#and fill up the jail with acid once for every time it changed how it expressed itself in me

[den-gamle-kartograf]

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[unityrain24]

anyways was thinking of a thor ragnarok rewrite last night as sleep refused to take me. obviously it can't be exactly like actual ragnarok bc marvel/mcu's norse stuff is..nothing like actual norse lore but i figured it could still have some more similarities than what the actual movie did.

(also if i were to rewrite the movie this isn't actually what id do, this was just. idk. what i was thinkin about as i was desperate to actually falll asleep).

anyways i figured this rewrite would actually work best if it rewrote the end of tdw first- loki gets stabbed by kruse and passes out for a while (rather than being able to pick himself back up in secret like what actually happened) and in that time odin senses that loki isn't dead and sends some guards to collect him. since loki technically broke the law *again* (committed treason, escaped jail, etc), he can enforce even more punishment, especially now that frigga is dead and she can't do anything about it. That, combined with some prophecy from midgard (or maybe asgard, idk) as an excuse added justifying reason, he sentences loki to the worst thing he can think up: to be bound against a rock with a snake dripping venom on him, his lips sewn shut so he can never lie again, forced to be in his jotun form, for all of eternity. In the deepest dungeon.

Thor obviously doesn't know about any of this, because he thinks loki dead.

so loki is taken, bound to a rock (idk if it's really work to have him bound with organs tho, since he doesn't have children in the mcu. maybe it's his..pet's? or maybe just chain. idk.), a snake coiled above him, seiðr bound, lips sewn shut, and his æsir form taken. He is completely alone, save the guards outside the chamber.

i don't really ship logyn in the mcu, (bc she doesn't exist in the mcu and their relationship feels to me like it would span for several centuries prior, so just randomly introducing her in one movie would seem strange to me), but i follow some people who do, so i wondered how i could incorporate that anyways, and make it not seem too strange.

Sigyn is one of the guards who has a shift guarding loki's chambers. She feels awful about it though, and eventually decides she has to do something to help. She ventures into the chamber and decides to catch the dripping venom with her helmet.

She also tries to cut the stitches from lokis lips, but when one string is cut, it doubles and repierces the skin, now twice the strength. She tries again, cutting them all at once this time (rather than individually), and grabs them all at once and pulls them out before they can multiply and repair themselves (luckily this time it works). She almost regrets it, though, as now she has to hear loki scream himself hoarse, and she can't do anything else to ease the pain.

she stays for several weeks/months/idk, holding the helmet above loki, having to empty it every so often. Perhaps she gets to know loki in this time, perhaps she doesn't. Perhaps she notices a certain brand on his shoulder, perhaps she does not. Perhaps she knew loki vaguely before, and now muses to herself what could have possibly changed him. Perhaps she didn't know him before, and doesn't muse. I don't know. But eventually she decides she needs to find and tell thor.

as hard as it is, she leaves loki to suffer alone (she tries to see if she can leave the helmet or fashion some contraption to make sure the poison cannot get in his eyes, but she cannot). After some searching and asking, she finds the mourning sullen prince thor and tells him what has occurred. Thor, now filled with joy, rage, guilt, horror, and sadness, breaks loki out with sigyn.

Loki is a mess. He has gone blind- whether temporarily or permanently is unknown- and has visible burns from the acid venom. His hairs a mess and his skin sweaty and thin. You can see his rib cage with how thin he's become. He wasn't allowed much clothes at the start of his punishment, but what few he had have been burned by the venom as well. He can't walk. He's barely conscious, and what little bit he is is just filled with delirium. They basically have to carry him.

They hide away from asgard (or at least the palace). And then ragnarok gets unleashed and they have to fix it etc and in the end they realize that it wasn't literally loki's being freed that incited ragnarok, but it was necessary for him to be freed so they could help stop/fix it/lessen the damage etc idk i was pretty tired at this point i wasn't thinking of details. anyways

idk if that made any sense lol but i'll tag the logyn people i follow/was thinking of

@therese-lokidottir @jonquilclegane @cosmic0artist

[chez-pezeater]

TCR Birthday Bash 2019: Day 7- Game Night

So this is probably going to get me either a lot of hate, thrown out of the fandom, or (best case scenario) requests for more. I’m honestly not sure which is worse (worst?) at this point. Either way please enjoy Cards Against Humanity: The Cat Returns Addition. Persephone is a TCR OC that belongs to @tcrmommabear & @sindysugar being used with their permissions.

At this point Hiromi has long since become a frequent visitor to the Bureau after following Haru one day. Meaning Hiromi while not quite as close to the others as Haru is, is still considered a friend.  Also the humans are in their early 20s and knowing my friends and I when we get into the game, potty language. Which really should just be a warning for CAH in general.

Cards Against Humanity (for those that don’t know) is played with two types of cards: Black prompt cards and White (I call them) Reaction cards. A person draws a prompt card and the other players put down their reaction card(s) face down and then replace the number of cards they used. Prompt drawing player flips them over and selects the best reaction card of the round. Best reaction card(s) win the prompt card. Prompt cards use between 1-3 reaction cards.

- - - - - - - - - - -

To be fair, the entire thing was ENTIRELY Hiromi’s fault. Now that’s not to say that Haru didn’t love her best friend, because she did. She also knew EXACTLY what kind of humor Hiromi had. Mix that with a card game who’s box quite literally proclaims it to be “A horrible game for horrible people”. Yeah… It’s all Hiromi’s fault.

Hiromi drew a black prompt card. “’What’s making things awkward in the sauna?’ Ok folks hit me with your best shots.”

Louise puts down a card reading ‘A sales team of clowns and pedophiles.’

Muta chose to use ‘Scrotum tickling.’

Persephone gave it some thought before selecting ‘Cute Boys.’

Baron hesitated before putting down ‘MechaHitler.’

Haru slaps down ‘Full Frontal Nudity.’ with NO HESITATION.

Toto calmly places down ‘Fiery Poops.’

Hiromi reads all the reaction cards before declaring “A sales team of clowns and pedophiles is the winner. Who put that down cuz yeah that would make things awkward?”

Louise raises a hand while smirking. She accepts her prize before drawing a new prompt card, “’Only two things in life are certain: death and (blank).’ Oh my, there are so many ways that could be taken.”

Hiromi slapped down ‘The violation of our most basic human rights.’ as her card.

Muta, thinking of everything that happens regarding any of the groups antics, put down ‘Total fucking chaos.’

Persephone, not having very many good cards, selects ‘The male gaze.’

Baron, knowing how dramatic his sister is, chose ‘Dropping a chandelier on your enemies and riding the rope up.’ (winner)

Haru hemmed and hawed before putting down ‘Kamikaze pilots.’

Toto put down ‘Every ounce of charisma left in Mick Jagger’s tired body.’ hoping to get some laughs.

Louise read the cards out loud, cackling in between them, and said “’Dropping a chandelier on your enemies’ wins. So which one of you called me out like this?”

“I did sister dear, after all between the two of us this is exactly the kind of dramatics you would use.” Snorts echoed around the table, implying that Louise wasn’t the only over-the-top-Gikkingen around.

And so the game continued:

R3) Muta- (prompt) Listen, Gary, I like you. But if you want that corner office, you’re going to have to show me (blank).

Hiromi- Being a busy adult with many important things to do

Louise- Deez nuts

Persephone- Exactly what you’d expect

Baron- A constant need for validation

Haru- My worthless son

Toto- Meaningless sex

“Tough call but with how humans are ‘A constant need for validation.’ wins although ‘Meaningless sex.’ was close.” “Drat,” Toto declared while Baron took another card.

R4)Persephone- (prompt) Dear Sir or Madam, We regret in infom you that the Office of (blank) has denied your request for (blank).

Hiromi- Bill Nye the Science Guy & A gassy antelope

Louise- Republicans & Black People

Muta- Blackula & The shambling corpse of Larry King

Baron- Sean Penn & Tripping balls

Haru- AXE Body Spray & Being fabulous

Toto-  Wifely duties & Consensual sex

“Seriously Louise? ‘Wifely duties.’ AND ‘Consensual sex.’ You know that combination wins.” “Sorry Love but that wasn’t mine.” “Nope it was mine.” “Well either way it was well played, well done Toto.”

“Looks like it’s time to pull out the ‘Most Horrible Person of the Night Award’.” “Hiromi, No!” “Hiromi YES!” “Hey! Why does Birdbrain get Doritos?!”

R5) Baron- (prompt) Well if (blank) is a crime, then lock me up!

Hiromi- The boners of the elderly

Louise-  Eating together like a god damn family for once

Muta- The harsh light of day

Persephone- The Boy Scouts of America

Haru- Saying “I Love You”

Toto- The light of a billion suns

“I feel like I’m being called out right now. Who played ‘Saying “I Love You.”?” Baron asked with a very unamused look on his face.

“I did,” Haru replied straightfaced.

“You’re never going to let that go are you?”

“What do you think?”

Baron sighed before handing Haru the prompt card. It was better not to argue with her.

R6) Haru- (prompt) When I was tripping on acid, (blank) turned into  (blank).

Hiromi- Sudden Poop Explosion Disease & Used panties

Louise- The economy & The sweet song of sword against sword and the braying of mighty war beasts

Muta- Expecting a burp and vomiting on the floor & Turning the rivers red with the blood of infidels (winner)

Persephone- Crazy opium eyes & Treasure beyond your wildest dreams

Baron- Natalie Portman & Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night

Toto- A Ugandan warlord & Former President George W. Bush

“Really Muta? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: That’s disgusting.” “So are some of these reaction cards.”

R7) Toto- (prompt) Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to (blank)

Hiromi- All my friends dying (winner)

Louise- Syphilitic insanity

Muta- How awesome it is to be white

Persephone- Indescribable loneliness

Baron- The Pope

Haru- The eighth graders

“Toto pass Hiromi the bag. Hiromi you’re terrible.” Hiromi just giggles naughtily.

R8) Hiromi- (prompt) (Blank): Brought to you by (blank).

Louise- Homeless people & Rich people

Muta- Mouth herpes & Going down on a woman, discovering that her vagina is filled with eyeballs, and being totally into that

Persephone- Santa Claus & Being rich

Baron- Shutting the fuck up & The Rev. Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr.

Haru- Getting caught by the police and going to jail & Going around punching people(winner)

Toto- Running out of semen & A mine having a stroke

“Sound about right.” “Oh and how would you know Turkey Leg? You don’t have any fists!” “Wouldn’t you like to know fatso.”

R9) Louise- (prompt) (Blank). Betcha can’t have just one!

Hiromi- Heartwarming orphans

Muta- Grammar nazis who are also regular Nazis

Persephone- Gwyneth Paltrow’s opinions

Baron- A sad handjob (winner)

Haru- Horrifying laser hair removal accidents

Toto- Emotions

“Is there something you want to confess brother dear?” “Not to you sister dear.”

R10) Muta- (prompt) This is the prime of my life. I’m young, hot, and full of (blank).

Hiromi- My dad’s dumb fucking face

Louise- Cancer

Persephone- Lunchables TM (winner)

Baron- YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS

Haru- The Hamburglar

Toto- Statistically validated stereotypes

“What? I’m hungry!”

R11) Persephone- (prompt) We never did find (blank), but along the way we sure learned a lot about (blank)

Hiromi- Blowjobs for everyone & Pac-Man uncontrollably guzzling cum (Hiromi)

Louise- What Jesus would do & The South

Muta- The white half of Barack Obama & A black-owned and operated business

Baron- God & A chimpanzee in sunglasses fucking your wife

Haru- Jobs & Western standards of beauty

Toto- Important news about Taylor Swift & Starting a shitty podcast

“HIROMI!” “AHH SAVE ME SOMEBODY!” (This was not the first time Hiromi used Pac-Man against Haru. Nor would it be the last.)

R12) Baron- In return for my soul, the Devil promised me (blank), but all I got was (blank).

Hiromi- Jesus & White people

Louise- Third base & Being fat and stupid

Muta- A subscription to Men’s Fitness & Pooping back and forth. Forever.

Persephone- Some shit-hot guitar licks & An ass disaster

Haru- Interspecies marriage & Necrophilia (winner)

Toto- The Blood of Christ & Adderall TM

“Guilty conscious Haru?” “I’M NOT A FURRY DAMNIT!”

R13) Haru- (prompt) You won’t believe what’s in my pussy. It’s (blank).

Hiromi- Daddy issues

Louise- The power of the Dark Side (winner)

Muta- A salty surprise

Persephone- Old-people smell

Baron- My collection of high-tech sex toys

Toto- How wet my pussy is.

“I hate you all.”

R14) Toto- (prompt) Money can’t buy me love, but it can buy me (blank)

Hiromi- The mere concept of Applebees TM

Louise- Sexual peeing

Muta- Authentic Mexican cuisine

Persephone- An asymmetric boob job (winner)

Baron- Helplessly gigling at the mention of Hutus and Tutsis

Haru- Switching to Geico®

R15) Hiromi- (prompt) (Blank) is a slippery slope that leads to (blank).

Louise- Blackface & Ripping open a man’s chest and pulling out his still-beating heart

Muta- Court-ordered rehab & Words, words, words.

Persephone- Same-sex ice dancing & Butt stuff

Baron- Establishing dominance & Stockholm Syndrome (winner)

Haru- Overpowering your father & Darth Vader

Toto- Copping a feel & A boo-boo

“Damn Baron, what are you into?” “I’m not! Why are you handing me these?” “Because you made shit go real dark, real quick boyo.”

R16) Louise- (prompt) My gym teacher got fired for adding (blank) to the obstacle course.

Hiromi- Walking into a glass door

Muta- Sperm whales

Persephone- Peeing a little bit

Baron- A face full of horse cum

Haru- Meatloaf, the man.

Toto- Warm, velvety muppet sex (winner)

“I think I need to give these back to you Toto.” “No no, you can still keep them.” (Cue unhappy Baron face.)

R17) Muta- What gets better with age?

Hiromi- Crippling debt

Louise- A Super Soaker TM full of cat pee (winner)

Persephone- Roland the Farter, flatulist to the king.

Baron- Yeast

Haru- The placenta

Toto- Nothing

“At least no one played ‘My genitals.’ this time.” “That can still change Haru~.”

R18) Persephone- (prompt) In his new action comedy, Jackie Chan must fend off ninja while also dealing with (blank).

Hiromi- Not having sex

Louise- Aaron Burr

Muta- Mixing M&Ms and Skittle like some kind of psychopath

Baron- The dentist

Haru- Samuel L. Jackson (winner)

Toto- Getting eaten alive by Guy Fieri

“To be fair, Ryan Renolds had a hard time dealing with Samuel L. Jackson in ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard.’” “Still funny.”

R19) Baron- (prompt) Today on Maury: “Help! My son is (blank)!”

Hiromi- A woman

Louise- A monkey smoking a cigar (winner)

Muta- Teaching a robot to love

Persephone- Running naked through a mall, pissing and shitting everywhere

Haru- Such a big boy

Toto- Filling every orifice with butterscotch pudding

“What is ‘Maury’?” “An American TV show that mostly deals with people deliberately exposing themselves to lie detectors and paternity tests because they can’t stay in their lanes and be decent human beings.”

R20) Haru- (prompt) Heed my voice, mortals! I am the god of (blank), and I will not tolerate (blank)!Hiromi- Sunshine and rainbows & Incest

Louise- The profoundly handicapped & Throwing a virgin into a volcano

Muta- Sweet, sweet vengeance & Cheating in the Special Olympics

Persephone- Finger painting & The hiccups

Baron- Erectile dysfunction & Having a penis (winner) (game end)

Toto- Nickleback & Licking things to claim them as your own.

“That’s it, game over, Baron wins, Good night.” “Oh c’mon Haru.” “Nope! Can’t do it! Good night!”

- - - - - - - -

‘Most Horrible Person of the Night Award’ is an inside joke among my circle of RL friends that typically ends up being a bag of Doritos.

[funkzpiel]

Could you do something about Graves losing his job and everything going downhill from there? Maybe he ends up couch surfing or living off charity until Theseus comes to the rescue.

He knew it was coming. After all, a man who cannot defend himself can hardly defend America. Had he hold Theseus, he knew the man would no doubt tell him he was being too hard on himself. And due to his distaste of Seraphina and American politics, he would site that the move was more political and dirty than anything else. But Graves knows the game, and even if the decision was more to cast blame off MACUSA than it was to punish him, he gladly accepted the opportunity to assist his country. If he couldn’t protect it, the least he could do was pave the way for a new administration.

He knew it was coming. He just didn’t know it would be so hard.

His assets have been frozen for the duration of the ongoing investigation still taking place - to ensure he is who he says he is, a man who bleeds for America and not a turncoat. And that, more than anything else, hurts. 

All at once he is cut off from every luxury his name and lineage has ever afforded him. No businessman will touch him, thanks to the papers and the headlines. No bank will grant him a loan with his assets frozen. And even though Sera is his friend, she cannot unfreeze his assets. She cannot break the law.

He is kicked out of his apartment rather quickly. Grindelwald had not being paying the rent or the utilities, and now that he could not afford to, he finds the notice on his door unsurprising. His possessions are seized to pay for the debt - after MACUSA makes them no-maj safe, of course, storing all of his magical valuables in a vault until his name clears. 

He has only the meager things he managed to stuff into a case before they could stop him. 

It’s cold, this time of year, and his coat quickly tatters from the elements. He uses charms, as subtle as he can manage, to insulate the space between his coat and his body and heat it, but the charms always diffuse the moment he falls asleep without foci, and the stress from his exhaustion begins to catch up with him. 

Hungry, as it turns out, also blindsides him. He has never been a particularly food-motivated man. He often times forgot to eat at all, when too focused or preoccupied by work. But it’s a different matter all together when suddenly all he has is time. Time to think about the burning in his stomach, the empty ache of it. The way the acid seems to churn, chewing in on itself in search of anything to consume. The gnawing feeling quickly turns into spasms and sharp pains that leave him dizzy - and although he tries to avoid it, he does devolve to stealing from no-maj eateries with a wave of one hand to take meals that are not his, leaving the cashier thinking they fulfilled an order and the original purchaser believing they simply changed their mind or hadn’t been served yet.

But days without proper food, water or sleep begin to wear on him. One day, his charms are not strong enough and he actually has to run from a sandwich shop that catches him trying to snatch a meager meal.

Things go downhill from there. The winter grows colder, snow falling more and more commonly as the temperature drops. Grates and public areas like train stations are his only saving grace, and even those do not last long.

He begins to frequent soup kitchens and churches, but even those begin to grow tight in the beginning pains of a changing economy. So he struggles, but never once reaches back to the people and the old life he failed to live up to.

If he is to die like this, cold and alone, he thinks morbidly that he earned it.

When he’s finally found, he is barely recognizable. His clothing is a pale ghost of its former glory, and his face is hidden beneath a beard unkept and unseemly. his gloves do not match and some of the fingers are missing, leaving a few digits cold and barren and blue at the nail beds; dirty and chipped. His hair is longer than he’s ever kept it. Long ago someone had stolen his shoes and the ones he managed to get since are slightly too big, making him look small and withered in the clothing that once fit him like a glove. 

He sits in a subway station, tucked away into an alcove where he can usually manage to enjoy the heat and a little sleep for at least an hour or two before someone will shoo him away. Sometimes when he wakes, he’ll find coins scattered at his feet. No-maj money, something he never thought he’d be grateful for. Sometimes he finds snacks or bottled water. Today, he finds nothing at his feet but a shadow.

He sighs and fights down his drowsiness as he begin to get to his feet, a murmured “I’m going, I’m going” already slipping past his lips in preparation for the inevitable shooing.

“Percy?” The voice asks instead, short and thready and shocked, and he stills.

It’s like hearing a name from a distant dream, and when he slowly raises his gaze, familiar hazel eyes are looking down on him. 

Theseus is the anchor he has always remembered him to be. His uniform, rich and earthy, makes him look powerful and tall thanks to its crisp lines and smart badges. He has his hat tucked under one arm, his duffel over the other shoulder. His shoes shine even in the dimness of the station, and a man inside Graves from another life wonders about the brand he must use to get a shine as nice as that. 

“T-Theseus,” he whispers back before he can stop himself, before he can try to pretend to be someone else – before he can save his dignity.

Hands take him by the shoulders and hold him tight, pinning him in place as he roves over him searching merlin knew what.

“You’re—you… Hells bells, Percival, you just stopped writing! And I heard what happened, but the Ministry wouldn’t let me get away. I tried to write to you, to reach you via flu – anything, but I couldn’t find you. Your President was bloody useless. I came as soon as I can, I–”

Graves let the words wash over him, eyes wide as they sunk in. Theseus had come for him. Not for Newt. Not for a mission. For him. 

He was going to be so disappointed when he realized Percival deserved what he got…

“Theseus,” he said, cutting the man off with a rough, disused whisper that silenced him easily. “She didn’t help because I’m not her problem. I’m lucky they didn’t throw me in jail. They have other things to worry about – like cleaning up my mess… I’m not surprised she couldn’t tell you where I was. I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

“Weeks,” Theseus gasped, and Graves blinked. What an odd part of the story to get caught on. “You’ve been out here for weeks?! She’s supposed to be your bloody friend, I’m going to–”

“I’m being investigated as a turncoat, Theseus. There wasn’t anything she could do.”

Theseus stilled, and finally Graves knew the truth had sunken in. He’d leave him now, as he should, to stew in the pissy-smell of New York’s underground. Where he belonged. He closed his eyes and waited for it.

Instead, he was drawn into a sudden and breath seizing embrace.

“You stupid sonofabitch,” he said into Graves’ hair, “I have so much to say about that. But this isn’t the place. You’re coming with me. I’m going to feed you, get you washed up. And then we are going to have a very long chat about what you do and don’t deserve, and what your President very fucking well could have done instead of throwing her friend to the wolves. Like, say, have your bloody back.”

“Theseus!”

Theseus shot him a sharp, dark look before winding an arm around his shoulders and quickly leading him away. Tired and starved as he was, he could hardly refuse - though he tried. And all around him, people looked at Theseus as though he were a saint for reaching so low beneath his station to raise another man up.

If only they knew the truth, Percival thought, and they’d realize Theseus was so much more than that. So much better.

Theseus takes him to his hotel. He shoves him into the bathroom while he orders entirely too much food service, and lets Graves bathe to his content. Graves has to drain the water twice to clear it of his filth. He falls asleep despite the fact he wanted to be back into his own clothing before Theseus could see the extent of his fall from grace outlined in his skin - and he startles at the feel of hands rubbing shampoo into his hair and scalp, working it into a lather.

“Theseus,” he gasps and tries to hide his body, but the water does nothing to hide the visible count of his ribs or the knobbyness of his spine. The thinness of his ankles or the brittle jut of his wrists. 

“There’s food in the other room, I’ve got a charm on it to keep it warm,” he says softly, and Graves can’t help but feel guilty in the absence of Theseus’ disgust. “We’ll get you right as rain and then some. Fill all your old britches before you know it.”

Graves blinks.

“What?”

“If you think I’m leaving you here, you’re off your rocker, mate. I’m staying with you, at least until you can stand in a stiff breeze without fear of keeling over.”

He grabs Theseus’ wrist above his head, and the knowledge that Theseus lets him still his hand – that he is not actually strong enough – hurts.

“Theseus, I deserve this. I couldn’t–”

“Don’t you fucking dare get on your soap box and preach about justice, Percival Graves. You sit there and listen. This country failed you. You and your family have done nothing but sacrifice your blood and your families and your sanity and your dreams for it, and this is how it repays you? In your time of need they did not even notice you were gone. And instead of acknowledging its shortcomings, MACUSA threw a tortured and injured man under the bus – a man they should have noticed had gone missing. You’re just one man, Percival. You cannot bare a country’s mistakes upon your shoulders. And a good leader wouldn’t never have asked you to. This was wrong. And I’m going to use every day to prove it to you until you realize you deserved more, deserved better.”

But I don’t… he thinks, but does not say it. Instead he allows himself one day to be weak and give into temptation in the face of Theseus’ confidence and steadfast determination, and lets him pamper him. He lets Theseus run water over his scalp, gently cupping his face to protect his eyes. Lets him bathe his back, his arms, his legs, even though he already had. Lets him towel his hair dry and wrap him in soft robes. Feed him, tuck him into a warm bed and curl around him.

He lets him, because the director of magical security died a long time ago, and what was left behind is too tired to fight the lull of a full belly and the comfort of a friendly embrace. He closes his eyes, head tucked beneath Theseus’ chin, and wonders if Theseus is right.

Wonders if Theseus can convince him he’s worth existing. And as he falls asleep he thinks: if anyone can, it’s him.

[howyoutalktostrangers]

This interview was originally published by the Humber Literary Review

So,

Yasuko Thanh is an acclaimed short story writer and novelist from Victoria, B.C. After winning the Journey Prize for her short story about an island leper colony, “Floating like the Dead”, she went on to gain wide acclaim for her historical Vietnam-based novel The Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains. Her work often features spiritual or fantastical elements, as well as brutality and violence, and fixates on those who exist just outside the margins of polite society. Her latest is a memoir called Mistakes to Run With that details her upwards ascent from teenage prostitute to literary icon.

The Humber Literary Review’s Will Johnson caught up with Yasuko to talk about George Orwell, what it’s like to leave Christianity behind, and how it feels to be truly naked in public.

HLR: George Orwell once said “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying.” I thought about his words while reading your book, where it seems like you’re relentless about unearthing all your past foibles and sins for everyone to see. I admire your dedication to the truth, to introspection, but I wonder what compelled you to complete this public moral inventory. 

Why share your darkest secrets and shames with such a huge audience?

YT: When I started writing this memoir, I was still in therapy after a stay in the psych ward. It was Christmas of 2016, and in a six months period I’d won the Roger’s Writers’ Trust Prize and been abandoned by my husband of nine years. Now it was Christmas and my new anti-psychotic meds were addressing the worst of my mental illness symptoms. I no longer spent each day contemplating how to take my life, so I stopped going to therapy, and convinced myself that the writing of the memoir could serve as a replacement for Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. All my life, writing has been a sort of processing mill for experience so this idea, of writing as pseudo-therapy, was nothing new.

I used my experiences to shed light on certain issues. I wanted to examine the stigmatization of street-workers, and its contribution to a social milieu in which violence against sex workers has flourished. The experiences didn’t have to me mine per se but they were the ones I was most intimate with. Stories come from everywhere but the best ones often come from our own lives, what we think and feel, who and what we care about. 

At the time of the Pickton murders, the city of Vancouver propelled a harmful myth: that street workers were less valuable than other people. This thinking, this stigmatization of a group, was an obstacle to safer working conditions for them, and created the kind of environment on Vancouver’s downtown eastside from which nearly 60 women went missing. 

Various studies have looked at why adolescents start selling sex. At the time I was working the streets, I often felt that Social Services and the legal system had driven me to it.  I’d been denied Independent Living – welfare for youth under eighteen – I’d been jailed for shoplifting and could no longer maintain my career as a "booster."  I had seen friends arrested and forced by the police to violently choke up whatever acid or hash they had stashed in their mouth.  The sex workers I saw wore fur coats and red pig skin boots.

Money was the trade off for the conflicts I would experience with the law and abusive customers and pimps.  

I spent much of my career in the sex trade in Vancouver.

From the age of fifteen onward, my life included prostitution, arrests, drugs, an abusive relationship, and struggles with mental health. In 1998, when I realized I was pregnant with my first child, I began to examine my past and consider what I wanted my future to be like. What would I tell my child about the kind of person I was?

The seeds for the memoir were planted back then. 

My hope with this book was to begin a dialogue about the continued criminalisation of street-imbedded youth. A new model for understanding is needed, because their criminalisation entrenches them further in street life without addressing the social issues that put them there in the first place. I’d love for this book to spur a dialogue between legislators and the people for whom the skills and attitudes of the streets are logical means of survival. I’d love to contribute in some small way to the struggle for tolerance and open-mindedness.  

HLR: In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, you said that you hate the “role of victim into which the sex-traded are often cast — because of all the accompanying pity”. I thought one of the most striking and refreshing elements of your memoir was that you never moralized about sex work, or wrote condescendingly about the people you met during that time. It was simply a choice you made, and a milieu you existed within, before moving on. That being said, the danger and violence associated with that lifestyle clearly took its toll both on you and others you love. 

With all the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding the industry, is there something you’d like the average citizen to understand about that world?

YT: During the mid-1980s, right when I was entering the sex trade, working in both Victoria and Vancouver, I remember being chased from sidewalks with a garden hose, and men and women marching with placards.  I hid behind dumpsters and waited for the mobs to clear.  I was engaged with a profound feeling of puzzlement that people could be so self-assured without even knowing me or my name. 

One night, when I was about eighteen-years-old, I was sitting with my friend Frances in a diner called the Korner Kitchen, on the same corner where we caught dates, the corner of Richards and Helmcken. We drank coffee in the vinyl-seated booth; she stirred in her sugar and licked the spoon before laying it on the table. Neither one of us could see ourselves turning tricks forever, and we shared the conviction that we’d be good at a multitude of things, if we only had a chance to try them. She wanted to be a teacher, could see herself in that role. 

“But I wonder about a criminal record,” I said. 

Both of us had one.

 “With the kind of work you want to do,” she said, knowing I wanted to be a writer, “it won’t matter, anyway.”

The British philosopher and writer Iris Murdoch said that the goal of every writer was to cultivate what she called “true sight,” the ability to recognize other people really exist. I’m currently reading The Wisdom of the Body by Sherwin B. Nuland. In his chapter on “Biology, Destiny, and Free Will” he quotes Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Without imagination of another’s mind there can be no understanding of the other and therefore no love, and without love there can be no morality.” To be good, he says, is to imagine intensely and comprehensively the pains and pleasures of others. The great secret is love, or a going out of our own nature, an identification of ourselves with the other. 

The intimate tone of a memoir made it the ideal genre to negotiate such intensely personal material, and I hope it gives people the means to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

I guess what I’d like people to understand is that we/they have names. We have parents, siblings, spouses, children. To understand that “there but for the grace of God, go I.” That everyone has an identity outside of the roles we play even if, or maybe especially if, that role is dealer, junkie, prostitute, panhandler, street kid, etc. 

HLR: You were raised within an evangelical Christian context, but left the church and your faith behind as a teenager. This is a painful and confusing process, one that I went through, that often leaves people without something to replace their beliefs with. Have you ever been successful at filling the God-shaped hole? And is there any sort of spirituality you embrace?

YT: The spirituality I embrace is my personal religion of honouring anything and everything that spurs my writing. I deal with any number of doubts on a regular basis. Will I be good enough? Is what I have to say worth saying? Will anybody care? 

It’s enough to stop you in your tracks.

But stopping isn’t the same as quitting. 

And what keeps me going, and writing, is, at its core, akin to religious faith. 

Writing is what helps me battle the daily truth that people are separated by vast distances. And one of my main motivations,  one of the reasons I write, is because it helps me capture something from the inexorable, outward flow of time.  It’s nothing less than a fight against my own mortality, and a balm against my sadness at the transience of all things.

“No man writes except to get out of hell,” Antonin Artaud wrote from an insane asylum. 

I have to strongly believe in what I’m doing or I can’t do it. 

Toni Morrisson, expressing a similar dichotomy, wrote that love “is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.” That sums it up nicely. 

I write all chips in, plunging ahead confidently, blindly, without real proof that anything will come of it, though maybe being published is a little bit like proof that one is on the right track -- but you can’t wait for signs. My belief or practice is based more on a type of apprehension: that, if I don’t write, something bad may happen. 

I’m not sure what. 

Maybe I’d stop being me. Or I’d go insane. Or the sky would fall. Not-writing is my version of hell. 

I love the Wallace Stevens quote that goes: “After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that which takes its place as life’s redemption.”

Reading can be a spiritual act, in the way it affects the soul. Writing, for me is a way of expressing my hopes and wishes, and in that sense, it is a form of prayer.  

HLR: I’m working on a memoir at the moment, and one of the constant concerns is whether or not I’m honestly depicting the people involved—especially if the truth is less than flattering. I know you’ve changed some names, and utilized a composite character, but I’m sure there are people from your past who could potentially read your work and take issue with what you’ve written. How did you navigate these concerns while writing Mistakes to Run With, and how did you decide what to include and what not to?

YT: As you’ve pointed out, the people who share our lives may have very different opinions from us about what is appropriate and what is not to include in a work on nonfiction. I did ask one of my children about a specific episode in their life and whether they would feel comfortable with me sharing the story. They didn’t. So, out of respect for them, I didn’t include it in the book. However, the rest of my family and friends were fair game. 

That said, my aim was not to vilify anyone, because that’s bad writing, and I even pulled some punches with the intent of creating well-rounded characters. Good writing portrays character with all its complexity intact. Though, I’m sure there are people out there who are angry about things I wrote about. My answer to them is, Write your own book. I knew well in advance that I wasn’t going to let friends or family read it before it was published. I didn’t want to be swayed by their comments. I didn’t want to censure myself. I think writing by consensus is kind of a terrible idea. Post-publication, I’m happy to talk to anyone who takes issue, but the idea of being vetted beforehand? 

I think the prospect of allowing friends and family to sound in with their evaluations and appraisals of the work would make me too nervous to write at all.     

HLR: I love how diverse your work is, and how you seem to effortlessly jump genres. Your next novel is about Julia Pastrana, a 19th-century woman born with a genetic condition that resulted in abnormal growths of hair all over her body. I’m curious whether you’re purposefully challenging yourself to try new things, or if inspiration just happened to take you there. How did you land on this particular premise?

YT: That particular idea came about at a time I was reading a lot of books on so-called “freaks.” One book I remember in particular was A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities but Jan Bondeson. I came across Julia Pastrana’s story in there. What intrigues me about her story is the fact that she married her manager and toured across Europe and North America, even meeting royalty according to some versions. The hook (for me) is the way the story can be read one of two ways: her manager was just another kind of pimp who married her and told her he loved her to keep his paycheck close to home, or he was a man who, despite her unlikely appearance, was able to look past her outer shell and see her, love her, for who she was...I like the idea of playing with both versions, and having portions of each stand in for the truth. I like the idea of, perhaps, the truth being unknown even to Pastrana and her manager. 

We’re, all of us to varying degrees, mysteries to ourselves, often acting on our feelings whose origins lie in conflicting places. In these apparent dichotomies is where people come most alive for me. These contradictions in ourselves -- that’s when characters come most alive for me.

But here’s where I’m going to burst your bubble. That project has been put on the back-burner. Right now I’m working on two other projects. One is a collection of short stories with the working title, Death Rituals for a Modern Age. The other is a novel set in the present day, tentatively called, The Administration of Elementary Hopes. They share common themes of love and death (what else?) and I’m trying to lighten the load of the material through the use of dark humour, and in the case of the novel, the structure and tropes of the Gothic tale. 

HLR: Quill & Quire once quoted you saying “a good scream is worth a whole couple of months of therapy.” You were speaking about your musical projects, including your neo-punk band 12 Gauge Facial. I imagine the artistic impulse involved in creating your music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. How does music fit into your artistic practice?

YT: The artistic impulse involved in creating music is different than the much slower-paced process of writing a book. Music fits into my artistic practice like a really good chocolate bar between meals. It’s one of the things I do between writing different works, or to jog something loose.

It also gives me a chance to express in greater depth things that continue to haunt but that were glossed over in the memoir. You can’t fit everything into the pages of a book. If I had it would have made a better doorstop than a book. The original plan was to release an album at the same time as the memoir. My idea was that it could form a kind of soundtrack for the book -- but, alas, money and time conspired against me. That said, the project hasn’t been abandoned. Only postponed. I have sixteen original tracks that I’m hoping to release at some point in the near future. 

HLR: I really appreciated the conclusion of your book, though I won’t share any spoilers here. What I appreciated about your approach was that you didn’t tie things up with a tidy bow, claiming your life issues are resolved, but rather acknowledged that you continue to be a work-in-progress (as we all are) with problems to face. Life doesn’t have endings, really, and neither does your book. Did you have to resist the urge to include a “What I’ve Learned” passage to the end?

YT: Resisting the urge wasn’t hard — in fact, I fought against this type of ending. Initially, the memoir ended many years earlier than the version which iI published. Both my editor and agent urged me to look at the material again, and consider extending the narrative up to the present day. In the end, I agreed to have the ending of the book coincide with the Rogers Writers Trust prize, and I’m happy I did so. But rather than have the book end with a Frank Capra-esque moment, where we know that everything from here on in is going to be rosy, I wanted to convey the sense that, as you said, life doesn’t have endings and we all are continuously working on ourselves by squarely facing our problems. I attempted to do this structurally, in terms of chapter headings, and through repetition of certain key lines or phrases. 

I’m glad you think it worked.

The Literary Goon

[menhealthinformer]

Nourishment, Supplements, As Well As Man Sexual Performance For Erectile Dysfunction

Many diet-related diseases get on the increase at an alarming rate nowadays. Erectile disorder is one such very prevalent issue in modern society. This has made people a lot more health conscious therefore, people are starting to understand just how connected are nutrition and also sexual health and wellness.

A bachelor's degree in food as well as nutrition concentrates on the chemical as well as organic make-up of food and also its effect on the body. Factors for the decay of food are also critically examined. This extensive study assists individuals educate their patients on the demand for a modified diet plan and prepare a customized healthy and balanced diet regimen for them. The bachelor's level in food and also nourishment has several expertises. Dietetics as well as nutrition management are the typical locations specialized. Various other specializations consist of nourishment as well as food security, senior citizen nourishment, sporting activities nutrition, and environmental health and wellness. The curriculum varies with the field of expertise of your selection.

Typically, the bachelor's degree in food and also nutrition curriculum includes topics such as microbiology of food, food chemistry, food handling, and food development. Food analysis techniques as well as laboratory research study typically cover much of the credit histories of the course. Documents in biology, biochemistry and biology, basic psychology as well as sociology, food safety and security, etc., are additionally included in different terms. Almonds are filled with manganese and vitamin E. Manganese assists with enzyme activation and also vitamin E is certainly an antioxidant. Also found in substantial amounts in them are magnesium, which assists the body with crucial chemical procedures; tryptophan, which can be a needed amino acid; as well as copper which aids in hemoglobin production. Far more almond diet regimen information include the details and realities that other essential nutrients located in almonds are potassium, which is an electrolyte; riboflavin (likewise recognized as vitamin B2), which helps with the development of red blood cells and also the energy launch from carbs; and phosphorus, which every single cell demands.

Monounsaturated fats, for circumstances those discovered in olive oil, contribute for the decrease of heart problem hazard. They're considerable in monounsaturated fats, which also sustain lessen harmful LDL-cholesterol levels. Almonds is commonly purchased entire, in a raw type, salted or seasoned. They can also be acquired in bits, usually situated with various other cooking materials. These wanting to try various other sorts of them might possibly delight in almond 'milk, almond flour or almond butter. Almond 'milk is a non-dairy replacement for dairy milk that comes in plain and flavored types. Almond flour is in fact a gluten-free and nutritionally-packed alternative to white flour that does not impact blood sugar level varies the most effective means white flour does.

Almond butter is really a replacement for peanut butter, bringing a flavorful choice to those with peanut allergies. Almond butter is usually expensive to obtain pre-made, yet can merely be generated at house with raw almonds and also a durable food mill. Of every one of the almond diet regimen details, there is certainly one extra consider. Almond oil (additionally recognized as sweet almond oil) is frequently applied as being a moisturizing item, although some utilize it by mouth for its laxative influence, comparable to that of aloe vera gel. If you're a lot more interested in how nourishment brings about weight loss, continue analysis. There is a lot of argument about the appropriate nourishment prepare for fat loss. The hard part about it is that it differs from individual to person because there are so numerous variables entailed.

Your workout, daily activity degree, age, as well as gender all figure in in exactly how you should structure your sexual health nutrition strategy. One of the most important thing to bear in mind is that no calculator or formula will offer you specifically what you require. Your body is unique and every formula will certainly need some tweaking. This is something just you will certainly be able to determine.

The good news is, I'll offer a fantastic area to start right now. In my personal experience, with clients as well as with my very own body, I have actually discovered a lot of success with a macronutrient ratio of 40% Fat: 40% Healthy protein: 20% Carbohydrates. I'll enter into a little bit extra detail in a second, but I intend to repeat that this must be used as a beginning point. Nourishment Technicians are not signed up Nutritional experts. They collaborate with and under the guidance of a registered nutritionist to aid plan as well as execute nutritional solutions and also programs. Also called dietetic professionals, they can operate in a variety of different setups including health centers, nursing homes, retirement community, institutions, community university hospital, or reformatories. Nourishment Technicians collaborate with a selection of different types of patients and also have a lot of job tasks. You can likewise watch reviews like this.

They might meet patients and also interview them regarding their medical backgrounds as well as nutritional consumption. They help plan their people' meals to fit their nutritional requirements or wellness condition. They may review problem locations as well as record on clients' development to the supervising Nutritionist. They might likewise operate in a food solution center such as a retirement home, retirement community, institution or jail. Nourishment Tecnicians plan meals and menus, as well as make sure food quality and also security criteria. They may also design as well as carry out brand-new food solution systems right into facilities. Nutrition Technicians are not called for to have a Bachelor's level. Nevertheless, a lot of employers need them to have an Associate's degree in a nourishment associated field from an approved area university that is accepted by the American Dietetic Association. Typical required training courses are in biology, chemistry, algebra, English, residence business economics, athletics, company, psychology, and also computer systems.

Aspiring Nutrition Technicians likewise incorporated their training courses for study with practical experience as component of their training. Once they finish the university program, pupils have to after that also pass an evaluation to end up being licensed or registered, relying on their state requirement. Numerous pet dog owners are ending up being or are actively worried concerning the health and wellness of their pet dogs. Dry commercial family pet foods do not appear sufficient and a lot of us are beginning or have begun preparing raw or house prepared nutritional meals for our pet dogs. Veterinarian costs getting you down? Have a look at healthy foods for animals. Is your pet malnourished? Does it seem that each time he participates in a brand-new cycle or becomes a year or 2 older his food as well as nutritional demands seem to transform?

It might be proper to note your dog is experiencing out of balance nourishment. The majority of us know with pet food being identified and also marketed as young puppy, energetic, less energetic, elderly, allergy complimentary as well as others. Industrial firms have actually attempted to make it less complicated for consumers to pick ideal foods for dogs. People experience adjustments as our body grows or ages. Nutritional changes are necessary. Pets require a well balanced range of foods for their nutritional changes which additionally includes their needed minerals and vitamins.

[thinkingaboutsanfrancisco]

Dodging my way through this drunken and dangerously inattentive congregation with only one guy backing up and almost bumping his drink into me, my eyes fixate on the white, retro-futuristic, chair on the corner by S and I rush to claim it as if the one to his right wasn’t also available. There’s a couple open, actually. It’s a long counter and more customers are concentrated on the other side, where there’s a spot designated for people standing around while waiting to get their not-free-at-all refills, and I’m grateful S picked a good spot. It’s a stretch to say it’s quiet over here, but it is quieter; the buzzing of voices is audible at least, so I think we’re further from the speakers, and we’re certainly tucked safely away from those godforsaken strobes. The soft violet and blue lights drenching the bar in dark calamity are enough to lull me into closing my eyes, briefly rubbing my lids and temples with my fingers as I try to calm down that raging headache and take solace in my resting spot. Thank God I’m not here solely to socialize with strangers, because I’m sure if I was sitting next to someone else, they’d probably be so offended by their proximity to my godawful posture that they’d make a point to comment on it and, while I wouldn’t do a damn thing about it, I wouldn’t bother blaming them either. Hunching my upper body over this counter like this is unsightly and the furthest from impeccable table manners, but it’s the only thing that’s comfortable to me right now. 

Don’t worry S, I won't kill our prospects. Just give me another second and I’ll leave.

Well, another two, but I realize that he’s been too occupied to keep count; adjusting himself in his seat and turning to reveal the slim menu he swiped from a spot or two down from him while brandishing a playfully large and bright grin like he’s committed the heist of the century before he catches my squint. I was only trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing, but he has the audacity to think I’m actually judging him for snatching it and I roll my eyes. 

That’s about the last thing anyone’s going to call the cops on here, man. 

Especially since he has to elaborate on what would draw the attention of any authorities, tapping his nose to unnecessarily further the point and...yeah, now I am judging him because that’s discreet, that’s real fucking discreet, S. Let’s flippantly announce to the entirety of this uncharted territory our mission statement before I can even pull anything off so we can either get kicked out, threaten anybody else who could be selling here, or, worst of all, have me thrown in fucking jail since I’m the one holding an 8-ball in my pocket. It’ll be quite the joking matter then, won’t it? 

I don’t know.

I don’t want to know and...and I’m not going to. I swear that I’m going to calm down, I’m going to get up out of this chair and take advantage of his gracious hint since...well, it is the best place to start and I’m going to make a lot of money and survive. I’m going to be okay, I will be, I just…need another second... 

Not like S cares. His job for the night is done. He’s gotten me here, he’s gotten me in, and has more than fulfilled his quota of embarrassing me for the night. Now his nose is deep in this menu, trying to find the perfect drink so he can celebrate. Lucky him. 

At the rate I’m going, I need a drink to even start mine. 

I scoff at my sardonicism because yeah right, I don’t drink. The mere scent of alcohol’s always made me gag and I’m nauseous enough as it is, but my throat is dryer than a desert from all of my hyperventilating so...I should at least get something else to drink. What that’s going to be is undetermined, but I’ll figure it out once he’s done with the menu. For someone as impulsive as S is, I’m surprised he didn’t go with the first thing he saw instead of engrossing himself in it like it’s a textbook like he has. Frankly, I’m surprised he bothered to look at all since he was so eager to get over here, but then again...this place is as new for him as it is for me. 

Sensing that, he brings the menu a little closer, angling it my way so we can look together and that’s when I get why he’s still studying. This thing is a textbook, filled with so many sections of different liquors that it’s rather overwhelming for someone who wants none of it. Merely reading about their beer and expensive wine offerings makes me sicker, whiskey sounds old and disgusting, I have no idea what the hell a cognac is, and the names of the cocktails are enough of a hieroglyphic on their own, much less whatever’s in them. The only thing that sounds remotely good is a rum and coke, but without the liquor so...basically a Coke, which, at least they have...

“What can I get you started on?”

Both of our eyes fly up at the bartender’s genial, patient but obviously expectant, smile but she’s focused directly om S, who’s beaming with excitement to tell her what he wants: a round of tequila shots...and whatever I want. 

Oh. 

Well, uh, I wasn’t...entirely ready, but he’s already directed her eyes towards me with his neon arrow of a finger and the pressure of the attention...fuck....what is he doing this for? What is he expecting me to say? What is he expecting me to make him pay for? What could I order to make it worth his while? What is she expecting me to have her make? A round of shots of my own? Something harder to ease how miserable I am? An actual rum and coke?  Why am I even contemplating it? I don’t drink. I fucking can’t…

“Yeah, uh…just a Coke, thanks,” I eventually order, flashing her the biggest grin of assurance that I can muster so she doesn’t press me on it. Ironically, this is one the most legal things I could do here, yet something about it feels almost felonious.   

I really don’t belong here, do I? 

S unintentionally points it out further with a joke at his own expense and my lips twist briefly in amusement because he does look like a real drunk in comparison, but I don’t have their capacity to find it that riotous. After all, he picked his own poisons here so I’m not going feel sorry for him for that and, ultimately, the bartender doesn’t either as she assures him that he’s far from the worst she’s seen before providing him his set of shots on a silver tray that already makes my modest Coke look even more silly and I haven’t even received the damn drink yet. Promptly, he takes out his wallet and pulls out a sleek credit card to formally arrange this tab, which she whisks away to do and leaves him to down one of the shots all while I just...sit here aimlessly, like the out of place kid I always am. 

It’s not that I want to get plastered nor that anyone outside of myself is necessarily preventing me from it, I just want to get it the fuck together and feel better so I can focus. I wish I had something to expedite that, something to make me feel easygoing and sociable like S and everyone else is here, something to bring me back down to Earth from my detrimental funk and get me through this night. Ideally, that little something would be a cigarette. My permanently festering craving’s worsening and I need to head out to the alley to satisfy it, but then I’d have to go through all of those people and have to get in the door again and God, that thought only makes me feel worse.  

“Well…” S begins and I look up at him right as he’s in the middle of downing another shot, which provides me a second to brace for the inevitable. Ready or not, this has to be my cue...

“If at any point in the night, you get tired of waiting for your Coke, I clearly have an excess of alcohol...” He offers, his shrug of nonchalance buying me just a little more time.  

Thanks, that’s very generous of you, but I don’t drink. I never have. I never wanted to...

Seventeen years of assurance primes the tip of my tongue with those words, but my eyes turn traitorous when they wander down to those remaining four tiny glasses of clear, clean, liquor that openly await my answer to his invitation. 

Before now. 

Their transparency is deceptive of what their true collective power can be, but individually they’re so small and can’t be too much to commit to. All it’d take is one quick swig and I’d get a taste of what I want. I’d get what I need...

“Thanks, that’s very generous of you, but...I’ll just take one. For good luck, y’know?” I tell him while I pick up my glass, attempting to still the nervous waver in my grin so he can see the gratitude beneath it. He didn’t have to share. Why did he? Is my misery that fucking noticeable? 

Must be. 

That would disgust me more if it weren’t for the tequila’s pungent smell wafting up my nose as I bring the rim of the glass to my lips and God...God, God, God, God... it’s---oh Christ, it’s that awful. How the fuck can S stand this? Not only that, how can he drink it without the slightest flinch? It’s so acridly acidic that I have to pinch my nose, which leads to my eyes closing as tight as I can when the bittersweetness cloaks my tongue and burns all the way down my throat. Not in the rough but ultimately benign way that carbonation does either; this lingers until it blisters, setting all of my senses ablaze with all of the raw, cutting, clarity of a slap in the face. My cheeks are boiling...everything in my body is and my first gasp for air fuels the pain like salt piling in the venomous bite’s wound.

The clink of my empty glass against the counter startles my eyes open again and I’m met with this unexpected sea of orange and yellow ravishing the pillars and bar like flames. I’m so hot that they feel like real ones to me, but it’s only the lights, which have changed to match the next song and... I groan when I recognize who’s responsible for the awful noise. It’s not hard since he fucking announces his presence with the stupid and inaccurate nickname he gave himself in the first fucking line. Mr. Worldwide? He’s been stuck rapping about  Miami and fucking every woman in it for the last decade! Yet, out of all of the artists, I don’t think there’s anyone more unfortunately appropriate than Pitbull to accompany my gross reeling:

Tell her, tell her baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby I'm on fire.

[chiseler]

SYLVIA SIDNEY: Jailhouse Blues

“She always looked like she was gonna cry!” my grandmother would exclaim whenever Sylvia Sidney came up. In her 1930s heyday, Sidney was constantly cast as the victim of circumstance, hovering at the very bottom of the economic ladder, mixed up in crime and usually winding up in or near jail. “I was paid by the tear,” Sidney joked later, and that knowing comment is a measure of just how different she was from her on-screen persona. “My mother and I adored her and her films,” said Tennessee Williams. “She was always so fragile and plaintive. She appeared to need protection. Let me tell you: Sylvia needs no protection. She may look frail, but look in that exquisite purse she carries with her: it contains the balls of thousands of men who annoyed her; the hearts of those who crossed her; and the locations of those who betrayed her.”

Sidney was born Sophia Kosow in 1910 in the Bronx to a Russian-Romanian Jewish family. She studied at the Theatre Guild School as a teenager and was acting on Broadway at age 17. Sidney was unhappy with her screen debut, Thru Different Eyes (1929), a film made at Fox where she played a murderess, and she returned to the stage. While acting in the play Bad Girl, she was spotted by Paramount head of production B.P. Schulberg, who promised that if she signed with his studio that she would play in an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Tempted by that, and by Schulberg himself, she signed with Paramount and was soon rushed into the lead role in Rouben Mammalian’s City Streets (1931), replacing Clara Bow, who had had a breakdown.

Sidney gets quite an entrance in the arty City Streets, winking at a criminal accomplice before being seen in a screen-filling close-up where she is closing one eye to fire a gun in a shooting gallery. Her heart-shaped face looks vulnerable, but when she talks in this movie, the toughness of the Bronx comes through: “You oughten to be wastin’ yer dough in these joints,” she tells Gary Cooper, as they wander through a carnival and start to fall for each other. On a beach with Cooper, Sidney treats us to one of her secret weapons, a sunburst of a smile that transforms her face, puffing out her cheeks and nearly shutting her eyes with pure joy. Such joy never lasts long for Sidney on screen, however. She gets sent to jail here and then suffers some more and tears up most fetchingly when she realizes Cooper has joined her father’s criminal underworld. Sidney rarely played smart women in her youth. The girls she pretended to be were always a little dim so that fate could sock it to them as hard as possible. “I didn’t mind playing unhappy characters,” she said later. “Every young actress thinks she’s a tragedian—the more tragic the roles, the more you cry, the more you suffer, the better an actress you are.”

In Josef Von Sternberg’s version of An American Tragedy (1931), Sidney makes a far more appealing victim than Shelley Winters did in the remake, A Place in the Sun (1951). Her Roberta is an innocent girl, looking wide-eyed with shock when social climber Clyde (Phillips Holmes) first kisses her, but she falls deeply in love with him, pleading soulfully, “Please don’t go,” when he wants to sleep with her. Lovely as she is, Sidney’s Roberta is also a bit of a clinging vine and seems fated to turn slovenly and bitter through lack of money and opportunity. Sidney is alarmingly good at being pitiful here, and she’s particularly pathetic when Von Sternberg actually shows her drowning after a boat tips over, calling out for help several times before finally going under. In King Vidor’s adaptation of Elmer Rice’s play Street Scene (1931), Sidney is a bit of a flirt at first, but she soon suffers to the utmost. These three movies were all carefully made and designed to show off Sidney’s best assets, and together they made her a star.

She was framed for murder and sent to the hoosegow again in Ladies of the Big House (1931). Off screen, Sidney became Schulberg’s mistress, and you’d think that might have won her special privileges, but she started to get a reputation for being difficult when she complained about being stuck in bad movies like The Miracle Man (1932) and Madame Butterfly (1932). “They considered me a bitch,” she said, and the studio loved putting her in punishing positions in films. She wound up in jail once more in Pick-Up (1933), and in the sleazy Good Dame (1934) she is accosted by the infamous Pre-Code sex fiend Jack La Rue, who offers her a part in a girlie show. “I’m not a cooch dancer!” she protests to Fredric March. “I gotta take a job cuz I’m broke!” Thirty Day Princess (1934) was one of her few changes of pace, a bit of froth that might have made a meal for Claudette Colbert or Carole Lombard, but Sidney can’t function in screwball comedy. Her eyes look habitually anxious in Thirty Day Princess, as if she fears she might be thrown in the slammer at any moment.

Her relationship with Schulberg ended in 1934 when he returned to his wife. Sidney signed with independent producer Walter Wanger, who had produced her last credit on her old Paramount contract, an archetypal Sidney film, Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), where her bad lot boyfriend helps to railroad her into prison for a crime she didn’t commit. At this point on screen, Sidney was starting to seem like a regular paranoid, constantly looking worried and speaking tentatively in her high, strained voice (all traces of the Bronx had been wiped out of it by this point).

While in New York, Sidney entered into a very brief marriage with publisher Bennett Cerf, who advised, “One should never legalize a hot romance.” She looked beautiful in three-strip Technicolor as a mountain girl in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) and then followed that film with two masterpieces in a row, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936). As Spencer Tracy’s sweet fiancée in Fury, Sidney ably carried her usual load of suffering, believably fleshing out her love for Tracy in the first scenes and then looking memorably stunned in close up as she watches a lynch mob try to burn her man up in a jail.

As Mrs. Verloc in Sabotage, Sidney runs a cinema, and she makes it very clear that this woman, who is only known by her married name, has made a loveless marriage to Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka) solely so her charmingly mischievous little brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) can be taken care of. She’s nice but not very bright, and so she doesn’t discern that Mr. Verloc is a terrorist until after her brother has been blown up by one of his bombs. When she realizes what has happened, Sidney faints. After she’s revived, she says, “I want Mr. Verloc, I want to see Mr. Verloc,” in a trance-like voice. This is a truly tragic film that does not let either her or the audience off the hook, and Sidney goes the full distance with it. She has the sort of face that looks like it knows the worst before it happens, and so when the worst does happen, it just confirms the anxiety in her eyes.

Sidney’s Mrs. Verloc sinks down into sheer misery when Mr. Verloc talks to her about her brother’s death in a callous, sociopathic way. She stumbles out into her cinema and hears people laughing at a Disney cartoon. Grateful for any distraction, Mrs. Verloc sits down in the theater herself and laughs a little at the cartoon until a bird is shot and a bass voice sings out, “Who killed Cock Robin? Who killed Cock Robin?” The smile on Sidney’s face dies away instantly—she looks like she’s been stabbed in the back. It’s an unforgettable moment, as is the piercing little cry she lets out when she stabs Mr. Verloc with a carving knife, not vengefully but fearfully, as if she has no control over what she’s doing, and what she’s doing simply needs to be done. “Stevie, Stevie,” she cries, in her high, helpless voice, after executing Mr. Verloc. This is Sidney’s finest hour on the screen, her flair for suffering put at the center of one of Hitchcock’s most unsparing looks at evil and its consequences.

Sidney then entered wholeheartedly into the l’amour fou of Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) as a faithful lover of a convict (Henry Fonda) on the run who becomes a criminal herself. In William Wyler’s Dead End (1937), she wears little make-up and is not afraid to appear totally downtrodden, alternating between toughness and tears. Her third outing with the tyrannical Lang was You and Me (1938), a strange movie where yet again she is an ex-convict involved in crime. In …One Third of a Nation (1939), where she plays opposite a very young Sidney Lumet, Sidney looks dead tired of this type of socially conscious leftist ‘30s film. Watching a bunch of Sidney’s 1930s movies in a row, I couldn’t count the number of times I said, “Poor thing, poor thing.”

Nearly ten years of cinematic suffering had taken their toll on Sidney, and she had made many enemies. “I used to fight,” Sidney said later. “Yes, it’s true. I even used to throw telephone books and anything else I could get to at the time. Everything that didn’t go smoothly annoyed me terribly. And I flew off the handle and got myself terribly disliked.” She married the actor Luther Adler and returned to the theater for a number of years, making a brief comeback with James Cagney in Blood on the Sun (1945), where she played a glamorous half-Chinese woman. She was still typecast for suffering as Fanzine in Les Miserables (1952), and this was the beginning of an awkward period where her looks had changed and slightly coarsened so that she couldn’t play leading lady roles anymore but was still too young for character parts.

Sidney survived on stage and on television before making a second and very successful film comeback with a brief but flashy role as Joanne Woodward’s acidic mother in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), which won her her only Academy Award nomination. This was followed by a steady stream of parts, some thankless, some juicy, in a variety of films and TV projects. A long-time smoker, Sidney’s high voice had lowered to a gravelly baritone, which was particularly amusing in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988), where she played a caseworker for the dead who smokes through a long slash in her throat.

Burton used her again for her final film, Mars Attacks! (1996), in which she played a spacey, ill-tempered Grandmother in a wheelchair who foils the alien monsters with her favorite Slim Whitman records. “They blew up Congress!” she cackles at one point, seemingly glad that “the system” which landed her in jail so many times on screen was being destroyed. Off screen, Sidney enjoyed being thoroughly not nice, not the victim anymore but the gleeful victimizer. “She was a bitch on wheels!” says film distributor Gene Stavis, who knew her a bit. “A naturally nasty lady. She could never let an opportunity pass without laying a zinger on someone. I guess she didn’t want to be thought of as a sentimental old lady, so she went wildly in the other direction.”

by Dan Callahan

[bigwheelblading]

Rob Dargiewicz is a 36-year-old aggressive inline skater from Derby, Connecticut. Two years ago he also added distance skating to his blading arsenal. This year he won the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge skating 2,364.52 miles.

What year did you start skating? How did you get into skating?

It was probably around ‘92 or ‘93 when I first put skates on at the local roller rink. By the second lap, I was launching off the ramps that go from the floor to the carpeted area. They also had a race where the DJ cut the music and everybody lined up and did three laps and I won that. Multi-disciplined since day one!

I spent every Saturday night for the next few years at Roller Magic. In 1994 I started going to CT Bike on Friday nights. It’s an indoor skatepark that’s still there today. There was a thriving hardcore scene back then and they had shows at the park. I was 12 –years-old shredding the vert ramp with the older skateboarders while Hatebreed played in the mini. Those were great memories.

How long have you been distance skating?

I started skating almost two years ago.

What made you want to start skating distance?

At the end of 2015 I got sober. I spent a good part of the previous 5 years struggling with alcoholism and everything that goes along with it; jail, losing friends, feeling sick ALL the time, depression etc.. Once I got clean and started to feel human again, early morning solo trips to the skatepark and distance running became my personal AA meetings.

In 2017 I got my first taste of big wheels on some Trimax UFS frames. As soon as I felt the combination of smoothness and speed that the larger wheel size afforded I knew I had found my new passion. Big Wheel Blading was everything I loved about running but I was able to go super fast with skates on my feet. I was hooked.

Were there any skaters at the beginning of your distance skating that you enjoyed watching or motivated you?

Slo-Mo. That guy gets it.

How competitive are you?

I pride myself on my work ethic and always do the best I can at whatever I’m doing. I’m constantly looking for ways to progress so I guess that makes me pretty competitive.

How had your approach to distance skating matured since you began?

Hopefully distance skating is something that will be with me for a long time so I feel like I am just beginning. There are so many techniques to master, muscles to develop, equipment to try, events to attend, and so much I can learn from other people. I knew that going in so I’m just going to keep on that steady path of progression.

How did you find the time to skate so many miles in 2018?

If you love something and you’re having fun you make time for it.

What’s was your daily skate regiment like?

A typical day starts around 5:30 am with about 10 hours of manual labor outside to warm up. As soon as I get home I kick off the work boots and go running anywhere from 4-12 miles. After that I would try to get in 10-20 miles on my skates unless it was Wednesday in which case I’d be shredding whatever park we picked that week for Wednesday Night Skate. There were days with more or less miles but that was an average weekday.

What was your original mileage goal when the year started and did you achieve it?

I didn’t really have a goal but at some point I thought it would be cool to get at least as many miles as the distance from coast to coast across America and I accomplished that.

What were the most challenging moments for you this year?

Trying to spread my time between multiple athletic endeavors and work full time was the hardest thing for me. I ran 3 half-marathons and the full NYC Marathon. I trained hard for those races all year separately from skating all those miles. On top of that I’ve been out in the streets filming with the world famous Tallboyz crew.

Rob has been running marathons as well.

Rob has been running marathons as well.

Did you suffer any injuries?

I had to deal with a broken wrist and bursitis in my hip but nothing from distance aside from some blisters and sore muscles. If anything I would feel beat up from work or a slam I took, go for a mellow skate on the trail and feel a little better.

What is your weekly training regiment, workout / skate schedule?

Weekdays are for work, mellow sessions, and shorter distances. Weekends are for street skating, filming, and longer skates/runs.

Have you changed lifestyle at all with your training?

Self improvement has been a major component of my lifestyle for the past few years so I guess you could say the training fits right into that.

What kind of diet are you on?

Nothing too strict. The only things I avoid completely are fast food, soda, and energy drinks. When you burn as many calories as I do you have to eat a lot so I just try to make smarter choices when it comes to food. Everyone’s body is different. Over time you learn what slows you down and what keeps you going. For instance, eggs are a great source of protein but they give me the bubble guts. Ice cream isn’t great for you but I’ve consumed it every day since I’ve been sober without a problem. I know my body but I’m always learning.

What snacks / food do you eat before, during and after skating? What do you use to hydrate when skating? How much water do you drink on your long skates?

My favorite thing before a long skate is oatmeal with almond butter, bananas, and berries. Anything over 30 miles I’d have granola bars in my pockets, Haribo gummy bears, almonds, and plenty of vitamin THC. For water I always carry a bottle with me and filled it up when I could. It’s very important to know where the water spot is on long skates. Also chocolate almond milk was great for recovery when I was completely wiped out.

How has skating distance affected how much you aggressive skate?

I’m happy to say it hasn’t negatively affected how much aggressive skating I do at all. 2018 was a great year for skating especially here in Connecticut. We’ve had multiple park upgrades, new skaters, people coming back; if anything I’ve been skating more.

Rob pulling a top acid on the hand rail.

Rob lacing a kindgrind.

Has skating on big wheels and doing distance, had any benefit to your aggressive skating or changed the way you approach tricks in aggressive skating?

It has quite literally changed the way I approach tricks; I always want to be going fast! Even when we’re skating a ledge spot, I prefer to come in hot from halfway down the block. I love finding spots where I can incorporate the double push on the approach.

Did you ever imagine growing up skating that you would be skating thousands of miles in a year?

Never! I skated everywhere when I was a kid and I rode anti-rocker so I hated it! I would destroy wheels just getting to the spot. I always knew I would keep skating but never pictured myself doing what I’m doing now.

Where there any months you skated less then others?

Running took up most of my time in September and October leading up to the NYC marathon. I cut my miles but still skated almost everyday.

How do you handle cold weather skating? What gear do you wear when the temperature dips?

I had one of my scariest skate experiences recently because of the cold. It was 6 degrees Fahrenheit and I was bundled up pretty good. Even had on 2 pairs of leggings. This proved insufficient against the constant 20 mph headwind. I got about 3 miles up the trail and started to feel the pain. I immediately skated back to my truck and spent the next 15 minutes in a terrifying amount of agony. That was the day I learned about penile frostbite and why you need to wear 3 socks on really cold days.

What moments were you proudest achievements in your skating in 2018?

Winning the Big Wheel Blading Challenge was awesome but I’m just really proud of the fact that I’m still skating at all, let alone at the level I am. I absolutely hate hearing the phrase “I used to skate”.

Rob on his distance blades.

Milford Beach Daily Skate Route

What is the furthest you’ve skated in a day?

I had done a few 50-70 mile skates but a week after I ran the marathon I decided to go out and do 100 miles in a day. I did 85 on the trail before it got dark. I got the remaining 15 by shredding around downtown New Haven and then bombing a hill to finish off. It was rad.

Did you have to mentally prepare yourself for skating everyday?

No, I have to skate to mentally prepare myself for everyday.

What is your favorite place / route to skate?

I like the Farmington River Rail Trail for long skates but most of my daily routes were on the roads along the beach in Milford, CT.

What skates, frames, bearings and wheels did you use during 2018?

Powerslide Swell with the 10” aluminum Trinity frame, 125mm UC wheels and whatever bearings I had laying around.

What are you skating goals going into 2019?

First things first – I’m going to finish filming for the Tallboyz video and start on the next project. Then I’m going to quit my job and get paid to rollerblade. I’m going to skate in the North Shore Marathon, NYC 100km skate marathon, WYII, New England Blade & Camp, BPSO, Berlin Marathon, Athens to Atlanta, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I’m going to skate 10,000 miles and win the X-Games. I’m sure I’ll narrow that list down but in the meantime I’m just happy to stay healthy and keep skating.

Skating all those miles paid off with a sweet prize package!

Rob holding his prizes.

Thanks to our sponsors for their prizes for 1st place.

The Sponsors

Thank you Rollerblade, Sonic Sports, Hypatia Extracts, Oysius and Rudy New York for sponsoring the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge.

Join the 2019 Challenge!

To find out more information about how to join the 2019 Big Wheel Challenge and the 2018 Inline Skate Challenge on Endomondo click here. From Aggressive to Distance: An Interview with Rob Dargiewicz, the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge Winner Rob Dargiewicz is a 36-year-old aggressive inline skater from Derby, Connecticut. Two years ago he also added distance skating to his blading arsenal.

[kyukurator-blog]

Wow...

 LSD is having another moment.  The practice of “micro-dosing” is trending in trendy circles, and Michael Chabon’s wife (a former D.A.) just outed herself in the Sunday NYTimes — “How LSD Saved One Woman’s Marriage.”  — as promotion for her new book on the subject. 

Here at The Thread, we got a little bored with acid after the first 75 or so trips. 

But a few years later — well in advance of the late-arriving micro dosers of today — we discovered that a couple nibbles of a fresh homegrown ‘shroom was almost as good as a strong cup of coffee.

 The release of the new documentary on the makers of Orange Sunshine it seems like a great excuse to take a little trip, if only down memory lane. 

     SUNSHINE MAKERS (2017)

Director Cosmo Feilding Mellon comes by his interest in this subject matter honestly – his mother is the extremely colorful Amanda Feilding — titled British artist, spiritual experimenter and advocate of psychotropic drug reform.  Her Wikipedia entry is an amusing read.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Feilding

In the 1960’s a Brooklyn hippie named Nick Sand and a Berkeley science nerd named Tim Scully teamed up to save the world by inventing and spreading super-pure Orange Sunshine LSD. Their goal was to get the entire world high by producing 350 million tabs.

Unfortunately, the government took a different angle on their messianic mission – the film is billed as “a real-life Breaking Bad for the psychedelic set.”

Reports say the film is not incredibly well crafted, but so entertaining  that you’ll want to see it anyway.

       ORANGE SUNSHINE (2016)

 Much better made and even more entertaining, this is the other half of the story, made by acclaimed director William Kirkley (Excavating Taylor Meade), and nominated for the big award at last year’s SXSW.

It’s the story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a mystical/altruistic band of surfer hippies out of Laguna Beach, CA who executed their own mission to transform the world by becoming one of the biggest drug dealing syndicates ever.  Think 100 million hits of LSD. The Sunshine Makers were the chemists, but it was the Brotherhood that spread Orange Sunshine across the country and around the world.

Although the main players slipped away before the big bust came, most of them were eventually ended up in jail.  But even now, in their 70’s, they maintain that the driving force behind everything they did was not money, but psychic and cultural transformation.

Kirkley really knows what he’s doing – this one is engrossing and really well made — a mix of archival materials and current interviews augmented with a massive amount of perfectly executed re-enactments.

    FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998)

Anyone who has had personal experience with psychedelics knows that the effect of a trip cannot be replicated on film; and anyone who hasn’t had that experience probably doesn’t care.

But every couple of years a film comes out that is supposed to capture the experience better than anything that came before.  This year it was Dr. Strange.  In 1998, it was Terry Gilliam’s rendering of Hunter Thompson’s epic drug rage through the rotten heart of the American nightmare — Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

There is chasm between the two schools of opinion on this film.  Roger Ebert gave it one star.  But for those who love it, it’s “the best film ever made”.

Gilliam was born to direct this thing, and for us, this is one of Depp’s signature roles, right up there with Scissorhands and Jack Sparrow – and much better than his later and lamer attempt to capture a young Thompson in Rum Diary (skip it).

Personally, we don’t know why anyone would want to take acid in Las Vegas – the hotel check-in scene is case in point, and should be enough to dissuade any sane person.

And we don’t know why anyone would watch this movie more than once.  But you do have to watch it once.

  ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007)

By the early 70’s the cultural effects of LSD had pervaded American society, and the country was as deeply, deeply divided.

It was a wonderful time and it was a horrible time, a time of love, a time of war.  The counter culture was seducing and nibbling away at the status quo – and anybody who was invested in the status quo was profoundly threatened.

The Beatles bridged the turmoil.  Half the country was listening to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the other to Andy Williams’ cover of “Michelle”.  In 2007 Judy Taymor captured a lot of this (along with some  creative evocations of psychedelia) in her deeply nostalgic and underappreciated jukebox musical Across The Universe.

  AMERICAN COMMUNE (2014)

LSD did catalyze genuine social change, including more than a few utopian experiments.  The Farm in Tennessee is the best known and most successful of the “hippy communes” that sprung up in the early 70’s.

It was founded by charismatic leader Steven Gaskin who trekked across the country from San Francisco.  300 admirers followed in a motley caravan of vans and old school buses.  They bought 1,750 acres in rural Tennessee, took vows of poverty and set out to live off the land, practicing vegetarianism and optional group marriage. They eschewed personal possessions, birth control, abortion, alcohol, tobacco, and all man-made drugs – except for LSD.  The core group of founders had bonded through common psychedelic experiences, and regarded marijuana as a sacrament.

As cults go, Gaskin’s was tame and well-intentioned.  The Farm went through trials and transitions; but it evolved and is still very much in existence.

American Commune is a documentary by sisters Nadine Mundo and Rena Mundo Croshere — daughters of Jan and Jose Mundo, two founding members who lived on The Farm for over a decade.  Years later, the sisters were both working as producers for MTV, and decided to go back, revisit the site of their childhood and look at the history of the place, fondly but frankly.

For some reason we here at The Thread can’t get enough on this subject.  We highly recommend Arcadia, a novel by Lauren Groff (National Book Award nominee for Fates and Furies) about a kid raised on a Farm-like commune.   And our friend, documentary maker Jonathan Berman, made another great, breezy film called Commune about Black Bear Ranch in northern California.

  EASY RIDER (1969)

 A dozen movies could have filled this last slot, but we decided to grab the low-hanging fruit.

By the time Wyatt and Billy get to New Orleans, George Hansen (Nicholson) is dead, but they still have the LSD the kid on the commune gave them.  They drop acid with the prostitutes, played by Karen Black and Toni Basil.

As the four of them wander through Mardi Gras and into the cemetary, director Hopper used very simple visual effects to capture the essence of an acid trip as well as anybody before or since. Including the perfectly balanced look of rapture and terror in the famous still above.

Wow… was originally published on FollowTheThread

[bigwheelblading]

Rob Dargiewicz is a 36-year-old aggressive inline skater from Derby, Connecticut. Two years ago he also added distance skating to his blading arsenal. This year he won the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge skating 2,364.52 miles.

What year did you start skating? How did you get into skating?

It was probably around ‘92 or ‘93 when I first put skates on at the local roller rink. By the second lap, I was launching off the ramps that go from the floor to the carpeted area. They also had a race where the DJ cut the music and everybody lined up and did three laps and I won that. Multi-disciplined since day one!

I spent every Saturday night for the next few years at Roller Magic. In 1994 I started going to CT Bike on Friday nights. It’s an indoor skatepark that’s still there today. There was a thriving hardcore scene back then and they had shows at the park. I was 12 –years-old shredding the vert ramp with the older skateboarders while Hatebreed played in the mini. Those were great memories.

How long have you been distance skating?

I started skating almost two years ago.

What made you want to start skating distance?

At the end of 2015 I got sober. I spent a good part of the previous 5 years struggling with alcoholism and everything that goes along with it; jail, losing friends, feeling sick ALL the time, depression etc.. Once I got clean and started to feel human again, early morning solo trips to the skatepark and distance running became my personal AA meetings.

In 2017 I got my first taste of big wheels on some Trimax UFS frames. As soon as I felt the combination of smoothness and speed that the larger wheel size afforded I knew I had found my new passion. Big Wheel Blading was everything I loved about running but I was able to go super fast with skates on my feet. I was hooked.

Catching air on his big wheel blades at the Milford, CT Skate Park.

Were there any skaters at the beginning of your distance skating that you enjoyed watching or motivated you?

Slo-Mo. That guy gets it.

How competitive are you?

I pride myself on my work ethic and always do the best I can at whatever I’m doing. I’m constantly looking for ways to progress so I guess that makes me pretty competitive.

How had your approach to distance skating matured since you began?

Hopefully distance skating is something that will be with me for a long time so I feel like I am just beginning. There are so many techniques to master, muscles to develop, equipment to try, events to attend, and so much I can learn from other people. I knew that going in so I’m just going to keep on that steady path of progression.

How did you find the time to skate so many miles in 2018?

If you love something and you’re having fun you make time for it.

What’s was your daily skate regiment like?

A typical day starts around 5:30 am with about 10 hours of manual labor outside to warm up. As soon as I get home I kick off the work boots and go running anywhere from 4-12 miles. After that I would try to get in 10-20 miles on my skates unless it was Wednesday in which case I’d be shredding whatever park we picked that week for Wednesday Night Skate. There were days with more or less miles but that was an average weekday.

What was your original mileage goal when the year started and did you achieve it?

I didn’t really have a goal but at some point I thought it would be cool to get at least as many miles as the distance from coast to coast across America and I accomplished that.

What were the most challenging moments for you this year?

Trying to spread my time between multiple athletic endeavors and work full time was the hardest thing for me. I ran 3 half-marathons and the full NYC Marathon. I trained hard for those races all year separately from skating all those miles. On top of that I’ve been out in the streets filming with the world famous Tallboyz crew.

Rob has been running marathons as well.

Rob has been running marathons as well.

Did you suffer any injuries?

I had to deal with a broken wrist and bursitis in my hip but nothing from distance aside from some blisters and sore muscles. If anything I would feel beat up from work or a slam I took, go for a mellow skate on the trail and feel a little better.

What is your weekly training regiment, workout / skate schedule?

Weekdays are for work, mellow sessions, and shorter distances. Weekends are for street skating, filming, and longer skates/runs.

Have you changed lifestyle at all with your training?

Self improvement has been a major component of my lifestyle for the past few years so I guess you could say the training fits right into that.

What kind of diet are you on?

Nothing too strict. The only things I avoid completely are fast food, soda, and energy drinks. When you burn as many calories as I do you have to eat a lot so I just try to make smarter choices when it comes to food. Everyone’s body is different. Over time you learn what slows you down and what keeps you going. For instance, eggs are a great source of protein but they give me the bubble guts. Ice cream isn’t great for you but I’ve consumed it every day since I’ve been sober without a problem. I know my body but I’m always learning.

What snacks / food do you eat before, during and after skating? What do you use to hydrate when skating? How much water do you drink on your long skates?

My favorite thing before a long skate is oatmeal with almond butter, bananas, and berries. Anything over 30 miles I’d have granola bars in my pockets, Haribo gummy bears, almonds, and plenty of vitamin THC. For water I always carry a bottle with me and filled it up when I could. It’s very important to know where the water spot is on long skates. Also chocolate almond milk was great for recovery when I was completely wiped out.

How has skating distance affected how much you aggressive skate?

I’m happy to say it hasn’t negatively affected how much aggressive skating I do at all. 2018 was a great year for skating especially here in Connecticut. We’ve had multiple park upgrades, new skaters, people coming back; if anything I’ve been skating more.

Rob pulling a top acid on the hand rail.

Rob lacing a kindgrind.

Has skating on big wheels and doing distance, had any benefit to your aggressive skating or changed the way you approach tricks in aggressive skating?

It has quite literally changed the way I approach tricks; I always want to be going fast! Even when we’re skating a ledge spot, I prefer to come in hot from halfway down the block. I love finding spots where I can incorporate the double push on the approach.

Did you ever imagine growing up skating that you would be skating thousands of miles in a year?

Never! I skated everywhere when I was a kid and I rode anti-rocker so I hated it! I would destroy wheels just getting to the spot. I always knew I would keep skating but never pictured myself doing what I’m doing now.

Where there any months you skated less then others?

Running took up most of my time in September and October leading up to the NYC marathon. I cut my miles but still skated almost everyday.

How do you handle cold weather skating? What gear do you wear when the temperature dips?

I had one of my scariest skate experiences recently because of the cold. It was 6 degrees Fahrenheit and I was bundled up pretty good. Even had on 2 pairs of leggings. This proved insufficient against the constant 20 mph headwind. I got about 3 miles up the trail and started to feel the pain. I immediately skated back to my truck and spent the next 15 minutes in a terrifying amount of agony. That was the day I learned about penile frostbite and why you need to wear 3 socks on really cold days.

What moments were you proudest achievements in your skating in 2018?

Winning the Big Wheel Blading Challenge was awesome but I’m just really proud of the fact that I’m still skating at all, let alone at the level I am. I absolutely hate hearing the phrase “I used to skate”.

Rob on his distance blades.

Milford Beach Daily Skate Route

What is the furthest you’ve skated in a day?

I had done a few 50-70 mile skates but a week after I ran the marathon I decided to go out and do 100 miles in a day. I did 85 on the trail before it got dark. I got the remaining 15 by shredding around downtown New Haven and then bombing a hill to finish off. It was rad.

Did you have to mentally prepare yourself for skating everyday?

No, I have to skate to mentally prepare myself for everyday.

What is your favorite place / route to skate?

I like the Farmington River Rail Trail for long skates but most of my daily routes were on the roads along the beach in Milford, CT.

What skates, frames, bearings and wheels did you use during 2018?

Powerslide Swell with the 10” aluminum Trinity frame, 125mm UC wheels and whatever bearings I had laying around.

What are you skating goals going into 2019?

First things first – I’m going to finish filming for the Tallboyz video and start on the next project. Then I’m going to quit my job and get paid to rollerblade. I’m going to skate in the North Shore Marathon, NYC 100km skate marathon, WYII, New England Blade & Camp, BPSO, Berlin Marathon, Athens to Atlanta, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I’m going to skate 10,000 miles and win the X-Games. I’m sure I’ll narrow that list down but in the meantime I’m just happy to stay healthy and keep skating.

Skating all those miles paid off with a sweet prize package!

Rob holding his prizes.

Thanks to our sponsors for their prizes for 1st place.

The Sponsors

Thank you Rollerblade, Sonic Sports, Hypatia Extracts, Oysius and Rudy New York for sponsoring the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge.

Join the 2019 Challenge!

To find out more information about how to join the 2019 Big Wheel Challenge and the 2018 Inline Skate Challenge on Endomondo click here. From Aggressive to Distance: An Interview with Rob Dargiewicz, the 2018 Big Wheel Challenge Winner Rob Dargiewicz is a 36-year-old aggressive inline skater from Derby, Connecticut. Two years ago he also added distance skating to his blading arsenal.