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elisela · 4 years ago

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take root buck x eddie, 1.2k. happy birthday, @gracieli! ♥️🌻

“Dad!” Chris rushes towards him, phone clutched in one hand, beaming. “My zucchini sprouted!”

Eddie holds his hand out for the phone—Chris had been checking his classroom website obsessively as soon as summer break started, waiting for his teacher to post an update about the vegetables they planted on the last day of school. “Looks pretty good, buddy,” he says, looking at the two tiny leaves sticking up through dark soil, Christopher’s name written in his best handwriting on a marker in front. “Did you sign up for a time to go work in the garden yet?”

“Yeah, two times,” Chris says. “We can go on Wednesday and Buck said he’d take me, too, on Friday.”

Of course he did.

“I already sent you the invite,” Chris adds, pushing his glasses up and reaching a hand out for his phone back. “You need to accept it, Dad.”

It’s not that Eddie regrets getting him the phone, but he does wish the constant bombardment of calendar invites, download requests, game requests, and text messages with nothing but memes would … slow down a bit. “I’m not even sure where my phone is,” he says, “but I will. Promise. You should send that picture to abuela, she’d love to see it.”

----

Eddie hadn’t been exaggerating when he told Chris that he had a brown thumb. He’s not sure what it is—maybe the same lack of intuition that keeps him away from the kitchen most nights—but when he’d failed to even keep a succulent that Sophia had given him alive back in El Paso, he’d given it up. Plants are fine, and he can enjoy them in nature, but he doesn’t really feel the need to have them around the house, anyway.

Chris is different. Fourth grade science and a unit on plant life cycles had him begging for flowers to be brought into the house, and with huge bouquets regularly sold at the farmer’s market for $10, Eddie had no problem taking him every week to pick a bunch out. Sometimes Chris would save his allowance and buy a smaller bouquet for his room, or a vase or two at a yard sale. Then it was a ficus that was half-dead at the nursery and tended carefully by his son until it was thriving again, a monstera deliciosa that Buck brought over and was moved around no less than twenty-six times before Chris found the perfect place for it, and four planters full of sunflowers that Chris planted along the side of the house.

But his obsession with growing vegetables really starts after they plant the zucchini at school. Eddie and Buck take turns bringing him twice a week to meet his science teacher so he can help tend to the garden, and every time Chris looks wistfully out into their small, brown backyard, Eddie’s heart sinks. They don’t have the space for a real garden—Chris had never been a kid to run around in the backyard, preferring playgrounds and parks, so he hadn’t cared too much when he’d rented the place—let alone the knowledge on how to set it up. The school’s gardens are nice; he can see irrigation lines, beautiful cedar planters, and he’s pretty sure it would cost quite a bit to set something like that up.

It’s not until they respond to a call at a community garden that he realizes how he can get Chris the garden he so desperately wants.

-----

It takes seven months for space to become available, and part of him had worried about Chris losing interest in that time, but they now have four additional plants in the house along with a windowsill herb garden filled with rosemary, mint, basil, and chives that Chris and Buck regularly use while they cook. The garden manager gives him a call on Tuesday and Eddie fills out the rental agreement while he’s on shift, renting out two adjacent plots, and buys a gardening book that becomes remarkably difficult to read without his boys catching him. He doesn’t just want to drag them out to an empty plot—it just doesn’t feel right—but he’s also … really not sure what to do. So he sucks it up and wanders around the garden, asking for advice, before finally planting a peach tree in Chris’ plot (his favorite fruit) and California poppies in Buck’s (despite Buck claiming that sunflowers are his favorite flower, Eddie’s been dragged out to the poppy fields more times than he can count).

He picks up the gardening tools that everyone told him he would need, puts them in the community garden branded tote bag that the manager had given him on his first trip out, and takes his boys out to breakfast.

“Let’s go on a walk,” Eddie says, and Buck groans.

“I would have eaten less if I had known you were going to torture us,” Buck says, but he’s smiling.

“Liar,” Eddie says, reaching for his hand. “Come on, I want to show you guys something.”

They listen to Chris chatter as they walk, and Eddie brings them to a stop along the wrought iron gates with a giant metal sun. “In here,” he says, and feels a sense of pride bloom in his chest as Buck and Chris read the sign and then glance at each other, clearly excited. Their plots are in the back of the expanded section, set up against the corner. One of the other gardeners had offered to make signs for their planter boxes, and he watches the pleased smile on Buck’s face as he runs his fingers over the small wooden board that says Diaz Family.

“It’s ours?” Chris asks incredulously, gazing around at the space. “We can plant whatever we want?”

“It’s yours,” Eddie says. “One for you, one for Buck. We can head over to the nursery for all your seeds after this.”

“Once again, you just reap the benefits,” Buck teases, throwing an arm over Eddie’s shoulders and leaning in to kiss his cheek. “This is awesome, Eddie.”

He shows them where he’d planted the peach tree, and Buck’s poppies, and sits on the side of the planter box, face tilted up to the sun as they discuss their plans, Chris tapping away at his phone as he writes everything down.

“This is the best, Dad,” Chris says when they’re leaving, red-cheeked from the sun and grinning. “I’m gonna grow so many vegetables, we’ll never have to buy them from the store again. I’ll teach you how to grow it all, too.”

Eventually, they get into the habit of spending a few days a week at the garden, tending to their own patches and talking to the other gardeners, experimenting with different things to grow, celebrating their victories with new recipes and old favorites at home, bunches of carefully cut flowers adorning the dining room table.

When he and Buck finally decide to buy a house, the backyard is the first thing he looks at.

#buddie #buddie fic #evan buckley #eddie diaz #christopher diaz #eli writes #it's okay eddie #i also have a brown thumb #happy birthday alicia!

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brokehorrorfan · 5 years ago

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Blu-ray Review: Amityville: The Cursed Collection

After the original trilogy, The Amityville Horror's storyline had run its course, as had its theatrical viability. The 1979 original is an iconic adaptation of Jay Anson’s allegedly true book. 1982's Amityville II: The Possession is a successful prequel that shows the murders that led to the house being haunted. 1983's Amityville 3-D rested its laurels on the 3D gimmick for a largely dull entry.

This would spell the end for most franchises (at least until the remake boom), but once the home video industry blossomed, the marketable title was revived for a spate of direct-to-video sequels. While the initial source material had been tapped, four of these later efforts borrowed a concept from John G. Jones' 1988 short story collection, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, in which cursed objects from the original house find their way into unsuspecting peoples' lives.

Vinegar Syndrome has collected the pseudo-quadrilogy of 1989's Amityville: The Evil Escapes, 1992's Amityville: It’s About Time, 1993's Amityville: A New Generation, and 1996's Amityville Dollhouse - the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth installments in the franchise, respectively - in a Blu-ray box set dubbed Amityville: The Cursed Collection. (The absent fifth entry, 1990's The Amityville Curse, is an unrelated Canadian production that remains out of print due to rights issues.)

Amityville: The Evil Escapes was made for television but features decent production value, including a strong opening with a rain storm and a fairly convincing facade of the original Amityville house at 112 Ocean Avenue. The Amityville Horror screenwriter Sandor Stern returned to write and direct the followup. While having one of the original creative forces at the helm is a good omen, his effort is light on scares.

The film follows Nancy Evans (Patty Duke, Valley of the Dolls) and her three children. The untimely death of Nancy's husband has put a financial burden on the family, forcing them to move to rural California to live with her mother, Alice (Jane Wyatt, Star Trek), who recently received an antique lamp from the Amityville house. The 300-year-old evil is attached to the lamp and then transmigrates to the most vulnerable person in the house: the grieving youngest child, Jessica (Brandy Gold), who communicates with her late father.

The familial melodrama is akin to a Lifetime movie, while a series of strange occurrences in the house causes further tension between its inhabitants. Naturally, the cursed lamp lights up whenever something happens. The ridiculous plot lends itself to a few entertaining set pieces, including a possessed chainsaw and a garbage disposal gone wrong. The gore in the latter scene was absent from the TV broadcast but was added for the home video release and remains intact on Blu-ray.

Duke is probably a little too old for her role, but she's good in it. The kids don't fare as well, but what's asked of them is fairly minimal. The cast also includes Fredric Lehne (Supernatural) and Norman Lloyd (Saboteur) as a pair of priests from Amityville, Aron Eisenberg (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as Nancy's son, and Peggy McCay (Days of Our Lives) as Alice's sister, who sets the story into motion by gifting her the lamp.

Amityville: The Evil Escapes's Blu-ray disc includes new interviews with Stern and cinematographer Tom Richmond (House of 1000 Corpses, Chopping Mall). Stern's conversation is an informative one, but the most interesting fact is that he had no idea more sequels were made after this one. Richmond details how he felt more like the lighting manager than the director of photographer, as Stern was more experienced and knew what he wanted.

Amityville: It’s About Time is directed by Tony Randel (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) and written by Christopher DeFaria (who went on to executive produce the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road, Gravity, and Ready Player One) and Antonio Toro. Its subtitle is not just a clever clock pun; the movie deals with time in rather interesting, if sometimes nonsensical, ways - including time shifts. The name also works in a metaphorical sense, as the core of the picture is about a character struggling to break the cycle of making the same mistakes.

In the film, the Amityville house has been torn down and replaced with a new development, but architect Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, The Monster Squad) helped himself to a antique clock. He brings it home to suburban California, where his ex-girlfriend, Andrea (Shawn Weatherly, Police Academy 3: Back in Training), is watching his two teenage kids, Rusty (Damon Martin, Ghoulies II) and Lisa (Megan Ward, Encino Man). The clock physically roots itself into their home and begins controlling the family members.

Rusty - who's depicted as a "troubled" kid in a very '90s way, complete with black clothing, an earring, and heavy metal music - recognizes that there is an evil presence, but everyone else blames him for the weird happenings in the neighborhood. While he's at the center of it, the plot successfully integrates the entire household, unlike the previous film, and the complicated family dynamic is a welcome shakeup of the formula.

Playing more like an ensemble than any other Amityville, each cast member is able to pull their own weight. Macht's role is fairly thankless, as a dog attack leaves him in failing health, but he fully commits. Jonathan Penner (Survivor) gives a charismatic performance as Andrea's pretentious psychologist boyfriend, and Nita Talbot (Hogan's Heroes), Terrie Snell (Home Alone), and Dick Miller (Gremlins) are among the neighbors who pop up.

If not for the tenuous connection to the Amityville Horror franchise, I suspect this picture might have more of a cult following. (It's easier for word-of-mouth to spread about a lone gem than the sixth entry in a direct-to-video franchise.) The most entertaining film in the set, It's About Time is a charming, if unspectacular, B-movie with a delightfully silly plot and several fun moments featuring special effects by KNB EFX Group (From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream), the most memorable of which sees a character melting into the floor.

Amityville: It’s About Time's Blu-ray disc includes new interviews with Randel and DeFaria. Randel seems to relish the opportunity to discuss the film, as he says no one ever asks about it, and praises the cast and crew. DeFaria explains that he offered to write the film as a way to get his foot in the door as a producer - which, looking at his post-Amityville resume, seems to have worked out for him.

Amityville: A New Generation eschews the franchise's traditional, suburban family dynamic in favor of a metaphorical one; a community of artists living in an urban loft co-opt. It focuses on Keyes Terry (Ross Partridge, Stranger Things), a struggling photographer who's struck with inspiration when a homeless man gives him an ornate mirror that has been in his family for generations. The mirror predicts the death of its first victim, which would be an interesting enough concept, but alas it is not consistent. Ultimately, the possessed object tempts Keyes to commit murder.

The film boasts a powerful supporting cast that includes David Naughton (An American Werewolf in London) as the landlord, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as a detective, Richard Roundtree (Shaft) as one of the artists, Robert Rusler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) as a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, and a particularly charming Lin Shaye (Insidious) as a mental hospital nurse. Although the cast elevates the material, the script - penned by a returning DeFaria and Toro - remains lackluster.

While the previous entries did an admirable job to overcome their limited resources, A New Generation looks and feels very much like a '90s direct-to-video movie; THE of the same caliber as the endless Children of the Corn, Hellraiser, and The Prophecy sequels that were being churned out around the same time. Despite a direct connection to the Amityville mythology beyond the mirror, it hardly even feels like an Amityville movie.

Directed by John Murlowski (Santa with Muscles) made the inspired choice to hire The Amityville Horror visual effects artist William Cruse to handle the elaborate mirror effects. They're all accomplished in camera; an impressive feat that sounds great in theory but looks campy in practice. The film also features cinematography by future Academy Award winner Wally Pfister (Inception, The Dark Knight).

Amityville: A New Generation's disc includes new interviews with Murlowski and DeFari, plus a commentary by Murlowski. Murlowski's chat includes a breakdown of the analog effects, supplemented by behind-the-scenes footage. His commentary allows him to go more in depth, citing The Shining as an inspiration, pointing out the similarities to Oculus, and addressing shortcomings such as the pacing and the rubber monster. DeFari discusses the challenges of channeling artists' fears on screen and offers advice for aspiring filmmakers.

Amityville Dollhouse is perhaps the most traditional of the bunch in terms of concept, though its execution goes in a different direction. In it, a newly blended family moves into a house that the contractor father, Bill Martin (Robin Thomas, Summer School), built on the original Amityville lot. Bill finds an old dollhouse - a miniature model of the Amityville abode, naturally - and gives it to his young daughter. While the girl ostensibly releases the evil, the strange occurrences begin before she receives the gift.

The eerie events start small but escalate to the point where the family's younger boy sees his deceased father, urging him to murder his family. The father appears in three stages of decay, a la Jack in An American Werewolf in London. His ultimate form is something like a cross between Tales from the Crypt's Crypt Keeper and Friday the 13th Part VII's Jason Voorhees, but he's too loquacious to be scary, delivering a few Freddy Krueger-esque quips.

While the deceased father feels a bit out of place in an Amityville movie, he is the highlight of the film, thanks to exceptional makeup by SOTA Effects' Roy Knyrim (The Toxic Avenger Part II & III). Also notable is an appearance by a young Lisa Robin Kelly (That '70s Show). The film marks the lone directorial effort of Steve White, who executive produced all four films in the set, along with The Devil’s Advocate and Halloweentown. Joshua Michael Stern (director of Jobs) penned the script.

Amityville Dollhouse's disc includes new interviews with White, Knyrim, and director of photography Thomas L. Callaway (Feast, Slumber Party Massacre II), along with alternate footage from the TV edit. White, having produced the prior three films, offers an interesting perspective. Knyrim discusses the progression of the dead father's makeup and how existing creature parts were repurposed for demons in the climax. Callaway breaks down a few interesting techniques, like a 360-degree shot with a periscope lens and the challenges of lighting a character covered in latex.

The perfect companion to Scream Factory's The Amityville Horror Trilogy set, Amityville: The Cursed Collection is available exclusively from Vinegar Syndrome. It's not as loaded with extras as some of the company's releases (there's no input from any cast members and only one commentary), but each movie offers at least a couple of new interviews. All four films have been newly restored in 4K from their 35mm original camera negatives, so they look better than they ever have. Each disc is in its own Blu-ray case with reversible artwork, all packaged in a slipcase box designed by Earl Kessler Jr., which is limited to 4,000.

Amityville: The Cursed Collection is available now from Vinegar Syndrome.

#the amityville horror #amityville horror #amityville #amityville: it's about time #vinegar syndrome #amityville: the evil escapes #amityville: a new generation #review #article #dvd #gift #lin shaye #david naughton #terry o'quinn #dick miller #patty duke #richard roundtree #robert rusler #stephen macht

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avalonsilver · 5 years ago

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Tag 9 people you want to get to know better

I was tagged by @feathersinthesky Thank you for tagging me!! I appreciate it.

Top three ships:

Sastiel (Supernatural) -- Sam and Cas have a great friendship. Solid potential for something more, but I appreciate what they have in canon. The meaningful moments they’ve had were so good. I will always cherish them. :-)

MacRiley (MacGyver reboot (2016)) -- Gone back to regularly watching this show, and I really appreciate the MacRiley dynamic. Still just friends on the show, but they could have potential to become something more. Love their friendship.

ArthurMerlin (BBC’s Merlin) -- I was really into Arthur/Merlin back in the day-- particularly when the show was still airing. And I credit their epic bond for being the inspiration for a lot of fics I ended up writing. -- With ships, can’t help but get into an explanation for each.

Lipstick or chapstick: Chapstick

Last song: “High Hopes” by Panic at the Disco

Last movie: Judy (well-done movie but sad too)

I’m behind on seeing movies. Went to see a lot of movies over this past summer. Curious about Birds of Prey.

More focused on watching TV Shows -- catching up on MacGyver (2016) episodes -- winding up rewatching some episodes, but there are some I haven’t seen. Sticking to watching eps in order, and luckily, some episodes play well upon rewatch. <3

On Amazon: The latest Charmed (2018) episode - 2x13 “Breaking the Cycle” I have a Season 2 pass for the show.

On cable: I don’t have cable.

Last book: Haven’t read a book recently. More of a fanfic reader for now. Think I may read “The Mythology of Supernatural” by Nathan Robert Brown soon as from what I’ve skimmed of it, it looks really interesting. Definitely my speed.

The book has to do with the show Supernatural (exploring the religious roots and ancient folklore... angels and demons which is a big part of the show) -- as the title hints at. ;-)

Tagging: @captain-christopher-pike @angelfireeast @lovedsammy @wendibird @petrichoravellichor @anguishmacgyver @claudiaxx97 @bluestar22x @bex-pendragon Feel free to skip if you’d like. Thank you for doing this meme if you go ahead with it. :-)

#tagged #tumblr meme #meme answered #meme #feathersinthesky

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frazzledsoul · 7 years ago

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Reboots and Revivals, Ranked By Frazzled! (well, the ones she has seen)

So we’re currently experiencing a revival craze. The suits have run out of ideas, few people actually want to watch the networks anymore, so why not send everyone scrambling back for the stuff they used to love?

I’m not so crazy about it. The trend seems to be to retcon the characters’ endings so we can place them back in the same places they were ten or fifteen or twenty years ago, and in many cases the characters needed and deserved those endings. It doesn’t do anyone any good to make these characters unhappy when they were happy or to pretend that life hasn’t moved on when it very much has. It isn’t the same and many times it ruins what was good about what we loved about those TV shows in the first place.

However, sometimes stuff needs to be fixed, and that’s not a bad thing.

However, since this article got all of it dreadfully, dreadfully wrong I will proceed to rank these revivals from worst to best, according to my infallible judgment.

(I won’t be discussing Roseanne, as this is Tumblr and I doubt that discussion would go well. It probably would be in the middle of the pack if I was going to talk about it, though).

9. 24: Legacy

Okay, whose brilliant brainchild was this? 24 without Jack or Chloe? How can we even think of such a thing? I mean, Tony Almeida was there, and he was still hot, but seriously . . . there is an entire plot thread devoted to whether Not!Jack’s wife wants to take her birth control pill. THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR, GUYS. Plus, they kill the female head of the CTU, the only likable character? (besides Tony, that is).

I’ve heard they’re planning to reboot it again, only still without Jack or Chloe, but with a female in the Not!Jack role. Guys, that was not the problem here. The problem is that you can’t do this without the Terrible Twosome. Don’t even bother.

8. Battlestar Galactica

I only watched the first two seasons, and I didn’t see the original. I’m not going to say a lot about it, but the human characters got to be so vicious and did so many blatantly immoral things I just couldn’t excuse that I quit. I kept rooting for the Cylons to wipe out the human characters. I don’t think that was the goal. Before then, it was a very well made show, though. Sometimes I wish I could have kept watching it.

7. 24: Live Another Day

Okay, I only suffered through a few episode of this, and it probably shouldn’t even count as a reboot. We still had Jack and Chloe and they merely removed the action to another continent. However, I just think that killing off Chloe’s entire family so she could wear black eyeliner was so cruel that I couldn’t get past it, especially since the show refused to touch a hair on Kim’s head. I don’t think moving the action to Europe really worked for me, either.

I’m glad they killed off Audrey, though. I could never really understand Jack’s obsession with her.

6. Fuller House

This show knows exactly what it wants to be and it is. What it wants to be is not a quality show. It wants to be a nostalgia-filled, kitschy sitcom, and it is. So I enjoy it for what it is and don’t expect more. It’s ranked low because the end result is well, not that good, but that’s mostly due to the nature of the show. It’s as good as it can be, and that’s enough.

Also, #TeamSteve forever, and I look forward to the Perfect Strangers reboot so we can have crossovers.

5. The X Files

Okay, so major points off for breaking up Mulder and Scully for the purpose of this reboot, William is a bizarre alien hybrid baby and not really the spawn of our beloved duo, someone needs to inform Chris Carter about the realities of the female reproductive system, and WTF was that ending?

OTOH, I did really enjoy Mulder and Scully being adorable and making their way back to being a couple and I can live with that ending since we’re already pretending that these two are years younger than they actually are. But please, no more, ever. Done. Finito. That’s it.

4. Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life

Oh, wow. So much to say about this. I know this because I have spent the past year and a half talking about it, over and over.

There was no need for this revival to exist. The only reason that it existed at all was because a large contingent of fans were convinced that the only real ending was the one that ASP could write, that only she could magically fix what was wrong with the last two seasons, even though she had caused most of the damage in the first place. It wasn’t to make Lorelai and Rory happy or to give them the endings they deserved so they could move on with their lives and not have to depend on each other so much. All of that had had already been done.

So was it a mistake giving ASP control of the narrative back? I don’t know. I enjoyed the revival. I didn’t trust these writers. I had feared for years that if ASP got her chance to pretend that season 7 didn’t happen that she would have simply reunited Lorelai with Christopher and give them the happy ending because she hadn’t gotten to write that ship like she wanted. All I wanted from this revival was for Luke and Lorelai to be happy and for Christopher to stay in his corner and not bother anyone else. I got that.

I loved Luke’s epic speech to Lorelai and the wedding in the gazebo. I loved that Lorelai admitted that the Christopher thing was a mistake and she had loved Luke all long. I loved that they had formed this successful domestic life for themselves after so many hurdles and misunderstandings. I loved how much Jess had grown and that he and Luke were still close. I found a lot of the revival in general to be funny, quirky, and charming.

However, honestly? It was sloppily written. There are gigantic plot holes and logical inconsistencies all over the place. Prison Break and Roseanne both did a better job in resolving the stuff they retconned from their last seasons, and both of those shows brought characters back from the dead. It’s obvious to me that the two major things that season 7 did well - focusing on April as a vital and important part of Luke’s life and developing his relationship with other characters and making Logan an independent person who wasn’t beholden to his father for his entire existence - were dearly missing from the revival. And objectively speaking, that ending for Rory is horrible. Not because I think it’s really that disastrous of a situation now but because the intent all along was to ruin both Lorelai and Rory’s hopes and dreams and sacrifices. No one can ever escape becoming their parents, and neither Lorelai or Rory can really grow up and seek the futures they wanted because they’ll always be tied to the same cycle. “Where you lead, I will follow” becomes a curse, not an inspiration.

So maybe it’s better to just keep the finale we had, and believe that Rory was sent off to live her dream in the adult world that Lorelai had worked so hard to ensure for her. Lorelai moves onto a life (and a family) with Luke that they both had wanted. Neither of those things were possible unless Lorelai and Rory were allowed to grow up and have a little space from each other. The relationship the show was about wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it was necessary for them to move on and be happy. I think that’s a perfectly suitable happily ever after.

3. Macgyver

I don’t remember ever watching the original show, though I’m sure I must have at some point. This is a perfectly inoffensive and entertaining procedural. It’s exactly what it wants to be and nothing else. I quite enjoy it for that.

2. Hawaii 5-0

I am certain I never watched the original. However, like Macgyver, an inoffensive procedural that is exactly what it wants to be. I haven’t watched it since they kicked off half the cast, but until that point I really liked it and, and bonus points for the many, many guest appearances from TV sci-fi royalty.

1. Prison Break

Okay, I really did not expect to love this revival this much. They resurrect our dead protagonist, revive our OTP, have all of the returning characters basically behave in character, and we can get down to the business of illogical plot twists and impossible action sequences. And we end up with a happy ending with our formerly dead hero reunited with his family and the villain vanquished?

Seriously, I know it’s Prison Break and the expectations aren’t that high, but I wish other revivals were able to do this. Just bring back your characters and end it with the plot thread concluded and everyone we care about happy and alive. That’s all I ask for.

(This will probably be shot to hell if they go through with the second season, but for now it’s my favorite).

#revivals ranked!#gilmore girls ayitl #prison break #macgyver #24 live another day #24 legacy #battlestar galactica #fuller house #x files #hawaii 5-0

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skygemspeaks · 7 years ago

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Third Time’s the Charm

They’re 14, the first time MC asks Damien out.

Damien still went by “Dahlia” back then. Still dressed in pretty sundresses and sensible black Mary Janes, forced to be his mother’s little dressup doll.

Even at that age, MC already refused to answer to his birth name, and Dahlia had always admired him greatly for it.

(Through countless and increasingly irritated calls of his name, he’d sat convincingly oblivious, even when his mother’s eyes were wide, her nostrils flaring, her fists clenched.

“Miles Christopher Young, you answer me right now!”

He’d been grounded the entire winter vacation of their ninth grade, and still he stubbornly refused to acknowledge his name until, finally, his parents and teachers alike had decided this was a war no longer worth fighting, and had finally agreed to start calling him MC.)

They’re together for all of high school, practically attached at the hip.

Dahlia is the first one MC comes out to about being pansexual.

MC is the one that buys Dahlia’s first pack of pads, when he’s shut himself in his bedroom, crying and refusing to let anyone into his room, too ashamed to tell his mother.

They pose together for countless prom pictures, and MC gives Dahlia a corsage with a single, beautiful white rose.

(Innocence and purity; charm and innocence.)

But then they’re 18, and both leaving the nest for parts unknown, attending university on opposite ends of the country.

They try to make it work. They try so hard. But in the end, the stress, the distance, the workload, it’s too much. The phone calls and texts falter away, from daily to weekly to monthly, until quite suddenly it’s been three months and they realize they can’t remember why they’re still together at all.

And so they quietly cut ties and go their separate ways.

A clean cut, simple and easy, and so much more painful than either of them are willing to admit.

They’re 27 before they see each other next, and MC almost doesn’t recognize him at first.

Not that Damien can blame him.

Damien’s been on T for almost a year now, and has done away with his birth name for good.

MC smiles, wide and bright and joyful, telling Damien how proud he is of him, and Damien wonders for a dazed moment why he’d ever let this beautiful man go.

(He doesn’t tell MC about how, on some days, he had been the only one that kept Damien from falling apart at the seams.

He’d remember MC’s bullheadedness, sitting peacefully at his desk and reading a book as their furious fifth grade teacher called his name over and over again until finally she’d given in and said, with an exhausted sigh, “MC.”

And he’d looked up with the sweetest, most innocent smile.

“Yes ma’am?”)

They fall back in with each other so easily, it’s like nothing had ever changed, like they’re still the two goofy children who had imprinted upon each other on the first day of elementary school and had never let go.

They aren’t, of course.

They’re adults now, and reality isn’t quite so rose-tinted.

Damien is a single father, victim of an emotionally abusive transphobe of a fiancé who had walked out on him when Lucien was just a year old.

And MC is freshly widowed, still so lost and alone after losing Alex, clueless on how to be there for little 5-year-old Amanda when she wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying for her papa.

But maybe that’s why the universe had brought them back together.

Because they were both drowning, and only the two of them could bring each other back up.

Three months after being reunited, MC shows up at Damien’s door with a red face and a bouquet of elegant white camellias and charming little yellow cowslips dotted throughout.

(Perfected loveliness; youth and healing.)

The next four years are perfection.

They take holidays to the beach and weekend trips to museums and art galleries.

Damien gives Amanda her first camera and teaches her how to use it.

MC teaches Lucien how to ride a bike and picks him up when he punches classmates who make fun of his papa.

(Officially, MC scolds Lucien harshly for these instances and grounds him for a week.

Unofficially, he takes the little punk out for ice cream and praises him for looking out for his dad.

“Papa,” Lucien corrects him one day, and MC looks at him in confusion.

“Damien is papa,” Lucien explains. “You’re dad.”

And his voice is so matter-of-fact, as if he’s stating a simple truth of the universe, like the sun being yellow and snow being cold.

MC most definitely does not cry.)

But then, things start falling apart, like they always do.

The endearing little quirks they love about each other become irritating, the fights louder and more vicious.

Damien and MC both have their own problems, so many things to work through, so many hurts to heal from.

And maybe...maybe they’re not the right ones to help each other out after all.

Maybe they’re just hurting each other more by being together.

The second break-up is, if possible, even more painful than the first.

Amanda becomes withdrawn - why bother getting attached to anyone if they’re just going to leave you in the end? The only one she opens up to is her father, and to him she clings, like a baby koala. Because she’s already lost two parents. She can’t bear to lose a third.

Lucien becomes harder, more angry. He was 3 when MC had come into his life, and can’t remember a time without him. The longing for his dad is like a hurricane, a wild, fierce ache he doesn’t know what to do with. So he turns it outwards - to students who sneer about his weird last name and adults who call his papa she and her. But he never turns that snarling, explosive anger on his papa. Never on Damien.

They’re 39 when MC and Amanda move to quiet little Maple Bay, and it’s a few days before they actually become aware of each other’s presence.

Amanda is hanging out with some of her new friends (a pair of girls from her class, both named Emma), and MC, with nothing better to do, is at the Coffee Spoon, a nice little cafe within a few minutes’ walk from their new house.

He’s got a book open in front of him, and is sipping at his piping hot chai latte when the bell over the door gives a chime to announce a new customer.

He doesn’t look up as a pair of teenagers walks in talking about something or other, and he doesn’t notice how one of them freezes in his tracks, staring at MC with a breathless shock.

His friend stops too, and turns to look at him with confusion.

“You okay, dude?” asks his friend, Ernest, but he doesn’t reply.

“Dad?” he chokes out, voice just barely above a whisper.

And Ernest turns to follow his gaze, expecting to see Damien Bloodmarch.

But the man Lucien is staring at is short and broader in the shoulders. He has messy red curls and freckles sprinkled like cinnamon across the bridge of his nose. He’s engrossed in his book.

“You high or something, dude?” asks Ernest, but Lucien doesn’t reply.

“Dad!” he calls again, louder this time, as he walks up to the man sitting at the table, and his voice is maybe a little desperate, maybe a little vulnerable.

The man looks up, and Ernest sees his expression cycle through a million different emotions in the span of three seconds.

Confusion, bewilderment, dawning realization, tearfulness, joy, love.

He gets to his feet, pulling Lucien into a crushing embrace.

And the teen may be half a head taller than him, but he folds into the embrace with something akin to relief, like a tension Ernest hadn’t even known existed finally being released from his shoulders.

He’s quiet, almost docile, in a way that’s so completely foreign, Ernest is rooted to his spot.

They exchange a few quiet words, the stranger wiping what look like tears from Lucien’s cheeks.

Then, they pull apart, and Lucien watches the man leave with longing, watches him cross the street and head towards the Bloodmarch residence.

He doesn’t snap out of it until the man is completely out of view, after which he proceeds to ignore Ernest’s questions in favor of dragging him to that house that used to belong to the Wilson family until they’d moved last week.

He pulls out a key that Ernest hadn’t even noticed the other man give him, and let them into the house, where they sat watching television while they waited for...something.

An hour or two later, the front door finally opens, and a pretty older girl with healthy dark skin and a sweet, freckled face walks in.

She stops short when she sees the two strangers in the living room, and looks like she’s about to take on a fighting stance before Lucien quickly unfolds from his position on the couch and approaches her cautiously.

(He, better than anyone, knows not to underestimate her sweet and unassuming appearance.

She’s been taking kickboxing since she was 6, and had been formidable even then.

He shudders to think how dangerous she must be now.)

“Calm down, Manda, it’s just me,” Lucien says by way of greeting, and her expression morphs into confusion.

“Who is “me”?” she asks, eyes narrowed.

“What, don’t recognize your own baby brother?” he asks, tone teasing, and she gasps.

“LUCY!” she shrieks, tackling him, and Ernest would probably be laughing at the ridiculous nickname if he wasn’t just so darned confused.

It takes about ten minutes for her to get her squealing and tears back under control.

“Where’s dad?” she asks. “Where do you live? Can you take me there? I wanna see pops! Is he home from work yet? How-”

“They’re busy, Manda,” Lucien finally interrupts, and Amanda’s eyes light up.

“’Busy’?” she asks, her smile taking on a sly edge, and Lucien huffs and rolls his eyes, pushing her face away from how annoyingly close it was to his own.

“Talking,” he stresses. “Busy talking.”

And Amanda’s smile takes on a softer cast.

“About time,” she says. And her voice is hopeful as she asks, “Do you...do you think they’ll...?”

She doesn’t say the words, worried that vocalizing them will break the fragile hope that’s woven tight around her heart.

Because she wants this. More than anything she’s ever wanted in her life. Wants it so much she can barely breathe, so much she doesn’t know how she’ll survive if it doesn’t happen.

And Lucien, for all of his cynicism and jadedness, wants it just as fiercely as she does.

“God I hope so.”

It doesn’t take MC 3 months to ask Damien out this time.

It’s been nine years since their fragile happiness had broken apart, and in that time, he’s done a lot of thinking.

A lot of learning and growing and regretting.

And now that they’ve found each other again, he’s not going to let go a third time.

They sit and talk for a long, long time.

They talk about their lives, their hopes, their problems, their children, their love.

They talk about everything that had gone wrong the last two times, and they talk about whether they’re willing to give it one last shot.

After five hours of talking things over and working things out, they decide to take some time apart to think things over.

MC goes home with a spring in his step and hope in his heart.

Amanda and Lucien, as well as the other boy from the coffee shop whose name MC never got, are slumped over each other on the sofa, fast asleep while an episode of Long Haul Paranormal Ice Road Ghost Truckers murmurs quietly in the background.

With an exasperated smile, MC turns off the television and tucks a blanket around the teens.

Lucien returns home the next day just before noon with a kink in his neck and a smile on his lips.

He badgers his father for the next hour or two about what he’s going to do about his relationship with MC until Damien finally gets fed up and throws him out of the house to go and “bother someone else for a bit.”

Lucien obviously takes this as a good sign, because he’s wearing a satisfied grin across his cheeks.

Damien wants to be annoyed at how easily his son can seem to read him.

But he doesn’t have any room in his heart to feel anything but excitement, happiness, love, optimism.

When his doorbell rings a few hours later, he opens it excitedly to find MC standing there, hiding behind an enormous bouquet of dahlias.

(Dignity and elegance; commitment and everlasting bonds.)

And Damien can’t help but think back to that innocent little girl more than three decades ago, with her pretty little sundresses and sensible black Mary Janes, with her scraped knees and fingers covered in paint.

He wonders if she’d be proud of the person he’d become.

He sure hopes so.

#dream daddy #damien bloodmarch #dadsona #amanda ann #lucien bloodmarch #ddadds #ernest hemmingway vega #long post #raw fic #third time's the charm

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briangroth27 · 7 years ago

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IT (2017) Review

IT is fantastic! I don’t remember much of the original miniseries except that Tim Curry was very good as Pennywise, but this felt like a whole other animal. I haven’t read the book, but the movie definitely made me want to. The tone was perfect, with just enough humor to get you through the ever-increasing tension created by Pennywise, Henry Bowers, and the general sense of dread from the town’s adults. There’s a palpable sense that even though the adults lived through similar events, they’re not going to be any help to the kids. One of my favorite subgenres is kids encountering the supernatural, and IT absolutely delivered!

Every single one of the kids did a spectacular job! They all felt like real, relatable kids and they’ve got incredible talent. These actors also formed an incredible sense of chemistry; like the young casts of Super 8 and Stranger Things, they felt like actual friends and I imagine shooting this was a lot of fun for them. The thing that perhaps let them down a bit was the runtime; at two hours and fifteen minutes, it’s understandable things had to be succinct, shortchanging a couple of the Losers. Stan (Wyatt Oleff) in particular didn’t get much to do, but even he had some great moments of characterization, such as when all the kids unceremoniously drop their bikes and run off, while he takes a moment to calmly use his kickstand. Since his bar mitzvah is the big moment in his life here, I think they could’ve explored what his idea of becoming a man was and how that played into dealing with Pennywise, particularly as this is a coming of age tale. Mike (Chosen Hansen) didn’t feel like he got much screentime in comparison to some of the others either, but I liked the connections to societal issues his story included; he experiences the racism in Derry the other kids don’t, pulling him a step further into the horror of the town than the other kids. I really liked Mike’s grandfather’s (Steven Williams) speech about Mike needing to decide whether he wanted to be the man killing sheep or the sheep being killed, because if he didn’t the world would decide for him. That felt especially relevant to today while playing into his arc of learning to stand up for himself (and he gets a particularly surprising climax to that arc!). Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor) handled the exposition well (as did Hansen) and brought a plucky charm to his role as the new kid in town. He was easy to root for and sympathize with, and had several perfect adolescent moments like sneaking a peek at Bev’s room during a break from a rather disturbing clean-up session. Eddie’s (Jack Dylan Grazer) hypochondria provided him with a solid Achilles Heel, a great place for comedy to spring from, and a strong foundation for him to eventually stand up to his mom (Mollie Jane Atkinson). Grazer played all of those to their fullest extent! My friend pointed out that his mom’s obsessive overprotectiveness may’ve been brought on because she does know something evil is in Derry, she just doesn’t know what, and is protecting him the best way she can. That’s an interesting variation to the Derry adults’ forgetfulness/apathy about the evil in their town.

I was a little disappointed Richie (Finn Wolfhard) didn’t get a solo scare sequence outside the house on Neibolt Street like everyone else did, though if cutting it got us as much time with Ben, Mike, and Stan as we got, I’ll take it. Still, he had perhaps the most clearly-defined and strongest characterization of the kids; Wolfhard refused to let Richie be just another kid in the group. Going in, I thought he’d feel like his character on Stranger Things (probably because this is also 80s-set horror with kids encountering a monster), but Richie was totally different from Mike and Wolfhard sold it completely. Sofia Lillis was very good at achieving balance between Bev’s friendly, almost cheery outlook with her new friends and the jaded, knowing sensibility that had been forced on her by everyone else. The whole town seemed to see Beverly as a sex object or a slut, including creepy adults (like Mike, she’s deeper into the hell that is Derry than the others). Beverly knowing exactly how to work the adults to her advantage spoke not only to the fact that this is nothing new to her and she’s had to learn coping and survival skills, but to the tragedy that this was the case. Every scene with her father (Alvin Marsh) was incredibly uncomfortable given what he was, and I was rooting for her to escape the situation. Bill (Jaeden Leiberher) and Ben’s crushes on Bev worked well, though I think they could’ve played up the difference in their early meet-cutes a bit more: she’s nice to Ben and talks to him, while Bill sees her walking in near-slow-motion in dreamy sunlight. They also could’ve contrasted Stan exploring what it means to be a man (and Mike discovering what it means to be an African-American man) with her attempts to define what being a woman means outside of what everyone tells her she should be. The love triangle between Bev, Ben, and Bill was sweet, with neither of them expecting anything from her, and thankfully didn’t explode into jealousy the way I thought it would. Bill had the most personal connection to Pennywise via Georgie’s (Jackson Robert Scott) murder, and they mined it for all it was worth. I totally bought Leiberher as the kind of kid who could rally the others to go on an adventure to save the day. Bill’s stutter felt totally natural and never felt like Leiberher was playing a caricature of someone with a speech impediment. His relationship with Georgie was sweet and they felt like real brothers, so Bill’s pain over losing him felt real. Watching him literally fight through his sorrow and guilt over giving the boat to Georgie (and encouraging him to sneak out of the house) was great! Scott was perfect as Georgie too, showing just as much range in his limited scenes as the other kids got to: from scared of the basement and telling himself “I’m brave,” to carefree (and sneaky) kid playtime, to sad Bill wasn’t with him after his death, and finally horror as a manifestation of Pennywise, he was fully on par with the other young actors.

When I watched Georgie meet Tim Curry’s Pennywise as a kid, I remember being sadder about him losing his boat than encountering a killer clown in the sewer (I guess as a kid, losing a beloved toy was the more likely and pressing fear!). That was not the case here. Bill Skarsgard’s Pennywise was playful enough with Georgie, but otherwise he was unsettling and a few jump scares got me. I liked how there were moments where his whole body would quiver and waver except his head, giving the impression that he was tightly coiled and ready to spring into an attack at any moment. He had an otherworldly sensibility about him—appropriate given what the deadlights are—and an overall creepy demeanor that was perfect. He didn’t echo Tim Curry’s Pennywise voice and that was a smart choice; Skarsgard was creepy in his own way. I really liked how he was able to pervert the entire town, popping in and out of murals to watch the kids, running a bizarre kid’s television show no one seemed to find strange, and possibly fueling (or feeding off of, which would be worse) the hate, apathy, and ugliness under Derry’s wholesome surface. Aside from school bullies and adults who varied from uninterested in protecting the kids to downright creepy predators, the real-world villainy mainly manifested in Henry Bowers (Nicholas Hamilton). I imagine Henry is a bully to prove to himself that he’s not the only “paper man” who’ll crumble when confronted with fear. Even with that tenuous understanding, though, Henry is a total psychopath who was scarier than Pennywise (possibly because Pennywise needs to eat kids to survive, while Henry is just angry and violent for no reason). He was such a strong villain that they could’ve removed the supernatural altogether and it still would’ve worked as a solid coming of age movie. As it was, the supernatural was a perfect bonus to the story being told!

The move from the 50s setting to the 80s worked very well, with It’s manifestations (aside from Pennywise) reflecting the kids’ personal fears instead of classic movie monsters. I love Dracula and those monsters, but using the tragedies of Derry’s history and the personal struggles the kids are living through as Pennywise’s alternate forms works better. The one thing that stood out to me as perhaps not fitting with the ’89 setting was naming Bill’s bike Silver; would a kid in the late 80s have been a fan of the Lone Ranger? There was a failed movie in 1981 with Christopher Lloyd, but I don’t know if westerns or that character in particular were very popular by then. Maybe Bill’s dad (Geoffrey Pounsett) introduced him to the Lone Ranger and was a fan in his youth (I was born in the mid-80s and was aware of the Lone Ranger thanks to my parents). Perhaps this Silver is a reference to King’s Silver Bullet wheelchair in Cycle of the Werewolf and the Silver Bullet film instead (maybe Bill sees a connection between Marty’s paralysis and his stutter?). In any case, that was a very small thing and otherwise contemporary mentions like the AIDS epidemic (which played into Eddie’s hypochondria perfectly) made the time period feel real, while the presence of 80s movie posters, movies like Batman playing at the theater, and video games like Street Fighter made it feel like the 80s without being nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. The New Kids on the Block elements that appear in the film also served to build Ben’s character rather than just appearing as cheap jokes or because it was the late 80s.

Derry itself felt like a very real, relatable town that you might want to live in if you didn’t know what was beneath the surface. The house on Neibolt Street was a perfect haunted house that stuck out like a festering sore on the town, while also feeling like it was a natural part of this world. Cutting from animals walking though slaughterhouse stalls to kids heading through the school halls was a great, ominous bit of editing at the beginning. The pacing was excellent; while it felt like a long movie, it did so because it felt so full rather than because of dull scenes. When the kids first confronted Pennywise in 29 Neibolt street, I thought it could be the climax, but the movie keeps going to a very satisfying conclusion after that! It was smart to split the book into one movie for the kids and another for their adult counterparts; even if this weren't a huge success and sure to get the second half, it'd feel like a complete story. Whoever they cast as the adult versions of the Losers Club are going to have some impressive shoes to fill! I definitely hope they get the kids back for flashbacks in Chapter 2.

The film has a great feeling of dread (punctuated by some truly funny lines), excellent villains in Pennywise and Henry Bowers, and a young cast of fantastic actors. 2017’s IT (perfectly released 27 years after the story’s last adaptation in 1990!) is neck and neck with Kubrick’s The Shining as the best of the Stephen King adaptations. Definitely see this and get your Halloween season started off right!

Full spoilers….

-I’m glad the sex scene in the sewer was left out. Obviously that’d be really screwed up to film/show/see, but I don’t think it would’ve fit even beyond the fact of the creepy content. Not only did these kids not need that to bond them, but I don’t think it would’ve fit with any of their characters as they were drawn here. Even boastful loudmouth Richie seems like the kind of guy who’d be intimidated by the prospect of sex if it actually presented itself. That’s to say nothing of the fact that Bev would’ve been forced into exactly the role the town wants her to take (and wants to punish her for taking), and that would’ve been a tragedy. The kids just hugging after their ordeal worked perfectly.

-I was so glad that there were no consequences to Bev killing her creepy father, even to her reputation (at least from what we saw) once word inevitably would get out about why she did it. It’s possible she was leaving town partially because of what people would say, but I’m choosing to believe she was just jumping at the chance for a fresh, happier start.

-I think the leeches I’ve heard of in the book for Patrick Hockstetter’s (Owen Teague) death would’ve been cooler than the burnt people he encountered in the sewer. That’s probably the one Pennywise manifestation that sounds better in the book than what was onscreen.

-Eddie changing the “Loser” signature on his cast to say “Lover” was a funny bit of characterization I wish we’d seen more of from him. Who is this kid—or who does he want to be—to proclaim himself that? Haha

-Eddie mistakenly calling placebos “gazebos” was perhaps the most unexpected laugh I’ve had in a theater in a long time.

-Given how little Stan got to do in this movie and what I’ve read about adult Stan’s part in the present-day portion of the book, I really hope his fate is changed in the sequel. If not, it’ll feel like he was just there to die.

-Finn Wolfhard gets maybe the best line in the movie with “…and now I’ve gotta kill this fucking clown!”

-There were a few Easter Eggs in the movie, including a picture of Tim Curry’s Pennywise!

-IT has perhaps some of my favorite stories from Twitter. One guy said someone in his screening released a single red balloon into the theater once the movie was over! Another theatergoer walked into his screening and there was a clown cosplayer sitting alone in the room, holding a single balloon. I’d have been severely unnerved. Hahaha I think it’d be great if theaters did things like this in an official capacity; it’d be a fun return to the promotional stunts of the 50s and 60s.

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didanawisgi · 7 years ago

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The quest to crystallize time

Bizarre forms of matter called time crystals were supposed to be physically impossible. Now they’re not.

Elizabeth Gibney

08 March 2017

Christopher Monroe spends his life poking at atoms with light. He arranges them into rings and chains and then massages them with lasers to explore their properties and make basic quantum computers. Last year, he decided to try something seemingly impossible: to create a time crystal.

The name sounds like a prop from Doctor Who, but it has roots in actual physics. Time crystals are hypothetical structures that pulse without requiring any energy — like a ticking clock that never needs winding. The pattern repeats in time in much the same way that the atoms of a crystal repeat in space. The idea was so challenging that when Nobel prizewinning physicist Frank Wilczek proposed the provocative concept1 in 2012, other researchers quickly proved there was no way to create time crystals.

But there was a loophole — and researchers in a separate branch of physics found a way to exploit the gap. Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, and his team used chains of atoms they had constructed for other purposes to make a version of a time crystal2 (see 'How to create a time crystal'). “I would say it sort of fell in our laps,” says Monroe.

And a group led by researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, independently fashioned time crystals out of 'dirty' diamonds3. Both versions, which are published this week in Nature, are considered time crystals, but not how Wilczek originally imagined. “It's less weird than the first idea, but it's still fricking weird,” says Norman Yao, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author on both papers.

They are also the first examples of a remarkable type of matter — a collection of quantum particles that constantly changes, and never reaches a steady state. These systems draw stability from random interactions that would normally disrupt other kinds of matter. “This is a new kind of order, one that was previously thought impossible. That's extremely exciting,” says Vedika Khemani, part of the Harvard team and previously part of the group that originally theorized the existence of the new kind of state. Experimental physicists are already plotting how to exploit the traits of these strange systems in quantum computers and super-sensitive magnetic sensors.

Break time

Wilczek dreamt up time crystals as a way to break the rules. The laws of physics are symmetrical in that they apply equally to all points in space and time. Yet many systems violate that symmetry. In a magnet, atomic spins line up rather than pointing in all directions. In a mineral crystal, atoms occupy set positions in space, and the crystal does not look the same if it is shifted slightly. When a transformation causes properties to change, physicists call that symmetry-breaking, and it is everywhere in nature — at the root of magnetism, superconductivity and even the Higgs mechanism that gives all particles mass.

In 2012, Wilczek, now at Stockholm University, wondered why symmetry never broke spontaneously in time and whether it would be possible to create something in which it did. He called it a time crystal. Experimentalists imagined a quantum version of this entity as perhaps a ring of atoms that would rotate endlessly, cycling and returning to its initial configuration. Its properties would be endlessly synchronized in time, just as atom positions are correlated in a crystal. The system would be in its lowest energy state, but its movement would require no external force. It would, in essence, be a perpetual-motion machine, although not one that produces usable energy.

“From a first glance at the idea, one would say this has to be wrong,” says Yao. Almost by definition, a system in its lowest energy state does not vary in time. If it did, that would mean it had excess energy to lose, says Yao, and the rotation would soon halt. “But Frank convinced the community that the problem was more subtle than maybe it seemed to be,” he says. Perpetual motion was not without precedent in the quantum world: in theory, superconductors conduct electricity forever (although the flow is uniform, so they show no variation in time).

“This is a new kind of order, one that was previously thought impossible.”

These conflicting issues swam around the head of Haruki Watanabe as he stepped out of the first oral exam for his PhD at Berkeley. He had been presenting work on symmetry breaking in space, and his supervisor asked him about the wider implications of Wilczek's time crystal. “I couldn't answer the question in that exam, but it interested me,” says Watanabe, who doubted such an entity was even feasible. “I wondered, 'how can I convince people that it's not possible?'”

Together with physicist Masaki Oshikawa at the University of Tokyo, Watanabe began trying to prove his intuitive answer in a mathematically rigorous way. By phrasing the problem in terms of correlations in space and time between distant parts of the system, the pair derived a theorem in 2015 showing that time crystals were impossible to create for any system in its lowest-energy state4. The researchers also verified that time crystals were impossible for any system in equilibrium — one that has reached a steady state of any energy.

To the physics community, the case was clear cut. “That seemed to be a no-go,” says Monroe. But the proof left a loophole. It did not rule out time crystals in systems that have not yet settled into a steady state and are out of equilibrium. Around the world, theorists began thinking about ways to create alternative versions of time crystals.

Particle soup

When the breakthrough came, it arrived from an unlikely corner of physics, where researchers weren't thinking about time crystals at all.

Shivaji Sondhi, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University, New Jersey, and his colleagues were looking at what happened when certain isolated quantum systems, made of soups of interacting particles, are repeatedly given a kick. Textbook physics says that the systems should heat up and descend into chaos. But in 2015, Sondhi's team predicted that under certain conditions, they would instead club together to form a phase of matter that doesn't exist in equilibrium — a system of particles that would show subtle correlations never seen before — and that would repeat a pattern in time5.

That proposal caught the attention of Chetan Nayak, one of Wilczek's former students, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Microsoft's nearby Station Q. Nayak and his colleagues soon realized that this strange form of out-of-equilibrium matter would also be a type of time crystal6. But not Wilczek's kind: it would not be in its lowest energy state, and it would require a regular kick to pulse. But it would gain a steady rhythm that doesn't match that of the instigating kick, and that means it would break time symmetry.

“It's like playing with a jump rope, and somehow our arm goes around twice but the rope only goes around once,” says Yao. This is a weaker kind of symmetry breaking than Wilczek imagined: in his, the rope would oscillate all by itself.

When Monroe heard about this proposed system, he initially didn't understand it. “The more I read about it, the more intrigued I became,” he says.

Georg Kucsko

Illumination with green light reveals a time crystal formed in a network of electron spins (red) within the defects of a diamond.

Last year, he set about trying to form his atoms into a time crystal. The recipe was incredibly complex, but just three ingredients were essential: a force repeatedly disturbing the particles, a way to make the atoms interact with each other and an element of random disorder. The combination of these, Monroe says, ensures that particles are limited in how much energy they can absorb, allowing them to maintain a steady, ordered state.

In his experiment, this meant repeatedly firing alternating lasers at a chain of ten ytterbium ions: the first laser flips their spins and the second makes the spins interact with each other in random ways. That combination caused the atomic spins to oscillate, but at twice the period they were being flipped. More than that, the researchers found that even if they started to flip the system in an imperfect way, such as by slightly changing the frequency of the kicks, the oscillation remained the same. “The system still locked at a very stable frequency,” says Monroe. Spatial crystals are similarly resistant to any attempt to nudge their atoms from their set spacing, he says. “This time crystal has the same thing.”

At Harvard, physicist Mikhail Lukin tried to do something similar, but in a very different system — a 3D chunk of diamond. The mineral was riddled with around 1 million defects, each harbouring a spin. And the diamond's impurities provided a natural disorder. When Lukin and his team used microwave pulses to flip the spins, they saw the system respond at a fraction of the frequency with which it was being disturbed.

“This is an intriguing development, but to some extent it's an abuse of the term”

Physicists agree that the two systems spontaneously break a kind of time symmetry and therefore mathematically fulfil the time-crystal criteria. But there is some debate about whether to call them time crystals. “This is an intriguing development, but to some extent it's an abuse of the term,” says Oshikawa.

Yao says that the new systems are time crystals, but that the definition needs to be narrowed to avoid including phenomena that are already well understood and not nearly so interesting for quantum physicists.

But Monroe and Lukin's creations are exciting for different reasons, too, says Yao. They seem to be the first, and perhaps simplest, examples of a host of new phases that exist in relatively unexplored out-of-equilibrium states, he says. They could also have several practical applications. One could be quantum simulation systems that work at high temperatures. Physicists often use entangled quantum particles at nanokelvin temperatures, close to absolute zero, to simulate complex behaviours of materials that cannot be modelled on a classical computer. Time crystals represent a stable quantum system that exists way above these temperatures — in the case of Lukin's diamond, at room temperature — potentially opening the door to quantum simulations without cryogenics.

Time crystals could also find use in super-precise sensors, says Lukin. His lab already uses diamond defects to detect tiny changes in temperature and magnetic fields. But the approach has limits,because if too many defects are packed in a small space, their interactions destroy their fragile quantum states. In a time crystal, however, the interactions serve to stabilize, rather than disrupt, so Lukin could harness millions of defects together to produce a strong signal — one that is able to efficiently probe living cells and atom-thick materials.

The same principle of stability from interactions could apply more widely in quantum computing, says Yao. Quantum computers show huge promise, but have long struggled with the opposing challenges of protecting the fragile quantum bits that perform calculations, yet keeping them accessible for encoding and reading out information. “You can ask yourself in the future whether one could find phases where interactions stabilize these quantum bits,” says Yao.

The story of time crystals is a beautiful example of how progress often happens when different strands of thought come together, says Roderich Moessner, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany. And it may be, he says, that this particular recipe proves to be just one of many ways to cook up a time crystal.

Nature 543, 164–166 (09 March 2017) doi:10.1038/543164a

http://www.nature.com/news/the-quest-to-crystallize-time-1.21595?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews

#time crystals #discrete time crystal #discrete time crystals #quantum physics #quantum computing #quantum crystals #quantum consciousness #quantum cryptography #quantum bits #crystals #crystal #mythology campaign #laser #quantum mechanics #physics

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Kings of a Dead World: Why We Tell Sleep Dystopia Stories in an Age of Climate Change

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This piece is sponsored by

Author Jamie Mollart laughs while admitting this, but the idea for Kings of a Dead World, his new dystopian novel about a world put to sleep to conserve resources, came to him in a dream. And why shouldn’t it have? “Sleep on it” is the common advice for a human being pondering a big choice or change, with the promise that a good night’s sleep will allow them better perspective to write a novel, make a life-shifting decision… maybe even save the world?

Over fifty years ago in Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut vividly described a grossly overpopulated Earth like the tightly-packed drupelets of a raspberry. Mollart’s bleak near-future bears these familiar hallmarks, further complicating overpopulation with rising water levels, dwindling fossil fuels, and, most damningly, individual countries’ failure to halt the global climate crisis on their own terms. The solution, then, requires a global sacrifice: The majority of the world’s population spends three months in a chemically-induced, coma-like Sleep, with one month Awake in which they make up for that lost time. Everyone, that is, except for the Janitors, who live by natural circadian rhythms: monitoring the Sleepers’ vitals, as well as conducting worldwide Trade to deliver Creds into their accounts so that they have some earnings to spend in their limited Waking hours.

As a way to curb consumption, it makes sense in theory, and has Kings of a Dead World joining a subgenre of dystopian or otherwise speculative fiction in which sleep can potentially solve seemingly insurmountable societal problems: David Fincher’s seminal film Fight Club, Karen Russell’s quietly devastating novella Sleep Donation, Christopher Nolan’s dreamlike Inception, and so forth. After all, there’s something incredibly alluring about the idea of closing your eyes and trusting that the world will fix itself while you snooze. It’s the same passive self-improvement your body undergoes during the normal stages of sleep, but on a colossal, collective scale: the ozone layer restitches itself, the stocks go up, the Earth gets a break from billions of footprints. It’s almost like rewinding time.

But that’s the thing, Mollart says, when Den of Geek speaks to him about his new book: “Time’s like a false constraint, isn’t it? You’ve got the sun coming up, the sun coming down—there is an obvious set of divisions of how people spend their time. But the whole hour and minute thing—we’ve made these false constraints that we as society have put onto things. It’s humans grappling with what’s in front of them in nature, isn’t it? It’s this whole thing we can’t control, so we try to control it by putting our own constraints on it.”

False or not, these societal constraints have created an inverse relationship between sleepers and wakers, their movements balanced by time zones that dictate when half of the world ends the day while the other half is just beginning. In fiction, this dynamic is even more pronounced, with characters moving through the dream realm at cross-purposes to one another, whether it’s the Inception team planting ideas three layers into the slumbering subconscious, or Tyler Durden puppeting the Narrator’s body for cross-country flights to found Fight Clubs all over the country. Kings of a Dead World alternates between the perspectives of Ben, an octogenarian whose age belies his revolutionary fighting spirit, struggling to take care of his sick wife Rose during their brief time Awake; and Peruzzi, a Janitor who has the Sleeping world as his playground yet suffers an existential lack of purpose.

Being the sleeper is easy, or so we think: Sleep Donation posits that donating sleep is as painless and noble as giving blood. That’s the party line for the Sleep Corps’ champ recruiter Trish Edgewater, who convinces the parents of newborn donor Baby A that she has a surfeit of the stuff, and to not give would be to doom the nation’s insomniacs to an agonizing, brutal, unnecessary death. For Baby A, or Washington Irving’s archetypal snoozer Rip Van Winkle, or the Narrator, they get to wake up into a changed world. It’s the people watching them sleep, moving through the insomniac hours, who have to do the actual hard work of breaking and reshaping the world.

In the Narrator’s case, Mollart says, “[he] can’t break out of the cycle that he’s in without inventing someone to tell him how to do it, which is just such a modern male thing. We’re rubbish about talking about our feelings; we’re rubbish about facing responsibility for ourselves.” Toxic masculinity is a recurring theme in Mollart’s work, from his prior novel The Zoo to his next project: “We’re the shit half of the species, and I just think male friendships are really interesting. Most blokes have one real strong relationship, often from your childhood, and you become really mirrors of each other. That’s kind of what the Tyler Durden/Narrator [dynamic] is like. Blokes egg each other on, [and] it’s difficult for men to show affection to other men, it’s just sad. As long as that continues, we won’t break the cycle of nonsense of male violence and the patriarchy that we’ve got unfortunately still.”

The Tyler/Narrator dynamic plays out in the relationship between fellow Janitors Peruzzi and Slattery: colleagues, quasi-friends, and partners in crime. While their decadent lifestyles spoil them with at-home gyms and Brave New World-inspired raves every three months, Slattery tempts Peruzzi into seeking out greater highs than pills and sex. Their explorations into the Sleeping world at first tap into a Fight Club-esque awakening of the blood, only to tip into Project Mayhem levels of voyeurism and violation in pursuit of confirmation that what they do actually matters.

Despite these outbursts, the Janitors remain a shadowy presence in the lives of the Sleepers, watching them but not motivating them to Sleep. That incentivization comes from this world’s new-old religious order: the chronological trinity of Chronos, Bacchus, and Rip Van. “In a world where you hit a cultural stop,” Mollart explains, “where it goes from this to this, it felt to me that you would go back to something quite primal.” He turned to ancient mythology for the personification of time (who oversees the Sleep/Wake cycles) and the god of partying (who rewards the Janitors for their hard work). But it was fairy tales that provided a folkloric Jesus Christ figure for the Sleepers in Rip Van, a figure who every extended Sleep cycle seems to preach, I did it, and you can too. I lost twenty years, you can give up three months.

Fairy tales, Mollart said, are “rooted in innate primal fears; they’re very much about things we worry about on a hunter-gatherer level, like getting lost in woods [and] wicked witches turning us into things. They’re very dark, aren’t they, but with this playful exterior.” His description sounds not unlike dreaming, in which the dreamer uses that otherworldly space to process waking events and subconscious conflicts.

But what about a Sleep with no dreams? “I wanted there to be a difference between forced Sleep and actual sleep,” Mollart says. “It shouldn’t be a thing where you get to restore your body and your mind. It’s like they’re turned off, literally turned off.”

Although the Sleep is initially presented as a solution for the sake of the common good, it becomes clear that it is more of a life sentence than a sacrifice. “It’s the actual stealing of time,” Mollart says, “time is stolen from them, rather than time you can do something else in. If they were having beautiful dreams while they’re Asleep, it would just take away a little bit of the fear of it. … There should be nothing. Not to get into the comparison with death and all that, but it’s little incremental bits of death.”

This is especially the case for Ben’s wife Rose, afflicted with an unnamed disease suggestive of dementia, in which she Awakes into different eras of her life. Because Ben never knows which Rose will Awake, or how panicked she will be—with any heightened stress levels forcibly putting her back to Sleep—their time together is so precious. Mollart likens it to currency, especially with Peruzzi as the have to Ben’s have-not: “He’s got so much time, but he doesn’t do anything with it, whereas Ben is the sort of person who’s working really hard to look after their family, and every penny counts. When you’ve got loads of something, you lose a sense of what it’s worth.”

Ben’s struggles to reach Rose mirror that of Inception’s Dom Cobb, who even in other people’s dreams is haunted by his subconscious’ projection of his dead wife Mal. He blames himself for getting her so immersed in dream-sharing that, despite living fifty years in the space of a dream, she believed upon waking up that she was still dreaming. That conviction, that she was stuck in a waking dream, led to her suicide. For Rose, some months she emerges having gone through fifty years of Sleeping and Waking with Ben; others, she’s young and scared and doesn’t understand why her body is being turned on and off like a light switch.

Despite being a universal aspect of the human body, sleep itself is such an intensely individualistic experience. Even if interlopers can infiltrate dreams in Inception, or if a nightmare can taint a sleep supply like in Sleep Donation, a given night’s sleep still feels like it is intimately owned by that person. This quandary mirrors our society’s approach to the climate crisis: “One of the whole problems with climate change is it’s just too big, you can’t picture it,” Mollart says. “It’s so big that you can’t understand that recycling more or not eating meat or not using single-use plastic will have a difference, because the problem’s too big. I think it’s that sort of mentality, that we can only project so far out from ourselves; and I think when you’ve had things taken off you, you very quickly resort to looking after yourself and those close to you. It’s human nature—not very nice human nature, but that we all do.”

Trish promises the Harkonnens that the Sleep Corps will not overdraw Baby A’s sleep supply, painfully aware that she’s saying so “at a moment when people are plunging their straws into every available centimeter of shale and water, every crude oil and uranium and mineral well on earth, with an indiscriminate and borderless appetite.” When sleep becomes yet another resource to be exhausted, Russell shows readers, the individual will be exploited supposedly for the greater good, in reality robbing the next generation of their future.

“Our fathers were our models for God,” Tyler tells the Narrator while branding his hand with lye. “If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?” While Kings of a Dead World unpacks toxic masculinity, it contextualizes that misbehavior within this greater trauma of parental abandonment and explores how to break the aforementioned cycles of violence caused by a refusal to engage with one’s feelings.

Outside of fiction, that’s witnessing our planet’s youngest generation openly speak out about being burdened with an irreversibly damaged world with a shrug in place of an apology. Their unfortunate position fits the second half of that oft-quoted Fight Club monologue: “You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen.” By acknowledging their shit situation instead of trying to ignore it, the next generation is trying to find a way forward.

Despite Kings of a Dead World being more of a cautionary tale for mass sleep, Mollart acknowledges that, on an individual level, sleep can certainly be a positive force for change.

“It actually is in Fight Club, isn’t it?” Mollart says. “In a very messed-up kind of way. The whole bringing down of society happens because the sleeping version of him is more proactive than the waking version—and he goes about things in a very fucked-up way, but his intentions are good. The ending scene with Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’, where all the [credit card companies] get blown up, is supposed to be a positive, uplifting ending. It’s like he’s dreamt—well he has dreamt the whole thing, weirdly—and then he wakes up and it’s this fresh start. He’s got rid of his demons, he’s with Marla, and their society’s monetary evils have been wiped out.”

That distinction between sleep and waking is crucial. Dystopian sleep stories are not meant to be soothing lullabies, especially when threaded with narratives about climate change. They are meant to depict the nightmarish future that cannot be pushed off—not by escaping into symbolic dreams, not by punting the issue to children and grandchildren. Sleep should be utilized for its initial purpose of recharging—but at some point we have to complete the cycle by waking up.

Kings of a Dead World is available June 10 in the UK from Sandstone Press. Check out the full synopsis below…

The Earth’s resources are dwindling. The solution is the Sleep.

Inside a hibernating city, Ben struggles with his limited waking time and the disease stealing his wife from him. Watching over the sleepers, lonely Peruzzi craves the family he never knew.

Everywhere, dissatisfaction is growing.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The city is about to wake.

The post Kings of a Dead World: Why We Tell Sleep Dystopia Stories in an Age of Climate Change appeared first on Den of Geek.

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wineanddinosaur · 5 years ago

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Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africa’s Forgotten Vines

One day last February, in South Africa’s Franschhoek Valley, Gary Baumgarten, managing director of Anthonij Rupert Wyne, joined a group in his tasting room who were visiting on behalf of Wines of South Africa. It was the height of South Africa’s 2019 harvest, and temperatures were 107 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat had followed three years of drought.

“Welcome to climate change, guys,” Baumgarten said.

If there’s a wine likely to survive these conditions, it’s this. A David & Nadia Hoë-Steen Chenin Blanc, it came from dry-farmed vineyards planted over half a century ago. Those tough, old Chenin bush vines have longevity on their side.

“Old vines do pretty well in adverse conditions, especially drought, particularly due to their well-established root systems,” Andre Morganthal, project manager for South Africa’s Old Vine Project (OVP), and our host for the tasting, said. OVP member wineries use grapes from vines at least 35 years old, a status indicated on bottles with the OVP’s Certified Heritage Vineyards seal.

The Project is the brainchild of viticultural consultant Rosa Kruger, who’s been hunting down South Africa’s forgotten vines since 2002. The diversity of her discoveries is impressive. Though they make up just 3 to 4 percent of all South African plantings, OVP-registered vines comprise 48 varieties. Approximately half of these are Chenin Blanc.

That’s largely because there’s so much Chenin in South Africa altogether. Once known by its old Dutch name, Steen, it was brought here in the 1650s. Under the Koöperatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging van Suid-Afrika (KWV), which dominated production in the 20th century until apartheid’s end in the 1990s, Chenin was widely planted for South Africa’s popular brandy. It’s still the nation’s most cultivated variety.

The reasons for the vines’ longevity, though, remain the subject of OVP research. Many suffer viruses, but with the help of vine nursery Vititec, the OVP has been cleaning up neglected vines and propagating disease-free materials from them for “new” heritage vineyards at Anthonij Rupert. By doing this, the OVP is creating a living archive — and one that is adapted to South African conditions.

“I believe the oldest vineyards in South Africa have mutated to plants that reflect the landscape, the sun and the wind and the rain typical to that site and typical to the South African climate,” says Morganthal, who also believes “old-vine South African Chenin represents some of the best white wine in the world, different from, for example, Loire Chenin, solely because of the abundance of sunshine, unique ancient soils, and clonal materials, weathered over centuries.”

Bosman Family Winery’s Optenhorst Chenin Blanc, made from bush vines dating to 1952, with its banana-like notes and abundant minerality; Bellingham The Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin’s big, rich texture and bitter-herb finish evocative of South Africa’s fynbos, or scrublands; Mullineux’s Leliefontein Quartz Chenin’s opulent mouthfeel and snappy, pineapple acidity, indicative of its quartz-laden soils — these wines are not only delicious, they are uniquely South African.

Unlike the wetter, cooler, limestone Loire, where a touch of RS (residual sugar) is left in the wines to balance out their acid, South Africa’s Chenins are mainly vinified bone-dry, but they’re characterized by a natural, velvety mouthfeel that’s amplified as the vines age. “Yields come down and the bunches and berries are smaller,” says winemaker Christopher Mullineux of Mullineux and Leeu Family Wines. “You get more natural extract from these small berries, and that is where the natural textures come from.”

Indeed, sensory researchers at Stellenbosch University found that old-vine Chenins exhibit complex aromas and concentrated, balanced, lengthy mouthfeel. “Grapes on older vines ripen later, have a lower pH, higher acidity, and lower sugar,” Morganthal says. “It’s an ideal analysis for a wine.”

That is, if the vines are treated right. Kruger learned the hard way. “During the first years I tried to cut life back into the old vines with pruning shears. I made a terrible mistake,” she says. Heavy pruning weakens old vines. “Now, with our new pruning techniques, shaping the vine from the best wood on the plant, we have increased quality and volume,” she says.

The same goes for fertilizing, which Kruger does sparingly and organically. “We have the best results when we treat these lovely old plants with dignity,” she advises vineyards. “Listen to them as if you are talking to your grandmother.”

A light touch in the vineyard allows for more of the same in the winery. Says Mullineux, “If you have healthy old vines, it tends to be easier to make low-intervention wines, as the fruit is in a better natural balance.”

In its membership agreement, the Old Vine Project encourages minimalist techniques, eschewing added acid, sulphur, new oak, and commercial yeast. Many old-vine Chenins are the result of spontaneous fermentation with extended lees contact in old wood and, sometimes, concrete or amphora. Luscious wines with exuberant, tropical flavors, they are made to express their terroir.

Of course, we can’t separate terroir from history. A 35-year-old vine planted under apartheid has racialist exploitation embedded in its wood. And today, though South African organizations like the Wine and Agriculture Ethical Trade Association promote ethics in labor relations, a 2011 Human Rights Watch report found widespread labor abuses in the South African wine industry. These included substandard and insecure housing on winery lands, harsh working conditions and overly long hours, safety hazards such as pesticide exposure, lack of access to drinking water, opposition to unionizing, and more.

Says biodynamic viticulturist Johan Reyneke, who worked in vineyards in the 1990s before launching his own Reyneke Wines: “My colleagues were poor; they were working as kids. It just sucked. One cold day in the vineyard, I put my surfing wetsuit on under my clothes, but my colleagues, they shoved newspaper in their shoes to stay warm. I said, ‘If I stay in this industry, things must change.’”

As Human Rights Watch found, however, not all wineries have poor labor practices. Reyneke launched his Cornerstone wine series to dedicate its proceeds to education, housing, and retirement annuities for his workers and their families. Similarly, at Bosman Family Wines, a Fairtrade brand, workers own 26 percent of the business and 430 hectares of Bosman land.

“We are very cognizant of our legacy, specifically the current working and living conditions of our workers,” Morganthal says. The Project trains workers, he says, “to elevate their skills to master pruner level,” and has developed a trading platform for old-vine grapes “to benefit grape growers, brand owners, and, ultimately, vineyard workers.”

The idea is that old-vine skills, grapes, and wines can garner higher prices, so there’s more cash in the system to raise the living standards for everyone.

As Mullineux argues, “If we cannot sell our wine for a fair price, then everybody in the Swartland struggles, and we cannot break the cycles of the past.”

10 Old-Vine Chenin Blanc Wines to Try

Not every old-vine winery is a member of the Old Vine Project, but each wine below meets the OVP’s 35-year-old threshold and is available in the States:

Beaumont Hope Marguerite Chenin Blanc 2018 Left 10 months on the lees in 15 percent new wood, this wine from vines planted in 1974 and 1978 on the Cape South Coast balances beautifully between oak-driven oomph and a pineapple-citrus acidity. Price $37.99.

Botanica Mary Delany Series Chenin Blanc 2017 From dry-farmed bush vines dating to 1957, this wine shows juicy Asian pear notes and a touch of spiciness with a flinty finish. Price $26.94.

David & Nadia Hoë-Steen Chenin Blanc 2017 This apple-bright wine comes from low bush vines planted in decomposed granite, shale mix, and iron-rich clay soils between 1963 and 1982. Price $79.94.

Hogan Chenin Blanc 2016 Full malolactic fermentation gives this creamy wine from 40-year-old Swartland vines an exuberant, nearly gewürztraminer bouquet and big papaya-like flavor, balanced by a bright, bitter finish. Price $41.99.

Ken Forrester The FMC 2018 A boom-boom vanilla richness and intense, snappy apricot fruit battle it out in this Stellenbosch bottle vinified from 46-year-old bush vines and aged a year in barrel. Price $56.99.

Joostenberg Die Agteros Chenin Blanc 2018 Vinified from 38-year-old Stellenbosch vines in a mix of new oak and concrete eggs, this bargain organic wine has the weighty texture to linger over but the gingery acid to make it terrifically refreshing. Price $15.94.

Memento 2015 Abetted by 9 percent Verdelho, this Chenin Blanc blended from 35-year-old Swartland vines and ones just a tad younger in Bot River smells of ripe mango and guava with a lush, savory mid-palate that resolves to a green-apple bite. Price $32.99.

Mullineux Granite Chenin Blanc 2017 One of three single-terroir expressions by the winery, this fresh-faced Chenin from 40-year-old vines dry farmed in Paardeberg’s decomposed granite soils has a tart nose but a velvety mouthfeel and a bittersweet finish reminiscent of roasted endive. Price $69.97.

Mullineux Straw Wine 2017 From a mix of old vines at least 37 years old grown in granite and schist soils, this luscious, passito-style dessert wine balances nectary sweetness with dried-apricot brightness. Price $49.96 for 375 ml.

Reyneke Chenin Blanc Natural Wine 2016 Cold-fermented and matured in clay amphora, this unique Chenin Blanc from a biodynamic Stellenbosch producer working with vines over 40 years old has a nutty, umami character with a hint of sweet smoke, like that of roasted almonds or butter-braised enoki mushrooms. Price $68.99

The article Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africa’s Forgotten Vines appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/old-vine-project-chenin-blanc/

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isaiahrippinus · 5 years ago

Text

Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africa’s Forgotten Vines

“Welcome to climate change, guys,” Baumgarten said.

The idea is that old-vine skills, grapes, and wines can garner higher prices, so there’s more cash in the system to raise the living standards for everyone.

As Mullineux argues, “If we cannot sell our wine for a fair price, then everybody in the Swartland struggles, and we cannot break the cycles of the past.”

10 Old-Vine Chenin Blanc Wines to Try

Not every old-vine winery is a member of the Old Vine Project, but each wine below meets the OVP’s 35-year-old threshold and is available in the States:

Botanica Mary Delany Series Chenin Blanc 2017 From dry-farmed bush vines dating to 1957, this wine shows juicy Asian pear notes and a touch of spiciness with a flinty finish. Price $26.94.

David & Nadia Hoë-Steen Chenin Blanc 2017 This apple-bright wine comes from low bush vines planted in decomposed granite, shale mix, and iron-rich clay soils between 1963 and 1982. Price $79.94.

The article Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africa’s Forgotten Vines appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/old-vine-project-chenin-blanc/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/611216380739584000

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johnboothus · 5 years ago

Text

Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africas Forgotten Vines

“Welcome to climate change, guys,” Baumgarten said.

The idea is that old-vine skills, grapes, and wines can garner higher prices, so there’s more cash in the system to raise the living standards for everyone.

As Mullineux argues, “If we cannot sell our wine for a fair price, then everybody in the Swartland struggles, and we cannot break the cycles of the past.”

10 Old-Vine Chenin Blanc Wines to Try

Not every old-vine winery is a member of the Old Vine Project, but each wine below meets the OVP’s 35-year-old threshold and is available in the States:

Botanica Mary Delany Series Chenin Blanc 2017 From dry-farmed bush vines dating to 1957, this wine shows juicy Asian pear notes and a touch of spiciness with a flinty finish. Price $26.94.

David & Nadia Hoë-Steen Chenin Blanc 2017 This apple-bright wine comes from low bush vines planted in decomposed granite, shale mix, and iron-rich clay soils between 1963 and 1982. Price $79.94.

The article Chenin Blanc Winemakers Are Breathing New Life Into South Africa’s Forgotten Vines appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/old-vine-project-chenin-blanc/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/chenin-blanc-winemakers-are-breathing-new-life-into-south-africas-forgotten-vines

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drippeddaily · 7 years ago

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Album of the Year #23: Smino - blkswn

ARTIST: SMINO

PROJECT: blkswn

LISTEN

SPOTIFY

SOUNDCLOUD

APPLE MUSIC

BACKGROUND

Christopher Smith Jr., from St. Louis, Missouri, first made his way into the local music scene in 2012 under the name C. Smi, which he later changed to Smino in 2015 with the release of his debut EP, ‘S!Ck S!Ck S!Ck’. This EP was produced exclusively by Monte Booker, a member of Smino’s collective ‘Zero Fatigue’. Only two months after its release, Smino then went on to put out a second EP, also produced by Monte Booker, titled blkjuptr. Blkjuptr was met with generally positive feedback, propelling Smino’s musical career forwards and helping him find himself in the eyes of critics and bloggers.

After this second EP, it would be a little over a year before the world heard from Smino again, however, needless to say, it wasn’t prepared in the least for what was to come.

REVIEW

Blkswn.

In this full length debut album, with 18 songs spread over an hour and three minutes, Smino puts on display a sonic spectacle as he effortlessly weaves through musical genres, fusing hip hop with elements of funk, soul, and RnB.

The project kicks off with what is probably its smoothest track. Entitled ‘Wild Irish Roses’, Monte Booker instantly sets a funky tone for the track with a bubbly synth accompanied by some hi hats. This tone is carried through the rest of the album as well and plays a huge role in binding the album together. Smino is quick to jump in with a catchy, yet calm flow which helps convey a relaxed atmosphere as he tells a story of himself inviting a girl to ride around town with him in search of ‘Wild Irish Roses’ (a brand of wine) - a thinly-veiled sexual proposition. All in all, ‘Wild Irish Roses’, perhaps my favourite track off the album, is a very strong opener that sets both the sonic and thematic tone for the rest of the project.

With the way they seamlessly blend into each other, the next two tracks ‘Maraca’ and ‘Glass Flows’ could easily have been passed off as one long song. Smino’s versatility is blatantly apparent here as he surprises the listeners with a switch from an experimental intro verse to a very funky chorus on ‘Glass Flows’. His verses have a playful vibe to them, as he isn’t afraid to switch from singing lines to rapping lines to going into falsetto and then doing it over and over, all while somehow making the entire thing sound cohesive and well thought out. While the subject matter of the songs on the album revolves almost exclusively around Smino’s relationships with women, he keeps the content fresh by addressing various aspects of the relationships, each with varying levels of seriousness. This can be seen as he switches from dabbling in playful lyrics with sexual connotations in ‘Maraca’ to highlighting the precarious nature of his relationship with a woman in ‘Glass Flows’.

The song “Glass Flows” also marks the appearance of Ravyn Lenae, the first of six female features on blkswn. In this remarkably well executed track, her and Smino exchange bars, providing both Smino, and his female companion’s perspective on their relationship.

The next track, Flea Flicka switches the vibe up to a funkier and happier tone. And while it plays its role in the progression of the album, I personally didn’t welcome this departure from the atmosphere Smino had created thus far. This track didn’t feel as if it was put together all that well, comprising only two verses - a guest feature from Bari, and a second verse from Smino - with no hook or bridge to seperate them. A filler track for me, however, that is to be expected in any full length album.

After ‘Flea Flicka’, the album really starts to take shape and define itself. Spitshine takes its place as the grooviest track on the album for me, with a simple yet catchy melody and Smino doing what he does best with his innovative vocal delivery

Netflix and Dusse takes its place as one of the more playful tracks on the album. As its name would suggest, it’s about Smino trying to get acquainted with a girl. The lyrics on this track definitely stand out as Smino finds three different ways to describe that ass, two of them in the same verse.

That ass a creature

That ass on Sunset Hill, a beautiful view

That ass look like a fuckin' grapefruit

His creative way with words is also very much visible on this track with bars like

Pink Caddy, Pepto Bismol-bile

Suggesting that the colour of his caddy is similar to that of Pepto Bismol, going as far as to call it his Pepto Bismol-bile (like Batmobile).

Been on my brain, Miss Serotonin

In this line, he calls this track’s girl his Miss Serotonin - Serotonin being a chemical which contributes to feelings of joy and happiness in the brain.

The next track on the album, Anita, is one of the album’s defining/iconic tracks. Released as one of two singles prior to the album’s release, Anita is a track involving Smino showing appreciation for all the women who’ve had an impact on him, using the name ‘Anita’ as a general name for all of them. He uses the verses on this track to talk about his city, St. Louis, his family, and his crew, tying it up at the end with a beautiful outro where he spells out the words to the sentence, “Anita, I need her” over and over.

Lobby Kall is a fun track and not much more than that. It lets the album breathe after Anita and doesn’t say too much. With barely any Genius annotations to help me on this track, I’m quite lost as to what the verse was actually about. However, the track does end with a small skit which is presumably Smino turning up at his house drunk in the late of the night, with his girl who’s inside refusing to open the door. This is a set up for the progression of the album as Smino addresses his problems with drinking and smoking.

Edgar Allan Poe’d Up starts with what sounds like Smino bragging about smoking, drinking, and having sex, however he is quick to admit that he’s stuck in a cycle which has left him feeling mundane. Furthermore, he recounts his plans to break this cycle which unfortunately end up being ruined by a meddling shawty who sends him nudes, which then sent him spiralling back. He reverts to rapping about the girl’s body and manages to find yet another way to describe a girl’s head game before ending the verse. This track has a feature from TheMIND which I didn’t find memorable at all, however it does add to the track as TheMIND talks about his struggles with expressing his emotions and instead choosing to get over them by drinking.

Father Son Holy Smoke was the first song I listened to on the album because I thought the name was cool, before going to the start of the album and listening to the whole thing over and over. As is tradition, Smino throws in a bar about getting head, this time getting over with it at the very start. He has wide array of flows for this song which he weaves together beautifully. What Edgar Allan Poe’d was to Smino’s drinking, Father Son Holy Smoke is to Smino’s smoking, however, the latter is far better executed in my opinion. Through the track, Smino speaks of how smoking weed helps cool his mind, yet still manages to acknowledge it as an addiction which he indulges in to avoid his problems.

On B Role, Smino goes off with a flow that you can’t help but bob your head to. That being said though, this is a song which I don’t feel belongs on the album, despite liking it outside the album’s context quite a bit. The track starts off with an edgy crushed guitar riff which instantly deviates from the atmosphere that had been set up till now in too abrupt a fashion. With a better intro transition, it could have found its place, especially keeping in mind that the following track has a similar style of production too, alas imperfections are bound to be found on an 18 track project.

Blkoscars is another song on this project which I’m not fond of. It feels like the production is venturing into areas of experimental music which just leave you slightly confused after listening, or maybe it’s just me. Anyways tho, Jay2 starts off the song with a feature verse and he seems to be rapping like he’s trying to prove something. A good verse, yet once again, out of place for me. Smino comes in towards the second half to rescue the track with his funky singing. This is one of those songs which I only listen to when I’m going through the whole project - didn’t even remember what it sounded like when I started writing this.

The title track’s finally upon us at this point and it does amazingly well to bring the album back to its roots. The production’s free of its edginess and has reverted back to its laidback style. Smino goes Boom Boom Boom Sminoshima (as in Hiroshima) just as the kick kicks in with the bass and everything feels fine again. The singing on this song is snappy. Another interesting aspect is that Smino’s devoted the track to talking about his grind and shifted the focus from girls, drinking, and smoking. He also manages to throw in the line Smi-no, more like Smi-yeah, which is nice, I guess.

Long Run’s got an intro which reminds of the one on Maraca. It sets a vibe and that vibe completely changes soon as the verse starts. Once again he’s talking about a topic which although he has brought up, he hasn’t devoted a lot of time to on a track. Smino reflects on his childhood, where he grew up, and his community. Via Rose features on the chorus and delivers her vocals beautifully - probably my favourite feature on the album alongside Ravyn Lenae.

I feel like Innamission is one of those songs you sleep on for a long time until it comes up on shuffle one day and suddenly you open your eyes. Smino starts off by shouting out his crew, followed by a verse, which is solid. And then a prechorus, which is kind of exciting. But then the chorus comes on and without doubt, it’s the dopest thing you’ve heard in a good minute. I played that on the bus one time, and it was a bit disappointing when no one lit up when the chorus came on. I think it takes a couple of listens before it hits you. Or maybe it was just me.

Silk Pillows sounds like it’s rehashing a couple of ideas we’ve already heard on the album. Akenya brings a decent verse to the song, but for the most part this song felt like something I’d already heard over the last 20 minutes of listening to the album. However, we do see Smino go back to making sexual references in the track after a severe drought over the course of the last three songs. He says "D go deeper than an 808, boom boom boom". He also says "You a vet? I'm a dog", which makes me wonder what Smino thinks a vet does, but good music’s meant to raise questions so in its own way, this is getting the job done.

The production on Ricky Millions is very very nice. It’s something about the chords which makes it stand out. Smino’s got some catchy bars and Drea Smith captures the vibe of this track perfectly. The mixing on her vocals is done really well. All in all, I rate this track. It shows that Smino still has some tricks left up his sleeves, even towards the end of this 18 track long journey.

Amphetamine. What a way to close out an album. The track starts off with a somber tone, and Smino projects his emotions beautifully through his delivery. You can hear slight breaks in his voice in the chorus which really add to the effect. He talks about his struggles with addiction, and how he realises the negative impact it has on him. Yet, he’s still optimistic that he’ll be alright. If he makes it through the night, that is. Part 2 of this song is titled Krash Kourse, and could easily be its own song, however, it makes sense for it to be one long track, combine with Amphetamine, because you see Smino address everything he’s been talking about over the album. We see a verse from Jean Deaux, a chorus from Bari, and finally a verse from Noname to close the album. Thankyou Jesus, whoever you are are the last words you hear. It’s beautiful.

Favourite Lyrics

All the lyrics about getting/giving head

Woo, my bad, don't gag

Although it's cute that you choosin' me over breathin'

Shawty sucked me, I was 9

Head game crackin'

She a cluck with the fuck

She just wanna suck somethin'

Toppy, that's the topic of discussion

Shawty sling head like a Greek sword

My dick a cheat code, I stick for the joy

She sayin' it's sweet, callin' me chico

But if you real then I extract my grill

And I snack on that 'til that blood sugar build

That clean me up, I pick you up

I pick you, gimme that spitshine

Shawty she be comin off the top

Like some good writtens

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What do you think is next for Smino?

Do you think mainstream glory lies in Smino’s future?

Who would you like to see Smino collab with?

What do you think the weak points of this album were?

Is Smino taking rap in a whole new direction?

Which head bar is your favourite?

How do you feel about the variety of lyrical content in this album?

ARTIST: SMINOPROJECT: blkswnLISTENSPOTIFYSOUNDCLOUDAPPLE MUSICBACKGROUNDChristopher Smith Jr., from St. Louis, Missouri, first made his way into the local music scene in 2012 under the name C. Smi, which he later changed to Smino in 2015 with the release of his debut EP, ‘S!Ck S!Ck S!Ck’. This EP was produced exclusively by Monte Booker, a member of Smino’s collective ‘Zero Fatigue’. Only two months after its release, Smino then went on to put out a second EP, also produced by Monte Booker, titled blkjuptr. Blkjuptr was met with generally positive feedback, propelling Smino’s musical career forwards and helping him find himself in the eyes of critics and bloggers.After this second EP, it would be a little over a year before the world heard from Smino again, however, needless to say, it wasn’t prepared in the least for what was to come.REVIEWBlkswn.In this full length debut album, with 18 songs spread over an hour and three minutes, Smino puts on display a sonic spectacle as he effortlessly weaves through musical genres, fusing hip hop with elements of funk, soul, and RnB.The project kicks off with what is probably its smoothest track. Entitled ‘Wild Irish Roses’, Monte Booker instantly sets a funky tone for the track with a bubbly synth accompanied by some hi hats. This tone is carried through the rest of the album as well and plays a huge role in binding the album together. Smino is quick to jump in with a catchy, yet calm flow which helps convey a relaxed atmosphere as he tells a story of himself inviting a girl to ride around town with him in search of ‘Wild Irish Roses’ (a brand of wine) - a thinly-veiled sexual proposition. All in all, ‘Wild Irish Roses’, perhaps my favourite track off the album, is a very strong opener that sets both the sonic and thematic tone for the rest of the project.With the way they seamlessly blend into each other, the next two tracks ‘Maraca’ and ‘Glass Flows’ could easily have been passed off as one long song. Smino’s versatility is blatantly apparent here as he surprises the listeners with a switch from an experimental intro verse to a very funky chorus on ‘Glass Flows’. His verses have a playful vibe to them, as he isn’t afraid to switch from singing lines to rapping lines to going into falsetto and then doing it over and over, all while somehow making the entire thing sound cohesive and well thought out. While the subject matter of the songs on the album revolves almost exclusively around Smino’s relationships with women, he keeps the content fresh by addressing various aspects of the relationships, each with varying levels of seriousness. This can be seen as he switches from dabbling in playful lyrics with sexual connotations in ‘Maraca’ to highlighting the precarious nature of his relationship with a woman in ‘Glass Flows’.The song “Glass Flows” also marks the appearance of Ravyn Lenae, the first of six female features on blkswn. In this remarkably well executed track, her and Smino exchange bars, providing both Smino, and his female companion’s perspective on their relationship.The next track, Flea Flicka switches the vibe up to a funkier and happier tone. And while it plays its role in the progression of the album, I personally didn’t welcome this departure from the atmosphere Smino had created thus far. This track didn’t feel as if it was put together all that well, comprising only two verses - a guest feature from Bari, and a second verse from Smino - with no hook or bridge to seperate them. A filler track for me, however, that is to be expected in any full length album.After ‘Flea Flicka’, the album really starts to take shape and define itself. Spitshine takes its place as the grooviest track on the album for me, with a simple yet catchy melody and Smino doing what he does best with his innovative vocal deliveryNetflix and Dusse takes its place as one of the more playful tracks on the album. As its name would suggest, it’s about Smino trying to get acquainted with a girl. The lyrics on this track definitely stand out as Smino finds three different ways to describe that ass, two of them in the same verse.1That ass a creature2That ass on Sunset Hill, a beautiful view3That ass look like a fuckin' grapefruitHis creative way with words is also very much visible on this track with bars likePink Caddy, Pepto Bismol-bileSuggesting that the colour of his caddy is similar to that of Pepto Bismol, going as far as to call it his Pepto Bismol-bile (like Batmobile).Been on my brain, Miss SerotoninIn this line, he calls this track’s girl his Miss Serotonin - Serotonin being a chemical which contributes to feelings of joy and happiness in the brain.The next track on the album, Anita, is one of the album’s defining/iconic tracks. Released as one of two singles prior to the album’s release, Anita is a track involving Smino showing appreciation for all the women who’ve had an impact on him, using the name ‘Anita’ as a general name for all of them. He uses the verses on this track to talk about his city, St. Louis, his family, and his crew, tying it up at the end with a beautiful outro where he spells out the words to the sentence, “Anita, I need her” over and over.Lobby Kall is a fun track and not much more than that. It lets the album breathe after Anita and doesn’t say too much. With barely any Genius annotations to help me on this track, I’m quite lost as to what the verse was actually about. However, the track does end with a small skit which is presumably Smino turning up at his house drunk in the late of the night, with his girl who’s inside refusing to open the door. This is a set up for the progression of the album as Smino addresses his problems with drinking and smoking.Edgar Allan Poe’d Up starts with what sounds like Smino bragging about smoking, drinking, and having sex, however he is quick to admit that he’s stuck in a cycle which has left him feeling mundane. Furthermore, he recounts his plans to break this cycle which unfortunately end up being ruined by a meddling shawty who sends him nudes, which then sent him spiralling back. He reverts to rapping about the girl’s body and manages to find yet another way to describe a girl’s head game before ending the verse. This track has a feature from TheMIND which I didn’t find memorable at all, however it does add to the track as TheMIND talks about his struggles with expressing his emotions and instead choosing to get over them by drinking.Father Son Holy Smoke was the first song I listened to on the album because I thought the name was cool, before going to the start of the album and listening to the whole thing over and over. As is tradition, Smino throws in a bar about getting head, this time getting over with it at the very start. He has wide array of flows for this song which he weaves together beautifully. What Edgar Allan Poe’d was to Smino’s drinking, Father Son Holy Smoke is to Smino’s smoking, however, the latter is far better executed in my opinion. Through the track, Smino speaks of how smoking weed helps cool his mind, yet still manages to acknowledge it as an addiction which he indulges in to avoid his problems.On B Role, Smino goes off with a flow that you can’t help but bob your head to. That being said though, this is a song which I don’t feel belongs on the album, despite liking it outside the album’s context quite a bit. The track starts off with an edgy crushed guitar riff which instantly deviates from the atmosphere that had been set up till now in too abrupt a fashion. With a better intro transition, it could have found its place, especially keeping in mind that the following track has a similar style of production too, alas imperfections are bound to be found on an 18 track project.Blkoscars is another song on this project which I’m not fond of. It feels like the production is venturing into areas of experimental music which just leave you slightly confused after listening, or maybe it’s just me. Anyways tho, Jay2 starts off the song with a feature verse and he seems to be rapping like he’s trying to prove something. A good verse, yet once again, out of place for me. Smino comes in towards the second half to rescue the track with his funky singing. This is one of those songs which I only listen to when I’m going through the whole project - didn’t even remember what it sounded like when I started writing this.The title track’s finally upon us at this point and it does amazingly well to bring the album back to its roots. The production’s free of its edginess and has reverted back to its laidback style. Smino goes Boom Boom Boom Sminoshima (as in Hiroshima) just as the kick kicks in with the bass and everything feels fine again. The singing on this song is snappy. Another interesting aspect is that Smino’s devoted the track to talking about his grind and shifted the focus from girls, drinking, and smoking. He also manages to throw in the line Smi-no, more like Smi-yeah, which is nice, I guess.Long Run’s got an intro which reminds of the one on Maraca. It sets a vibe and that vibe completely changes soon as the verse starts. Once again he’s talking about a topic which although he has brought up, he hasn’t devoted a lot of time to on a track. Smino reflects on his childhood, where he grew up, and his community. Via Rose features on the chorus and delivers her vocals beautifully - probably my favourite feature on the album alongside Ravyn Lenae.I feel like Innamission is one of those songs you sleep on for a long time until it comes up on shuffle one day and suddenly you open your eyes. Smino starts off by shouting out his crew, followed by a verse, which is solid. And then a prechorus, which is kind of exciting. But then the chorus comes on and without doubt, it’s the dopest thing you’ve heard in a good minute. I played that on the bus one time, and it was a bit disappointing when no one lit up when the chorus came on. I think it takes a couple of listens before it hits you. Or maybe it was just me.Silk Pillows sounds like it’s rehashing a couple of ideas we’ve already heard on the album. Akenya brings a decent verse to the song, but for the most part this song felt like something I’d already heard over the last 20 minutes of listening to the album. However, we do see Smino go back to making sexual references in the track after a severe drought over the course of the last three songs. He says "D go deeper than an 808, boom boom boom". He also says "You a vet? I'm a dog", which makes me wonder what Smino thinks a vet does, but good music’s meant to raise questions so in its own way, this is getting the job done.The production on Ricky Millions is very very nice. It’s something about the chords which makes it stand out. Smino’s got some catchy bars and Drea Smith captures the vibe of this track perfectly. The mixing on her vocals is done really well. All in all, I rate this track. It shows that Smino still has some tricks left up his sleeves, even towards the end of this 18 track long journey.Amphetamine. What a way to close out an album. The track starts off with a somber tone, and Smino projects his emotions beautifully through his delivery. You can hear slight breaks in his voice in the chorus which really add to the effect. He talks about his struggles with addiction, and how he realises the negative impact it has on him. Yet, he’s still optimistic that he’ll be alright. If he makes it through the night, that is. Part 2 of this song is titled Krash Kourse, and could easily be its own song, however, it makes sense for it to be one long track, combine with Amphetamine, because you see Smino address everything he’s been talking about over the album. We see a verse from Jean Deaux, a chorus from Bari, and finally a verse from Noname to close the album. Thankyou Jesus, whoever you are are the last words you hear. It’s beautiful.Favourite LyricsAll the lyrics about getting/giving head1Woo, my bad, don't gagAlthough it's cute that you choosin' me over breathin'2Shawty sucked me, I was 93Head game crackin'She a cluck with the fuck4She just wanna suck somethin'Toppy, that's the topic of discussion5Shawty sling head like a Greek sword6My dick a cheat code, I stick for the joyShe sayin' it's sweet, callin' me chico7But if you real then I extract my grillAnd I snack on that 'til that blood sugar build8That clean me up, I pick you upI pick you, gimme that spitshine9Shawty she be comin off the topLike some good writtensDISCUSSION QUESTIONSWhat do you think is next for Smino?Do you think mainstream glory lies in Smino’s future?Who would you like to see Smino collab with?What do you think the weak points of this album were?Is Smino taking rap in a whole new direction?Which head bar is your favourite?How do you feel about the variety of lyrical content in this album?

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