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theliterateape · 4 years ago

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History is a Puzzle Box of Rashomon

by Don Hall

I’ve often said that the scariest thing to ever come out of my mother’s mouth was the declaration “Let’s go on an adventure!”

For my mother an adventure must include a lack of preparation, potential for danger, and a sense of I can’t believe we just survived that! She once decided she wanted to do a charcoal sketching of a gravestone from the grave of one of our Appalachian Baptist fire-and-brimstone preacher ancestors. My dad drove her up into the mountains and they started seeing patches of purple paint on trees and rocks.

Turned out that was the locals’ way of telling outsiders they'd get shot if they trespassed. My dad clutched his pistol the rest of the way.

Mom got her charcoal sketch. I can’t believe we just survived that!

When I was a kid and we lived in Arizona, mom decided we were going on adventure. My little sister, mom, and I loaded up in her brown Gremlin, a bag of sandwiches, some sodas, and all of our swimming gear and headed out for an afternoon at Lake Pleasant.

All was copacetic until she thought she saw a shortcut to he lake. It was not a shortcut. It was simply desert. It started out as a bit of a dirt path that sort of petered out about an hour into the drive. We were driving in the open desert in the vehicle equivalent to a Pinto.

Of course we blew a tire. Of course we didn't have a spare.

Being a melodramatic kid, I went into a full-blown faux-survivalist panic. After a few minutes of wailing about our imminent demise I set out to figure how to get water out of cactus, the thorny testaments to the heartiness of desert foliage fending off my un-callused hands and delivering exactly no water.

This being decades before smartphones, we were stuck. We had no clue where we were in terms of the comforts of civilization and while mom put on a brave face (and occasionally got the giggles at my histrionics) our fate was sealed. Unless someone miraculously drove into the middle of the desert to save us, we were doomed.

And then the miracle occurred. A beat-up red Ford pickup truck coming from the other direction popped up on the horizon. I shrieked in relief; mom flagged the truck down.

We were about a mile from a highway but we couldn't know that. The driver of the pickup was taking a shortcut from the highway.

Here's where the story gets odd. To this day, my mother's version of this adventure and mine are identical. Word for word the same until we get to the driver of the Ford. On my life, I swear it was an older Native American man who stopped, hitched up the Gremlin to his vehicle, and towed us the mile to the highway and on to a gas station.

My mother will go to her grave insisting it was a family of four Mormons.

What?!

We’ve had family arguments about this story. Both my mother and I are intractable in our insistence of our specific endings of either Native American man or family of Mormons. We both were there. We both can see ourselves in the tale. The endings are as different as could be.

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold. The more you tell the story, the more it transforms into something similar but wholly different in the margins.

If my mother and I can have such divergent differences within a memory of an event we both shared, how many splinters are there in a collective re-telling of a larger event encompassing many more tellers? How many completely incompatible versions of the attacks on New York on September 11, 2001 are there? How many versions that don’t quite line up with one another are there of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?

Moving forward and backward in history, if we are to accept (and I do) that our memories are more Silly Putty than Lego Bricks, how much does film, television, books, and social media come into play in the constant morphing of objective truth to the collection of subjective memories and finally commonly accepted reality?

There is conclusive scientific research that demonstrates how the memory of an event subtly changes the actual memory as it is retold.

Back in the olden days when one could watch something horribly incorrect in the political sense without it becoming a ringing endorsement of your personal "brand" or a scathing indictment on who you are as a fellow human, I went to a screening of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. It was at an esoteric video shop/screening theater on Fullerton Avenue in Chicago called Facets Multimedia and there were six or seven others in attendance. I was the only white person in the room.

Historically, Griffith's opus is significant in several ways.

First, it was among the earliest epic uses of film. Released in 1915, it was the first blockbuster Hollywood hit. It was the longest and most-profitable film then produced and the most artistically advanced film of its day. It secured both the future of feature-length films and the reception of film as a serious medium.

Second, it was the first modern popular culture example of an artistic achievement attempting to force a certain perspective on the larger culture (the idea that the KKK were the heroes of the Civil War) it was initially released with the title "The Clansmen" and reframed the war, Reconstruction, and white hooded sheets in tandem with lynchings as the preferred story of American history.

Third, while propaganda has been around since men could talk and write, it was the most pervasive use of a medium that communicated on a newfound mass level to promote a horrifying ideology and was embraced by President Woodrow Wilson as a personal favorite.

Following the three-hour screening, there was a sense of discomfort as the lights came back up. My guess at the time it was the other viewers in the room wondering if I, the sole white person in the room, was as offended by the revised perspective the film espoused as the rest in the small cadre. I suppose I wasn't as offended because I wasn't black and I knew what I was getting into when buying my ticket. I can imagine seeing the film without some context would be like a slap in the face.

One of the things I learned doing stage combat around the same time was that a slap in the face never hurt as much as you'd think. It wasn't the pain of the blow but the surprise of it that gave it impact. Going in cold to see the KKK presented as the true patriots wouldn't hurt but the surprise might be a shock.

In a very different way but in the same vein, I remember being the only white face in a crowded theater in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the opening night of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The looks of inquisition for my reaction to the film from the predominantly black faces followed me out into the lobby and into the parking lot.

I read recently that one of the reasons the scars of that Civil War in America have never fully healed is that we’ve never, as a nation, agreed on a single narrative of why we fought the goddamned thing. The subjectivity of truth in the re-telling of that dark period is confounding and subsequent attempts to force one perspective or the other or multiple angles on the causes of the War of the States has only confused the issue. Thus the recent beheadings of statues glorifying Southern generals and the re-naming parties of public schools to eliminate anyone associated with slavery.

I understand and empathize with this impulse to reverse the whitewash of history from our streets and schools. So much of our literature and symbols in real life have been created with, maybe not a D. W. Griffith subjectivity, a revisionist historical perspective that paints over the ugliest parts of our history to re-tell the narrative and erase those most subjugated by it. I expect over-correction (like the New York Times 1619 Project which casts our history as steeped in nothing but racism and slavery without acknowledging the contributions set apart from those stains) and, after reading that San Francisco schools are eliminating Abraham Lincoln's name, I decided to re-watch Spielberg's Lincoln.

I don't know if it was actually Lincoln or screenwriter Tony Kushner who came up with the following analogy but I found it instructive in the push to reframe the story today.

A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you True North from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way.

If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... What's the use of knowing True North?

The film paints the fight for the 13th Amendment as a dark political game, cajoling and persuading the legislators of the day to codify in the Constitution a formal revocation and rebuke to the forced enslavement of other human beings. It also portrays Lincoln as a deeply pragmatic leader. The speech is one he gives to Thaddeus Stevens, a zealous abolitionist, who rightly sees true north but, up to that point, would rather be righteous than successful in abolishing slavery.

Both men are long dead so the question of whether both men would tell the same story, in their re-telling of those pivotal moments leading up to the vote, or if their stories would radically diverge, is wholly academic. That’s where the trappings of art collide with authenticity. This is the version Spielberg and Kushner decided upon and it will be the version millions who watch the film and decide to simply accept it as the one true version.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact.

On the other hand, we have celebrated author Mark Manson, whose book Everything is F•cked: A Book About Hope is being banned in Russia by Putin because it speaks directly to atrocities committed by Stalin. Putin is looking to re-write Stalin's history.

There is a big difference between revising a history shown to diminish the effects of overt racists in one country and purging a country’s history of established monstrosities but the mechanism remains the same: reframe the story and tell it enough times that the meaning changes over time. Keep pushing the new narrative (right or wrong) until the soft memory of an entire nation bends to the will of the teller.

That’s all history is, after all. A slew of stories we tell over and over to indoctrinate a sense of national pride. It grows more perilous when those revising the stories weren’t present. The source of the tales becomes less reliable and the reframe more suspect. When the source is a film or video of an event, we feel as though we’ve experienced it but our perspective is entirely subverted by what the camera shows us and the narrative promoted when we watch it.

One of the techniques that Griffith practically invented was the camera’s use to tell the story from his view. Frame things in a certain way, in a certain order, and our very eyes are deceived, our minds accept the deception, and we believe.

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa gave the world the reigning example of individualized subjective point of view. Rashomon shows us three different perspectives on one specific event. The film makes the point so clearly that the term used popularly to label the he said/she said/they said dilemma is a rashomon.

This is not to say there is no objective truth. It is to suggest that our inability to separate fact from our subjective fictions makes us pretty fucking lousy arbiters of that fact. Show me someone absolutely 100% certain of the sort of events they've only seen on an iPhone video moderated by Faceborg and spun by both the media and some random stranger and I'll show you someone deluded and quite probably dead wrong.

Even when we're there to witness events in person we get it wrong so the concept of getting it right through the mediation and manipulation of amateur videographers and activist pushing a narrative is nothing short of lunatic fringe.

Bizarrely, we all know this to be true.

We know that social media is almost entirely unreliable. We know that film is a highly manipulative art form. We know that Robert Downey, Jr. never flew in a suit of armor, that Keanu Reeves is not Neo, that as much as he embodies who I hope Abraham Lincoln was like, Daniel Day Lewis is an actor and couldn't possibly know what the man was actually like in person.

We know this to be true but we need to be right. We need to believe and so we take that leap of faith, that gut level adherence to what makes some sort of sense in the story and run with it. More so, if the fiction supports things we already have chosen to believe in, we are adding it to the arsenal of defenses against any other sort of view of our story.

We know there's more to the story of the Antifa takeover of Seattle. We know there's more to the January 6th breach of the Capitol. We know there are more sides to the story of Michael Brown. We know that with everyone filmed in a Walmart screaming about her right to forego a mask there is something else before and after that moment that may demonize her just a bit less.

We know but we don't care. Context and considering the framing takes too much work. Too much time. In an existence flooded with too much information, too many stories, too much video, too many opinions, it's just fucking easier to settle on the story that suits you and roll with that.

That's why—no matter what my mother says—it was definitely not a family of Mormons and I'll go to my grave with that.

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sockparade · 5 years ago

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tips for surviving the pandemic: things i learned from my immigrant parents

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a little over a week since the WHO announced that the coronavirus (COVID-19) was officially a pandemic. This has been a long, challenging week for a lot of people and it is nothing short of terrifying to read reports of what is happening in Asia and Europe as many predict that we’ll likely endure a similar fate here in the United States. In the midst of all of this chaos and uncertainty, I’ve been reminded of so many lessons that my Taiwanese immigrant parents taught me. I’m sharing them here so that others might also benefit. Thanks Ma. Thanks Daddy.

你昨天已經出去了.

“You already went out yesterday.“

1. Learn how to stay home. Our family is eight days into self-isolating at home and Tony asked me this morning if I had cabin fever. And strangely, the answer is no. I’m not. Not to downplay the difficulty of this moment but my experience with this “shelter-in-place” ordinance reminds of pretty much all my summers between kindergarten and 8th grade. Both of my parents worked full-time so summer was just three blissful months of nothing. No structure, no plans, no camps, no playdates, and no responsibilities. My parents never made me feel like I was missing a thing by staying home and I don’t remember ever feeling bored. There were always library books to read, stories to write, and thoughts to journal. Hours were spent playing school with my big sister (now a first grade teacher!), making up random games like who can avoid touching the carpet longest, learning Kim Zmeskal’s latest gymnastics floor routine, writing lyrics to Kenny G saxophone solos, and rehearsing for our variety show that we would perform to our tired parents at the end of the day. And that’s not even including the hours we spent watching The Price is Right, CHIPS, Knight Rider, and Airwolf (yep, no cable).

As a teenager I carefully plotted all my hangouts with friends so that I didn’t have too many consecutive days when I was out of the house. Whenever I asked my parents if I could hang out with friends, they would always say, “But you already went out yesterday. What’s wrong with staying home? Why do you always have to go out?” It was as if having too much fun two days in a row was off limits. If there was a big party on Friday, I would purposely make sure I stayed home Wednesday and Thursday just to increase the chances of being able to go out on Friday. I know a lot of people talk about how awful their high school years were but I was one of those lucky kids who had a really great group of friends that made me feel seen, loved, and cared for. The downside was that I couldn’t get enough of it. I was always thinking about the next hangout, the next event, the next thing. It took me all the way until my late twenties to fully appreciate the fine art of staying home and to finish my unexpected transformation into the expert homebody that I am today.

I’m reminded of that old quote by Blaise Pascal, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

It’s great to be out and about, but it’s also really important to learn how to stay home.

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晚上要吃什麼？清冰箱.

“What are we eating for dinner?” “Cleaning the fridge.”

2. Be creative with what you have. I love food. Not in a foodie sense, but I get a lot of pleasure out of eating. I’m not a food snob by any stretch of the imagination. I thoroughly enjoy a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as much as I enjoy a fancy, inventive, Michelin-starred meal at Commis. What’s hard for me is when food is eaten as sustenance rather than with delight. But my parents taught me that you can always take pride in preparing a meal. No matter your ingredients.

My mom is an excellent cook. I know a lot of people think their mom is a good cook but my mom is legitimately skilled in the kitchen. There were some nights when I’d ask what was for dinner and my mom would just reply, “Cleaning the fridge.”

Now for some, this might sound terrifying. But my mom could honestly make something out of nothing. I still crave my dad’s simple egg and garlic fried rice. My parents raised me to be able to make an tasty meal just from rummaging in the pantry and fridge for random leftover things. There were plenty of summers where lunches and snacks were an individual culinary adventure for each of us kids. I still remember the day I witnessed my baby sister add a Kraft single on top of her onion ramen noodles. She saw my confusion, shrugged and said, “You should try it, it’s good.”

With all the hoarding folks have been doing during this pandemic, I’ve found myself feeling quite anxious. Trying to calculate if we have enough food. Estimating how many more meals we can eat at home before we need to make another grocery run. As someone who struggles with a scarcity mentality it has been hard not to panic. But then I keep reminding myself that I know how to make good food using just whatever’s available.

You know, I was pretty disappointed with Mary H.K. Choi’s second novel, Permanent Record, given how much I enjoyed her debut novel, Emergency Contact. But I was absolutely thrilled with the shine she gave to what her protagonist calls “Hot Snacks”.

Here’s an excerpt from Permanent Record that is a beautiful ode to creative food mashups and immigrant kids everywhere:

“I edit and post a Shin Ramyun Black video set to music. My favorite instant noodles with three flavor packets and so much garlic. It’s a classic Korean HotSnack, especially when you throw in cut-up hot dogs, frozen dumplings, extra kimchi - and this is where the artistry comes in- eggs, cheese, corn from a can, and a drizzle of sesame oil on top. And furikake if you’re feeling wealthy. The next night I put up a bacon, egg, and cheese not in a bagel but in a glazed honey bun. Laced with sriracha and pan fried on the outside. Then it’s chilaquiles with Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos and chorizo. Jamaican beef patty casserole disrespected with a smothering of Japanese curry and broiled. With Crystal Hot Sauce over the top and pickled banana peppers. I’m trolling with that one but the controversy is berserk. When I run out of old videos, I make saag paneer naanchos with Trader Joe’s frozen Indian food, and it’s a hit. Especially when I add yogurt and a thick layer of crushed-up Takis on top.”

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看連續劇.

“Watch soap operas.”

3. Find a way to escape. I’m generally pro technology but I’ll admit I’m a little bummed at the way iPhones and iPads have made TV viewing such an individual activity. I like how Disney+ has gotten some families back to watching TV together again. Although I will say, we really coddle our kids these days. I grew up in a time when movie ratings only applied in the theaters and we watched movies with our families like Alien, The Fly, and Gremlins. We were scared out of our minds and sometimes could only watch through the cracks between our fingers covering our eyes because it was so scary. Okay, this also might be why I can’t watch horror movies as an adult.

From a young age, my parents taught me that watching other people’s drama unfold on screen is one of the best way to escape your own drama. Some people say binge watching became a thing when the TV networks started releasing shows on DVD. Others give credit to Netflix releasing their original content a whole season at a time. But truth be told, I first learned how to binge watch from my parents.

We would rent 30-40 VHS cassette tapes from that random spot in Bellaire Chinatown. Can you picture it? You needed multiple plastic bags to transport that many VHS tapes.

Do you remember the one about the dying mother who needed to find homes for each of her 7 children? I don’t think it’s normal for a 10 year old to cry so much but you better believe it’s made me learn the true value of a soap opera escape hatch.

Are you in a pandemic? Now’s the perfect time to pick up that YA novel, binge that reality show, start that kdrama, or rewatch all six seasons of The Sopranos again.

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下個禮拜會下雨.

“It’s going to rain next week.”

4. Be informed about what’s ahead. If you ask either of my parents about the weather at any given time they can reliably tell you the daily percent chance of precipitation and humidity for at least seven days out. They’ve always been this way. They would inform me of the weather at various points throughout the week. They planned their yard work and car washes around the weather forecast. There’s something about the way the weather forecast is available to everyone. And it feels like it’s just a matter of making the small extra effort to access it and gain a slight advantage. I feel like so much of the immigrant mentality is to be diligent in making the right choices to not screw yourself over and seizing opportunities whenever you can. And it wasn’t just weather but this is such an obvious example of it.

I remember my dad saying to me once, "Can you imagine if someone decided to read every book in their local library? If they just went shelf by shelf and systematically read all the books? You could do it, you know. It’s free, it doesn’t cost any money to check out a book from the library. But no one really does it.”

I think immigrant parents get a bad reputation for forwarding chain letters and health/science hoaxes they get on email, WeChat and Line. And in a pandemic, yes, they are definitely susceptible to misinformation, rumors and flat out untruths. But the thought behind it seems right.

The mistrust of government leadership is actually quite relevant right now in this pandemic. Many immigrants left countries with governments that were overtly corrupt, oppressive, and used propaganda to influence its citizens. And while many Americans still take pride in living in a country that verbally champions freedom and democracy, the truth is that our government has already failed us and lied to us in many ways. During this pandemic, we cannot wait on leaders to tell us what to do. We must be diligent in reading for ourselves, seeking experts, using our critical thinking skills, and making preparations accordingly.

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會不會冷?

“Are you cold?”

5. Check in with yourself. Check in with others. I have so many memories of my parents walking through the living room and asking me and my sisters if we were cold. It felt like they couldn’t walk past the thermostat without asking us if they needed to raise it or lower it. As if they couldn’t hear us sneeze and wonder if they needed to turn off the ceiling fan. They couldn’t see us sitting in a dim room without turning on a light for us. There are so many times I fell asleep reading on the couch and woke up with a blanket over me. Or sometimes I was fully awake doing something random, like playing Egyptian Rat Screw with my sisters (a cardgame for the uninitiated), and my mom would walk by and wordlessly drop a warm, heavy blanket over my shoulders. That’s care, y’all. Consistent, immediate action, and often without words.

The tip here is to pay attention to your discomfort during a pandemic. There’s this immigrant stereotype of stoicism and that’s true to some degree but maybe the resilience is made possible not because of unnatural toughness but largely because immigrant parents can also be so incredibly perceptive and tender in some very tangible ways.

When everything is chaotic around you and you’re busy multitasking these next few months, don’t ignore your needs. Notice how you’re feeling. Physically and emotionally. Where are you carrying your stress and tension in your body? You don’t have to tough it out. Oh and remember to check in with your people on how they’re feeling. Is there a light switch you can turn on for someone?

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笑死人.

“Laugh to death.”

6. Laugh to survive. Look, we didn’t have the perfect family or anything like that. We’ve definitely had our share of difficult times, financial stress, health issues, arguments, and pain. But my parents also really knew how to laugh and taught us to laugh with abandon. Like, bent over, tears running out of your eyes, can’t breathe kind of laughing. Our dinner table was kind of like a writer’s room. It was difficult to tell a mediocre story. You had better come prepared with a punchline or a point. It was a tough crowd, every night. On many occasions I stopped myself halfway through a story upon the self-realization that there was no real way to land the plane. Polite laughs were nowhere to be found, except perhaps a charitable smile from my baby sister. But it didn’t stop us from trying. I think my sisters and I are all probably better storytellers for it and we definitely have learned to try to bring humor into difficult times.

I know that this pandemic is so incredibly dark and depressing that it can sometimes feel disrespectful, inappropriate, or childish to laugh at anything. But my parents taught me that you laugh to survive. Nothing is ever so dark that you can’t find a reason to laugh. And sometimes you really need to find something to laugh about.

I’ve been taking long breaks each day from major media news outlets but I have been finding such joy and laughter from the meme creators on IG and the comedic geniuses on Twitter. In Taiwanese when something’s really funny, people will say a phrase that is imperfectly translated as laugh to death. Like you killed a person it was so funny. Now’s the time to find that content or those people who will get you to laugh to death.

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我要去挪車.

“I’m going to go re-park the cars.”

7. Go to bed with a plan for the next morning. I grew up in a suburb of Houston, Texas where one property developer built the entire neighborhood and used the same eight or nine floor plans for all the houses but changed up the brick and trim color to keep things interesting. Most homes have a long driveway that connects a garage set near the backdoor of a home to the street. By the time I was driving, we had four cars in total -- two in the garage and two on the driveway. At the end of the day when everyone was home for the night and my dad was getting ready to go to bed, he’d announce, “I’m going to go re-park the cars.” Then we’d all kind of stop what we were doing and rearrange the order of the cars to match our morning departure schedules. This meant figuring out who was leaving when in the morning and sometimes also prompted brief check-in conversations about any changes in our usual routine.

In a pandemic it can sometimes feel like there are a million different things to attend to and large conceptual concerns that demand your attention. But there’s something calming and centering about spending a few minutes each night thinking through specifically what needs to happen just tomorrow. Not the day after or next week. Get super tactical and specific about what tomorrow morning looks like. Check-in with your partner about any aberrations to your schedule (e.g. I have a super important conference call at 7am tomorrow) to minimize any unnecessary surprises. There’s something magical about setting up your morning that helps you rest just a little easier at night.

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星期三我們有禱告會.

“On Wednesdays we have prayer meeting.”

8. Make time for your spirituality. Growing up my parents both had physically demanding jobs. My mom was a seamstress for many years, providing alterations at my aunt and uncle’s dry cleaners. She later worked in an elementary school cafeteria and then eventually became a classroom aide for special needs students. My dad worked at that same dry cleaners for years until he got a job at the post office. He then became a letter carrier, delivering mail on foot. The summer months were especially grueling, carrying a heavy sack of mail in 100 degree, humid weather, and walking until sweat soaked his shirts and blisters formed on his feet. They had every excuse to skip weeknight events. But unless they were sick in bed, I can’t remember a time when they missed their weekly prayer meeting with their friends from church.

Pandemics have an unsettling way of forcing us to confront our mortality and can trigger a bunch of unresolved shit that has been bubbling underneath the surface. We’ve lost some of our usual coping mechanisms and it can be super hard to quiet the anxieties, fears, and other demons that we usually try to keep under control. This isn’t a lecture about a particular faith or belief system. It’s just a reminder to prioritize your existential questions, your interior life, and your connection to things much bigger than yourself -- whether that’s a community, a yoga practice, a faith group, a tradition, or something else.

I have a fledgling meditation practice that I’ve been trying to strengthen since last year. When I say fledgling I mean that sometimes I bail before the ten minutes is up and check my phone. Even though I’m not very good at it yet, I can really tell the difference on the days that I make time for it. Our church started hosting its weekly Sunday service online and that’s challenging for me because a church service feels like it’s designed to be so much about the physical rhythm of going to a place, seeing faces of people I love, hearing their voices co-mingling with mine in song and in prayer, and tasting the bread and wine in my mouth. The online service was short, and just for viewing through a zoom conference call, but there was still something meaningful about setting aside that time Sunday morning, asking our wiggly kids to be present, and saying the liturgy out loud knowing that in homes all across the country, other people are doing the same.

If things are really going to get as bad as some are predicting, we’ll need the spiritual strength to make it to the other side. Those habits are hard to form overnight. My parents taught me that you really have to make the time for your spirituality non-negotiable, so that you won’t abandon it when it’s inconvenient or when you are too tired.

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沒辦法.

“What choice do we have?”

9. Rise to the occasion. Whenever my parents are telling old war stories about things they had to do to get to where they are today, inevitably one of us will say, “Man that’s crazy, how did you manage to do it?” And instead of pointing to some super personality trait of theirs or some complex self-help principle, they always say, “We had no choice.” It’s not said in a defeated way, but in a posture of accepting that life can be cruel, unfair, and capricious. And that it’s not helpful to dwell too long on the why’s and how’s. My parents taught me that you can’t stay in despair mode. You eventually have to push yourself into problem solving mode and you do whatever it takes to move forward.

This coronavirus is so unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in our lifetime. It is so unprecedented for me that my brain is having a hard time processing the reality of what’s happening right now and the rest of my lived experience. I spent the first few days of this week just being overwhelmed, anxious, angry, and irritable. At this point though, I’m in go mode. I’m doing what needs to be done for our family and taking care of business. What choice do we have? I can hear my parents saying it. One day, if we’re lucky, we’ll say it to our kids too.

#coronavirus #immigrants #immigrant parents #survival tips #advice #covid-19 #pandemic #childhood #lifelessons

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lunadiane · 5 years ago

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A Happier Afternoon

Summary: Felix has a companion over for tea.

A brief exploration of our canon gremlin.

Read on Ao3

Felix sank into the plush armchair as he leaned his entire weight into it, a porcelain cup of tea in one hand and matching gold-rimmed saucer in the other. Before him, a teapot and accompanying cake stand stood before him on the blue-covered table.

The pastry assortment consisted of petit fours, eclairs, macarons and French-style sandwiches, instead of the usual scones, cakes and English sandwiches he was used to. They were currently in Paris, after all, and although the hands of the grandfather clock read fifteen to five thanks to French schooling hours, it didn’t mean he had to go without his afternoon tea. Now that he had returned to the comfort of his and his mother’s residence, he could also drop the French and converse easier in English.

Felix sipped the steaming hot tea and made a face.

“No milk or sugar? That’s unusual.” His teatime company remarked with amusement. “You never take your tea without them.”

The tea scalded his tongue and he frowned at the bitterness. “I wanted to take my tea your way just this once, to see why you like it. Can’t say I see the appeal.”

The man seated in the armchair across him laughed. “That’s because you didn’t take your time, my boy. Take a breath of the tea before you sip it, make sure you actually sip it, not just take a mouthful – and roll it around your mouth. Bathe your tongue in it and breathe. The scent is half the experience.”

Felix nodded. He carefully inhaled the scent of black tea – which smelled wonderfully of roses, as was its namesake, took another sip and did as he was instructed to, quietly savouring the dark liquid.

He swallowed after a few moments. “There’s hints of…something sweet. Vanilla?” Felix wondered. “And a rose aftertaste.”

The man smiled. “Bain de Rose. Nothing beats a good Earl Grey, though.”

“Of course.” Felix agreed, taking a third sip. “However…in Rome, drink as the Romans drink.”

Felix set his cup back on the table, saucer beneath it, and leaned forward to pluck a brown-coloured macaron, all of the biscuits chocolate except for two mint ones. “And pick your favourites of their local cuisine.” The man continued, his brown eyes crinkling in mirth as he chuckled.

“Mother doesn’t fancy macarons that much anyway.” Felix defended as his companion exclaimed in mock outrage.

“Just because we’re away from our cooks doesn’t mean you can eat anything you want!”

“Really? I thought that was the opposite.” Felix teased, grabbing another macaron and popping it into his mouth.

“I see your mother is spoiling you as usual.”

“No, not really.” Felix smirked. “But she’s been so busy lately, there’s simply no time for her to think about trivial matters. I just decided to step in regarding the menu.” He shrugged helplessly, holding his palms up.

“Rascal.”

A comfortable few seconds of silence passed. Felix drank his tea before reaching for the sugar bowl, metal clinking as he dropped two cubes in with tongs and stirred using the accompanying teaspoon. “What?” He replied to the man’s reproachful look. “I can’t taste anything after eating macarons. The French are impeccable with their sweets.”

“You’re lucky your mother isn’t back yet.”

A second cup, saucer and spoon sat next to the teapot, empty and untouched.

“Speaking of, how is she?”

“She’s fine.” Felix quickly said, drinking his tea. Now it actually tasted sweet, which was to say, good. “She’s got another project, the rings, so of course she’s happier. It takes her mind off…you know.” A lump formed in his throat, which Felix hurriedly swallowed with another gulp of tea.

Kind brown eyes softened as he curled his fingers together on the table, leaning in. “That’s good to hear. I think the change in scenery is really doing her good. She has the French film scene to explore.”

“Exactly what I thought.” Felix nodded.

“What has she discovered?” He asked.

“Mostly shooting locations.” Felix answered. “French architecture’s distinct from London, and she likes to take day trips into other provinces.” He picked up his phone lying on the table and swiped it, opening an image of a quaint cottage in the afternoon sunlight decorated with bright flowerbushes. “From Roussillon. It looks exactly like the ones you find in the English countryside,” He scoffed, “so I don’t know what she was raving about.”

“Don’t let her catch you saying that.” The man smiled.

“It’s about the atmosphere, love!” Felix mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “The French sun is simply better, no dreary English clouds and rain! Why can’t she just wait for summer? It’s not like England doesn’t have blue skies.”

His companion chuckled. “You know your mother is biased toward her home country.”

“Too biased. Meanwhile,” Felix went on, “I think I’ve found a future costume designer.”

“Really?” The man’s eyes twinkled. “Is that where you’ve gotten your ensemble from?”

Unlike the mourning grey and black he’d worn all of the past year, he was now wearing grey – and predominantly white. A white top hat was perched on his head, a pair of grey vulpine ears protruding from it. He stood and proudly spread out his arms, rotating his wrists theatrically to display his grey-gloved hands and the crisp white fabric of his pants and jacket sleeves. Beneath the jacket was a bright orange vest, gold chain hanging from the pocket, and a grey undershirt. A grey domino mask covered his eyes.

“Worthy of Savile Row, isn’t it?” The boy preened.

“A fox magician?” The man murmured, impressed, eyes tracing the tailored garments. “A bit heavy on the symbolism, don’t you think?”

“I think the symbolism’s perfect. Magic tricks are lies the audience willingly believes, after all.” Felix said. “Besides, what else is best suited to pull rabbits from their hiding places?”

“Was this made by your new costumer talent?”

Felix’s lips curled into a smirk. “It wasn’t, but I would love to see her take on it. She is-”

Outside, the door pushed open. “Felix, I’m home!” came a feminine voice, together with the echoing click-clack of heels.

His green eyes widened. Abruptly, Felix pushed his armchair back with an ugly screech. The man darted out of his own seat to stride closer, moving with his arms outstretched.

Felix flung his arms around him.

“Father.”

At his touch, his father, dark-haired, brown-eyed, clad in his signature white shirt and blue vest, vanished into nothing.

The rustling of paper and plastic sounded from outside. She was obviously setting her purchases down on the counter. For a few moments, Felix stared into the empty space.

“Trixx, hide.” His transformation immediately melted off, leaving him again in grey and black. The fox kwami sprung from the necklace hidden beneath his shirt and zipped into his pocket. The efficacy of the deactivation phrase was one of the reasons he liked this miraculous.

Amelie appeared in the doorway, and he turned to meet her. “Welcome back, Mother.”

There was a healthy flush to her skin and her golden hair slightly mussed from exertion. “I see you’ve started without me.” She said lightly. The smile on her face was playful, but genuine joy and relief exuded from it. For a year, Felix had refused to do anything alone if his mother could be with him. He would wait at school until she came to pick him up, distracted by a book, so that they could go home and take tea together.

She stepped forward to rest her hands on his shoulders, caressing his blond hair. “A year…it’s been a year since he passed.” Amelie murmured, eyes shining. “I suppose we’ve both moving on, aren’t we?”

His chest felt tight.

“Of course, Mother.”

#miraculous ladybug #felix graham de vanily #ml felix #amelie graham de vanily #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fanfiction

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luscaina · 6 years ago

Text

Whitebeards Headcanons

Edward Newgate aka Whitebeard

Ultimate Grandpa

Loves his rowdy kids

Will fuck your shit up

Absolutely terrifying in battle

Claims not to spoil his kids but secretly does

1st Commander: Marco the Phoenix

Cool and Collected™

internally somehow stresses over nothing constantly

secretly mischievous

chanting under his breath as he sorts out preventable bullshit #23 of this week: "i love all my siblings equally, i love all my siblings equally, i lov"

Can and Will Kill you in an instant if you hurt his family

2nd Commander: Portgas D. Ace

semi-responsible rowdy boy

always down to brawl

*walks into a mannequin* "i'm terribly sorry"

sunshine smile and youthful freckles to hide Angst and Depression

a vaguely functional Bi who is a bit Dumb at times

3rd Commander: Diamond Jozu

Just Goes With It

Responsible

*long suffering sigh*

likes to play with Kotatsu by making him chase light reflections from his diamonds

regularly plays chess with Marco

4th Commander: Thatch

Dramatic™

it’s all fun and good until someone starts crying

“i have never done anything wrong ever in my entire life”

gives the best hugs

vaguely terrifying when truly enraged

5th Commander: Flower Vista

always smells pleasantly like flowers

owns a whole cabinet of top hats bc he loses them so frequently

will offer you a tissue and then proceeds to pull out a never-ending string of colourful handkerchiefs out of his sleeve

tends to a small garden of flowers

someone once accidentally stepped on his prized rosebush and he nearly burst into tears

6th Commander: Blamenco

chaotic neutral

stashes everyone’s hidden snacks in his pockets in exchange for a portion of said snack

equal amounts respected as feared amongst the crew

all the stories of his life experiences sound like a bad acid trip

but then again it’s Blamenco so it’s better to not question it

7th Commander: Rakuyo

surprisingly clumsy

feeds his weapon table scraps

sleeps with a nightcap

will write “I Told You So” on your tombstone

cries easily at Ballads

8th Commander: Namur

“what do you mean Ace is overboard again??”

Tired Of Your Bullshit

loves the ocean but always worries how deadly it can be to his family

Sarcastic to the point he accidentally sassed himself

has the shiniest teeth

9th Commander: Blenheim

Grumpy Old Man

actually v soft

probably speaks with an irish accent

“STOP BLOWING HOLES INTO MY SHIP!”

low-key worried about everyone smaller than him

10th Commander: Curiel

a bit trigger-happy

“have you ever fired a cannon?” - “no?” - “wELL WOULD YOU LIKE TO”

Public Enemy Nr.1 in the eyes of the shipwrights

always a notebook in hand in case he gets new ideas for inventions

known to barricade himself in his workshop only to emerge three days later to eat one slice of toast and then promptly passing out at the table

11th Commander: Kingdew

cuts his own hair and Izo weeps silently

doesn’t like it when friends fight

a stressbaker

*punches a guy straight into next sunday* “remember kids, violence is never the answer”

your personal hype man

12th Commander: Haruta

Local Gremlin

probably swipes at everyone’s ankles

regularly teams up with Thatch and Ace for pranks

surprisingly noble and prince-ly attitude

will fight you to the Death for the last cookie

13th Commander: Atmos

only communicates in grunts

befriends so many birds bc he keeps feeding them

loves mini-sandwiches

apologises profusely whenever he accidentally squishes something

“Atmos SMASH”

14th Commander: Speed Jiru

never speaks in contractions

teaches his comrades who weren’t able to have an education

*milt kahl head swaggle*

meticulously polishes his weapons

“maybe tis because thee art a, how doest Ace sayeth, a Major Bitch”

15th Commander: Fossa

chainsmoker

“i’ve got your four basic food groups – beans, bacon, whiskey and lard!”

when asked about his scar he always tells a different story

always smells like smoke and metal

once when he was taking a nap, someone jokingly put a cigar in his mouth and to everyones horror he ate it

16th Commander: Izo

Dramatique™

Flawless Boss Ass Bitch

has many talents, crew suspects he is an Omniscient Being

wanna get your ass beat swiftly? mess with his makeup or fabrics

Absolute Nightmare When Angery

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kote-the-inn-keeper · 8 years ago

Note

Kote seeing dedan and hespa at the waystone but they pretend not to know each other. But they have like 6 kids.

//i WOULD CRY HOLY FUCK YES!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOLD ON LETS JUST//

There was a loud bustling outside, making Kote and Bast pause their conversation for a small moment. The two looked puzzled; it wasn’t time for the noon rush yet. Everyone was still out and about in the fields, or working on the farms. Were they taking an early day perhaps?

Kote pushed himself up from the table and went to see what was going on, before the inn door flew open, children screeching and running in like banshees from hell. Two parents walked in after the little gremlins, who were currently tracking dirt and grass all over the inn.

Bast was gone. He literally left as fast as humanly possible without drawing attention to himself.

Kote turned to ask for help, but saw he was gone, and sighed. Listening to the adults bicker, he walked to go greet them in the least, dodging children along the wall. “Hello! Welcome to the Waystone Inn. Passing through, I assume?”

The woman looked to him, pausing, and just watching him.

Kote jumped from the intensity of her stare, smiling sheepishly and looking to the burly man. “A-Are these your children?”

“Yeah.” He said, rather bluntly. Not really... offering much else in return.

“O-Oh, uh... they are... lovely. Um, can I help you two?” Kote asked, growing more anxious with his Inn being trashed by children and two rather large people just staring at him.

“You look familiar.” The woman said, crossing her arms softly, stepping in and around the innkeeper. “Must be the red hair.”

Watching her saunter off to grab a kid, it didn’t take him long to click onto who she was. It was hard to have a walk like her’s and not be a seasoned fighter. Hespa... God, he meet her as a kid! He was only a teen around that time; she was still alive? Not to say she wasn’t smart; but she was brutish in manners and, well, the job she had was shit. Low living rates.

“Didn’t we know a red head?” The man asked, closing the door and moving past Kote. “Ale for me. Food for the kids.” He said, looking down to Kote as he walked passed.

“Sure. A ton.” Hespa replied, trying to corral some of the six screeching kids into one area and table. “At least three.”

The man grunted a bit, trying to help her in moving the kids around and getting them to stop being terrors to the place.

Kote quickly slipped back into the kitchen, grasping his chest and leaning against the wall, silently screaming. How the /hell/ did she get all the way out to where he was?! Why was she even there!? Kids?! What if she recognized him?! What would he do!!?

“Reshi?” Bast whispered, peeking in from the door that lead out back. “Are they gone?”

Kote turned swiftly, color drained from his face and heart racing. “Hm? No. No.” he shoo his head swiftly, hair jostling into a bit of a mess. “No, there are a lot of them and -- oh man. Get in here and help me cook!” He marched over, managing to grab the fae before he slipped away.

“But Reshi!!”

“You’re supposed to be helping me, Bast. I can’t go out there.”

“What do you mean you can’t? You own the place.”

“I can’t go out there again. Not right now.”

Bast tilted his head, “Scared?”

“SURE.” Kote said shortly, already cutting up meat and rushing around the kitchen. “Whatever will get you to help me out for five minutes and not let me die.”

Bast put his hands on his hips, “Well aren’t you being the over dramatic on here today.”

“BAST.”

“Reeeeeshiiiii~?”

Kote paused and glared at him, “Help me. Please. I can’t go out there because I know one of them. Maybe both. But I can’t go out there right now.”

Bast looked puzzled, then pressed his lips into a fine line. “So disappearing from already greeting them is going to solve it?”

“...Damn it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I mean, I’ll help you out, but, you can’t hide out back here. Just, maybe, don’t talk to them. That should work.” Bast explained, starting to help his friend out with the cooking.

Kote sighed, “Maybe. Go get them drinks, please? I’ll get this done... gotta start for the rush anyway.”

Bast nodded and went off to get Hespe and her husband and kids drinks, coming back maybe ten minutes later, looking frazzled. “...Reshi...”

“Yes, Bast?”

“I hate kids.”

“I know, Bast.” He continued to cook and make sandwiches and stew, pulling out one of his pies and getting it read as well. he dished everything out onto plates as fast as possible, taking a few, and giving Bast the others to carry out. “Sorry for the wait... We weren’t expecting people just yet.” He said as he set plates down in front of people.

“That’s fine--” Hespa began.

“Took long enough.”

“Dedan!” Hespa hissed, reaching over a kid and punching him in the arm. “Behave!”

‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.’ Kote thought, keeping a smile on his face and dying on the inside. “I hope you enjoy. If you need anything, ask me or my helping hand.”

“And your name is?” Dedan asked, chewing his food already.

“Kote.” Kote replied without hesitation. hesitation made people seem odd. It gave people away.

Hespa said something softly to herself, but it was drowned int he sound of clacking silverware against plates and children shouting and laughing. She ate though, giving Kote a long hard stare still, glancing to Dedan on occasion.

Kote fidgeted softly, before nodding and smiling again. With that, he turned away and hid back in the kitchen with Bast.

“I think she knows...” Bast muttered.

“You think!” Kote hissed, putting his hands to his head. “Oh no, no, no. This is bad. Bast you don’t understand how bad this is.”

“I think I know.”

“Do you? Really? You seem pretty calm for knowing how bad this is.” Kote snipped.

Bast held up his hands, “Look, freaking out isn’t going to help. If we keep calm, they won’t push. I-- huh?” He paused and peeked out form the kitchen, listening in on a conversation.

Kote paused, but slowly peeked out as well, trying to hear what was going on.

The kids were laughing and talking, some of them making a strange noise and making a weird hand gesture to one another. Kote couldn’t hear, but he felt liek he knew what was up.

“Why are they saying... chek?” Bast whispered.

Kote groaned and hid his face in his hands, sliding back into the kitchen slowly. “That’s really Dedan and Hespa... Long story short, an Adem Mercenary beat Dedan’s ass, made fun of him by calling him a dog, and did that to him. guess Hespa never let that one go and their kids picked it up.”

Bast was quiet, before nodding slowly. “R....ight...” He replied, unsure. “well, they should be done soon. So, we won’t have to worry much longer.

Much longer was two hours, and a lunch rush from locals later. This forced Kote to go out and stand about, interact, and clean up due to the swell of people in the usually quiet inn. This forced him to be around Hespa and Dedan; one of which kept watching him as he interacted with regulars. Eventually, they were they last ones once more and getting ready to leave.

“Thanks for the meal! Already, outside again!” Dedan roared playfully over the kids, chasing all of them out the door like chickens.

Hespa hung behind, paying for everything. “Sorry about that... Trying to go see family and what not. Lots of kids to feed and feet to keep busy.”

Kote nodded, taking the money from her softly. “May your travels be safe.”

“Mhm...” She replied, not leaving right away.

“D...Do you need something else, ma’am?” Kote asked, blinking quickly. “Food for the travel? Water?”

“No, no.” She said, before giving a knowing smile. “I’m sure you don’t need anymore trouble from us. This should really be the last time you deal with the two of us.” With that, she turned and left the inn, closing the door behind her.

Bast paused his sweeping. “I told you she knew...”

“I know, Bast!”

#timelorddarthswagger #replies for ears that listen

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analogscum · 6 years ago

Text

BLACKOUT (1985, d. Douglas Hickox)

I’m gonna let you in on the process, my dear Scumbags. The method behind all of this madness, if you will. This is how I tend to go about picking a movie to write about for this site: I look at the VHS box art. I would like to say that this is because I want to make the experience of reading ANALOG SCUM like scrounging through the grimy back section of a video store of yore, but the reality is that I’m lazy and easily swayed by aesthetics. So you can imagine my elation when I came across the box art for 1985’s Blackout. I mean, look at this puppy! There’s a bondage gimp man brandishing a knife, with a very rock n’ roll title font, what’s not to love?! This is one of those titles that haunted (tee hee) the horror section of my local National Video as a young’n, and I’m sure horror fans around my age or older remember those piercing blue eyes staring at us through that leather mask. Based on this box art, I thought I would be watching a sleazy giallo-inspired slasher, with nudity and gore to spare, maybe even of the SOV variety, which is a-ok in my book. But then…I learned that Blackout was a made-for-TV movie. Oh fudge.

So there’s this lady in a red trench coat, right? She walks up to a house and knocks on the back door. Then she rings the doorbell, and it sounds like a buzzer, which, who has a doorbell on their back door, and that’s not how a doorbell sounds. Fucking CARE MORE, filmmakers. The lady finds a spare key and enters the house. It’s pretty eerie. There’s classical music blaring, and the remnants of a child’s birthday party are still on the dining table. The lady goes into a side office, where the classical music is blaring from, and turns off the record player. But what’s that? The TV is on in another room. So the lady heads downstairs. It’s dark. It’s creepy. And in the TV room, there’s another lady and three kids, and they’re super duper dead! Whoa! Afternoon ruined!

And so enters Detective Grandpa. He’s a grizzled old gumshoe who you just know is going to take this case way too personally and the guy who did it is going to become his white whale, etc. etc. etc. Detective Grandpa learns that the patriarch of this murdered family, one Ed Vincent, has gone missing. So of course that must be the perp who done it! Cut to: a guy hitchhiking by the side of the road. Huh? So he gets picked up by someone driving what looks like a Yugo or a Gremlin or some other terrible late 20th century car. Anyway, this fucking guy immediately starts tailgating a lumber truck for no goddamn reason. Ease off the gas, dicknose! Then he tries to pass the lumber truck on the right hand side, which, c’mon, asshole, and then ANOTHER LUMBER TRUCK comes in the other direction, the car swerves, goes up a hill, comes crashing down, and fucking EXPLODES. Was it worth it, ya tailgating son of a bitch?!

Now the movie turns into The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for a few minutes, and we see things from the perspective of the hitchhiker. Turns out he’s suffered serious facial injuries and will require a series of total reconstructive surgeries, plus he’s got amnesia, so he has no idea who he is, whoops. We meet a bunch of his doctors, who don’t matter, plus his nurse, who is played by Kathleen Quinlan, aka the lady from Apollo 13, plus her cop boyfriend, played by Michael Beck, aka the guy from The Warriors and zero other good movies. She’s a recent divorcee, and he’s extremely pushy about wanting to get married, and gets super annoyed when she tries to assert her personhood, but don’t worry about it. Anyway, our homie gets all of his surgeries, and decides that he wants to look like Keith Carradine, which is fine. It’s a choice. It’s like saying, hey, make me look like a more wholesome Klaus Kinski. But yeah, eventually he and Kathleen Quinlan fall in love, and decide to get married. Michael Beck takes this extremely well, by which I mean he yells at her and then pretends he was only worried about their financial situation. Oh hey, is that a wall on Michael Beck’s bedroom that’s covered in photos of Kathleen Quinlan? I thought I said don’t worry about it!

Cut to: six years later. Keith Carradine is going by the name Allen Devlin. He’s a super successful real estate agent, he and Kathleen Quinlan are happily married, and they have three kids. Detective Grandpa, meanwhile, has been forced into retirement by the powers that be, definitely because of political reasons and not because he’s a degenerate drunk. But then someone anonymously sends him a newspaper clipping with a picture of Allen Devlin, and he’s like, oh fuuuuuuuuck, I’m off to Washington state to harass some innocent people! He accosts Allen on a crowded elevator and is like, Oh hey, Ed Vincent! And of course Allen is like, um, no, you’ve got the wrong guy. And Detective Grandpa is like, oh no, you’re definitely Ed Vincent, remember, you had a wife and three kids and then they were fucking murdered?! Anyhoo, see ya later! And then he just gets off the elevator and Allen is like, what the hell was that about, some old rummy just called me a killer?!

Detective Grandpa then does what he should’ve done in the first place were he not a whisky-soaked dickhead and shows up at Allen Devlin’s office. He shows Allen a bunch of crime scene photos and Allen is horrified and agrees to prove his innocence however he can. THE VERY NEXT SCENE, they go to the doctors and the doctors are like, hey, look, Allen’s dental records don’t match Ed Vincent’s, so this movie should basically be over now. But Detective Grandpa is like, nah, who needs scientific evidence when you’ve got a sleuth’s intuition and blah blah burp. At this point Michael Beck gets pulled back into the movie, and once again rightfully points out that the movie should be over at this point because scientifically speaking Allen can’t be Ed Vincent, and Detective Grandpa responds by calling Michael Beck a “young hot shot computer type.” Ugh. So Allen hires a private investigator to look into his past before the accident, which goes pretty much nowhere. Kathleen Quinlan starts getting threatening phone calls from someone calling themselves Ed, and addressing her by the dead wife’s first name. Oh, and out of the fucking blue, Mr. Bondage Guy from the box art shows up and starts attacking women around town, and Detective Grandpa is like, oh yeah, forgot to mention this, we had similar attacks out in Ohio, creep in a gimp mask going around rapin’ everybody up in here, but they stopped…AFTER THE VINCENT FAMILY MURDER!!! SPOOOOOOOOKY!!! It’s like, c’mon, you’ve GOT to set this up way before the mid-point of the movie! It’s like getting a sandwich with one too many meats: do you want a serial killer hoagie or a bondage rapist grinder? PICK ONE, BLACKOUT!

So the private eye that Allen hired winds up dead, and the police of course suspect Allen. Allen, meanwhile, is starting to think that Detective Grandpa and Michael Beck are conspiring to set him up, because of course he would think that! This sentient bottle of Captain Morgan and the creepy cop who clearly still loves his wife suddenly start lobbing accusations of murder at him? C’mon, what’s he supposed to think? But then one of the kids finds a gimp mask in the garden shed! Oh noooooo! Kathleen Quinlan is like, gaaaaah maybe you are a murderizer! And brandishes a knife at him, and Allen is like, c’mon, baby, you know me better than that, I have no idea how that super sexy mask got in our garden shed! Look, to prove that I’m not a murderer, I’ll have myself committed, so that the cops can’t arrest me (which is not how that works), and then when the crimes continue, I’ll be exonerated for good! So off to the loony bin he goes, and into the garbage bin this movie goes.

Detective Grandpa gets the DNA results back from the lab on the super sexy gimp mask: no traces of Allen anywhere on the thing. And then a guy gets arrested for attempted rape, and they find a different sexy gimp mask on him! All of a sudden, Michael Beck, who has been calling Detective Grandpa crazy this whole time, is like, this could be a copycat crime, I think Allen is the real bad guy here now because the plot needs me to! Detective Grandpa is like, nah, your man confessed, there’s no real evidence to tie Allen to any of this, I was wrong, I’m going back to my elderly bachelor’s apartment in Ohio, but before I do that, can I use your bathroom? Michael Beck is like, sure, no problem, just ignore my wall festooned with pictures of Allen’s wife, if you could. But whoops, he doesn’t, and Detective Grandpa is like, holy shit, you set this whole thing up because you wanna go back to boning Kathleen Quinlan, you sent me that newspaper clipping, didn’t you? And Michael Beck, toilet clown that he is, tries to have it both ways, and is like, ok fine, I sent you the newspaper clipping, but I did it because I really thought he may be the guy you’re after, not because of this obvious romantic vendetta of mine! Psssssssh. So then Detective Grandpa is like, did you make those phone calls and plant the gimp mask too? To which Michael Beck is like, how dare you, I may have sent you a newspaper clipping in the hope of getting my unrequited love’s new husband accused of murder, but I’d NEVER plant evidence! Get off your fucking high horse, Beck, and just admit that you’re a creep, yeeeeaaaaaah.

To his credit, Detective Grandpa stops by to see Kathleen Quinlan, and is like, hey, I fucked up, your husband is definitely innocent, and Michael Beck definitely set this whole thing in motion because he’s still in love with you. Which comes as a huge shock to Kathleen Quinlan, and I hate when movies do this, because women are fucking smarter than this. Men in general, but especially creepy men, are terrible at hiding their unrequited feelings, and women definitely know, they just choose to ignore it. Whatever. So Kathleen Quinlan goes to see Allen and is like, I know you’re innocent now, I just want you back, and he’s like, ok, you’re right, it’s time for me to come back to my family, but oooooh boy am I mad at Detective Grandpa and Michael Beck! Anyway, I should be home just in time for…OUR SON’S BIRTHDAY PARTY!!! SPOOOOOOOOOOKY!!!

Michael Beck, because he’s awesome at ideas, decides to show Kathleen Quinlan that he’s not a creep by accosting her in the Safeway parking lot. Smooth move, Xanadu. He’s like, look, I know that I made a few oopsies, but I still think that your husband is a murderer, and you and your family are in danger. So finally Kathleen Quinlan just unloads on him. She’s like, you’re a manipulative jerk, that’s why I didn’t want to marry you, and that’s why we’re in this situation now, and you need to fucking nut up and get over this childish crush you have on me, and while you’re at it stay away from me and my family, I never want to see you ever again. So Michael Beck totally respects these wishes and…nope, nope, sorry, he parks his car across from the house and goes and stalks them. To make sure they’re “safe.” Fuck offfffffffff, dude.

So the kids are celebrating the youngest’s birthday, they’re decorating the house and blaring the rock n’ roll radio (let’s go!). Kathleen Quinlan asks one of the kids to go close the garage door, but he’s like, nah, I’m on the phone with the radio station so that they’ll give little fuckin’ Mikey or whatever his name is a shoutout on the air! So Kathleen Quinlan goes herself to take care of the garage door, but the lights aren’t working, so she grabs a flashlight, and then, OH CRIPES IT’S MR. BONDAGE GUY!!! She fights him off and manages to knock him out. Meanwhile, Detective Grandpa has stopped for gas, when he hears the birthday dedication to little fuckin’ Mikey or whatever his name is on the radio and he’s like DEAR GOD!!! So then Kathleen Quinlan is like, I must know! So she pulls off the super sexy gimp mask, and whoopdie fuck, it’s Allen. Great. So he wakes up and starts smacking her around and he’s like blargh bloogh I’m crazy now, I’m Ed Vincent and I think you’re my wife, so everybody’s going to hell tonight! The kids don’t hear any of this, of course, because of that blasted rock n’ roll music! She barricades herself in the car, and oh shit, there’s Michael Beck’s dead body! He starts busting out the windows, she crawls out of the driveway, and he’s about to gank her with an axe, when all of a sudden, Detective Grandpa shows up and puts two between the eyes. RIP Allen Devlin. RIP Ed Vincent. And RIP Blackout.

Mostly this movie is just a deeply frustrating viewing experience. The central premise, an amnesiac accused of murder, is a really smart and fascinating one, because there are so many ways you can run with it: is this guy really a secret cold blooded killer? Is this detective just letting his obsession (and all that liquor) cloud his judgement? Or are they both being manipulated by someone else for their own nefarious means? Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to go with the most predictable and boring answer, while also taking the most needlessly convoluted route to get there. However, the performances are all good, more or less, and there’s some excellent cinematography, courtesy of Tak Fujimoto, who would go on to do incredible work with Jonathan Demme and others, so at least the movie looks good. Still, you can’t help but lament what a lost opportunity this is from a storytelling perspective. This is exactly the types of movies that should be getting remade: films with interesting plots that failed in execution. Just imagine what someone like Nicolas Winding Refn or David Fincher could do with this story, right?!

I’ll wrap things up with a strange and macabre addendum. Thanks to Nate Phillips, who runs the fantastic online storefront Media Crypt (I own a few of their shirts, and you should too!), for pointing out to me the fact that Blackout inspired a real-life murder! The film premiered on HBO on July 28, 1985. Less than a week later, on August 3, Ed Sherman of Hartford, CT, murdered his pregnant wife, Ellen. Just like in the film, Ed cranked up the air conditioning to slow down decomposition, and throw off the time of death, in an attempt to establish an alibi. During the trial, witnesses claimed to have discussed watching Blackout with Ed the day after it aired, and the film was even shown to the jury by the prosecutor. In the end, Sherman was sentenced to fifty years in prison, but died of a heart attack only four years into his sentence. The case would eventually be covered on an episode of “Forensic Files.” So that just goes to show ya, Scumbags: crime doesn’t pay! Or maybe it would if you pick a better movie than Blackout to base your crime on. I dunno. I don’t really do crimes.

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