blondie, Nile Rodgers, Roky Erickson, Philip Bailey, Blind Boys of Alabama, Big Bird, Elmo and a growing list of legendary and beloved artists and personalities, as well as this site’s growing list of mainstays.  What will JOVM’s 14th year hold? Generally speaking my hope is always for bigger and better for the site for y’all as readers. Earlier this month, I announced on this site that I was selected to be in the inaugural cohort for Asian Arts Initiative’s (AAI) Sound Type Music Writers Workshop in Philadelphia. So some explanation: Sound Type is AAI’s music festival designed to support and uplift new, courage music from the Asian Diaspora and beyond. The Music Writers Workshop will provide journalists and critics a series of workshops, gatherings and mentorships meant to help held build a sustainable ecosystem of BIPOC musicians and writers of criticism. The writers will attend and write about the concerts and other music programs at the festival — and it’ll be published after AAI’s 2024 season. I said this t...

[philamuseum]

Happy birthday to Roberto Lugo, who self-identifies as a ghetto potter, activist, culture-maker, rapper, spoken word poet, and educator. He blends his personal experiences of poverty, racism, and being a potter of color with historical ceramic forms, unapologetically inserting his own cultural perspective into a creative arena historically dominated by white makers. In updating ceramic discourse through representing people of color (activists, rappers, poets, politicians) as well as memorializing victims of police brutality and violence, Lugo’s work testifies to the triumphant and tragic lives contributing to history as it unfolds today. See two life-size works by Lugo on view in "New Grit: Art & Philly Now" through August 22. 

"Do you know how hard it is to get a black man through high school?," 2019, by Roberto Lugo (Courtesy of the artist and Wexler Gallery)

"Self Portrait as Street," 2019, by Roberto Lugo (Courtesy of the artist and Wexler Gallery)

[unfolded73]

This Graceful Path (18/19)

Summary: Emma has just moved in with Mary Margaret and started working as a deputy in the Storybrooke sheriff’s department when she meets Killian Jones, the town’s introverted harbormaster. When a prominent Storybrooke resident is found murdered, Emma tries to juggle solving the case with new friendships, parenthood, and romance. A Season 1 Cursed!Killian AU.

Rating: Explicit per CSBB guidelines (violence, sex); more of an M on unfolded73’s scale. The sex, when we get there, is not extremely graphic in nature. Same with the violence.

Content Warning: This fic contains two major character deaths, one canon and one not. (You’re already past them.) 

Total word count: ~ 75,000

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @j-philly-b for betaing this monstrosity. Thank you to @caprelloidea  for all of the read-throughs and cheerleading; not sure I could have written it without your excitement early on. Thank you to @teruel-a-witch for the original prompt on tumblr which sparked this fic. Thank you to @pompeiiablaze for the wonderful art which accompanies Chapters 3, 9, and 16. Thanks to the CSBB mods ( @sambethe in particular, who had to look at my check-ins) for your support and for enduring my neuroses.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 – AO3 Link

Chapter 18

The ribbons of black, swirling darkness in the sky over their heads could not be good, Emma thought.

“That’s the darkness,” Regina said, her eyes still trained on the sky. “Looks like there are some curses even true love can’t break.”

Killian put an arm on the railing and pulled himself to his feet. “What do you mean?” he asked. Emma reached for his hook, grasping it in her hand as she levered herself up to standing as well.

“I mean your kiss didn’t destroy the darkness, it released it. You’ve made everything unimaginably worse, but congratulations on your love,” Regina muttered sarcastically. As they watched, the swirling ribbons began to move in the direction of the center of town.

“Where is it going?”

“Toward the densest concentration of people.” Regina waved her hand, and Emma felt the almost-familiar tug of being transported by magic. When her vision cleared, she was looking around at the storefronts of downtown Storybrooke. The darkness, a pulsing, living mass, was swirling and breathing over their heads.

“If we don’t find a way to stop it, the darkness will destroy everyone we care about,” Regina continued. “It will eat and eat and eat, and when it’s consumed this town it will move on to the next.”

Emma felt Killian’s hook still gripped in her right hand, and she squeezed it as if he could feel the pressure. “So what do we do to stop it?”

“Emma!”

Turning, she saw Mary Margaret, David, and Henry running toward them.

“What are you doing, get him back inside!” Regina raged, her eyes flashing with terror.

David put a protective arm around Henry. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve managed to untether the darkness from Hook, and long story short, we’re all going to die,” Regina answered.

“Open the box, Regina,” Emma said. “You said if we could get the darkness untethered, we could draw it into Pandora’s box.”

“It’s risky,” Regina said, pulling the box out of her coat pocket. “I didn’t realize the darkness would be so… big.” Frustrated, Emma grabbed the box from Regina and started to press the button on top of it. “Be careful or you’ll get sucked in,” Regina grumbled, helping Emma to aim it at the sky. “Okay, now.”

Emma pressed the button. Nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” Killian said.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” said Regina. “It’s too far away, or too powerful. Or both.”

Other townspeople were starting to assemble, looking fearfully up at the swirling miasma in the sky. Belle and Ruby came out of the front door of the diner and joined the small gathering around Emma, Regina, and Killian in the street.

Killian drew the dagger out of his coat and held it up, and Emma could see the darkness convulse. “This will draw it closer,” Killian said.

“Yes, it will draw it right to you. It will consume you, and you’ll be lucky if all that happens is that you become the Dark One again!” Regina shouted over the rising wind as the darkness started to approach them.

“Killian, stop!” Emma cried.

“More likely it will carry you to the realm from which it originates,” Belle told him. “It may make you the Dark One again, yes, or it may destroy you utterly, wiping you out of existence.” Off everyone’s looks, she shrugged. “I’ve researched quite a lot about the darkness over the years. Rumple had an extensive library.”

“Will it save everyone else?” he asked, looking right at Belle.

She hesitated and then nodded. “It should. The darkness will be out of this realm, regardless.”

He raised his hand bearing the dagger higher. “Then I’m doing it.”

“Please, Killian, don’t,” Emma gasped, stepping in front of him. “We’ll find some other way.” One hand on his arm and the other pressed to his chest, she looked into his eyes. “I just got you back.”

“I know, love. And I’m sorry. But you have to let me do this. Let me die a hero. That’s the man I want you to remember, please.” He pressed his forehead against Emma’s. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she answered, her heart shattering for the second time that day.

Killian pushed her away, forcing her to stumble backward to maintain her balance. The darkness swirled around him, almost entirely enveloping his body. Emma felt her parents’ arms around her as she watched, horrified.

She was so focused on catching a glimpse of Killian within the ribbons of darkness closing around him that she didn’t notice Regina until the darkness started to drain away as if someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub. Looking around, Emma then saw Regina standing next to where Pandora’s box had been set on the ground, her hands splayed out and magic crackling from the tips of her fingers.

Emma pulled out of her parents’ embrace. “Regina, what are you doing?” she shouted over the rushing winds.

Regina’s arms shook with effort. “I can… use my magic… to channel it into the box.” And it looked like it was working; the darkness was starting to disappear inside the tiny ornate box, but then it pulsed as if it was fighting back. Regina’s teeth gritted as she redoubled her efforts.

“You’re not strong enough!” Emma shouted. The coils of darkness started to travel up the bolts of lightning that were springing from Regina’s fingers, wrapping around her wrists. “It’s going to kill you!”

“Mom, no!” Henry shouted from somewhere behind them.

Emma was never able to clearly explain what happened next. Without conscious thought, her own arms shot out — to help Regina, to ward off the darkness — she never knew for sure. White light came from her own hands, directed at the darkness, and she stared in mute shock as the light from her own fingers merged with Regina’s. The darkness retreated, no longer crawling up Regina’s arms. Emma’s arms shook, a feeling like an electric shock surging through them. The darkness got smaller and smaller as Pandora’s box continued to draw it in.

With an anticlimactic click, the box closed. The dagger, still clutched in Killian’s hand, dissolved to dust. Everything was silent.

“Mom!” Henry shouted, running up to them. “Moms! You both have magic. That is the coolest!”

Regina hugged Henry into her side. “Well, Miss Swan, this is a surprise.”

Emma reached out with a trembling hand and tousled Henry’s hair. “Not half as surprising for you as it is for me, believe me.”

“It’s because she’s the product of true love,” Mary Margaret said, her voice raspy with tears. “That was light magic.” Her parents approached, gathering Emma into their arms once more, this time with joy.

At the mention of true love, Emma’s eyes flicked over to Killian, where he still stood rooted in the street. He met her eyes briefly, then looked down at the small box which now contained all of the darkness that moments ago had been a part of him. Without another word, he turned and walked away. No one else noticed him leaving, and Emma’s voice caught in her throat as she started to call out. Maybe he needed some time to process everything. She knew she certainly did. Closing her mouth with a click of teeth, she hugged her parents tighter.

“You guys must be exhausted and starving,” Ruby said. “Why don’t you come into the diner and get some breakfast.”

“I need to find somewhere safe to store this,” Regina said, gingerly picking up Pandora’s box from the ground. “Perhaps I should lock it in my vault.” “Yeah, probably don’t want that box o’ evil falling into the wrong hands,” Emma remarked.

Regina’s lips quirked as if she almost found what Emma said to be funny.

“Thanks for your help, Emma,” she said before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

“Are we sure we can trust her with that?” David asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Emma answered. “All I know is, she risked her life to contain the darkness when she could have let Killian die, so I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

The group followed Ruby into Granny’s.

“No more Dark Ones, ever,” Mary Margaret said, shaking her head in amazement.

“You defeated the most powerful darkness in this or any realm,” David said, reaching out to pat Emma’s shoulder. “Pretty impressive work, Sheriff.”

Emma smiled faintly.

“So the spell Mom had been working on got the darkness out of Killian?” Henry asked.

Emma hesitated, then answered, “Yep. Worked like a charm.” She wasn’t ready to talk about what had really happened yet, not until she had a chance to turn the knowledge over in her mind first. Not until she had a chance to talk to Killian about it. For now, she held the memory of that kiss close to her heart.

“Well, I guess we have a lot to thank Regina for,” Mary Margaret said.

Emma looked at the pride on Henry’s face and nodded. Regardless of her little lie, that statement was true. “None of this would have happened without her help,” she said.

“Regina had a tough childhood, not… that that justifies the things she did,” Mary Margaret amended quickly before Emma could point out that her own childhood had been rough, and it hadn’t turned her into a villain. “Her mother Cora was a real piece of work: ruthless and cruel, and I think her father probably overcompensated by letting Regina get away with anything. So in some ways, he was no better a parent than Cora was. Watching her struggle to be good the last couple of months, I honestly believe that she can redeem herself. Today was just the start.”

“My wife, the eternal optimist,” David said, kissing Mary Margaret on the cheek.

Ruby brought over pancakes and eggs and bacon for everyone, with an unending supply of fresh coffee for the adults. “Granny says it’s on the house, seeing as how you saved the town from destruction,” she said. In between her trips to various tables, Ruby spent all of her spare time talking to Belle at the counter. The way they smiled at each other made something echo in Emma’s heart in bittersweet empathy.

He said he loves me, Emma thought, so why did he walk away?

Mary Margaret looked at her watch and jumped. “It’s time for me and Henry to get to school,” she said. “Are you going to be okay, Emma?”

Emma looked down at her mostly uneaten pancakes. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t get much sleep.”

Mary Margaret and Henry left the diner, while David regarded her across the booth. “I can take the first shift at the station and let you get some rest. Are you sure that’s all that’s wrong?”

Emma had to blink away tears; she felt so damned fragile right now, like her heart was a bird beating at her chest to try to escape its prison and fly away. “I’ll be fine, it was just a draining morning.”

Back at the loft, she spent close to an hour tossing and turning in her bed, replaying the events of the past few hours. The way the darkness had tried to kill her, and how Killian had fought it off, showing a strength that she bet he didn’t realize he possessed. The way he’d tried to get her to leave him for her own safety. The way he’d tried to sacrifice his life to save the town. The way he’d cried. The kiss they’d shared, and what that meant.

What did true love mean, anyway?

Finally giving up on sleep, Emma threw off the covers and left the apartment.

She gripped the steering wheel of the Bug in sweaty palms as she pulled up in front of Killian’s beachfront apartment. When there was no answer to her knock, she tried to the knob and found it unlocked.

Killian was sitting in a chair, facing the window that looked out over the ocean. He took a sip from a glass of rum, not looking up as she approached.

“The water calming you? Or the rum?” she asked.

“Both.”

“You aren’t the Dark One anymore, you know; you don’t have to hide from me.” His shoulders rose and fell once. “What?” she asked.

“I may not be the Dark One, but I’m still a pirate who spent hundreds of years on a quest for revenge. I’ve committed horrors you can’t imagine, Emma. Or perhaps you can; you saw what I did to Rumpelstiltskin. I’m a killer.”

Emma walked over to the window, leaning against it to look out at the ocean. The day was warm, but the wind off of the water made the glass feel cold to her fingers. “You were out of your mind when you did that, thanks to my magical curse-weakening abilities.”

“Perhaps, but trust me, the man capable of that murder is inside me. He’s the man who put on this hook all those years ago and swore never to rest until he’d had his vengeance for Milah’s death.”

Emma turned around to face him. “Yeah, but Rumple… Gold… whatever, was kind of the worst. And by killing him, and then defeating the darkness, you banished this big mega-evil from the world. Seems like a good deed, on balance.”

“I’m also the man who once killed a man on board my ship for stealing the captain’s wine.” He took another drink from his glass, grimacing.

“Okay, that sounds bad. You were a bad guy. I get it. But you’re also the man who lent Henry books, and cooked me dinner, and literally saved the whole town from destruction, like, two hours ago. If Regina can redeem herself, with all the evil stuff that she did, then you certainly can.”

He looked at her in amazement. “That’s an awful lot of faith you’re putting in me, Swan.”

“I know.” She shrugged. “But apparently we’ve got this true love thing between us, so—”

Killian laughed humorlessly and stood up, stepping into the kitchen and setting his glass down. “I’m not worthy of that. Not from you.”

“I don’t think that’s for you to decide,” Emma said as she followed him.

“Look at yourself, Emma. You’re the bloody Savior! You credit me with saving the town, but it was you, you and Regina, who put the darkness into that box. You, and the way you looked with that pure, white magic coming out of your hands…” He trailed off, lost in the memory of it. “You’re an angel, and I’m like the demon sent to drag you down into hell alongside me. I won’t do it. I won’t sully you that way.”

“Oh my God, you’re gonna have to get over yourself, Killian. We aren’t… we’re just people. We’re two flawed people who’ve made mistakes, and okay, it sounds like you’ve made a lot of them, but you’ve also lived a lot longer than I have, so… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I’m really not cut out for these big, dramatic speeches.”

He smiled. “I thought you were doing all right.”

The abrupt mood shift made Emma laugh. She noticed for the first time that he was freshly showered, his hair damp and curling around his ears. Little tufts of hair stuck out at his neck, and something about it made her want to sink her teeth into him. She drifted closer, suddenly craving the smell of his skin, the way he would be warm and clean and male.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

He seemed to thaw a little more at that, his eyes drifting down to her lips. “I’ve missed you too, love. More than you can imagine.”

Taking one more step, Emma closed the distance between their bodies. Just as she had earlier that morning, she put a hand over his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing. He held himself very still, absorbing her touch.

“Emma, the things I said to you before, about how you were just a way to pass the time, that was the darkness trying to drive you away. It was a lie.”

“I know,” she said, but she was grateful for the confirmation.

“But even so, I don’t think I’m any good for you.”

A memory flashed in Emma’s mind, of telling Killian that she loved him when she thought he was about to die. Now, standing in this room, she couldn’t get the words to come out of her mouth. It was too terrifying, even having seen the proof of her feelings in the breaking of the Dark One’s curse. Instead of responding with words, she responded with actions, closing the distance and brushing her lips ever so gently against his.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of whether you’re good for me,” she whispered.

With a helpless moan choked off in the back of his throat, Killian swept in for another kiss. Both of them inhaled deeply at the same time as they wrapped their arms around each other, holding on tight as their open mouths fused together.

When they finally broke apart, it wasn’t to go far; Killian rested his forehead against hers, breathing into her mouth. Then he swayed, almost as if he was close to losing consciousness.

“Whoa,” Emma said, catching his arm. “I didn’t know I was so swoon-worthy.”

He chuckled weakly. “You are, but I’m… suddenly exhausted.”

“God, Killian, when was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”

“I don’t know. Months ago, I suppose.”

“Come on,” she grabbed his hand and pulled, tugging him toward the bedroom. “Let’s get you into bed before you collapse. I don’t wanna have to try to drag you across the floor of your apartment.”

He unfastened his hook, setting it on the nightstand, and dropped onto the bed, fully clothed, eyes already closing. “Will you stay for a bit?” he asked, his voice full of tenderness and vulnerability.

Emma was already pulling her boots off, and she grinned. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

He already looked to be half-asleep. “Stay forever,” he murmured. And then began to snore softly.

Taking off her jeans, she suppressed a giggle at his sleep-talking. It was certainly more pleasant than the last time he’d talked in his sleep in her presence. Getting under the covers next to where Killian had fallen on top of them, she curled up against his body and fell asleep within minutes.

~*~

Emma awoke, completely disoriented about where she was. She stared at the 2:27 on Killian’s digital alarm clock for several seconds, trying to figure out whether it was a.m. or p.m. The daylight outside finally clued her into the fact that it was p.m., and that she had slept for almost five hours. Turning to look at Killian, she saw that he was still out, in exactly the same position he’d fallen asleep in. Given what he’d been through, she wouldn’t be surprised if he slept for the rest of the day and all night.

Realizing that she needed to get to the sheriff’s station, Emma sent a quick text to Killian’s phone, telling him where she’d be if he woke up. Giving his sleeping form one last look, she silently let herself out of his apartment.

Emma made it through the rest of her work day in a haze, the sluggishness brought on by sleeping in the middle of the day weighing on her limbs like extra gravity. Her father took care of most everything, leaving her to sit at her desk and slowly work her way through a little bit of paperwork.

After work, she offered to drive Henry over to Regina’s, since it was Friday and the beginning of her week with him. Trudging up the walkway behind him, she almost tripped on a tiny crack in the sidewalk. She still felt like she could sleep for a year.

Regina answered the door to Henry with a warm smile, giving Emma an appraising glance as he trotted inside the house. “You look terrible.”

“Yeah, midday naps don’t really agree with me.” Emma stuck her hands in her back pockets. “Look, thanks again for this morning. If you hadn’t been there… what?” Regina was continuing to scrutinize her, and it was unnerving.

“Why didn’t you tell your family about the kiss?” Regina asked. “Snow called me an hour ago, also to thank me, but among the things she was thanking me for was the spell that you told her had successfully untethered Hook from the darkness.”

Emma shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s kind of personal, and I don’t know what it means, and I don’t think I can deal with the added pressure of people knowing about it. They’ll have all these expectations.”

Regina raised an eyebrow. “Suit yourself. More importantly, what are you going to do about your magic?”

“What do you mean? I have to do something?” Emma still sort of couldn’t believe that had happened. The whole thing felt like a dream.

“You’re powerful, Emma; I felt it. You have an enormous amount of latent magical ability. Don’t you want to learn to use it?”

“How do I do that?”

“Well, I could teach you.”

“Oh. You would do that? Why?” She couldn’t help but be skeptical of Regina’s motives.

“Selfishly, it would be useful to have another magic user around, in case I ever need help with a more powerful spell. But for your sake, going untrained could be dangerous. You acted on instinct today, and you generated enough power to literally kill someone. Do you really want to have that kind of power inside you with no idea how to use it? Honestly, you’re like a toddler with a loaded gun.”

“Thanks,” Emma muttered sarcastically.

“Sorry, but you are. Also, there are things you can do with light magic that I would never be able to do with my dark magic. Like heal someone. It would be idiotic not to learn to use that, especially when you consider our son’s penchant for running into traffic.”

Our son. Emma had never heard Regina use that phrase before, and although she tried not to show it, she was enormously moved by it. “Okay, you can train me. When do you want to start?”

Chapter 19

[peach-bottom]

Peach Bottom - Chapter Five

<-ch4-  -ch6->

The Schuylkill river ran directly through what had once been central Philadelphia, before the war, before the bombs, before the river swelled up. Before towers connected by high-rises, accessed primarily by hovercraft, so distant from the perils of the ground that the rising water was a crystaline dream. These days, the river was slightly South of what was considered ‘Center City’ by official standards.

Despite the fact that it was deemed a flood zone and the homes there weren’t registered, there were homes - some folks squatted in the partially demolished buildings, ones that used to be considered ‘skyscrapers’ before the scraper communities. The old Peco building was a popular squat, and the barren, partially collapsed art museum was still a grounder Philly tourist attraction, in its own way.

The primary attraction, however, was the house boats. Docks had been shoddily created and connected, homes that could survive the encroaching flood flocked together and pinned down. This is what was called the Schuylkill, maybe even more than the river.

There were many ways down into that shifting maze of color and bleached wood, but to Martha, there was a familiar rope ladder beside an ancient, crumbled bridge, down into the quickly filling concrete revine, and then the docks, solid and worn beneath her sandals. All of this connected by more ropes, the whole thing moving just slightly, dizzily, around her.

This was where Martha had been born.

That baby’s parents hadn’t named her ‘Martha,’ though, and as she stood before her aunt’s flaking pepto-bismo pink houseboat, this is what she was thinking of. Her name - her real name, Martha, perfectly plucked from a proud branch of her family tree and affixed where it had always been meant to sit, before her: Martha.

It was important. She didn’t even care much, most of the time - let the waitress say ‘sir,’ and greeted an ‘oops, I mean miss’ as if it was some welcome kiss smacked wetly on her cheek, just a plucky forgiving trans girl, friend of the cis! But her name. Her name.

Martha Ortiz the first had been a soldier, gone awol, gone activist, gone prisoner, gone writer. She was a legend, and had had soft warm hands and flowers on her houseboat.

She’d died when Martha was four, but she liked to think-

Martha took a deep breath and knocked. No point delaying it.

There was a shuffle from inside, a dainty cough, and then silence. Martha could feel an eye peeking at her through the window, but she didn’t glance over until the silence stretched long enough that she began to wonder, the thought sudden and prickly, if she was going to be let in at all. Then there was a click and the door swung open and her aunt Claudia was there, arms open. “Mi amor! Bienvenio, oh, I was so worried!”

The words came over Martha like a balm she hadn’t realized she’d been needing, the familiar Spanish placing her solidly in the world again, where things made the most sense and she could understand. She squeezed Auntie Claudia tightly, trying not to cry as she was hustled in and had a cup of tea handed to her before she could get so much as a ‘thank-you’ out.

Martha took a deep breath. The air here smelled musty, incense, and she could see a candle lit at Claudia’s alter with - and this went over Martha in a wave - a picture of her.

But.

There must’ve been a thousand pictures taken between then and now, and Martha knew her aunt had access - her parents sent out personalized cards for every holiday - a whole slew, just for her Quinceañera a few years back. But this picture was old. This picture was from before.

Martha looked away, quickly. She told herself the intentions were pure, even though they weren’t. She told herself it would be fine, and sat down on one of the squat cushy chairs her aunt had crammed into a corner of the only real room in the boat. A familiar collection of small figurines perched crowded on a side table, most all religious, beyond a one - a tiny, cheap looking porcelain boy with a soccer ball. Martha had gotten it for her as a child - because she liked these fragile little dolls, just like mama, and because it was a soccer boy! A soccer boy, like Martha!

Martha picked it up. It felt cool in her hand. She had an odd urge to put it in her mouth.

“Oh chico, you must tell me everything! Have you contacted your parents yet?”

Martha put down the figurine. “I - not yet, no, I was actually wondering if I could-”

“Ah yes, of course, of course! I got an email from your mother earlier, chico, she is so worried, I’ll get the tablet-”

“And Auntie?”

“Yes, love?”

“I don’t mean to - I mean. Uh, just. Can you please stop calling me chico?”

There was a hefty silence. Auntie Claudia was in her room, supposedly getting the laptop. She was barely five feet from Martha in the tiny houseboat, but when she responded, Martha couldn’t hear her - just an odd mumble.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, love, here, take the computer. And - you are staying here, of course. Until your parents get home”

Martha could’ve cried. “Thank-you, Auntie,” she mumbled, and  took the computer, grateful to her core, and quickly logged in. She had thirteen emails, almost all from her parents. They were on their way, they said, but travel into Philadelphia had become difficult. She responded to the last email, and then typed out a quick note to Tye, too, while she had access. Auntie Claudia, of course, had laid out around three meals worth of snacks at this point, and Martha devoured them hungrily - she hadn’t realized how starving she was.

“How did you get out, my love?” Auntie Claudia was still talking. She’d ranted nonstop about Martha’s parents gall, leaving their son alone like that, and Martha had gritted her teeth and typed through it, mumbling responses when necessary.

“I didn’t. They arrested me for a while, but a friend… well, she paid my bail.”

This got a response. Silent, but deadly. Martha quickly added, “I’m paying her back, though! I just needed to borrow money, it’s not - I mean, I’m paying her back.”

“Spanish, please, chico.” Auntie Claudia said.

Martha bit down hard on her tongue. It didn’t work, though. “Please stop calling me that.”

Claudia lowered her teacup from where she’d been holding it before her mouth, hiding her words like a secret - an intimate, funny kind of habit Martha recognized from her mother, Claudia’s sister.

“You would really punish your Auntie for using pet names?”

“That’s not what-”

“Carlos, your parents would be ashamed-”

“That’s not my name!”

Silence on the boat. Claudia took another sip, shaking her head like Martha was being childish again, telling a story rather than the truth. “I believe I remember your baptism better than you, Carlos. I know what name you were given before G-d.”

“Mama had a new ceremony for me! She knows my name, she-”

Auntie Claudia slammed her tea down; the cup cracked, the liquid spilled, she she hissed like a snake, lifting her hand, which was bloody.

Martha leapt upwards, dashing over to the sink to grab a towel - she wet it with warm water before returning to her aunt and, after a hesitant moment, handing her the cloth rather than cleaning the wound herself, as she might’ve done in another life.

Her aunt didn’t take the cloth, though. She was staring at her hand. Martha swallowed.

When she finally spoke, the words were hard, and plain. “In your own home, or in your mother’s home, you may live whatever sin you like. I worry for you, but I have no control. But in my house, Carlos, you will live as our heavenly father sees you,” she reached out suddenly and clutched at Martha’s hand, her eyes fever-bright, “may it give you the chance to atone-”

Martha jerked her hand back. She grabbed her things, not looking at her Aunt, who was quiet. Until she wasn’t, of course, because she couldn’t be - just as Martha was about to make her exit, she broke the silence with a low voice, dangerous in its meekness, its victimhood.

“You were always so… so manipulative. As a little boy. Turning on the doe eyes anytime someone might give you something, always managing to be the only one out of trouble, though I know, I know you lead my little ones astray every now and then. Never any malice, but - it was a game, you liked it, to play this game. Is that-”

Martha could hear each thumpthumpthump of her heart in her ears, steady as a drum. Could feel the hot bile of anger rising in her throat, her face was burning with rage-

“Don’t you dare-”

“Is that what this is? A way to get closer to girls? Break into their secret world, their bathrooms? I know you like the girls; remember I’m the one that caught you watching that girlie movie, I know you’re not a homosexual, even if you think this is-”

“I am, though! I am! I’m a fucking dyke, auntie, I -”

“You will not swear in my house! You will not sin in my house! You will-”

SLAM.

Martha stared down at the tiny porcelain figurine, cracked on the floor, a dent in the wall beside her aunt’s head. The tiny boy head had been decapitated from the tiny boy body. She looked at her hand. “I didn’t mean -” she started to lie, but when she met her aunt’s eyes, she gave up and allowed herself to burst into tears.

Her aunt picked up the pieces of the little figurine. She looked uncomfortable, but Martha knew she couldn’t ignore crying - never could.

“Oh, Carlos. Fetch me the glue. All he needs is glue - just a little fix. Chico, you must watch your temper,” and then she looked up, a smile like she’d won a tiny victory, “All the men in our family have this passion, though. That is what we’ve always said. You must figure out a way to use it righteously! Be a good man, like your grandfath- Carlos! Carlos, come back!”

On her way out, Martha blew out the candle. She didn’t touch the picture, though. It was from when she was nine - she was in her soccer uniform, a ball under one skinny arm and a toothy grin on her face. She might even have liked it, before this moment. It was still her, after all. It was a picture of a little girl doing something she loved. But it had been poisoned, now.

Martha’s self-righteous rage lasted until she’d climbed the ladder back onto solid ground again. Then, with the earth not moving beneath her, what had happened hit her full force.

She had nowhere to go.

Martha wandered a bit, but it was getting dark, and soon she found an old, overgrown park that felt like safety, felt like faeries, and Martha loved faeries. She curled up on a bench with her backpack under her head and cried, softly, until the shouts and sounds of a group of drunk men roused her and scared her into leaving, creeping by them not creepily enough, jeers and laughter following her down the street, though thankfully, they didn’t follow far.

The AedosDynamic tower caught her eye as she turned down a small alley. It was a shining beacon in the dark danger of the old city. She wished she could call it ugly, but none of the towers were - they were pillars of pure light, vegetation bursting from parks up high, the whole thing fractured in some kind of important architecture way that made it disappear sometimes, turn into just the sky behind it on a rainy day, make that bursting garden top look like it was floating.

There were stairs up to the first floor of the tower. And then, buttons besides.

Martha did the only thing she could think to do. The thing Tye had told her to do - and Tye was smart. Smart and hard and loving in a way Martha couldn’t be. So she could only trust Tye, really.

Lemon answered on the second ring. “Helllooooooo?” she said as her image clipped into view on the display screen. Her eyes widened at Martha, and Martha opened her mouth, ready to engage her prepared speech, but Lemon got in there before she could, “Sweet! I was wondering when you’d turn up, girlie. Come in - 744B. I ordered takeout.”

There was a long drone as the door unlocked, and Martha quickly ducked under the motion sensor and passed through.

A wave of air conditioning smacked her in the face.

She’d forgotten what that felt like.

Ignoring the odd looks from the receptionists, Martha made her way across the lobby, which was so posh it hurt to look at - plants everywhere, a fountain, a chandelier, dripping with crystals. Martha felt like a plain stone in a box of diamonds.

Lemon met her at the elevator though, cheesesteak in hand, and to Martha’s shock, she handed it over immediately. “I ate the other one. One and a half. Whatever. Anyway, sorry. You were late.”

Martha laughed, despite herself, and took the cheesesteak. It was heavy with grease and loaded down with fried onions and mushrooms. It felt like the first real thing in this sterile world of wealth. “I won’t stay long. I mean, my parents are-”

Lemon grabbed her bag for her and then strutted down the hallway on a mission, calling back, “Well then it’s time to get the party started! We gotta have some fun before they get here. Come on in, then, babe. Bet you can’t beat my deaths-per-game count in Overwatch.”

“What’s Overwatch?”

“Oh man, I am gonna love showing you, come on come on, let’s do this!”

Martha followed, an odd hope alighting in her chest.

She could do this. Alright. She could totally do this.

<-ch4-  -ch6->

[daggerzine]

Back down to earth...Photon Band’s head time traveler Art DiFuria opens up.

Art DiFuria first came in to my radar in the mid-80’s when I saw him in a band called Tons of Nuns on stage at the Kennel Club in Philly. He seemed kinda like me, a “normal” punk (no mohawk, leather jacket, etc.) but I noticed his choice of footwear was cool. He had slippers on which I thought was about the most punk rock thing you could do (I wore mine in public a few times after that and got some odd looks/comments). A few years later I saw him in Uptown Bones and remember him being the same guy in Tons of Nuns and made a mental note. Fast forward a few years (early-mid 90’s by now) and I had left  the east coast for the west coast and began hearing rumblings of a band called Photon Band who began releasing singles in 1995-ish (yes the Lilys, who Art played with for a time, have a record called Eccsame the Photon Band and as far as who inspired who well……read below).

 The stuff I’d heard by Photon Band seemed to be a real inspired stew of whatever was/is in Art’s head at the time. A wiggy blend of psychedelic rawk with illegal u-turns all over the place. The stuff is good. On paper it could seem like the workings of a shot-out guy whose brain was addled by Clorox and Pop Rocks who lives in his mother’s basement and jams for jams sake, but no. These are honest to goodness songs by a truly talented songwriter and regarding Photon Band there’s more to come (again see below).

 I shot Art some questions and he was more than happy to spill the beans on his childhood as well as what Philly band should’ve made it (also what was more hardcore, the Ardmore, PA or Exton, PA scene). Thanks so much to Art for really making this interview come to life (or “Pop!” as the kids say). Take it away….

 photo by Jonathan Valania 

Where did you grow up? Was it in the city of Philly or a suburb?

 I grew up in a place that was basically “nowhere,” culturally speaking: Exton PA. Its redeeming quality was that there were endless woods and creeks out there. It wasn’t as developed as it is now and so you could get on your bike and just ride or walk forever, and just think and dream.

 Did your parents or any siblings influence musically?

 There was always all kinds of music playing in our house. We had this gigantic TV / Stereo system with this posh turntable and huge speakers. On Sundays, after church and before the Eagles games, my dad played a lot of Perry Como, Al Martino, and of course Sinatra. Hearing those big, fluffy recordings on a deluxe stereo was mesmerizing, even though the music wasn’t really my thing. My mom could play the piano, too. We had one in our house (which is now in my house!). But my sisters were the biggest influence. They would eventually take over the stereo from my dad by whining about the old goombah music and they’d put some Beatles on. Of course, in my little kid mind I was like “holy SHIT, what is THIS?” That was all a huge influence. My sisters are older than me by 7 and 10 years and they could both play guitar. The one closer to me in age majored in music in college, so she was always talking about music all through junior high and high school. It was the early 70s, so it was a very folky thing that she and my oldest sister were into, that whole heaviness-with-an-acoustic-guitar scene was very big then. And our local Catholic church, trying to be hip, dispensed with the organ and had a “guitar group” play the hymns. 10 or so teenagers looking wholesome on the outside but seeming a bit fiendish below the surface, as all teenagers do, was really cool to me. I was really little and hated going to church already, but I did like the sound of the guitars being tuned as we walked into the church. In my little kid mind I associated the big crucifix over the altar with the sound of guitars being tuned. It seemed ominous, like there was something profound about to happen. My sisters also had the first three Monkees albums, which made an indelible impression on me.

photo by Mary Garito 

Do you remember the first record you ever bought with your own money?

 Well, my folks were giving me records from an early age. They gave me “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” in 1973 and I had my own little turntable to play it on. I wore the grooves out on “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce and also the Raspberry’s “Go All the Way.” My first purchase, I remember very well because it pissed off my dad. I bought “The Who Sing My Generation.” I had become obsessed with them because I had seen footage of Townshend smashing his guitar and Keith Moon going nuts on drums. I had just seen the commercial for The Kids are Alright on TV on a Friday night and was supposed to do some yard work for my dad on that Saturday. He gave me the money in advance of the work because he had some errands to run. Then my sister invited me to go to the mall with her. Of course, I ditched the yard work and went to the mall and spent the money without having done any of the work. When I came back with the album my dad was waiting for me. Man, the tongue lashing that followed was intense.

 Where was your first punk show? Love Hall? Somewhere else? Who played and what year was it?

 We could get to Philly pretty easily on the R5 and by the early 80s, we were taking it upon ourselves to do so. The “other” record store at the mall, called Grand Records, was way better than the establishment one, Sam Goody’s. Grand Records actually carried the SST catalog, which was my entre into punk. I had Land Speed Record and The Punch Line because of that store. You could buy buttons and patches there that said “The Jam!” and “Fuck Art, Let’s Dance!” on them. They also had a little bulletin board with show posters and flyers. It was mostly new wave stuff, all pink and day-glo, about shows at the old Latin Casino, which had been renamed Emerald City. But one day, there was this black and white “xerox” flyer for a show at Love Hall with Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen. I had to go! It said that Love Hall was on Broad and South so I knew I could find it easily. I went by myself. I was scared shitless, this 16 year old kid with a new buzz cut so as to not look lame, wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, and combat boots just purchased from I.Goldberg’s. I scuffed them up on purpose right after I got them so they didn’t look too shiny and new. I was a LONG way from home. Once I got there, I didn’t talk to anyone. I just made myself invisible and watched the whole thing happen. Those bands were way better than I could have ever imagined. I left that show with a whole new concept of music. I think I went to see the Born Again era Black Sabbath that same fall and there was no contest in my mind as to which show was the real thing. But there was nobody at my high school that could relate to my Love Hall experience. They were all either wishing John Bonham hadn’t died, or to decide whether or not Rush’s Signals was a betrayal or a master stroke. Those are valid pursuits, too, and I didn’t become a punk overnight, or ever, really; becoming one narrow thing seemed dumb to me. But I did become a huge fan of it because of those bands.

photo by Jonathan Valania

I first saw you in Tons of Nuns in 1985 or maybe ’86. Was that your first band?

 I had played in cover bands in Exton, which is how I learned to play “live” instead of just playing along with records at home. But yep, the Nuns was my first real band. It started as Bernadette Rappold on guitar, Brian Sussman on drums, and Mike Logan (aka Spayce Mann, who currently plays with Brother JT) on bass. Then Mike decided to bail and Bern switched to bass. That sort of became our identity, that trio. And that was how I learned to play guitar in a trio: trust the other two.  

 What was next, Uptown Bones? How long did that last?

Between Tons of Nuns and Uptown Bones, there was Holy Smoke. Tons of Nuns started to feel too kooky, too gimmicky. I could’ve stayed in it and slowly changed that, but I had my head up my ass. It started to feel like it wasn’t growing, but that’s probably because I wasn’t willing to give it a chance. So I told those guys I wanted out. They stayed together and got Bill Rudolph to play guitar. He later founded Rotgut and then Rear Admiral. They also got a really great guitarist named Dan who could play circles around me. Brian and Bern turned the Nuns into a much better band after I left. I think my leaving gave them a burst of energy, like “we’ll show him!!” And it was probably a lot more fun for them without this pain-in-the-ass brooding perfectionist around who wanted things to be more serious. When Mike Logan heard I left the Nuns, he wanted to jam again. We were very tight buds and quickly got songs together with a drummer named Jay Jurina who was also in Sky Grits. We felt like Holy Smoke had no limits; we used to do long instrumentals, ballads, really fast stuff, heavy Sabbath sounding tunes, you name it. And we had a lot of gigs in a really short time during the spring and summer of 87. But then Mike left Philly without really explaining why. Jay and I tried to keep the band going, but I was really thrown for a loop. I had lost my best friend and didn’t know why. I sort of blamed myself and thought, “well, all I’ve really done is start this kooky band that got better after I left, and then started this other one that wasn’t good enough for its co-founder. I must suck at this.” So I decided to lay low and not be a front man. I went to see the Uptown Bones whenever they played. They were guys who came to Temple a year after I did. They were a spunky little band with super spazzy energy. Plus, they were tight with Eric DeJesus (the Raw Pogo on the Scaffold / Easy Pop Art guy, and eventual best man at my wedding) who had been showing me his poems and stories which were so fucking excellent I couldn’t believe it. They were, in my mind, a “real rock band.” And I could see right away that Rich Fravel, the singer, was probably the best front man I’d ever get to play with. We all sort of spoke a language that nobody else understood. We were like a little scene of our own, wherever we went. When their original bassist Scooter drifted away from them, I stepped in. We started to click right away. That momentum lasted from the spring of ’88 through to our last tour in France in the summer of 93; two full length albums, three tours, and a bunch of singles. But then, we grew tired of each other and could see that it wasn’t going anywhere. We opted out.

 Tell me about your involvement in the Lilys? Had you known Kurt previously? How long was your tenure in the band?

 I had been messing around with this totally spontaneous band called the Psychic Enemies. It was me, Wayne Hamilton from Suffacox, and Simon Nagle, future Photon Band drummer. We purposefully avoided writing songs. We would jam for hours and never repeat a riff. We’d show up at gigs and do the same. But after awhile, we just couldn’t sustain it. Somehow, all that freedom felt like a dead end. So I was sort of putting word out there that I was looking for a gig. I had my hand inside a turkey on Thanksgiving eve 1993 and Bryan Dilworth and Mike Lenert came up the stairs of my warehouse and said “you’re playing in the Lilys.” I had heard In the Presence of Nothing and Amazing Letdowns and was pretty impressed. And I loved Bryan and Mike. So I said “yes.” We had a gig in DC like a week later. I didn’t know Kurt when I joined, but we instantly got along and had all sorts of things to talk about. I thought the Lilys were set up to do a lot more than we did. We had three songwriters and access to two cool recording studios in Philadelphia because I had my own 16-track and the drummer, Dave Frank (who had been in the Wishniaks) was co-owner of Studio Red with Adam Lasus. I figured we would just be recording our White Album for the next 15 years or so, you know? At least, that’s how I wanted it to work. But it wasn’t my band, and so I respected Kurt’s way of doing it which was to stay true to whatever his inner ear told him to do with his songs. That usually didn’t involve us.

 from a You Tube video posted by dstarfreestar 

Am I missing any bands in between? Did you do a stint in Robert Hazard & the Heroes that we don’t know about?

Ha...never hung with Hazard or the A’s or the Hooters, heaven help us. But I did play with a lot of other bands. I can’t remember them all, but here are the main things: I played with Baby Flamehead, which was such a breath of fresh air for me, such a pleasure. From about 94 to 2010 when I moved to Savannah, I also played either guitar, bass, or drums in a bunch of John Terlesky’s projects: Suffacox, Vibrolux, Brother JT, and even late period Original Sins. In the mid-2000s, I also played drums for We Have Heaven (Eric DeJesus’s band) and Ex Reverie. The latter is Gillian Chadwick’s prog vehicle. I loved those drumming gigs so much. I was sad to have to bow out of Ex Rev especially, because I had too many other commitments.

 How/when did the Photon Band come about? Did you have a vision for it?

Even though I pulled back from being “the guy” after Tons of Nuns, I couldn’t stop the flow of ideas for songs. It seemed to be on the increase. Sometimes, they were so complete when I’d hear them in my head or dream them that I thought it was a cosmic phenomenon of some sort, like there are songs flying around out there in the ether and they choose people. And for some reason I was receiving more and more songs. I had been amassing cassette tapes of song ideas. At the same time, I’m really into astrology because my mother had been into that when I was a kid and it fascinated me. So I picked up this astrology magazine and there was an article in it by a woman named Barbara Hand Clow stating that since around 1962, the earth had gradually been entering into this band of photonic matter that would ultimately encompass our world and blow consciousness wide open. It made sense to me because I felt like that was happening to me. “Photon Band!” I thought. “If I ever start a band, that’s what I’ll call it and anything I write or record will go under that name. Its identity will be that it encompasses all the variety that comes out of me.” At the time, I was in the Lilys and my hopes for that band to become a vehicle for me and Mike Lenert as well as Kurt was dissipating. I left in late ’94 and told Kurt I wanted to start my own band under the name Photon Band. It was an amicable parting. He named the next Lilys album to honor that idea. That Lilys album, Eccsam the Photon Band and the first Photon Band single, “Sitting on the Sunn” came out at around the same time.  

 I know in the Photon Band you play all or most of the instruments. Did you learn all of those as a kid or pick them up along the way?

 I taught myself guitar. Bass wasn’t hard to do after that. And drums came together just by sneaking behind the kit before practice, during break, and after practice and getting a few minutes in here and there. I love playing drums but man, if I don’t keep practicing, the next time I sit down, the drop off is more severe than it is with either bass or guitar. And whether it’s live or in the studio, I really need Jeff Tanner there. His ear understands where I’m trying to go better than anyone I know. His approach to playing bass is really important. And when we were a four piece, what he was doing on guitar was starting to take on its own identity that was re-shaping the songs. As far as drumming goes, Simon, Brendan, and Patrick have done all the best drum parts on our records. It’s only very occasionally that whatever I’m able to do on drums has worked better than them. I’m lucky to have had those guys as willing foils.

 photo by Lisa Schaffer

Is Photon Band still going? If so what’s next?

 Yes. Since I moved to Savannah, I still record, and we still gig, though much less frequently. Pure Photonic Matter Volume 1 came out in 2013 and Songs of Rapture and Hatred came out in 2015, thanks to Nod and Smile Records. We did release shows for both and a few gigs before and after. In fact, from the fall of 15 through the fall of 16, we played three gigs. I think those three gigs were the most we played over a single year’s span since I left for Savannah. But then I had to finish this book I’ve been working on for quite some time. The publisher was getting antsy, so I had to put the music aside. The next thing will be two albums; one will be the next installment in the Pure Photonic Matter series. Another, probably done around the same time, will be an album of very long songs, sloppy, poppy, noisy, and primitive, with lots of jamming (think White Light White Heat). I’m also putting together a live album from all of the recordings I’ve got from over the years. And I’m going through all of the old DATS and cassettes. There are a number of songs that I’ve earmarked for another album of singles, comp tracks, and outtakes album: Our Own ESP Driven Scene: part II, I suppose. But I’ve also discovered a huge number of tunes that are either finished or nearly finished that I never released, plus also totally different versions of some of the songs that have come out. So over the next few years, I’m going to release an archive of sorts, probably on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

  How did you land in Savannah, GA? Are you involved in any kind of music/art scene down there?

 I’m an art historian. I was teaching at Moore College of Art and Design in Philly but started looking around for a better gig. The money there wasn’t great and there was quite a bit of dysfunction and acrimony between faculty and administration. I got a very good offer from Savannah College of Art and Design and off we went. The job, raising two kids, and going forward with my plan to publish the work I had been doing on a sixteenth-century Netherlandish artist named Maarten van Heemskerck have effectively kept me from getting out and involving myself in the scene down here. But now, I have basically taken care of Maarten (that’s the book I mentioned above). I feel like there will come a time soon when I can start saying “ya know any good drummers?” or “ya need a guitar player?” I’d like to get something together down here, another three-piece, sort of a Photon Band South. But what I’d also really like to do even more is just become the guitarist for a really good, no nonsense rock and roll band where I don’t write the songs.

 Who are some of your favorite current bands?

Weeding through the shit to get to the good stuff requires time, doesn’t it? It’s good that there are some nice places to hang out here in Savannah that let their younger staff choose the music, otherwise I might have no idea. Some of the Ariel Pink I’ve heard, I really like. The Dear Hunter has made some albums I like and so has Ty Segall. But those are by now, pretty old, right? I like bands that do interesting things with guitars, so I really loved the first Garden State album, also pretty old by now. I haven’t heard anything by them since then that suggests that they’re still committed to weaving together guitar lines the way they did on that first album. Sheer Mag’s guitarists do that really well! On Dead Waves have some good songs, and I like everything I’ve heard by Bass Drum of Death. I really like that song called La La La by Hoops, too. It’s a never-ending quest, isn’t it?  There are plenty more bands who have a song or two that blow my mind: the Wavves, the Panic Buttons, Suzi Chunk, Eagulls, to name a few.

 photo by Mary Garito 

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

 Oh shit! Okay…

 Neil Young: Time Fades Away

John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band

Stones: Beggars Banquet

Stooges: Fun House

The Who: Live at Leeds (the expanded version, because it has more tunes on it)

Stereolab: ABC Music

Flying Burrito Brothers: Gilded Palace of Sin

MC5: High Time

Rites of Spring

That’s nine. Then I’d lay the following four albums on the floor, have someone mix them up, and pick one blindfolded:

 Sun Ra: We Travel the Spaceways from Planet to Planet

Mr. Airplane Man: Come on DJ

The new Ty Segall album

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Pig Lib.

  Any final thoughts?  Closing comments? Anything you wanted to mention that I didn’t ask?

 Hmmmm…well, to close the loop on the Mike Logan / Spayce Mann story, all these years later, he came into JT’s orbit and now he has the role that I once had in JT’s band. We’ve reconnected and it feels so good to have that whole thing come full circle in such a cosmic way. It’s not just that we understand each other. We reconnected because he’s playing music with someone whose music is dear to us both. That’s our shared musical DNA, the stuff that resonates with our souls, determining our paths and bringing us in contact with the right people. That’s cosmic.  

 BONUS QUESTION; What is one Philly band that really shoud’ve made it?

 I know the popular answers are Ruin and the Electric Love Muffin, and that’s definitely true, especially the latter. The Muffin were so important for a lot of people, especially me, and they were as good as, or better than, any of their contemporaries. But in a better world, the real answer is either the early period of the Original Sins, or F.O.D. There’s no question that of all the bands of my lifetime that the industry missed, they sure did blow it with the Sins. JT should have a huge audience. If the industry was less shallow, either the Sins or JT would’ve “made it.” And to me, F.O.D. are the Experience, the Who, the Minutemen, the Sex Pistols, and Sun Ra’s Arkestra all in one brilliant three piece. I don’t think there’s a live band that can touch them.

www.darla.com

www.nodandsmilerecs.com 

      w

[sinsiriuslyemo]

Good afternoon!!! Here is the last episode in season 15!! Stay tuned for a new mini series, about Nevada’s time in prison, Philly v DR!!! And thank you guys so much for all your love and readership :)

EPISODE 25

Amber gritted her teeth, trying to dial her mother again. Still no answer, they'd been ignoring her calls. She wasn't sure she deserved to be answered back anyway.

Her brother's number came up on the phone and suddenly she couldn't help but hope. “Hey!”

“Mom says to stop calling her, Amber, please. You're killing her.”

“I'm killing her? She's completely abandoned me, I wasn't even aware Felicity was there when-” she bit her lip.

“You got her the job, Amber, you know I love you, but they don't want to talk to you...come stay with me for a few days. I was thinking maybe we can have our own little ceremony for her.”

“Yeah?” Amber whispered.

“You won't be missed for a few days, right?” She smiled.

“Probably not… Omar, is mad and… I dunno. Can I get back to you?”

“Sure thing, I'll be in Manhattan tonight, tell me if you wanna fly back with me for a few days, okay?”

“Thanks.”

She ended the call when she heard Omar come in.

“Hey, my brother's gonna be in Manhattan tonight and he wants to know if I wanna come stay with him for a few days…” Amber gave a shrug. “I figured you might want some space…? And he wanted to do a memorial for my sister.”

“You think I want space, or you don’t wanna be here?” he asked, arching a brow. “Nevada told you he’s doing a memorial for her...you said you didn’t wanna go,” he replied, furrowing his brows.

“I think you want space,” she said softly. “I'm on your shit list, right?” She shrugged. “I don't want a memorial with a lot of people, I wanted something small, with her family…” she took a deep breath.

“What, did you think Nevada’s gonna have a parade?” he asked. “And he is having it with her family. Her real family. Where were your parents when she relapse a couple years ago? Where were they last year when that customer roughed her up? Where were they when she almost got evicted from her apartment?”

“Where was I?” she whispered softly to herself, she had only known about a few of those incidents.

She buried her face in her hands. It hurt to think about, Felicity hurt to think about. So did Diamond. She wiped her eyes and stood up, immediately sitting back down. Stupid pregnancy had her whole equilibrium off kilter.

“I'm sorry about the job interview, it was stupid...I don't know what I was thinking.” She took a few shaky breaths and closed her eyes. “And you're right...as always...I think part of this is that I don't wanna be in the city that gunned down my sister and one of my best friends. I feel like I just need to breathe and I feel like we haven't done anything but fight in weeks and that scares me so much,” she said softly. “We're both under a lot of pressure, I get why we'd both be...us. But I'm scared that one day we'll wake up and stop fighting for each other…” she said gently. “All I want is a love like your parents had, I truly believe we have that. I don't want it to turn into something like my parents…”

“My parents never kept secrets from each other,” he replied softly. “And they worked at it every day. That kind of love takes work, it’s not something that’s just there. I’m sorry that I haven’t been more excited about the baby, I know it’s not how you pictured it...it’s not how I pictured it either.” He sighed a little, run a hand over his hair. “I wish it were different,” he mumbled apologetically.

She shut her eyes for a moment. “Me too,” she whispered. When she opened them she stood up and kissed him gently. “I'm gonna go stay with my brother for a little while...get out of this neighborhood.”

Omar sighed heavily, brows moving up and down once as he nodded his head.

“Okay,” he answered. “If that’s what you think is best,” he added softly.

“Or we could both get out of town for a while...maybe?”

“And go where, to your brothers?” he asked with a smirk. “I’m sure your dad would love that.”

“I was thinking we could go somewhere just us, get away for a bit. I just want to be with you somewhere,” she said softly. “Anywhere you want...just go somewhere with me, please?”

“Okay...like where?” he asked, trying to think of possibilities. “We could drive upstate, there’s a cabin my dad used to bring us to when we were kids…” he offered with a shrug.

A smile grew on her face, “Yeah? That sounds awesome,” she said honestly. “I would love to see some nature, a tree or two.” She giggled and smiled at him hopefully. “You'll go with me then?”

“Sure,” he answered, smirking at her. “Pack us a bag for like three days. I’ll go grab the key from my mom. We’ll probably need to stop on the way for extra bug spray. Those little fuckers love to ruin a good time.”

She smiled and nodded, excitedly heading to the bedroom to pack.

Nevada sat with Jasper, Josiah, Parker and Maddison at the table in the back of the warehouse. The last time they’d all sat at this table was just before they ambushed Michael for control of Harlem. Now, however, they were sitting here discussing how to maintain their control and defend themselves from these men that were trying to seize it.

“So? They contacted me already. What about you guys?” he asked.

“They sent me the video of them gunning down my husband,” Maddison looked angrier than any of the men had ever seen her.

Jasper nodded, “My computers have been getting videos as well. Threats, mentions of locations of some of my paintings. I've had to relocate a lot of art. These wankers are costing me a lot of money.”

“They shot up Hechicera yesterday. Two of my girls were hurt. Few of my corner guys were jacked too,” Josiah offered.

“Oakland charter should be here in a few days. We’ve been getting some power outages over in Inwood, longer every day,” Parker chimed.

“We need to bring these boys to their knees before they become any more of a nuisance.” Jasper said with a frown.

“Agreed, so we gotta hit em where they’ll bleed to most,” Nevada replied, looking at Maddison. “How do we do that?”

“They run on technology, you have the best tech guy on the east coast. We got them in a corner if we can shut their digital stuff down.”

Nevada nodded, looking back to the other men.

“Alright, Chibby and Sawyer can run point. Let’s get every one of your guys to the safe house in Brooklyn. These pendejos have been focusing on our business in Manhattan. Maybe they won’t think to look into the other boroughs,” Nevada replied.

“The sooner we end it, the better. If they follow their normal patterns, the body count hasn't even begun.”

[myphillyrealty]

Photos: Inside Amuneal’s massive facility in Frankford

Their work is featured over the world, and made right here in Philly

Behind the brick walls of a massive warehouse in Frankford, there are dozens of metalworkers, carpenters, and fabricators bringing to life the visions of some of the world’s most-renowned designers.

On one end of the 60,000-square-foot facility, a curved reception desk is being pieced together—it will soon be installed in the lobby of a Zaha Hadid-designed building on the High Line. At the other end of the warehouse, a worker sands down a 500-pound piece of walnut that will be carved into a bench for high-end hotel.

This team of fabricators is what make up the company called Amuneal. Chances are you’ve never heard of it, let alone knew the company was born and bred in Philadelphia. But it’s very likely you’ve seen their work all over the world.

A worker sands down a 500-pound piece of walnut, which will become a custom-designed bench in a hotel lobby.

Adam Kamens has always liked to tinker with gadgets. Makes sense, as the son of the husband and wife duo behind Amuneal, a magnetic shielding company.

His parents found their company in 1965 at a time when Frankford was mostly a mix of factories scattered between rowhomes. Like its nearby neighbor Globe Dye Works, Amuneal’s business boomed for the couple, who had developed a special metal alloy that attracted technical industries like aerospace engineers and medical companies across the nation.

“But by the eighties and nineties, that market just wasn’t growing at all,” said Kamens. “We just needed another way to grow.”

Kamens, who by that point had started his own glass-blowing business in Old City, took over at Amuneal. He realized that in order for the business to survive, it needed to expand its reach. Kamens started by creating a line of, as he puts it, “kitschy furniture.”

“Our customers basically said that they didn’t want to buy just metal from us. So it forced us to work on other materials,” Kamens said. “It proved that we could do other things with the same people, same equipment, and same approach.”

That was nearly two decades ago. Today, Amuneal has grown from a team of two to 150, many of whom are recent graduates from local universities like Temple and the University of the Arts. Their high-end work ranges from refined display cases to soaring steel sculptures and is featured everywhere from private residences to the Navy Yard campus to Barney’s in New York.

As client after client called up Amuneal to build their designs, the company began to run out of space. Kamens says there were only so many buildings that could accommodate structures like a 30-foot-tall staircase with a steel bird’s nest on top, which now graces Twitter’s New York headquarters.

Top: Amuneal collaborated with artist Sarah Sze to create this metal sculpture on the High Line. Bottom left: This award-winning kitchen in Haverford, Pennsylvania is made entirely of brass. Bottom right: There are five of these public art sculptures at the Navy Yard, made up powdercoated steel and mirror polished stainless steel. Courtesy of Amuneal.

“At that point, we realized it was time to grow up a little bit,” says Kamens.

Growing up meant buying a 60,000-square-foot warehouse on Torresdale Avenue. What was originally a coal yard in the early 1900s is now home to Amuneal’s wood and metal production facilities, and soon to be 7,000 square feet of office space. Meanwhile, the magnetic shielding side of the company has grown so much that it now occupies its own space in another nearby warehouse.

Kamens acknowledges that the company could have taken the same route of other manufacturers that have moved their headquarters outside of Philadelphia. But the type of workers that Amuneal employs made staying put in Frankford an obvious choice.

“There’s a certain amount of grit required for what we do,” Kamen says. “We attract an urban fabricator. That’s one of the reasons we chose to be in the city.”

This sculptural piece will become a lobby desk in Zaha Hadid’s 520 W. 28 building on the High Line.

In the end, the designers of these high-end pieces will likely receive all of the credit. And Adam Kamens and his team at Amuneal are okay with that. He’s just happy his parent’s company is still standing, and that he and his co-workers just get to build things.

“We get to make really cool stuff, we really do,” says Kamens.

from http://philly.curbed.com/

The post Photos: Inside Amuneal’s massive facility in Frankford appeared first on MyPhillyRealty.

http://myphillyrealty.com/2017/03/02/photos-inside-amuneals-massive-facility-in-frankford/

[restaurantclicks]

Best Boozy Bottomless Brunch Spots in Philadelphia

Best Boozy Bottomless Brunch Spots in Philadelphia

Going out to brunch with your friends is a great way to celebrate life and unwind on the weekend. Whether it’s celebrating your new promotion, catching up with old friends, or relaxing on a Sunday afternoon, brunch is a great way to get out of the house and grab some quality food and drinks. Boozy brunch is even better, with specials on mimosas, bloody Mary’s, and more.

Bottomless brunch in Philly is one of the most popular mealtimes for many restaurants. There are a lot of popular and trendy brunch spots in Philadelphia, so we’ve compiled a list of the best drink specials we could find in the city. From bottomless brunch specials, to exciting breakfast foods, to live music, Philadelphia has got it all.

Best Boozy Brunch Specials in Philly

Bourbon & Branch

Positano Coast

Moshulu

JJ Bootleggers

Cuba Libre

Khyber Pass Pub

Harper’s Garden

Aqimero

Urban Saloon

James Restaurant & Bar

Red Owl Tavern

  Bourbon & Branch

705 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19123

Bourbon & Branch is a combination music venue and restaurant located in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. Their brunch menu is extensive, with a lot of different options to choose from. Green dots on the menu indicate which menu items are friendly for vegans, which even features a vegan version of “Chik’n & Waffles.”

For $20 you get unlimited mimosas, and brunch is available from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Bourbon & Branch is a stylistically pleasing restaurant with a rich history, and with bottomless mimosas for $20, it’s one of the best brunch places in Philly.

  Positano Coast

212 Walnut Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Located in Old City, Positano Coast is a classy Italian-themed brunch spot with a choice of unlimited drinks. Enjoy your afternoon with Italian seafood dishes like spicy calamari with pickled cherry peppers and goat cheese, or go for a traditional American brunch burger.

While you eat, $20 gives you access to unlimited mimosas and sangria. Available 11:30 am – 3:00 pm Saturday and 11:00 am – 3:00 pm Sunday.

Make a Reservation

  Moshulu

401 S Christopher Columbus Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19106

If you want to spend your brunch by the water, (or on the water), Moshulu could be a great option for you. Located along Penn’s Landing, Moshulu is a historic ship that is now being used as one of Philadelphia’s most unique dining experiences. Their brunch menu specializes mostly in American dishes like their veggie Benedict and Philly cheesesteak omelet.

Moshulu offers an $18 bottomless brunch special that will get you a wide variety of bottomless drinks; Mimosas, Peach Bellinis, Kir Royals, or Poinsettias. Who doesn’t like drinking on a fancy boat? Brunch served from 11:00 am – 2:30 pm on Saturdays, and 10:00 am – 2:30 pm on Sundays.

Make a Reservation

    JJ Bootleggers

35 S 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

JJ Bootleggers is a moonshine-themed bar and restaurant in Old City, Philadelphia. They host a popular bottomless brunch special every Sunday, featuring classic brunch dishes like eggs benedict, build-your-own omelettes, and more exciting dishes like strawberry shortcake stuffed pancakes and banana foster french toast.

JJ Bootleggers offers a $20 bottomless brunch that includes mimosas, blood Mary’s, and peach bellinis. Brunch is available every Sunday from 11 am – 3 pm.

Make a Reservation

    Cuba Libre

10 S 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

When formulating your brunch plans, don’t forget about Cuba Libre. This restaurant has a wide variety of large and small Cuban dishes like pineapple guacamole and a Cuban take on chicken and waffles. Share a plate of empanadas with your friends and wash it down with their $5 brunch cocktails. Vegetarian options are also available for the non-carnivorous.

Don’t miss out on boozy brunch in Philly at Cuba Libre this weekend, running from 10:30 am – 2:30 pm Saturday and Sunday.

Make a Reservation

    Khyber Pass Pub

56 S 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Khyber Pass Pub is a bar and restaurant located in Old City that specializes in New Orleans Cajun style cuisine. They feature live music regularly, so if you want to stick around after your beignets or the Shrimp & Tasso & Grits, you may be able to catch a show.

Khyber Pass is a pub at heart, so if beer is your preference then they have a wide selection. Their $7 brunch cocktails include drinks such as  “Death in the Afternoon,” “Creole Bloody Mary,” and “Corpse Reviver #2.” Grab brunch at Khyber Pass Pub between the hours of 10:00 am and 4:00 pm.

  Harper’s Garden

31 S 18th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Located in Rittenhouse square, Harper’s Garden is an American style restaurant and bar that serves brunch on the weekends. Their menu is split into two parts, “Had a Great Night” and “Long Day Ahead”, which contain both healthy and not-so-healthy options.

They also have a wide variety of brunch cocktails, including Harper’s Frappe and the Ghost of Mary. Their bottomless mimosa special runs for five and a half hours, from 10:00 am – 3:30 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Enjoy bottomless mimosas for $20 along with the purchase of an entree, or choose from various other brunch drinks.

Make a Reservation

    Aqimero

10 Avenue Of The Arts, Philadelphia, PA 19102

Aqimero is an upscale restaurant located in the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia. If you’re planning on drinking, you may as well consider the “$50 Endless Brunch & Bubbles.” “Endless Bubbles” refers to the bottomless supply of Bellini, Mimosa, Kir Royale, and other drinks provided.

As far as the food options, the endless brunch includes toasts, sweets, and their list of specialty brunch creations. Aqimero’s brunch hours run from 11:30 am – 3:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday. What better way to spend your weekend afternoon than stuffing your face with smoked pork belly and champagne by the glass?

Make a Reservation

    Urban Saloon

2120 Fairmount Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19130

The Urban Saloon is a large sports bar located on Fairmount avenue. Their food choices range from breakfast nachos to their Monte Cristo Panini.  It’s a large location for a sports bar, so it’s a good place to go if you’re trying to accommodate for a large brunch group.

$20 will get you a bottle of champagne for you to concoct your own mimosas with. If you’re ever visiting the Eastern State Penitentiary, hop across the street and bring your friends to the Urban Saloon!

  James Restaurant and Bar

1835 Arch St, Philadelphia, PA 19103

James, located in Western Center City, is another modern American tavern that serves up brunch every weekend. The locally inspired menu is a Philly favorite, and brunch is no different. Their brunch menu features items like The Philly Benny, a Philadelphia-inspired eggs benedict, roast pork hash, and much more.

Brunch cocktails are also on special, so you can enjoy $8 mimosas and $10 bloody Mary’s complete with bacon, celery, and the works.

Make a Reservation

    Red Owl Tavern

433 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

The Red Owl Tavern is a trendy restaurant tucked inside of a historic tavern in Old City. They pride themselves in being a modern-styled restaurant with old school comforts. Their menu has traditional breakfast foods, southern comfort foods, and plenty of vegetarian and vegan options.

This trendy restaurant is on the pricier side of things for a brunch menu, and their cocktails are no exception, but if the price point isn’t an issue we highly recommend trying out this Philly brunch spot. They have unique brunch cocktails at $14 a drink. Brunch is available at the Red Owl Tavern from 8:00 am – 3:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Make a Reservation

Final Thoughts

Check out the best bottomless brunch specials in Philly and book a reservation for the upcoming weekend! If you own a brunch restaurant in Philadelphia and think you should be on the list, contact us at Restaurant Clicks today.

The post Best Boozy Bottomless Brunch Spots in Philadelphia appeared first on Restaurant Clicks.

https://restaurantclicks.com/best-boozy-bottomless-brunch-philadelphia/

[wavenetinfo]

June brings a slew of new TV shows and films to stream on a number of different platforms.

“Orange Is the New Black” returns to Netflix for its fifth season, while Amazon is debuting several original projects of its own.

Hulu subscribers can stream favorites including “Legally Blonde” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” as well as the season premiere of “The Carmichael Show,” which is also available on iTunes.

For the complete lists from all four services, see below.

Netflix

June 1

“1 Night”

“13 Going on 30”

“Amor.com (Love.com)”

“Arrow” Season 5

“Burlesque”

“Catfight”

“Catwoman”

“Chingo Bling: They Can’t Deport Us All”

“Days of Grace”

“Devil’s Bride”

“Full Metal Jacket”

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas“

“Intersection”: Season 2

“Kardashian: The Man Who Saved OJ Simpson”

“Little Boxes”

“Mutant Busters”: Season 2

“My Left Foot”

“Off Camera with Sam Jones”: Series 3

“Playing It Cool”

“Rounders”

“Spring” (“Primavera”)

“The 100”: Season 4

“The Ant Bully”

“The Bucket List”

“The Queen”

“The Sixth Sense”

“Vice”

“West Coast Customs”: Season 3

“Yarn”

“Young Frankenstein”

“Zodiac”

June 2

“Comedy Bang! Bang!”: Season 5, Part 2

“Flaked”: Season 2 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Inspector Gadget”: Season 3 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Los Últimos de Filipinas”

“Lucid Dream” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

“Saving Banksy“

“The Homecoming: Collection”

June 3

“Acapulco La vida va“

“Blue Gold: American Jeans”

“Headshot”

“Three”

“Tunnel”

“War on Everyone”

June 4

“TURN: Washington’s Spies”: Season 3

June 5

June 7

June 9

“My Only Love Song”: Season 1 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Orange Is the New Black”: Season 5 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Shimmer Lake” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

June 10

“Black Snow” (“Nieve Negra”)

“Daughters of the Dust”

“Havenhurst”

“Sword Master”

June 13

“Oh, Hello On Broadway” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

June 14

June 15

“Marco Luque: Tamo Junto” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”: Season 4

“Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance”

June 16

“Aquarius”: Season 2

“Counterpunch” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“El Chapo”: Season 1

“The Ranch”: Part 3 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“World of Winx”: Season 2 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

June 17

“Grey’s Anatomy”: Season 13

“Scandal”: Season 6

“The Stanford Prison Experiment”

June 18

June 20

“Amar Akbar & Tony”

“Moana”

“Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up For The First Time” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

June 21

“Baby Daddy”: Season 6

“Young & Hungry”: Season 5

June 23

“American Anarchist”

“Free Rein”: Season 1 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“GLOW”: Season 1 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“You Get Me” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

June 26

June 27

“Chris D’Elia: Man on Fire” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

June 28

“Okja” – NETFLIX ORIGINAL FILM

June 30

“Chef & My Fridge: Collection” (2014)

“Gypsy”: Season 1 – NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“It’s Only the End of the World”

“Little Witch Academia”: Season 1—NETFLIX ORIGINAL

“The Weekend”

Hulu

June 1

“The Carmichael Show”: Season 3 Premiere

“2 Days in the Valley”

“Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”

“Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls”

“Aeon Flux”

“All Over the Guy”

“Apocalypse Now”

“Apocalypse Now Redux”

“Barnyard”

“Black Rain”

“Blow Out”

“Blue Velvet”

“Bolero”

“Boogeyman”

“Boogeyman 2”

“Boogeyman 3”

“Bullwhip”

“Burnt Offerings”

“Chaos”

“Charlotte’s Web”

“Con Air”

“Dances with Wolves“

“The Deep End of the Ocean”

“De-Lovely”

“Desperado”

“Desperate Hours”

“Double Team”

“Dragon Eyes”

“Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist”

“Drunken Monkey, Floating Snake”

“El Gringo”

“The Fatal Flying Guillotine”

“Fighting of Shaolin Monks”

“Fire in the Sky”

“Fled”

“The Freshman”

“Free Willy”

“Gangs of New York”

“Ghost Rider”

“The Glass House”

“Hammett”

“The Hanoi Hilton”

“Harriet the Spy”

“Heartbreakers”

“Henry & Me”

“The Ides of March”

“Ingenious”

“The Invincible Armour”

“In the Line of Fire”

“Invincible Obsessed Fighter”

“It Could Happen to You”

“Joe Dirt”

“Kangaroo Jack”

“Last Action Hero”

“Legally Blonde”

“Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde”

“Legends of the Fall”

“Little Man Tate”

“Lost in America”

“Madeline”

“The Mechanic”

“The Medallion”

“Mo’ Money”

“Money Train”

“Moscow on the Hudson”

“Mr. Mom”

“Muppet Treasure Island”

“Muppets from Space”

“The Muppets Take Manhattan”

“Of Cooks and Kung Fu”

“On the Waterfront”

“The Out-of-Towners”

“Over the Top”

“Peggy Sue Got Married”

“The Philly Kid”

“The Prince of Tides”

“The Queen of Versailles”

“Random Hearts”

“Regarding Henry”

“See No Evil, Hear No Evil”

“Seven Years in Tibet”

“Shivers”

“Silverado”

“Starman”

“Stash House”

“Strategic Air Command”

“Stray Bullets”

“Tracker”

“Transit”

“Underworld”

“Underworld Evolution”

“World’s Greatest Dad”

“World Trade Center”

“XXX: State of the Union”

“Zoom”

June 2

“Black-ish”: Complete Season 3

June 3

“Dumb: The Story of Big Brother Magazine” (Hulu Documentary)

June 4

June 5

“Arbitrage”

“A Case of You”

“North”

June 6

“Rizzoli & Isles”: Complete Season 7

“Tyrant”: Complete Season 3

June 7

June 8

“What Happened Last Night”

June 9

“Girl Most Likely”

“Free the Nipple”

June 11

June 13

“American Ninja Warrior”: Season 9 Premiere

“Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge”: Season 2 Premiere

June 14

“Cocaine Cowboys”

“Control Room”

June 15

“Bayou Maharajah”

“Family Mission: The TJ Labraico Story”

“The Girls in the Band”

“The Hunting of the President”

“Outatime”

June 16

“Cardinal”: Complete Season 1

“The Strain”: Complete Season 3

“Asmodexia

June 17

“Kundo”

“Star Trek: Beyond”

June 18

June 22

“Little Big Shots: Forever Young”: Series Premiere

June 23

“Hollywood Game Night”: Season 5 Premiere

“Manny”

“Song One”

“Tarzan”

June 26

June 29

“Ong Bak”

“Ong Bak 2”

“Ong Bak 3”

June 30

Amazon

Available on Prime

June 1

“2 Days in the Valley”

“Aeon Flux”

“All Over the Guy”

“Apocalypse Now”

“Apocalypse Now Redux”

“Black Rain”

“Blow Out”

“Blue Velvet”

“Bolero”

“Bowling for Columbine”

“Bruce Lee Superstar”

“Bullwhip”

“Burnt Offerings”

“Chaos”

“Chinese Hercules”

“City of Gods” (“Ciudad de Deus”)

“Commando 2: The Black Money Trail”

“De-Lovely”

“Desperate Hours”

“Dragon Eyes”

“Drunken Arts and Crippled Fist”

“Drunken Monkey, Floating Snake”

“El Gringo”

“The Fatal Flying Guillotine”

“Fighting of Shaolin Monks”

“Fire in the Sky”

“Fled”

“Gone Baby Gone”

“Hammett”

“The Hanoi Hilton”

“Heartbreakers”

“Ingenious”

“The Invincible Armour”

“Invincible Obsessed Fighter”

“Lady of Burlesque”

“The Lady Says No”

“Lady Windermere’s Fan”

“Little Man Tate”

“Madame Behave”

“Magnolia”

“The Mandarin Mystery”

“Marihuana”

“The Mechanic”

“The Medicine Man”

“The Memphis Belle”

“Merry-Go-Round”

“Million Dollar Kid”

“Mind Over Murder”

“Miss Polly”

“Mission to Glory”

“The Monster Walks”

“The Most Dangerous Game”

“Mr. Mom”

“Mrs. Scooter”

“Murder at Midnight”

“Murder with Music”

“Night at the Follies”

“Nomads of the North”

“The Old Corral”

“One Exciting Night”

“One from the Heart”

“The Out-of-Towners”

“Outlaws of Sonora”

“Over the Top”

“Palooka”

“The Patchwork Girl of Oz”

“Payoff in the Pacific”

“The Philly Kid”

“Pinto Rustlers”

“The President’s Mystery”

“Prison Break”

“Private Buckaroo”

“The Queen”

“The Racketeer”

“Reaching for the Moon”

“The Red Rope”

“Regarding Henry”

“Revolt of the Zombies”

“Rex the Devil Horse”

“Riders of Destiny”

“Riders of the Whistling Pines”

“The Road to Hollywood”

“Roarin Lead”

“Robin Hood of the Pecos”

“Romola”

“Rough Book”

“Royal Bed, The”

“Saddle Mountain Roundup”

“The Savage Wild”

“The Scarlet Letter”

“Shadows”

“Shaolin Drunk Fighter”

“Shaolin vs. Lama”

“Shivers”

“Silver Blaze”

“Silver Horde”

“Six Gun Trail”

“Slightly Honorable”

“St. Benny the Dip”

“Stash House”

“The Strange Woman”

“Strategic Air Command”

“Submarine Warfare”

“Svengali”

“Swing High, Swing Low”

“Target for Tonight”

“Tarzan and the Green Goddess”

“Tarzan of the Apes”

“The Salesman” – AMAZON ORIGINAL

“The Tank”

“The Thief of Bagdad”

“Those We Love”

“Tomake Chai”

“Tormented”

“Tracker”

“Transit”

“True Heart Susie”

“Tumbleweeds”

“Wanderers of the West”

“War Comes to America”

“Way of the West”

“West of Nevada”

“White Orchid”

“Winterset”

“Within Our Gates”

“The Woman in Green”

“The Woman of the Town”

“World Trade Center”

“Yellowstone”

“Zis Boom Bah”

June 2

“Noor

“So Far

“The Closing of Winterland

“The Grateful Dead Movie

“Truckin’ Up to Buffalo”

June 4

June 5

“20th Century Women”

“Arbitrage”

“Ocean’s Eleven”

“Ocean’s Twelve”

June 7

“Aftershock”

“Brand New Testament”

June 8

“Art of the Steal”

“I Am Not Your Negro”

“Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood: Tiger Family Trip”

June 9

“Girl Most Likely”

“An American Girl Story: Summer Camp, Friends for Life” – AMAZON ORIGINAL

“Le Mans: Racing Is Everything”: Season 1 – AMAZON ORIGINAL

June 11

June 12

June 17

June 22

“Paterson” – AMAZON ORIGINAL

June 29

“David Lynch: The Art Life”

“Arthur: D.W. & the Beastly Birthday”

June 30

“All or Nothing”: Season 2

“Danger & Eggs”: Season 1 – AMAZON ORIGINAL

Streaming on Amazon Video

June 4

“I’m Dying Up Here”: Season 1

June 6

“Beauty and the Beast”

“CHIPS”

June 17

“Turn: Washington’s Spies”

June 18

“American Gods”: Season Finale

June 23

June 25

iTunes

June 1

“The Carmichael Show” (Free Season Premiere)

“The F Word with Gordon Ramsay” (Free Series Premiere)

“MasterChef”: Season 8

“Big Star Little Star”

June 2

“Life”

“Vincent N Roxxy” (in theaters now)

June 5

“Fear the Walking Dead”: Season 3

June 6

“Beauty and the Beast”

“Tickling Giants” (iTunes exclusive)

“CHiPs”

“Land of Mine”

“Stitchers”: Season 3

June 9

“Queen of the South”: Season 2

“King of the Road”: Season 2 (Free Season Premiere)

June 10

“Wynonna Earp”: Season 2

“Dark Matter”: Season 3

June 11

“Orphan Black”: Season 5

“Idiotsitter”: Season 2

June 12

“Claws”

“American Grit”: Season 2

June 13

“Power Rangers”

“Trainspotting 2”

“Belko Experiment”

“John Wick 2”

“Three Generations”

“Superhuman”

June 16

“Wilson”

“Once Upon A Time In Venice” (same day as theaters)

June 17

“The Great British Baking Show”: Season 4

June 18

“TURN: Washington’s Spies”: Season 4

June 19

“Kevin Hart Presents: The Next Level”

“Granchester”: Season 3

June 20

“Smurfs: The Lost Village”

“Kong: Skull Island”

“The Zookeeper’s Wife”

“Table 19”

“Resident Evil: Vendetta”

June 21

“Wrecked”: Season 2

“Queen Sugar”: Season 2

“The Bold Type”(Free Series Premiere)

June 22

June 23

“The Bad Batch” (same day as theaters)

“The Night Shift”: Season 4

“The Mist”

June 24

“Playing House”: Season 3 (Complete Season)

“The Bureau”: Season 3

June 26

June 27

“The Fate of the Furious”

“Personal Shopper”

“Last Men In Aleppo” (iTunes exclusive)

June 29

“Younger”: Season 4

“Cleverman”: Season 2

“Big Brother”

June 30

“Their Finest”

“Inconceivable”

“Who Killed Tupac?”

31 May 2017 | 9:18 pm

Source : ABC News

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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[philamuseum]

Each of Alex Da Corte’s three new window works, complete with vinyl siding, presents a tableau in its frame: a blazing fire, a cat, and a gun on the windowsill with curtains caught in a breeze. Oscillating between their cheerful colors and macabre implications, Da Corte’s windows reference the broken windows theory that posits that visible signs of dereliction—such as broken windows of an abandoned building—give license to further crime and destruction. Don't miss his work on view in "New Grit: Art & Philly Now." 

"S.O.S. (Sam on Sill)," 2020, by Alex Da Corte (Forman Family Collection).  "Burning Window," 2020, by Alex Da Corte (Courtesy of the artist, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, and Sadie Coles HQ, London). "Night Window (for Tamayo)," 2020 by Alex Da Corte (Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, and Sadie Coles HQ, London).

[nofomoartworld]

'Black Cowboy' Exhibition Reveals a Forgotten Part of US History

Ron Tarver, A Ride by North Philly Rows, 1993. Archival ink jet print, 28 × 30 in. Courtesy the artist

Those darn Westerns! A new exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem challenges popular silver screen portrayals of the American cowboy. Curated by Amanda Hunt, Black Cowboy pictures a distinctly different gaucho than the bank-robbin', bootstrappin' John Wayne of yore. Featuring photography and video works by artists Mohamed Bourouissa, Kahlil Joseph, Deana Lawson, Chandra McCormick, Ron Tarver, and Brad Trent, Black Cowboy gives visibility to the black boys and girls who have been excluded from the white, men's narrative.

Deana Lawson, Cowboys, 2014. Inkjet print mounted on Sintra, 41 × 51 in. AP1 from Edition of 3. Courtesy the artist and Rhona Hoffman Gallery

“In Philadelphia, where I grew up, there’s a large community of black cowboys,” explains Hunt to The Creators Project. I remember being in high school, and magically a kid on a horse appeared in North Philly and I was like, ‘What!’ That was my first engagement with the idea of the black cowboy,” she says. When the curator moved to Harlem many years later she saw, the Federation of Black Cowboys’ Ellis “Mountain Man” Harris riding the 3 Train. “Right before he got off the train I said, ‘Sir, are you a black cowboy?’” “Yes, Ma'am I am!” These two experiences led the curator to “begin to identify who was capturing these people in the most compelling way.”

Ron Tarver, Concrete Canyon, Harlem, 1993 Archival ink jet print, 28 × 30 in. Courtesy the artist

Black Cowboy features six artists who capture the contrasting lives of these men and women. Brad Trent's portraits, editorial images that ran in The Village Voice, present the New York chapter of the Federation of the Black Cowboys. The black-and-white prints are full-body performative shots of “Mountain Man” Ellis holding a lasso in one hand, Arthur “J.R.” Fulmore carrying leather saddles and “Mama” Kesha Morse, the chapter’s first black cowgirl, riding a pile of hay. Chandra McCormick’s Angola Prison Rodeo, Men Breaking Wild Horses is a disquieting image of inmates working and performing in the notorious Louisiana maximum security prison farm. Deana Lawson's Cowboys photograph shows two young males riding at night in Georgia, evoking the 19th century black American soldiers that natives nicknamed Buffalo Soldiers. The image also conjures the complicated legacy of the American cowboy, who ventured west and took land from native populations.The black cowboys, representing 25% of the more than 35,000 cowboys who rode in the west during the 19th century according to the Village Voice, played a role in the violent expansion of America.

The exhibition also features Kahlil Joseph's Wildcat, a single-channel film that explores the lives of an all black rodeo in Grayson Oklahoma. Flying Lotus soundtracks the slow-moving film, which forges through the lives of the cowboy and girls who live in middle-America. Mohamed Bourouissa’s Horse Day blends documentary and narrative forms to reimagine the American Western in Philadelphia. It provides a look at the ways the black cowboys living in urban areas have adapted traditions to fit their lives.

Shorts on Sundays S1 Ep3: "Wildcat" by Kahlil Joseph - NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.

“The history of portrait photography plays a part in piecing together American history,” says Hunt. “That was something I wanted to bring out in the exhibition. The balance between what is primarily photography with two video works is because you can’t conjure up an image of a black cowboy without movement. The elegance of a horse moving and a person, white, black, or native, commanding this animal. I hope that there’s a power in the representation of the people and their animals.”

Brad Trent, Ellis “Mountain Man” Harris from “The Federation of Black Cowboys” series for The Village Voice, 2016 Inkjet print, 22 × 30 in. Courtesy the artist

Nearly 20 years since, Will Smith’s cockamamie film adaptation of the television series, Wild Wild West, a more replete image of the black cowboy has emerged in popular culture, too. A series of Beyoncé videos, including power-anthem "Formation," have featured black cowboys riding along. In “No Angel,” Beyoncé briefly appears as a black cowgirl dressed in white fur. The 2012 documentary and multimedia project, The Forgotten Cowboy, chronicles the lives of contemporary black cowboys; Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 alternative history revenge western, Django Unchained, was a rare, if overwrought, viewing of a black cowboy on the silver screen correcting injustice; Ron Tarver, a photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who is also featured in the exhibition, spent the last two decades capturing  black cowboy communities in the city and across the country personally and for the paper. In The Basketball Game, Tarver shows a boy in motion, shooting a ball at a public court while his horse waits. The figure casts a long shadow that, for Hunt, “juxtaposes black life and the pressures of the urban landscape.” She says, “It’s the perfect metaphor for the long shadow of history and the expectations of the black male life.”

“We are always under the threat of erasure, communities of color, and that’s what make the story [of the black cowboy] so much more layered,” she explains. “It’s not John Wayne or an accepted popular cultural narrative. It’s a reality [...] one of grit and determination and sometimes violence. There is something about the independence and the power of what the image of the cowboy represents in my mind that is very applicable to the black experience.”

Black Cowboy continues through March 5 at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Click here for more information.

Related:

Analog Cut-Out Collages Reimagine America’s Cowboy

From Comme des Garçons to Cowboys in Cologne, 'Wanted' Mag Mixes Fashion and Art

Danger Mouse And Daniele Luppi Invade The Wild, Wild West Of The Web

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[philamuseum]

Happy birthday to designer Doug Bucci. Bucci utilizes digital processes to explore and display biological systems and the effect of disease on the body, prompted by his experiences as a lifelong diabetic. This commission, "The Last Course," takes his vision to an unprecedented scale, forming a room-sized installation replete with an eighteenth century-inspired table set for a dessert course. As a whole, the work acts as a self-portrait of the artist, conveying the provocation of his lifelong struggle and inviting us to walk the line between impulse and sacrifice, joining in and abstaining, healthfulness and disease, shared by 34.2 million diabetics in our country. Experience the installation for yourself in "New Grit: Art & Philly Now" through August 22.

"The Last Course," 2021, by Doug Bucci (Commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Collection of the artist)

[philamuseum]

“As a native Philadelphian and as a child of immigrants, the feelings of otherness and belonging have been ever-present in my life. The act of telling our stories is a way to be seen and heard. This new work explores the ways in which we honor our different points of arrival, when we decide what home is, and how we reveal that we are part of the fabric of our city.”

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a visual artist, muralist, filmmaker, and community arts educator, who uses her art to represent individuals and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. Learn more about her new work "Arrival and Belonging" on view in "New Grit: Art & Philly Now" through August 22.

"Arrival and Belonging," 2021, by Michelle Angela Ortiz (Commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist)

[philamuseum]

"When in despair, it is beauty that fills us with life and inspiration.”

Judith Schaechter self-identifies as a decorative artist; working mostly in stained-glass panels, she incorporates elements of engraving, collage, painting, stenciling, and digital technology. Yet she is not bound by this art form’s traditional associations or rules and makes her mark by transcending expectations with her carefully honed skills and unique subject matter. Don't miss her work on view in "New Grit: Art & Philly Now." 

"Over Our Dead Bodies," 2020, by Judith Schaechter (Courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery, New York)

[philamuseum]

“I try to explore or to expose this idea that there is a distinction between ‘high culture’ and ‘local culture.’ For me, this does not exist.” –Mohammed Bourouissa

While working with the museum on an exhibition in 2013, artist Mohamed Bourouissa met members of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club in North Philadelphia. The artist returned for nine months to live in the area and engage in the lives of the riders and their community, during which be began a prodigious body of work photographing the Fletcher Street community. His work, on view now in “New Grit: Art & Philly Now,” sheds light on the long tradition of Black urban cowboys and horsemanship, focusing on how the present community engages youth to promote responsibility and self-exploration through the care of horses. 

"The Unicorn," 2019, by Mohamed Bourouissa (Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo) © ADAGP Mohamed Bourouissa