#and used our (barely existent) cleavage as a launch point

[everlark-your-own-adventure]

Powder Keg, Chapter 1

Hey, Fandom! We’re back with the Holiday Edition of Everlark Your Own Adventure! Anyone fancy some love in front of a roaring fire in the middle of a blizzard? What about a good, old fashioned argument-turned kissing frenzy in the snow-covered woods? It can happen, but not without your help! This story will take us right up through New Year’s, so start reblogging and adding your thoughts in the tags today, and check back every Monday through to continue voting whether these two can put their past behind them, or if it’s just not in their favor this round. 

Enjoy the first chapter of Powder Keg, written by @peetabreadgirl.

“I’m scared, Katniss! I can’t do it!” Sally cries, clutching onto my ski pants. If she keeps it up, the tears running down her cheeks and the clear goo starting to leak from her nose will freeze before break time.

“It’s okay.” I use my best big sister voice to try and soothe away her fear of skiing on a slope that’s only a little flatter than my chest. “You’re going to do just fine. See that flag there?” I point to the pole that’s halfway down the bunny slope on the edge.

“Uh-huh,” she half-sobs, nodding her head, her fingers flexing in and out, probably trying to get a better hold on me.  

“All you have to do is make it there. I’ll be right behind you. Nothing to worry about, yeah?”

She sticks her nose back in my pants and shakes her head vigorously. I check my watch. I’ve been at this for 46 whole minutes. Only 14 left to go. Seemingly, a lifetime of seconds trying to convince a five-year-old that she has nothing to be afraid of, feels like hell. At this rate, I’ll have celebrated seven birthdays before we reach the bottom of the training slope.

Work with me, kiddo, I think, trying not to huff my frustration audibly. Happy parents give good tips.

Speaking of, I wave to Sally’s mother, sitting on the patio of the lodge, watching our progress. Or lack thereof. She’s propped in an Adirondack chair with sunglasses that cover half her face and a perfectly styled bun with just the right touch of messy. Her expensive jacket is only zipped halfway, and even from here I can see a the cleavage from her super-sized breasts.

She doesn’t wave back, clearly not impressed with my skill as a ski instructor. It’s my first time to teach here at Mt. Mockingjay Resort, but I’ve been skiing here all my life. I guess being a good skier doesn’t necessarily translate into being good instructor. I didn’t realize it would be so difficult.

But I’ve got an entire season to go, and it’s just starting to get busy with the holidays right around the corner.

Just as I’m about to pat Sally on the head, I hear a whoosh behind me. Before I can turn around, Peeta Mellark, my childhood-crush-turned-enemy stops in front of me and releases the bindings on his snowboard, stepping out of it.

“I’ve got this, Peeta,” I tell him, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice in front of Sally. I know what he’s about to do. Thinks he’s God’s gift to females of any age.

He ignores me, eyes on the little blonde girl who could pose as his offspring. She might be, considering the rumors that he receives tips from his students in the form of blow jobs and other activities in the bathroom. Ugh. That was harsh and those rumors probably aren’t true, but Peeta does get the most requests for private lessons of any of the mountain’s ski instructors. Mostly women. I guess he’s not completely unfortunate looking. Sort of classically handsome.

I cross my arms over my chest as he starts speaking to my lesson in a tone that’s both soft and fun, something I can’t seem to master no matter how hard I try.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

Sally looks up, connecting her blue gaze to his. The smile that lights up his face makes her keep her focus on him instead of burying her face back into my clothing. I notice a giant wet spot on my upper thigh. Thank goodness for waterproof gear.

“Sally,” she manages through a few sniffles. She wipes her nose with a gloved hand.

“Sally, I’m Peeta. It’s nice to meet you.” He pulls off his glove and holds his hand out to shake hers. “Are you having some trouble getting down the mountain?”

“Mhm,” she nods, turning her body towards him. Her skis move a little, sending her off balance. Her eyes widen in fear but Peeta catches her by the arm and steadies her.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do, Sally,” he says, like she’s just going to go along with it. I cock my hip, waiting for the outburst that’s sure to turn this crappy day into a win for me.

“I’m gonna hold your hand and walk right beside you all the way down, and then when we get to the bottom, we’re going to go inside that building right there,” he points to the ski lodge, sounding as excited as kid on Christmas morning, “and get the best tasting hot chocolate on Mt. Mockingjay. What do you say?”

Sally looks from him to the lodge, then back. I know I shouldn’t relish a child being scared, but right now, if it will put Peeta in his place, which happens to be out of my stratosphere, I’m rooting for a tantrum.

“Okay,” Sally says to him, wiping the remnants of her tears away. I would choke on my own spit if the air weren’t so dry when Peeta’s face breaks into the smile seen round the world, it’s so bright. Damn. People in China are waking up wondering what the hell happened to the moon.

“Um, you know what Sally, I can do that with you, okay? We can let Peeta get back to…” Whatever he was doing. Or whomever.

“No, I want Peeta,” Sally says, letting go of me all together and launching herself at him. Traitor. She’s known me for 46 minutes and him all of 46 seconds. I stare daggers at him as he sets her skis at the right angle and adjusts the strap that keeps the tips from sliding too far apart.

If I weren’t so dumbfounded at Sally’s change in attitude, I would forbid him to take her from me. Before I can utter a syllable, he starts down the slope with Sally in tow, making a game out of it. I finally snap out of the shock and push my poles into the ground, shoving off in their direction, seething.

When we reach Sally’s mother, Glimmer, she gives her mom a huge hug. “I did it, Mommy! Did you see? Did you see?” the little girl cries excitedly.

“I did!” Glimmer responds, looking up to Peeta. His shades make him look like an aviator pilot. She practically purrs like a cat in heat. “Thank you so much, Peeta.” Her hand goes to his bicep. Of course it does. That’s not obvious at all.

“I thought Katherine would never get her off that slope.”

“It’s Katniss,” I correct her with barely concealed irritation. She doesn’t even look at me. Neither does Peeta or Sally. It’s like I don’t exist. My seething is turning to a rapidly boiling rage. If Glimmer leaves a tip, he’s not getting it. I wasn’t even finished before he came waltzing in to play the unnecessary hero. “I’m sure Sally would have gotten down just fine if I’d been given a few more minutes to convince her she could do it.”

Peeta’s eyes snag mine and I see the warning there. Glimmer Abernathy is the richest ski bunny on Mt. Mockingjay. Her husband practically keeps these lifts open with how much money she spends here every year.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Sally says excitedly. Glimmer finally looks down at her daughter, her hand still on Peeta’s arm. “Peeta said we could get hot chocolate if I got down!”

“Did he now?” Glimmer looks back up at Peeta with a coy smile.

“It’s my treat,” Peeta tells her, showing off his dazzling smile and perfect teeth.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she gasps, smashing her free hand against her chest, pushing her ample cleaving damn near up to her chin. I want to barf. “I’ll buy if you let me come.” The twinkle in her makes me wonder if that’s a double entendre. I’d rather not stick around to find out, but this show ain’t over yet.

“Sally hasn’t finished her lesson, yet,” I remind them. If the lesson doesn’t get completed, I have to forfeit the whole hour’s pay.

“I think we’re all done.” The way Glimmer says it makes it seem like I won’t have any repeat business from her. “Thank you for your time, Kennedy.”

The three of them turn and walk across the deck, into the revolving door of the lodge, leaving me gaping at the backs of their ski-cap covered blonde heads. Kennedy? It’s not even close to Katherine!

I don’t have another lesson until the afternoon, so I huff and puff all the way back to the offices, almost slinging my skis into my locker. I’m so mad I barely register the other bodies in the room.

“Sorry, Everdeen.” Johanna Mason, my boss, says following it up with a low whistle. “It wasn’t my first choice.” If there’s a skier equal to my talent, it would be Jo, but an unfortunate accident blew out her knee and now she has to sit on the sidelines, scheduling us all over the mountain while she keeps warm inside. It sucks big time, and while we’re not super close, we’re better friends than when we were competing against each other in high school. I was a freshman giving her, a senior, a run for her reputation as the fiercest chick on the blacks.

I growl and grind my teeth together before answering. “You knew?.” I turn to face her, hands settling on my hips in challenge, ready to defend my earnings. “I didn’t get to finish the lesson. I was 14 minutes away, Jo! I shouldn’t be docked if he physically skis away with the kid.”

“I wish I could pay you,” she starts with a sincerity that’s usually not like her, “but when I made rounds earlier Glimmer caught me and requested that Peeta finish the lesson. I tried to convince her to let you have the full hour, and then we could switch instructors if she still wasn’t happy, but she complained that her hard-earned money was being wasted.”

I snorted. Hard earned money, my ass. She married a paunchy, balding drunk that made a fortune from a lucky investment in bitcoin.

“Keep it to yourself,” Jo stops me before I can say it out loud, probably not wanting it to get out what most of us think about her, flicking her gaze to Bristel and Gale, two other instructors this year. Bristel’s a boarder like Peeta, and Gale a skier like me, though he couldn’t beat me down from the top of the bowl if one my legs was broken.

“Look, Everdeen, I know it’s a tough situation, but the policies are what they are and we have to keep our best customers happy. And the fact of the matter is, you couldn’t get the kid to do what she needed to do, and Peeta can.”

I let out a deep breath and pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to let it go. As one of the ‘best’ customers of the lodge over the last five years, Glimmer gets what Glimmer wants. And she always chooses Peeta. He’s been her instructor since he started at the resort 3 years ago.

Another piece of gossip I picked up in the locker room.

“At least I have my afternoon lesson,” I say to myself.

“Actually,” Jo starts, and I feel my heart squeeze inside my chest. “They canceled. Kid has a cold or something.”

“So I get nothing at all today?” I shriek, lifting my hands in disbelief.

“You can clock into the snack bar and get a couple hours in,” she offers.

“That’s minimum wage!” I cry, my hands pounding my thighs they fall so hard. I spin and bang my forehead against the locker.

“It’s better than no money at all,” she shrugs.

She’s right, but I don’t want to admit it. I strip my outer gear off and toss it in my locker, slamming the metal door shut, and take off for the cafeteria. If this keeps up I’ll have to work the snack bar through the summer to make the money I need. In lesson tips alone I would quadruple the pay I’ll be getting working hourly here at the lodge, not including the $25 an hour I acquire for teaching.

I’m fiddling with the soda machine, trying to figure out how to adjust the carbonation setting on the Dr. Pepper when someone taps me on the shoulder. I whirl, coming face to face with Peeta. He looks… nervous. My earlier irritation isn’t as pronounced now that I know he was forced to retrieve Sally, but I’m not used to being second best to anyone, and it kinda blows.

“Hey, Katniss, look - I’m sorry about earlier.” He unzips one of his pants pockets and pulls out a wad of cash. “It was unfair what Glimmer did to you, and I want to be sure you get paid. I was watching you with Sally, and,” he swallows as my suspicious gaze narrows at the bills, “she’s a real handful. Not your fault.”

My instincts say to reject it. What he did years ago comes rushing back, slapping me with reality. I can’t take his money. It would be like forgiving him for that.

But I really need it. My old Jeep needs four new tires and my mom just lost her job. Not to mention Christmas is in six short weeks. Mom could use the income to help buy Prim some presents, but I don’t want to take his pity money. It’s not like I can’t do the job. I’m the best skier here. I’ll have more opportunities, right?

But what if I don’t? What if more lessons cancel and more parents aren’t satisfied? I hate to think what a dismal season I’ll have if I get only a few lessons assigned to me and no requests.

Help me! Do I take the money, or do I tell him to shove it up his ass?

[sadmovies]

PRAISE THE ROMANTIC AGONY!!! // edmond (2005), dir. STUART GORDON

Edmond opens with the title character getting a tarot card reading. "You are not where you belong," the fortune teller concludes. This launches a middle-aged crisis. He leaves his wife. He believes the universe owes him more. And what is that something more? A good lay.  

I had an inverse experience when I was home back East. I was couch hopping, seeing everyone who I thought I should see, and it was — I remember — a lazy afternoon where we, the friend whose house I was currently staying and myself, were waiting until a lady friend's party later in the evening. We passed time by playing Super Smash Bros. We took a walk outside. My friend explained the beauty of the Kingdoms Hearts franchise. It was then, too, that I had an encounter with his older sister. I had known the sister in passing because of a mutual interest in literature. We both had strong opinions of what made good writing. Both of us, at one point, had been published in our high school's literary magazine. She invited me upstairs so I could she her room and bookshelf. There, she lamented her love for Nabokov. She was a smallish woman that, because of her frame, had developed overbearing breasts and an impressive rump of an ass. In high school, she stepped into sexuality like a dress: all the male actors, it was rumored in the theatre department, had gotten to second base. But she never fell into a victim role. Sex was a statement of authority. It was her power. She refused to ever give up her power. "Troy, PJ, Vincent," she confessed. "All of them I fucked." She had her hand on my thigh at this point. We were sitting criss cross on her carpet while I read aloud passages from Despair.

"Do you want me to tell your fortune?"

It seemed like a good idea.

Lolita (which I'll call her from now on) pulled out a box of tarot card from under her bed. She proceeded to give me a reading. What the actual combination of the cards were I can't remember. But what I do remember is Lolita furiously flipping through her tarot card guide. She dog-eared pages, squinted at them. "You are heading in the correct direction," Lolita said. "Expect great success in your near future." I winced. Good or bad, I don't think anybody really enjoys getting their fortune told. It entertains the same type of pleasure as picking a knee scab or stalking an ex girlfriend's Instagram account: you are so consumed by the anticipation of the thing itself that, when the climax occurs, when the blood gushes down your leg and when the woman who you shared your most intimate moment with, in bed, one winter, both naked, where you confessed to her that insecurity, the insecurity to end all insecurities, and you felt, briefly, weightless, unburdened by existence, when you see this same woman, scantily clad, getting her assed grabbed by a Beef Wellington of a man (the iPhone flash lighting his eyes!), you feel a sadness so immeasurable and rooted to your being that you think that *this* must be what all the dead poets, heartbroken, wrote verses about with ink and quill, late into the evening, while Solider Big Dick fucked their muse next door. I didn't like getting my fortune told because it's always a letdown. Nothing is ever enough. And if it is, I am able to analyze it until it becomes sad. Lolita's fortune, that success was ahead, only meant that I was going to worry about success being ahead. How would I self sabotage?

"Did you tell him about that one time?" Lolita said. This is the question I knew would be asked.  It hung over our conversation. She was referring to a night of my life where, after having being dumped by my second girlfriend, I had recklessly texted Lolita asking for nudes. I wanted to feel like a man again. I was consumed with the romantic agony of a high school heartbreak. I told Lolita explicit details of what I would do to her. She told me details of what she would do to me. In the end, she agreed to a dimly lit photo of her bare cleavage. The next year, however, Lolita graduated and I had befriended her brother. A question of morals arose. Do I say what happened? Did I have an obligation to? And if I did, who would want to be told that about their sister? I chose silence.

"No," I said.

Lolita smiled. She edged herself closer to me. "That's probably for the better," she said. "I think he'd be weird about it." I nodded. Lolita began to talk about Lena Dunham and young adult fiction. I looked to the window. Outside, I saw the beginning of fall. The trees glowed with a green that I have only ever seen at home. There is an overwhelming age to the East Coast that I am not sure is readily apparent to the natives. I moved West after high school and so make infrequent trips back whenever I can. Each time I do my perspective becomes more nuanced. I noticed first the hand-me-down quality which Virginia possesses, a place seemingly burdened by history in the sense that—

Lolita placed her hand on my belt buckle.

"What are you doing?"

"Tell me what you're thinking."  

"Um," I said. "The trees."

"The trees?"

"You don't see trees like those. You don't see them in, um..."

"Is this a callback to an earlier review?"

"If you want it to be."

Lolita frowned. She looked up to my face. She had the eyes of a woman making a quietly desperate plea, a plea disguised as playful seduction. The eyes said, "I am going through a tough time." They said, "My boyfriend recently broke up with me, all seems lost, and you, the Film Slob, the boy who I knew in passing in high school, are looking pretty good right now. Let's have sex. Let's have sex so that I for a second can forget the burden of being. Okay?" I stood up from where we were sitting on the carpet. I did not have a lot of experience with making moral decisions. The most I've gotten out of morality has been in retrospect. There is always a promise to be more self aware: one part of myself commending another part of myself for catching my shadow self in the act. A Self-Congratulatory Process. But then the day to do better never comes. I'm stuck in hypothetical limbo. In front of me, though, Lolita had on her clothes of late summer. She wore jean shorts and a tight fitting long sleeve. She was an uncomplicated beauty, one that did not ask questions nor seek commitment. I could take Lolita and carry her over to her twin size bed. We could undress quickly before engaging in a breed of sex which I did not then know. We could kiss just for the sake of kissing. We could rub our bodies together just because it felt good. We could do all this while her brother played Nintendo Wii downstairs. I was Edmond but not Edmond. I had gotten the very thing he sought, a woman, but in a different context. In the film, Edmond seeks to get laid. However, to do so, he puts himself in a weak position. He lowers himself to women. He plays a game that is only played while, across from you, your opponent thumbs at the rulebook  You're in the dark. You're vulnerable. Who were these women? Who did they think they were?

I stepped out into the hallway.

The first time I heard of Edmond it was through the stage play of the same name by David Mamet. I read it in my dorm while my roommate snored from his half of the room. There was this feeling of secret knowledge and taboo; Mamet, with the play, was articulating something which I saw lurking beneath my own life. It had to do with sexual frustration. It had to with being a male, a white male: the privilege my skin color afforded me so informed my existence that it was like eating candy every meal. I was malnourished. Pleasure cannot be without pain. And if is, pleasure is no longer pleasure. All the years spent — as DeLillo describes — in my toothpaste suburb gave me more comfort that I knew what to do with. Happiness was so abundant that it made everyone sick. We needed to be punished. We wanted to avoid the guilt, or maybe to tap into our common humanity. We came up with illness, challenges to overcome: I remember being fed fifty milligrams of Adderall for getting a C in Algebra. The doctor said, "You have Attention Deficit." My mom, in the chair next to mine, nodded intuitively. I remember, high on amphetamines, chatting movies in gym class with anybody who was polite enough to listen. I was fifteen. "Lynch," I said. "His work is what I would call a mixture between a nightmare and the banality of Norman Rockwell's paintings." I pulled lines directly from David Foster Wallace's interview with Charlie Rose. (I needed to be shoved in a locker. Why didn't anybody shove me in a locker? Probably because they were too small. Biggest revelation: to be assigned a locker in the ninth grade only for the width to not be large enough to fit my head, much less body.) By the time I got to college, I had avoided danger for so long that I was shell shocked. I had been plucked from the bubble of my milieu. In a moment of crisis, I took a nighttime walk around campus. The area surrounding the university was notoriously known for violence and crime; the poverty could be seen in the cracks in the sidewalk, the houses across the street. They were so chewed up and sad; I almost didn't mind that the residences sought to mug their student neighbors. To have to watch each incoming class, year after year. To see them graduate with degrees. But nothing has changed. You still live in squalor, in shit. "Kill me!" I sobbed. This was the purpose of the nighttime walk. I was aware of my position as prey. I wanted a switchblade to the gut but only after putting up a fight. I would not give up my phone and wallet immediately. I would wrap my fingers tight around my killer's neck. I wanted to get at least a couple punches in the eye sockets and nose. Whether or not the act of doing so would help me escape wasn't the point. The point was that I could, for a moment, transcend the reality of my upbringing, of the neurotic guilt which served as an aftertaste for experience. And if I ended up bloodied, on the concrete, gasping for my last breath, I would have been redeemed.

The title character in Edmond goes through something similar: a life of white collars and privilege is great in theory but it deprives us of something much larger. A man must be a man. He must go out into the world and hunt. He must tap into some instinct. Edmond (William H. Macy) knows this not consciously but the audience can see it through his actions. He leaves his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) under the influence of a tarot card reading. He wants to start a new, dangerous life in the city. The truth is, this anxiety had been bubbling up for a long time. It just needed to find an excuse to express itself. We see the giddiness in his body language when he bets on a card in Three-card Monte. We see his eyes lick, up and down, the bodies of the strippers he lacks the authority to fuck. The connective tissue in these examples is that Edmond is attempting to transcend. The MacGuffin of the story, of him trying to get laid, is really the pursuit of ultimate transcendence: every time we ejaculate — it is my theory — that we are stepping a little bit outside of the physical realm. The pleasure can be so intense that it becomes something else entirely. It is not the same nauseating abundance of pleasure that was found in my toothpaste suburb. Rather, it is like a compacted, silver bullet which explodes inside your being. Your consciousness is shifted, and this is what I assume Death is like. An orgasm that extends into eternity, something that which — when it happens — makes the most sense in the world and is as simple as flipping on a light switch. There's no drama: it only is. Death cannot exist without Life in the same way that pleasure cannot exist without pain. This is because both are polar extremes of the same thing; they inform the other's purpose. One has to acknowledge this if he wishes to understand his world. Primitive man, I think, learned this lesson when they starved in the winter and killed for their meat in springtime. Edmond is a child who craves a caveman's contentment. However, he has been sucking at the generous tit of modernity for too long. And when he builds up the nerve to rebel, to state dominance, the crippling effects of his prolonged adolescence catches up with him. All those years spent without hardship leaves him a perpetual victim. The strippers con him for his cash; the Three-card Monte dealers mug him when he questions their credibility; and, in the film's climax, he is raped in prison by his cellmate and made a bitch. He is properly emasculated by the city folk who, in their environment, carry a nugget of the teachings of the primitive times: survival of the fittest, transcendence through nature, and the arbitrary distinction between Life and Death. I was driving downtown one time with Plebeian, a buddy of mine. We were staking out the city for hot wings. As we drove, we saw a man walking out into the middle of the street. Cars raced passed him, blaring their horns. The man did not react, though. He kept a peaceful pace and completed his walk through traffic. "I'd like to have his confidence," I said. We passed the man, and I saw a brief glimpse of his clothing. He wore a grey sweatshirt and pants that were covered in dirt. "You wanna get that confident?" Plebeian said. "Try crack." We both laughed. I did not think of the man again until later. I was in the bed of Frida Kahlo, and my lips still burned from the buffalo sauce. Plebeian and I had gotten the spiciest wings on the menu because of an unspoken promise between the two of us to live life in a way such that each night was an interesting story to tell. Tonight's story was about the sharp smell of our order, the milk we downed to heal our throats. I thought about the man and his behavior. Was he aware of something that I wasn't? The first reaction is accusations of craziness, of drug addiction. But to suggest those things, it meant that I was in a position of authority. An authority to judge. Who was to say that his perspective was anymore more valid than mine? There might have been something deeply troubling about life he discovered which made walking out into the middle of the street not only sane but strangely moral. It was important to realize there is no objective truth, because then — if I didn't — I was no better than Edmond. Edmond, who lived in a cloistered world and made the mistake of confusing it for reality. He moves to the city where he gets snugly placed in the hierarchy of man.

Lolita's fortune of great success never came. If it did, it was too abstract to notice. Maybe, I thought, the fortune meant that I needed to the find success myself. That, maybe, it surrounded me already in my own life. I was burdened by the Western belief that never was ever enough. Contentment was weakness. The fortune was trying to argue against this belief. I had my head head in the sand ("look at the beauty around you!"), and maybe the great success was the discovery of this - the wisdom it brings.

Or maybe tarot card readings are bullshit.

Everything is bullshit. I think this while Frida Kahlo tells me about my astrological sign. "Pisces are the most sensitive type," she says. She is without pants, vaping. We're in her bed after a failed attempt at sex. "I'm gonna break your heart," and she means this. I know because it's one of the few times she looks up from her phone. "As I've told you, I'm an Aquarius...," but by then I'm not listening. I'm staring at her blossoming unibrow. I could only ever call her Frida Kahlo because Frida Kahlo was the only frame of reference. She wore that night, I remember, a black turtleneck which only women with a pouty enough expression on their faces can pull off. She reminded me of Anna Karina but Mexican and a body which was many things but not modest. She was beautiful. She was so beautiful that it made me want to scream out into the void. I wanted her to hurt me. I wanted her to blow vape smoke in my face and tell me I wasn't shit. I wanted not her love but a condescending side glance, the one that ruins egos: I wanted to be ruined, not loved. Love was the stuff of my mother's gooey cheek kisses and after school specials. It did not have what I craved. I needed agony the same way people needed salt on their food. "Pisces sometimes fetishize suffering," Frida Kahlo says. And maybe she's right. When I think of pain I think of a feeling deep down in my stomach. It is an excruciating nausea. It tells me I am alive, here, in the present moment. It tells me I am madly in love.  I say, "What are you talking about?" I say, deviously, "I haven't been paying attention for the past several minutes." This is the game we play. It is a game where we inflict various emotional wounds while the other tries to keep a poker face. I see, in this case, a twinge of sadness appearing in her eyes before — poof — it's gone just as quick. A coldness returns. She looks at me again.

Frida Kahlo says, "We're not suited for each other."

A knife.

She says, "I don't think this is gonna work."

A knife into my abdomen.

She says, "I have an ex-boyfriend who I'm still not over. He moved to Sweden but then he came back. And, um."

A knife into my abdomen, reaching up to the part of my heart that still values...

She says, "I don't know. It's just not where I'm at."

...that still values a date night, movie and dinner, and it's cold because it's always cold in my memory and...

She says, "Film Slob?"

...maybe, as you're walking back to your car in the parking lot, after the film, you—shit! shit! shit!—you lean in close and wrap your arm around her, your date, and she nozzles up into your shoulder for warmth and...

She says, "I'm sorry. I've just been so..."

...you feel like you could die right there, just die, because it is in those moments (January in Virginia, Inarritu's's Birdman) where the most beauty is found—

She says, "...depressed. I've been depressed."

But it never lasts, the beauty. The beauty turns blue before it curls up into fetal position, dead. You carry the beauty from under the porch. You bury it in the backyard. You don't know how to cope. You consider writing something Important. You consider spending weeks on end alone. Don't shower. Don't shave. After all, you don't have to look after beauty anymore. Your only goal should be writing a novel, an Important novel, a novel that critics will call "genius" and will make any women with Woody Allen frames and a Tumblr url drop their wet panties. But the novel never gets written. It never gets started. You should spend the last several weeks of summer driving around aimlessly at night. You eat at Five Guys. You break the peanuts. One night, after sobbing, you text a woman notoriously known in theatre department as being easy. You ask for a photo of her breasts. You masturbate into an old pair of boxer shorts.

Frida Kahlo says, "Are you crying?"

Move on. Forget it. Develop a love for the masochistic. Finish senior year of high school. Move for college. Try to forget it some more. Pick at masochism like a scab. Know that the pain you fetishize is because of beauty, buried in the backyard. The hole you had to shovel. The dirt you had to throw onto its corpse. Know that it left a huge impression, not easily erased. Be okay with this. Don't be okay with this. Decide to be okay with this.

She says, "Why are you crying?"

Match with Frida Kahlo on Tinder. Meet up in a coffee shop. Talk about Quentin Tarantino, jazz. For a second date, take her back to your dorm. Show her music you like. Get a blowjob.

She says, "Film Slob."

Frida Kahlo jumps on top of me. She begins wiping the tears flowing down my cheeks. I don't do anything. I suck the snot back into my nose. Frida Kahlo gives me a look that is probably of genuine concern but which I have the bad habit of confusing with pity. I grab her waist. I flip her over. I wanted to feel like a man again. My right hand grabs her ass while my left thumbs her nipple. I kiss her neck. Frida Kahlo wraps her legs around me. She rubs my back, unaroused.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Then why were you—"

"I wasn't."

She pushes me off. I go under the blanket, wrap myself in the sheets. I stare at the wall. Praise the romantic agony! I think of Edmond. Emond, with a knife, slicing up a waitress (Julia Stills) that he goes home with. "I had too much coffee," he explains to his ex-wife. This is over a prison phone. Of course, he gets punished for his actions. Of course, he is raped in prison and made a bitch. Where was the true motive, though? The motive, I mean, for the murder of the young waitress. I remember seeing the film after my atoms had been rearranged by reading the play. I remember not much difference in terms of experience except for the killing scene. There was the high pitched squeals of Julia Stills (why don't I see here more often?) as William H. Macy plays up an Edmond that has finally rediscovered his male vitality. "I have a warrior blood, too," he claims to the waitress. In two scenes before, Edmond is lured into a dark alleyway by a pimp. The pimp puts a switchblade to his throat. But Edmond's knife is bigger. He whips it out at an opportune time and begins to slash at his mugger. The pimp screams, begs for mercy. Edmond doesn't offer any. He continually kicks at his gut while calling him a racial slur. With each kick, there is something being communicated. With each kick, Edmond is reminding himself of the power which was within him the whole time. "Don't fuck with me, coon," he says. All seems well. He has the confidence of a man that has just been baptized, given a purpose. He takes this new found conviction and uses it to seduce a bar waitress. The questions remains: Why? Why, when things seem to be looking up, does Edmond decide to murder? I have a theory. It comes to me when I am staring at the wall, avoiding the worried gaze of Frida Kahlo.

"I didn't think it was a big deal."  

Edmond, his whole life, has been placed in various hierarchies. This is not a surprise, as most humans are. However, one reaches a breaking point. A man is consumed with the anxiety of judgement. He feels he is not all he could be. He does not exercise that masculine part of his brain enough. His life is mostly ice cream socials and the blue glow of his work computer's screen. Where has the danger gone? It has been replaced by a dreary commute. It has been replaced by two and a half cups of coffee a day. It has been replaced by a wife who, deep down, he knows he does not satisfy sexually. Where, oh where, does he get a break? He grows resentful. He grows bitter enough where he leaves his wife because of, seemingly, no reason. He goes to the city. Nobody will judge him there. Not the street bums. Not the Three-card Monte shufflers. And especially not any of the women. Women are toys, he thinks. He is not interested in actually having sex but masturbating with their bodies. How can you have sex when you don't view the other as an individual? Edmond does not respect women but uses them as a value system. That's the irony, right there. It eats him alive. And so, when he does finally get validated (laid), what does he do? He kills the waitress. In a way, he think he has killed the ugliness which exists deep in his heart: this need for affection, for a female's approval. Hear my roar.  I will never be compromised again! Oh, Lolita! I missed my Lolita. To selflessly give herself to me, that one afternoon. To text a photo of her breasts. Was there a woman more selfless? To allow me the gift of choice.  

"We've only known each other for three weeks."

Silence.

"Please just talk to me."

It stretches out into eternity.

[kidsviral-blog]

The Cleavage Of Consent Between Bollywood's Leading Ladies And Their Voyeurs

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/the-cleavage-of-consent-between-bollywoods-leading-ladies-and-their-voyeurs/

The Cleavage Of Consent Between Bollywood's Leading Ladies And Their Voyeurs

Objectifying Deepika Padukone without her consent has implications far beyond Bollywood: It endangers every single Indian girl and woman.

View this image ›

kartari.tumblr.com

I remember laughing out loud the first time I watched the music video for “Sheila Ki Jawani.” I remember being taken aback by Katrina Kaif — per usual a paragon of all things sexy — thrusting herself at me with her midriff and cleavage and legs deliberately bared, while simultaneously telling me, emphatically and with no room for doubt, that she knows I want it but I’m never gonna get it. I’m never gonna get her body. I remember delightedly grappling with the cognitive dissonance Sheila created, her tongue firmly in cheek.

“Main tere haath na aani” sounded to me like an empowering and explicit withholding of consent. And to see it sung by a scantily clad, pelvic-thrusting woman was to be told: Look, I can be as overtly sexual and “immodest” as I want to and still not grant you any further physical permissions.

I remember getting predictably addicted to the criminally catchy tune, but remaining pleasantly surprised by the very, very progressive message I perceived: Sheila will allow you some access to her body. Sheila will flaunt her body. Sheila will be totally thrilled for you to look at her body. But anything you do with Sheila’s body will be decidedly, nonnegotiably on Sheila’s terms. Don’t even think about assuming otherwise.

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FADEL SENNA / Stringer / Via Getty Images

In this morning’s Times of India, Pooja Bedi made the argument that Deepika Padukone, along with the rest of Bollywood’s leading ladies, has herself to blame for the culture of media-driven objectification that she is now vehemently protesting.

“If admiring and focusing on a woman’s assets is a crime, all item numbers should be banned,” Bedi wrote.

This comes in response to Padukone’s livid (and now famous) assertion this past weekend that the media’s objectification of her is disrespectful to women. This was specifically with regard to the Times of India article “OMG: Deepika Padukone’s Cleavage Show!” that highlighted Padukone’s cleavage in a surreptitiously taken video from a trailer launch event. “YES!I am a woman.I have breasts AND a cleavage! You got a problem!!??” Padukone tweeted. “YOU don’t know how to RESPECT Women!”

While India’s Twitterati and tinseltown alike came forth quickly in her support, critics were just as ready. And, picking eagerly at low-hanging fruit, many were quick to cite item songs in the argument that Bollywood’s ladies are themselves complicit in the media’s thirsty, relentless objectification of them. You’ve made your bed, Deepika, now strike a provocative pose and be gawked at in it.

The argument — which Bedi perched herself at the helm of this morning — seems to be that by consenting to being ogled at and exposed in certain contexts, these women have granted permission to their audiences to do so all the time.

Logically, Bedi’s argument is sound. “If admiring and focussing on a woman’s assets is a crime,” then by all means, ban item numbers. Ban the fashion industry. Ban most means of money-making, really.

But here’s the catch: Admiring and focusing on a woman’s assets is not a crime. Doing so without her consent is. Doing anything to her body without her consent is, be that eve-teasing, harassment, rape, or circulating a particular video or photograph of her to millions of people who wouldn’t otherwise have had access to it (the latter-most being a crime that Jennifer Lawrence and several of her Hollywood contemporaries famously fell prey to just a few days ago).

This isn’t to say that item songs, a still problematic mainstay of Indian cinema, are absolved of their many, many flaws. They glorify objectification; they are a shameless money-making assault on good storytelling; they are usually just terrible music. But, for all their shortcomings, they have absolutely nothing to do with how the women starring in them should be treated when removed from their very particular context. To argue otherwise is to make the very dangerous assumption that every minor provision of consent can be extended to universality. That just because a woman has shown you her body in any capacity, she is “asking for” whatever else you choose to do to it.

In a nation where the gravity granted to female consent is already absent to a terrifying and life-threatening degree, this isn’t an argument to which we should be attaching any credibility.

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tumblr.com

“We don’t go into a hostile frenzy when cameras caress and capture SRK’s and Hrithik’s perfect six-pack abs,” Bedi pointed out, in her own defense. “Why should it be different for a woman?” And for anyone who has ever railed publicly against female objectification, this is a familiar challenge.

Again, the question itself reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of why nonconsensual female objectification is dangerous: It is dangerous when it sets or reinforces a precedent for disregarding female consent or, more importantly, a lack thereof. Forty-two percent of Indian girls have faced sexual violence in some form by the time they’re through with their teenage years. Ninety-two Indian women are raped every day. If the weight granted to male consent had also been under siege in India for centuries and if it claimed lives on a daily basis, I would raise just as loud a din in defense of Hrithik. As things stand, I think he’ll be all right.

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Via india-forums.com

“Sheila Ki Jawani” was refreshing to see in the Indian mainstream because — as Padukone exemplified most recently — being a woman in India means being surrounded by an age-old, culturally persistent disregard for your consent. Myriad headlines remind us every morning that personal space is a myth; that yes means yes and no means violence; that if you want to live in a country where the female body is not a liability, you’re in the wrong place.

Being a woman in India means your most mundane decisions — what to wear, what route to take to work, how many drinks to drink — are weighed down by the potential to become life-threatening at any moment, without your permission. We are constantly reminded — most depressingly by ourselves — to dress modestly and arm ourselves against a culture whose mind-set, apparently, is that if you can see a female body, you can have it.

“Sheila Ki Jawani” was thrilling in its outright and preemptive rejection of what is now Bedi’s argument: that being consensually exposed to the female form in one context gives audiences the right to consume it in any other. This is a mind-set that has made victims of thousands of Indian girls and women across the nation, to gruesome and horrific degrees, when those around us assume that because we are allowing them to see our bodies, we are also allowing them to do anything more. And Sheila’s emphatically inaccessible jawani was the perfect antidote.

But, as of this morning, my initial elation at Sheila’s sexy and indubitable feminism has been brought crashing down by one sobering revelation: In order for Sheila’s message to carry any weight, one would have to stop staring at Katrina for long enough to hear it.

And that, of course — being heard and not seen, being listened to and not completely objectified, being given any agency with regards to how her body is devoured and when and by whom — is a luxury the Indian woman has yet to be granted.

I remember laughing out loud after voicing the (admittedly unpopular) opinion that “Sheila Ki Jawani,” while not unflawed itself, sounded to me like Bollywood’s closest existing approximation of a feminist anthem. In a perfect matching of form and function, it was an item song to defend all item songs.

Moreover, it was the perfect defense for Bollywood’s leading ladies against their hoards of drooling voyeurs: Yes, I am showing you my body, Sheila says. Yes, I’m aware that it is supremely attractive. No, that does not mean you can touch it, that doesn’t mean you can photograph it, that doesn’t mean you can monetize it, devour it, or otherwise claim it.

And don’t you fucking dare tell me otherwise.

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/tere-haath-kabhi-na-aani

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/no-nip-tuck-richard-simmons-plus-demi-lovatos-revealing-hack/

No Nip Tuck for Richard Simmons plus Demi Lovato's revealing hack

While it hasn’t been long since she exited Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, model Yolanda Hadid is already preparing for her triumphant return to TV. In a new announcement, TV network Lifetime revealed that Yolanda would be starring on their upcoming reality show Model Moms. Media outlet Deadline reported on the upcoming show, saying, “Yolanda, along with her trusted team of experts, will put the girls and their “momagers” through an intensive eight-week training program, focused on the physical, mental and emotional wellness that it takes to build a sustainable brand. With a $5,000 weekly prize on the line to put towards their future careers, only one girl will be left standing to win a management contract with Yolanda’s company and the potential opportunity to be represented by IMG models in New York.” Essentially, the show will be similar to America’s Next Top Model. However, it will feature Yolanda guiding both up-and-coming models and their managing moms. In addition to her own success in the modeling world, Yolanda has successfully advised and supported all three of her children, as they pave their own paths as models. Yolanda’s two daughters, Bella and Gigi, are amongst the top models in the business right now and her son, Anwar, is just beginning to get into the industry as well. Yet another wave of hacks have hit the celebrities of Hollywood. Over the past while, numerous celebrities’ private photos and information have been hacked and shared online. Early this week, the hackers claimed yet another victim – this time being Demi Lovato. According to reports published on Tuesday, a series of Demi’s private photos were stolen from her Cloud account by an established group of hackers. It is claimed that some of the photos that the hackers managed to obtain included ones of Demi lying in bed with her ex-boyfriend, actor Wilmer Valderamma. In addition, various outlets claim that the hackers also got their hands on photos of Demi completely bare. While the rumor mill continues to churn out stories about the speculated intimate photos that were stolen from the songstress, Demi took to her Twitter to address the controversy head on. In a tweet posted Tuesday evening, the “Neon Lights” singer posted to her followers, “I love how everyone’s freaking out about one picture. It’s not nude, and it’s just cleavage.” The former Disney starlet went on to note, “Besides the world has seen me nude by choice before…#vanityfair.” Here, Demi is referring to her previous spread for Vanity Fair, where she went completely clothes and makeup free. Demi Lovato, Twitter post: https://twitter.com/ddlovato/status/844354359072821249 https://twitter.com/ddlovato/status/844354708240261122 Moreover, it appears that the whole leak scandal in regard to Demi Lovato has been completely overblown. However, this should not discount from the fact that cyber sleuths are targeting an increasing number of celebrities. Some notable stars that have fallen victim to the most recent wave of cyber hacks include Beauty and the Beast starlet Emma Watson and newlywed Amanda Seyfried. Terrence Howard, who has a history of domestic abuse, has turned over a new leaf these days. “I’ve made terrible mistakes throughout my life,” the 48-year-old “Empire” star told People. “I was dragging baggage with me that was crippling me mentally and physically. But I finally feel I can put that to rest. I can breathe again.” Howard’s childhood was rocked by numerous incidents of violence. His father, Tyrone, was jailed for fatally stabbing a man while the family waited to meet Santa Claus. Howard says he was “whooped” by his father until he was 14. The actor has also confessed to hitting his first wife, Lori, and there are multiple allegations of domestic abuse from his second wife, Michelle Ghent. Today, Howard credits the death of his mother in 2008 as well as meeting his third wife, Mira Pak, with changing his outlook on life and his behavior. The couple — who were married, divorced and reconciled — share two young kids. “Mira settled me,” Howard said. “Our marriage is effortless. Relationships are hard work, but we really don’t fight.” Weeks after meeting Pak in 2013, Howard moved to bury his past. “I gathered up my things associated with my past and found a nice hill and buried them all there,” Howard said. A week after, he popped the big question. Although Howard is in a new space in his life, he sometimes still encounters stress. “I’ll just watch a tree’s limbs sway back and forth and take my shoes off and put my hands on a tree,” Howard said of his unique stress-management technique. “It makes me feel part of the whole.” Pak, 39, has also picked up on the calmer side of her Howard. “He refuses to kill a fly,” she said. “And we’re trying to teach our kids not to pick flowers.” Howard, a father of five, followed up with his own theory: “I know in those two weeks or month of a fly’s life, that’s 80 years for them. And we smash them so quickly. I hope if someone saw me trapped, some bigger creature would help me.” Actor Shia LaBeouf is taking his controversial anti-President Trump art installation across the pond, claiming America isn’t “safe enough” for his work. The “He Will Not Divide Us” webcam exhibit has been adopted by the Liverpool-based Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, the group said Tuesday. “Events have shown that America is simply not safe enough for this artwork to exist,” LaBeouf and the other artists wrote in a statement. The project encourages people to say “He will not divide us!” into a wall-mounted camera that is live-streaming 24/7. It was launched in Queens on Inauguration Day and was supposed to run through the duration of Trump’s presidency. But the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria shut down the installation on Feb. 10, saying it became a “flashpoint of violence.” So LaBeouf moved it to Albuquerque, where it was yanked a few days later because of vandalism and gunfire Charlie Sheen knows the secrets of Hollywood, including which stars are HIV-positive. “I know who they are, but I will take that to my grave,” Sheen, 51, teased on Wednesday’s episode of “The Kyle & Jackie ‘O’ Show,” according to the Daily Mail. But Sheen, who announced his status in November 2015, did reveal the “miracle drug” he’s taking. “Here’s the absolute freaking irony — with the miracle drug that I’m on, this PRO-140, I am actually safer than most cats out there that profess to be on the tallest tree,” he quipped. The conversation also turned to the topic of Scientology. The radio hosts bluntly asked if any of his friends ever tried to lure him into the church. “Yes, actually,” the father of five stated. “There was one — and she’s a dear friend of mine. It’s Kelly Preston, who’s married to John Travolta.” Since he’s good friends with the couple, the hosts pressed Sheen about Travolta’s sexuality. They asked if he believed the rumors about Travolta and massage parlors. “I have a new rule now: If I wasn’t there, I can’t possibly harbor an opinion,” he said. Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s pioneering Funny or Die website is closing its New York offices media outlets are reporting. Staff at the nearly 10-year-old comedy site’s East Coast operation were informed that they could either relocate to its Los Angeles offices or be laid off. Insiders tell us that of the 13 staff in the NoMad location, three have decided to leave the company, and the remaining 10 staffers chose to ship out to LA. Industry site Deadline reported in August that Funny or Die — which has featured videos on its site starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Jim Carrey and Johnny Depp, and also produced the Emmy-winning “Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis” and Billy Eichner’s “Billy on the Street” — was also shuttering its Silicon Valley office and laid off 37 staffers, mainly “on the tech side.” The move came shortly after production exec Mike Farah was promoted to CEO. At the time, Farah said: “As we move into the future, we’ve decided to double down and refocus on making the kind of content that made us a household name in the first place. To accomplish that, we’ve had to reorganize and reduce our staff.” In 2015 the site expanded by opening a Washington, DC, office and in 2016 hired David Litt, a former President Obama speechwriter who was also lead joke writer for the former POTUS’ White House Correspondents’ Dinner speeches. We’re told that many among the New Yorkers who have had to move their families cross-country are less than thrilled with the sudden upheaval. The three members of staff who elected to leave the company were designers, we’re told, and the site still has a sales office in the city. That team moved into a smaller space on Wall Street. The site — which Ferrell and McKay launched in 2007 with Ferrell’s legendary “The Landord” sketch, starring McKay’s 2-year-old daughter, Pearl, as a ferocious landlord — initially moved from a Broadway space to a bigger office in NoMad in 2014. A Funny or Die rep declined to comment. Since going public with abuse claims against her producer in 2014, Kesha has gotten substantial support in the court of public opinion. She has not fared so well in actual court. Again on Tuesday, a New York judge turned down Kesha’s attempt to break her contract with Dr. Luke, rejecting a motion to file an amended complaint. The ruling from Judge Shirley Kornreich reiterates many of the points from the same judge’s earlier ruling, in April 2016, in which the singer’s claims against the producer were dismissed. Dr. Luke, the stage name for Lukasz Gottwald, filed an initial complaint against Kesha in 2014 for failing to work on a third album as required under her contract. Kesha filed a countersuit, seeking to be released from the contract on the basis of allegations that Dr. Luke had raped her and verbally abused her over the course of several years. In February 2016, Kornreich denied Kesha’s request for an injunction that would have allowed her to record an album outside of her contract. In her April 2016 ruling dismissing the countersuit, Kornreich noted that the two specific instances of sexual abuse alleged in the counterclaim each occurred before Kesha signed her contract with Dr. Luke. After the success of her first two albums, the judge noted that Kesha sought increased royalties, but Dr. Luke rejected the request. Following the string of courthouse defeats, Kesha began working on the third album last fall. Her lawyers contend that Dr. Luke continues to interfere and delay the album’s release, which Dr. Luke denies. In January, Kesha’s attorneys sought to amend her original counterclaim, again seeking to release her from the contract. “Dr. Luke has aggressively sought to financially destroy Kesha by keeping her under his control while simultaneously waging a nuclear litigation campaign against her,” her attorneys claimed. “It is a vendetta against Kesha … She is not demanding more money. Kesha asks for something far more basic: the freedom to make music without being bound indefinitely to the very producer who subjected her to years of abuse and continues that abuse to this day.” Dr. Luke’s attorneys countered that she was attempting to litigate the dispute in the media. “It was obviously designed to garner sympathetic headlines for Defendant, and further tarnish Plaintiffs, based upon false assertions and blatant mischaracterizations,” they wrote. In Tuesday’s ruling, Kornreich ruled that Kesha could not advance claims for breach of the agreement because she herself had failed to perform her obligations. The judge took note that Dr. Luke’s accountants have calculated that she owes him $1.3 million in royalties, and has not paid him since 2012. Richard Simmons‘ private life is unlike anything tabloid speculation has made it out to be. The 68-year-old fitness guru, who has not been seen in public since January 2014, laughed off allegations he is unhappy and is transitioning into a woman. “The other day I told him, ‘There are people who think you are a very overweight, depressed woman.’ And he just laughed,” Simmons’ manager, Michael Catalano, told People. “He’s trim, and he has a beard.” Rumors surfaced that the reclusive Simmons was being held hostage by longtime live-in housekeeper Teresa Reveles. Publicist Tom Estey has since called the claims a “complete load of crap.” “She takes impeccable care of Richard. She’s nothing but a blessing to him,” Estey continued. The Los Angeles Police Department visited Simmons earlier this month, confirming that the colorful personality is doing fine. “There was something about his housekeeper holding him hostage and not allowing people to see him and preventing him from making phone calls and it was all garbage, and that’s why we went out to see him. None of it is true,” Detective Kevin Becker told the magazine. “The fact of the matter is we went out and talked to him, he is fine, nobody is holding him hostage. He is doing exactly what he wants to do.” While Simmons’ fan base may yearn to see him again one day, brother Lenny Simmons, 70, said his sibling prefers the secluded lifestyle, having spent 40-some years in the spotlight. “My brother is fine. He calls me every Sunday, and we have a nice conversation — it’s not me calling him, that’s him calling me,” Lenny explained. “He’s always been the way he is now. He’s always had his quiet time. It’s just that people only saw one aspect of him, and now that they aren’t seeing that, they thinking that something has happened, that something is wrong.” Though Simmons was hospitalized for dehydration 2016, he phoned “Entertainment Tonight” with an update last March. “No one should be worried about me … The people that surround me are wonderful people who take great care of me,” Simmons said. Simmons now dedicates his time to primetime television — specifically “60 Minutes” — and his garden. “After 40-odd years, he just decided that he wants to rest, and I certainly can’t blame him,” Lenny shared. “It’s his decision not to be seen.” If you have been Keeping Up with the Kardashians (i.e. watching their weekly reality show) this season, you may have noticed that the youngest sister, Kylie Jenner, has been notably absent. While the season just started 2 weeks ago, it is unusual for the show to completely skip over Kylie’s perspective on the ongoing family drama. In contrast to media reports saying that the makeup mogul is looking to distance herself from television, a source close to Kylie just recently revealed that the starlet is actually in the midst of developing her very own TV show. According to the source, Kylie is putting together a weekly show that gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at her ever-growing makeup empire, Kylie Cosmetics. The source told media tabloids, “Kylie is so excited [about getting her own show]…It’s going to be all about building her business and hiring people for her team.” While Kylie has already accomplished so much in regards to her makeup business, the 19-year-old continues to expand her reach. Just recently, Kylie opened up 2 pop-up stores, one in Los Angeles and one in New York, which both drew hundreds of fans on their opening day. This isn’t the first time there has been speculation surrounding Kylie and a possible spin-off show. In fact, back in 2016, sources were claiming that she was already collaborating with her family’s home network, E!, on one. A source told the press at the time, “[Kylie] wants the show to be all about her…She no longer wants to do one with Kendall [Jenner].” With Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ ratings downward trend, a Kylie-centric show may be just what E! needs to regain some momentum. Move over Gaga! There is another female starlet coming to FX’s hit anthology series American Crime Story. A while back, it was confirmed that singer/actress Lady Gaga would not be playing Donatella Versace in season three of ACS. While Gaga was initially the leading candidate for the role, ACS’s creator Ryan Murphy later told fans that they were unable to fit the show’s filming in with Gaga’s hectic schedule. Fortunately, the show enlisted another strong female actress, who is bringing plenty of her own star power to the cast. Early this week, media outlets reported that Vicky Cristina Barcelona star Penelope Cruz will be taking on the role of Donatella in season three of American Crime Story. Penelope will be helping Ryan, and the rest of the show’s crew, explore the murder of Gianni Versace (who will be portrayed by Edgar Ramirez), who was found dead on the steps of his Miami Beach home. It was later determined that serial killer Andrew Cunanan (who will be portrayed by Darren Criss) was responsible for the highly publicized murder. Stay tuned for more detail about the upcoming seasons of FX’s American Crime Story. While they have gone about being in the spotlight in different ways, there are plenty of things that One Direction’s Liam Payne has in common with pop singer Justin Bieber. Pulling from some of the commonalities present within their whirlwind lives and careers, Liam admitted that he previously reached out to Justin Bieber. The boy band member recently told Rollacoaster magazine that he felt obligated to offer his support to Justin when he was going through a notably tough time. In his interview with the publication, Liam gushed, “[Justin Bieber’s] a great guy - inside there’s a really good heart.” Liam went on to reveal that he previously gave Justin his cell number just in case Justin needed someone to talk to - particularly, someone who understood the craziness of Hollywood and show business. Liam explained, “I said [to Justin], ‘Look, the difference between me and you is I had four different boys going through the same thing to look to.’ [Justin] didn't have that.” The “Story of My Life” crooner added, “I said to him, ‘Take my number and any time you want a chat, let me know as I’m here and I understand exactly what you’re going through and I understand your world.’” While Liam did not disclose whether or not Justin actually took him up on his offer, he did further sympathize with how overwhelming Justin’s life must be. Liam told the magazine, “[Justin] needs somebody [that knows what he is going through] and in [a similar] position.” Disney starlet Demi Lovato has certainly come a long way over the past 5 year. Last week, the star celebrated her fifth year of sobriety. You may remember, back in 2012, Demi shocked her young Disney fans when she checked into a rehabilitation centre. While there, the singer got treatment for drug and alcohol addiction, as well as issues relating to her mental health and eating habits. Last Saturday, Demi proudly celebrated her 5 years of sobriety. In doing so, the talented songstress drove around Los Angeles and hand-delivered check donations to a number of admirable charities. Some of the causes that Demi offered her financial support to included: LGBTQ, animal rescue and adoption rights. On Wednesday, a few days before she ventured on her drive of goodwill, the star took to her Instagram to share her sobriety milestone with fans and followers. Alongside a picture of her Twelve Steps milestone details, the “Neon Lights” artist captioned, “So grateful. It’s been quite the journey. So many ups and downs. So many times I wanted to relapse but sat on my hands and begged God to relieve the obsession. I’m so proud of myself, but I couldn’t have done it without my higher power (God), my family, friends and everyone else who supported me. Feeling humbled and joyful today. Thank you guys for sticking by my side and believing in me.” Demi Lovato, Instagram post: Congrats Demi!    

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