#chicago is all us poor little midwesterners get

[thiswasinevitableid]

if you're in the mood for requests i would honestly LOVE to read some stern/indrid outside of the ot4... au where stern is sent to find the mothman instead of bigfoot? or the fbi hires indrid as a consulting psychic on a case and stern is obsessed with finding out whether or not indrid is a Real psychic? or indrid approaches stern as someone with the societal authority to actually prevent a disaster? or whatever else you vibe with

Here you go!

Joseph picks his way over the rocks, camera clutched carefully under his rain jacket and water dripping off his “Bluff Creek” baseball hat. Voices bounce off the trees on all sides of him, and he rolls his eyes; how is he, at eighteen, the youngest cryptozoologist here but the only one who knows to keep his mouth shut so he doesn’t scare off the find of a lifetime.

Mothman is not, traditionally, a Midwestern cryptid, so he was skeptical when the forums he follows started having reports of sightings around Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison. Two nights ago, user TinFoilCrown posted a photo that doesn’t sport the tells of a fake, and Joseph would stake his college fund on the winged figure in it being something other than a bird. 

It was when he arrived at the last known sighting point that his suspicions were further confirmed; in among the amatuer cryptozoologists were three or four people who looked like people dressed like they thought an amatuer cryptozoologist might dress. In other words, they looked like cops, or maybe even government agents. That means that the sightings are credible. 

He’s been out for well over an hour, it’s getting dark, and so far he’s scared up some deer, four dozen squirrels, and one perturbed owl. He scans the tree-tops, hoping for glowing eyes or giant wings. 

Which means he misses the edge of the embankment he’s walking along, and goes rolling down a slope to land in a muddy stream bed.

In the fading light, he sees tracks in the mud that are like nothing he’s ever seen; clawed, four toed, and huge. He follows them to a hollowed out section of roots, switching on his flashlight so as not to lose them, and then they stop. But just up the embankment are broken plants and chittering noises that sound almost like curses.

He hauls himself up into the leaf litter, and comes face to face with Mothman.

Mothman is not pleased with this turn of events. He hisses, poofing up his feathers and baring his teeth. 

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I, I just want to take your picture.”

Another hiss, Mothman glaring at the camera.

“Or not. This is incredible, I can’t believe you’re real, you’re real, and you’re right here and you’re-” the flashlight beam falls on his right wing, where a patch of feathers is broken and bloody. 

“-you’re hurt.”

Voices in the trees, somewhere to his left. Instead of poofing up, Mothman shrinks in on himself. 

“Will...will something bad happen if you’re found?”

A frantic nod.

“And you can’t fly because of that wound?”

Mothman hesitates, then nods again. Joseph reaches into his small backpack, pulling out his first aid kit; they may not have let him into the Boy Scouts, but he still knows to be prepared. 

Carefully, he crawls across the ground to the wounded wing, watching the claws on the two sets of chitinous hands. He touches the wing and Mothman hisses, more softly, and chirps in pain. 

“I’m sorry, this might hurt.” He parts the dark, speckled wings, and rubs a disinfectant pad across the cut. The part of his brain that is freaking out over the fact he’s touching the Mothman gives way to the part that can focus on the task and on keeping the cryptid calm.

“There” he smooths down the bandage, “is that better?”

Mothman flexes his wing, winces, but then nods. The voices are getting closer, and Joseph turns, trying to see how close they are. There’s a whoosh of wind, and he whirls around to find the spot behind him empty. 

He sighs; the encounter of a lifetime, and he didn’t even get a feather or a photo. 

From above him, a lilting voice softly calls, “thank you.”

He blinks into the tree tops, hoping for a final glimpse, and murmurs, “holy shit. Mothman can talk?”

---------------------------------------------------------

No one ever said FBI training was easy, but Joseph’s muscles protest every step as he climbs the stairs to his apartment. He’s only two months in, determined to become an agent for the department of Unexplained Phenomena, and that means vigorous bouts of physical training strewn between tactics for identifying serial killers. He knows for a fact there won’t be any discussion of cryptids or aliens until he’s in his department of choice. Even then, he’s not certain he won’t be seen as an oddball, either for his belief in the supernatural and unexplained or for the fact he’s more interested in studying them and learning how their societies interact with human ones, rather than seeing them as something with implications for defense or monetary gain. 

As he’s on the last flight of stairs, he realizes he’s out of muscle rub, and most of what he needs for dinner. He rounds the corner and, in front of his door, is a take out bag and a tin of tiger balm.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened; a bag of cold supplies the day before he gets sick, a note on his car warning him not to take a certain route home. There’s no pattern, and there have been years between incidents. He has a hunch as to who his mysterious helper might be, but he’s never been able to prove it. 

Two nights later, he gets his chance. A fall storm batters the town, the windows of his apartment rattling with wind. Then rattling changes, becomes underscored with tapping. Standing on his dark, rainy balcony is a tall figure with glowing eyes. 

He slides the door open, and the Mothman steps inside. 

“Hello again. May I trouble you for a towel?”

“That’s-”

“-An odd way to start this interaction. Yes, but you tend to prefer the futures where I don’t drip all over your floor.”

It makes as much sense as anything else about this moment, and so he grabs a towel from the bathroom and hands it to the cryptid. 

“Thank you.” Water drops flick from his antenna as he dries himself.

“You’re welcome. Um, you must be the same mothman I met in the woods years ago.”

“That’s right.” 

“And the one who’s been leaving me helpful advice or items?”

“Right again. It seemed fair to repay a large favor with several small ones.” He extends his wing to test its dryness. 

“I see. Um, what’s your name? Or is it even something I can pronounce? I mean, I assume your name isn’t ‘mothman’ because that’s a name humans came up with.”

The cryptid smiles, showing pointed teeth in addition to his mandibles, “My name in my native tongue is” he breaks into two atonal chirps followed by a trill, “but you may call me Indrid.”

“It’s nice to meet you again, Indrid. I’m Joseph.”

“I know.” Indrid pads down the hall, dropping the towel on top of the laundry basket. 

“Right. Um. Is there a reason you’re here? I’m, I’m not complaining, and this is incredible, but are you in danger? Am I?”

“Not exactly. I foresaw the storm knocking me into the capitol building, badly injuring me and exposing me to unwanted eyes. Taking shelter with you seemed the best option.”

It’s flattering, to know someone so remarkable trusts him, and he blushes before an issue occurs to him. 

“Indrid, you’re welcome to stay but do you know what I’m training for?”

A nod, “A job with the UP. A future I saw flashes of that night we met.”

“That did sort of...solidify what I wanted to do. Knowing that you, and therefore maybe other entities like you, are out there, that there could be connection between your world, or worlds, and ours. There’s so much I want to know.”

“And there is a limit to what I can tell you; some secrets are not mine to share. However” Indrid settles at the little kitchen table, taking a small, leather pouch from his upper right wrist and setting it down, “I’m willing to answer some.”

“Even knowing what I plan to do for a living?”

He could swear Indrid raises an eyebrow, “Do you intend to reveal my existence to your superiors?”

“No”

A cocked head, Indrid extending his wings in a casual gesture that also emphasizes how much larger and stronger than Joseph he is, “Are you lying?”

“No. I think I can learn more being your friend, and maybe do more good overall if we’re allies rather than if my superiors get a hold of you.”

“Very well. In that case, we can trade: a question about me for a question about you.”

“You mean about humans?”

“No” antenna twitch in the direction of the oven, where his left-overs are reheating, “about you, Joseph Stern. I’ve been on earth for some time, humans are familiar to me. I…” for the first time, Indrid sounds shy, “I’d like to learn about a new friend.” 

Joseph smiles back, “I can do that. So my first question is: what would you like to drink?”

--------------------------------------------

Indrid’s appearances remain infrequent as the years pass, but he makes good use of what he learned with his last question the night of the storm 

“What’s your phone number?”

As the human progresses in his training, Indrid calls him with tips and warnings; he never reveals his fellow Sylphs, but there are plenty of strange happenings or disasters that Joseph may be able to stop without accidentally starting and interplanetary war. 

More than that, he calls him to catch up. Joseph tells him stories about his work, or about the book he’s reading or the restaurants he’s checking out, and Indrid tells him about his travels. The longer they keep in touch, the less Joseph’s questions center on learning about Indrid and other Sylphs and the more they center on how Indrid is doing, if he’s safe, if he’s staying out of trouble (and camera lenses). 

It’s nice, having someone who is so invested in his well-being. And it is nice to have a friend to look after. 

As often happens, Indrid is in an area where phone reception is poor. So he wanders down, quarters in his pocket, and finds the nearest payphone. 

“This is Stern” laughter in the background, and a glimpse of the futures show the man in a bar, smiling and a little wine flushed. His fellow newly minted agents flit about in the background, but Indrid only has eyes for his human. 

“Hello, Special Agent. And congratulations.”

The voice drops to a hush, “Indrid?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, Joseph, nothing about this call will get me carted off to Area 51.”

A groan, “Not you too. That’s not what Area 51 is for.”

Indrid chuckles; tipsy Joseph is always a bit grumpy about paranormal misconceptions, “I know. I merely wanted to congratulate you on your promotion.”

“Thank you, Indrid.” 

“You’re welcome, my dear. Have a goodnight.”

“You too.”

It’s only when he hangs up that it occurs to him: he called Joseph ‘my friend,” right?

Right?

-----------------------------------------------

The motel in the middle of nowhere, Arizona, is stifling but at least he gets to have the evening in peace. Agent Rogers was pulled, as Hayes deems this mission a one-agent job. 

Which is why the knock at the door is confusing. Opening it explains nothing.

“Can I help you?” He eyes over the man in front of him, taking in his silver hair, his wide smile, and his large, red glasses. 

“Yes” the man lifts a white plastic bag, “you can have this birthday cake with me.”

Peering out into the parking lot, he sees a weathered Winnebago. There is one person he knows of who owns such a vehicle and also knows his birthday.

“Indrid?”

The man nods, stepping inside when Joseph waves him forward. 

“Happy birthday, my friend. I stopped off at the last diner to get us dinner. You have spent your last two birthdays alone because of your work; I was in the area, so it seemed silly not to remedy that.”

“Did you make a human disguise just to see me?”

“No. This is how I am able to go about the world without being detected. I keep the disguise in my glasses.” he taps the frames, “don’t look so glum, special agent. This disguise is not on your behalf, but this is.” He produces a green, spiral notebook. Joseph opens it, finds odd, angular characters, beneath which are music notes, followed by a word or sentence in English. 

“It’s Mothman to human dictionary!” He gives a little hop of joy, knowing Indrid will not begrudge him a full on geek out. 

“A highly abridged one. But this seems more effective than relying on me alone to teach you.”

Joseph snickers remembering the last time they met in person; they got drunk on spiked eggnog and Joseph insisted that he would get Indrid’s name right in his native tongue. He managed it, then demanded Indrid teach him more, the cryptid chirping hysterically at his attempts. At some point, they ended up slumped side by side, a wing around Joseph’s shoulders as he showed Indrid pictures of his sister and niece. 

“This is amazing, Indrid. Thank you. And, um, thank you for trusting me with your human face. I know that must be high risk, letting someone be able to connect this you with the other you.” He sits on the burnt-orange bedspread, Indrid plopping down beside him. 

A cold hand brushes his cheek, “I trust you, Joseph.”

He’s so close, like this, and in his human form Joseph is actually taller than him. He could hug him, protect him from a world that they both know isn’t the safest for him. They could go on dates with Indrid like this and no one would know the truth but them. 

Indrid’s hand is still on his cheek, but when his eyes glance towards it the other man notices, and lowers it. 

“Now” Indrid grins wide, clapping his hands together, “let’s have that cake.”

---------------------------------------

This is one of those moments where, if Mama ever finds out he did what he’s about to do, she will lock him into a room at the Lodge so he cannot do something so foolish again.

The government agents only just arrived back at their hotel, having picked up one of their ranks outside of Forks, WA. He was one of two, and the only survivor of a run-in with something not of this earth. Indrid happens to know it was a fellow Sylph, gone feral. Because he was vampiric in nature, the futures show all case reports concluding he was human gone mad and bloodthirsty. 

Joseph was luck; he’d been searching another section of the forest, and only arrived in the aftermath of the fight. But what horrible aftermath; Indrid sympathizes. 

The hotel is non-descript, and nobody pays any attention as he walks the polka dot carpet to room 402. Footsteps reach the other side of the door, and then it’s hurled open and he’s yanked into a darkened room. 

“Are you out of your mind!?” Joseph hisses, “there are five agents here, not counting me, all on high alert.”

“And I have looked like this” he indicates his disguised form, “for the last day, just to be safe. I wanted to comfort you, not add to your stress.”

His words register as Joseph cards his hands through his formerly slicked-back hair. 

“You...you’re worried about me? Indrid, I, I’m a special agent, I’ve seen intense things before. I’ll be fine.”

Indrid almost buys it. Impressive. No wonder Joseph is so successful in his work. 

“We’ve been friends for years. I can tell you’re agitated. Also, I looked at the timelines, and in the ones where I didn’t come you had nightmares and a panic attack all night.”

Joseph stops pacing, sits heavily down on the bed. 

“It was awful. All that blood. And, and both of them looked afraid, laying there dead. Like his attacker realized in their last moments what they’d done. I keep seeing it.”

“I’m sorry.” Indrid says softly and sadly, sitting beside him. He is; he is sorry for his friend, frightened by what he saw. He is sorry for the other agent, and for his fellow Sylph, yet two more beings he failed to save.

“I don’t want to think about it. I keep trying to read, or watch T.V, but it doesn’t work.”

Indrid checks the futures, then removes his glasses, the bed creaking at the surprise change in weight. 

“I have an idea. You have expressed, in prior meetings, a desire to more closely investigate this form.” He spreads his wings in welcome, “perhaps that will distract you.” 

Joseph hesitates, then carefully holds the bottom of one wing and cards his free hand along the feathers, studying them. For a time he says nothing, then, “does your coloration serve any purpose?”

“No more than human hair color does, at this pointOOOH careful, ah, I forgot to mention that inner patch is sensitive.”

“Sorry!” Joseph starts pulling away, and Indrid catches his hands, setting them on his chest.

“No harm done, little human.”

Joseph’s eyes widen at the nickname, then he schools his face and runs his fingers through the feathers of Indrid’s chest and up to the fluffier ruff. 

“I knew this was soft, but I never realized just how wonderful it is to touch. It’s like bird down and rabbit fur mixed together up here.” He scritches and Indrid chirps, then purrs. The human does it again. Indrid lightly wraps his arms around him and lays back against the pillows, Joseph staying on his chest and moving his attention to his arms.

“Is this as strong as chitin?”

“More or less” Indrid combs his hair with his claws.

He runs a finger up to Indrid’s elbow, “Can you feel much through it?”

Indrid shudders at the soft touch, “Some.”

Joseph nestles closer, petting his ruff, “Will you stay the night?”

“Absolutely.” 

-----------------------------------------------

Joseph reads over the text from last nights date, composes a polite brush off, and sets his phone in it’s charger. The guy was nice, but he’s been having a problem lately; every time he fantasies about being in bed with someone, he sees red eyes and longs for feathers under his fingers. When he makes out with a date on the couch, he’s thinking of cold hands and an otherworldly smile. 

He’s trying to keep those thoughts from his mind as he cleans the apartment; Indrid is coming over tonight, and he wants it to be fun but to not pressure his favorite cryptid with his silly crush. 

The trouble is, Indrid seems hell-bent on exacerbating is feelings. He compliments him, purrs at him, licks his fork clean with noises that count as porn in no fewer than five states. And then, as he’s trailing a hand over Joseph’s back while he does dishes, he murmurs, “goodness, you’re all knotted up. Come along, cleaning can wait.”

“Indrid, I’ve seen your trailer, I do not trust your cleanliness standards.”

“Defer to me just this once, little human, so I can massage that sore back.”

“Okay. But just this once. I saw what was living in that travel mug on your dashboard.” He laughs when Indrid elbows him, flicks on the bedroom light. 

“Please take your shirt off and lay on your stomach.”

He complies, and Indrid chirps a laugh.

“Oh lord, the tattoo, I forgot-”

“That you have my likeness on your shoulder? I must admit I’m flattered.” The cryptid teases, and Joseph gasps as four clawed hands set to work on his back. 

“You, you were integral to my life’s work, and I got this well before we became friends. I never thought it would be something you’d see.”

“It’s not a bad image, though the coloration isn’t quite right.”

“Indrid, I saw you in the dark for a total of three minutes.”

“Is that being a formative experience also the explanation for that round mothman pillow you have?”

“That was a birthday present!”

“Suuure it was.” The claws add pressure and Joseph whimpers. Lord, it feels like Indrid is everywhere, studiously mapping his skin with his hands. Then the cryptid freezes.

“And that toy under your dresser?”

“Oh, shit” he buries his face into the blanket, “I thought I put that away. Please forget you ever saw it.”

“It’s supposed to be mine, isn’t it.”

Joseph keeps quiet. Then he yelps as Indrid flips him onto his back. The mothman cocks his head. 

“Or is it supposed to be my tongue?” 

“Yes” He squeezes his eyes shut, knowing he has a full-body blush from the admission. 

A cold, thin pressure drags from his navel up his stomach, and he opens his eyes as it hits his chest; Indrid’s tongue, long and vibrating with a purr. 

“Can your toy do that?” Indrid flicks his tongue playfully over his nose. 

“No. But, but you don’t have to, Indrid, really, I know it’s probably weird to know I feel that way about youOOooo!” He arches off the bed as Indrid pulls back his palps (not mandibles, he learned that years ago) to suck a bruise onto his neck.

“On the contrary” two hands thread into his hair, the other two play along his sides and chest as Indrid stares down at him, “it’s immensely flattering. I’ve had people attracted to my human form. But this one” he flexes his wings, smirks when Joseph’s eyes lock onto them “not so much.”

“I mean, I like moth you and human you.”

“Even better.” He helps Joseph sit up enough to kiss his cheek, hands resting in the feathers of his shoulders. 

“That came out weird. What I mean is I...I like you, Indrid.”

A tender purr, Indrid leaning in to nuzzle his face and neck, “What a nice thing to hear in real time, rather than just see coming. Because I like you too, Joseph. So very much.”

-------------------------------------------------

Joseph opens the dossier, listening as Hayes lays out his instructions for the mission. He tries not to focus on the phone call he got early this morning, Indrid alerting him to his safe arrival in West Virginia. 

“I have some business in Huntington, then on to Kepler after that.”

As he scans the case notes, the destination catches his eye, and he keeps his smile hidden under his professional veneer as Hayes finishes his briefing.

“Understood, sir. I’ll set off for Kepler first thing tomorrow.”

[lille082]

marital bliss

this fic fulfills the squares “fake marriage” and “there was only one (1) bed” on the Trope Prompt Table (004) by @mi6-cafe​ 

marital bliss

“...So you see, I’ve royally mucked things up and I’m afraid he's going to think our whole honeymoon is ruined if I can’t turn things around.”

The proprietor of the bed and breakfast peered closely at Bond over her spectacles before she broke into a sympathetic smile. He had a feeling the Armani suit played into her decision, despite how much rainwater it was holding currently.

“Oh, he won’t hold it against ya,” she rounded the reception desk and flipped open an appointment book, her finger tracking over the page until she found what she was looking for. “Just what I thought, our honeymoon suite’s booked through Thursday, sorry to say, but I have a cozy little room with a fireplace available if that’ll do.”

Bond played up his relief, heaving out a sigh and an amazed grin.

“Oh, we’ll take what we can get! Thank you so much,” he reached out to shake her hand, taking it warmly in his. The older women blushed and gave him a knowing look. “If we need to pay a late booking fee or anything, that’s no problem.”

She waved her hand dismissively at him and tucked a strand of grey hair behind her ear.

“Oh, nonsense. I’m just glad we had an open room for ya. Why don’t you go fetch that fella of yours and I’ll get everything sorted out here, Mr.--”

“Bond,” he gave her his most charming smile, leaning against the counter. “James Bond.”

“Well, nice ta meet ya, Mr. Bond. I’m Helen. Here, take this--” she rummaged under the counter for a moment before handing him an umbrella. “You don’t need to get any more soaked than you already are.”

Bond accepted the umbrella gratefully and headed back out into the storm.

-

Sure, Q had seen the door open and Bond amble out with an umbrella. And sure, he figured that meant they had lodgings for the night, thankfully. And sure, maybe it was childish, but he couldn’t help wanting to make him suffer just a little bit more.

Bond approached the passenger door and pulled on the handle to open it for Q, but the door didn’t budge. Q glanced up from his phone with a bored look on his face and looked at Bond through the glass. Bond rapped on the window, staring at him expectantly, and Q unlocked the car with a sigh.

“Yes?” His waspish tone was sharp over the sound of rain on the roof of the car.

Bond kept his answer just as short.

“C’mon, we’ve got a room.”

Q took the umbrella from Bond without a word, slung his messenger bag over his shoulder and tightened his grip on the prototype case, leaving the rest of their luggage (or what little remained of it) to him.

He didn’t wait for Bond before setting off for the dry indoors.

-

Q entered the small lobby area and closed the umbrella on the threshold, shaking it off under the eaves before turning his attention inside.

“And you must be the other Mr. Bond!” A sweet, very midwestern American accent rang out and Q turned to stare at her in shock for just a moment before nodding slowly.

“I suppose I must be,” he grinned, now kicking himself that he didn’t brief with Bond before coming in because clearly he’d already gotten to talking with the older woman behind the desk.

“I know, it’s hard to get used to it at first, but you will. Get used to having a new name that is,” she said and held out her hand. “I’m Helen.”

Q stepped forward to shake it when the door opened behind him.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Helen said, holding his hand between her’s, tutting. “Your new husband is absolutely frozen, Mr. Bond.”

“James, please,” Bond said, setting the suitcase down next to Q, who slowly pulled his hand away from Helen. “To be fair, he’s always cold. Lounging around the flat in jumpers in the middle of the summer. But I’ve always run hot, so we balance each other out.”

Q felt Bond’s arm wind around his waist and it took every ounce of his energy not to elbow James in the stomach. He relaxed into the embrace, following his lead.

“Well, I had Roger head on up to the room to start a fire for you,” she said, grabbing a honest-to-god brass key from a pigeon hole behind the desk. Q tried not to look completely horrified at the complete lack of modern innovation or security in the setup.

Helen led them up a narrow stairway and down a short hall before reaching an ajar door.

“Again, sorry we don’t have that honeymoon suite available, but I hope this’ll do,” she said as she pushed the door open and led them in. A man in overalls was throwing another log on the fire and Bond set their luggage down off to the side. He hooked his chin over Q’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him from behind.

“Really, Helen, it’s perfect. Besides, it doesn’t matter where we sleep, as long as we’re with each other.”

Q saw the woman put her hand over her heart at the sentiment and had to close his eyes to cover up him rolling them. He felt the warm press of lips along his jaw and an involuntary shiver ran through him.

“Oh, we should leave ya alone to warm up,” Helen said, nodding at Roger who got to his feet. “If ya boys need anything, just give us a ring downstairs. There should be enough towels and blankets, but let us know, and we’ll bring more up in a jiffy!” 

Roger guided Helen out of the room with a hand on her elbow and Bond broke their embrace to quickly lock the door behind them.

“What the fuck, Bond?” Q hissed, stepping into Bond’s path as the agent loosened his tie and shrugged out of his soaked suit jacket. “This is your plan? Hide in the middle of fucking nowhere Missouri and hope they didn’t follow us?”

Bond ignored Q in favor of unbuttoning his shirt.

“Also: our honeymoon? That’s the best you could come up with? What are we supposed to do with this?” Q gestured exaggeratedly at the single bed in the room.

Q received a raised eyebrow as his only response before Bond dropped trou.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Q turned around and marched towards the luggage that was piled in the corner. He rifled through his go bag until he heard the bathroom door shut. Stripping his wet socks from his feet, he threw them in a pile on top of Bond’s jacket with relish. 

He shrugged out of his coat and made quick work of changing out of his wet clothes into dry ones. He eventually settled himself in front of the fireplace, leaning against the bed, and donned the warmest pair of socks he’d brought with him. As he stared at the fire and listened to the sound of the shower running, his mind immediately reminded him of the electric charge feel of Bond’s fingers pressed against his stomach, the scrape of stubble against his cheek, and the eyeful he’d been graciously granted moments before.

He dropped his head back against the foot of the bed with a groan, conceding there was no way he’d sleep tonight.

[smolbeandrabbles]

Glow - Danny Rayburn x Reader (Bloodline)

☃❄!Holiday Fic 2!☃❄

I STG every time I see GIFs of him I’m like “Let me write for you some more...”

Author’s Note: Hello! Welcome to the second Holiday fic! So, spoilers, Danny is getting two... Because I realise that whenever I write him I always automatically go back to the familiarity of my 10 part series. Rather than, y’know, giving him another reader.

So whilst my friend and I called me out on it, we came up with this plot! Glow ~ Brett Eldredge  I’m officially pulling out all the original songs rather than Holiday classics... I’m sorry! 🤣🤣 Disclaimer: Lyrics not mine / Bloodline characters not mine / So - This is basically made up of throwing random questions at Midwesterner’s and some stuff I did when I spent Christmas with family in Chicago...! Premise: On a trip back to your parents, and the Christmas alcohol run, you figure Danny needs to learn about Midwest weather the hard way... Words: 2524 Warnings: Swearing / Drinking

This fire is nice But so are your eyes They twinkle when you smile Ain't felt this warm in a while That northern star Shines straight from your heart Pour on the bourbon it's gettin' late Let's melt all the frost on the window pane Let's never let this moment slip away Just stay, just stay You look good in the light of my Christmas tree You and the mistletoe and me You are my sunshine over a field of snow And I love to watch you glow Come on, just glow Come on and glow, just glow

---

The initial idea wasn’t really to have it pan out like this. You and Danny were going to have a fairly quiet Christmas - at least, that’s what you’d talked about. Maybe see Nolan, maybe go out to his restaurant... but you knew you weren’t going to see his family. Only, a few weeks before Christmas that plan went up in smoke, because when your parents invited you back home, and you said you wanted to stay with your boyfriend, they had simply said bring him too!

Your first thought was you might still get away with not going (not that you didn’t want to see your family of course. But you knew Danny needed you as much here), was that Danny wouldn’t warm to the idea at all and would rather stay home. Not the case. “Oh? Really!” “Yeah that’s what they said...” “That’d be nice-! I mean; you’re from all the way Midwest - I’ve obviously done a little moving from the Keys to here... but... I’ve never been out of State..! This will be nice!” You raised an eyebrow at him; “...You do realise that it’s gonna be freezing. Right? Snow, ice... you name it. You sure you can handle it?! Being a Florida native!!?” “I can handle it.” Danny gave a not of assurance “You ever seen snow and ice!?” He laughed; “Yeah-! You know we get freak weather down here.” “Storms and hurricanes are not blizzards and below freezing.” But Danny insisted; “I got this!” “Geeez... you better have a winter coat, and a good scarf and gloves!! And I still think you should be prepared to eat your words!!”

 ***

 And so he did. Although Danny was prepared to put on a brave face about it when it was cold but dry, not a speck of white in sight, and refused to complain even though it was obvious he wasn’t exactly enjoying it. “Missing your Florida heat-!?” You couldn’t help but tease him “Nah-! It’s just Winter Sun!!” You let that one go. Fairly certainly that Midwesterners would call a trip to Florida ‘Winter Sun’… wait, was that the joke?

 He got on with your parents and siblings just fine, which is exactly what you wanted, thinking on his family - but Danny never made himself hard to get on with. Just hard to get to know... There was a lot deep within that he carried everywhere he went; and Danny liked to hide this with a (mostly) positive outlook. Although, that fared better in his usual sunshine. Of course, once he’d volunteered his services for cooking, the more culinary skilled in your family jumped on that; and you knew Danny was going to spend the majority of Christmas Day showing off. Ah, I’m just a chef – He tried to play it down, with a beaming smile, but you obviously weren’t falling for it. Yes, try head of one of the best restaurants in Miami. And that wasn’t just your opinion.

 But then it snowed. And whilst he could look at it with a kind of childish wonder falling outside your window, and the way the sun sparkled upon it - when your mom asked you to walk down the road and stock up on alcohol, that was when reality set in. Because half way down the road - as if he wasn’t already complaining - the snow started falling again. It was light and not too bad for you; you were comfortable in a light jacket, you did have a scarf; but it was cotton instead of wool and looked like something you might be able to accessorise with in summer. Danny wasn’t. “How are you anywhere NEAR warm!” “I told you it was going to be freezing!” He jabbed a finger at you, pulling his hat down further over his ears, “You clearly don’t count this as freezing!” You wound your arms around his and put up your umbrella to catch the snow, and stop it falling on your already moody and cold Florida Boy. “I just think you run a little hotter down there.” That at least picked up his smirk and he nudged you; “Damn right.” You nudged him back; “Manners! Or I’ll shove you in it! Then you’ll know what cold really is…” “If you f**king dare-!” Danny had you laughing again; at how red his cheeks were, and his nose. “You look cold.” “Thanks! I am!!!” He buried his face in his scarf and huddled his body, in order to make best of his own warmth, putting his hands into his pockets. “Poor baby...” “It’s not funny! I’m suffering!” “Just seems like someone didn’t listen!” “I listened! I’m prepared! We don’t have to walk this!”

True enough, you could have had a warm cozy 5 minute car ride... “Well, now you can tell all your friends you’ve had the authentic Midwestern winter experience, including being outside on a walk in snow... you may exaggerate in depth... and didn’t die!” He grumbled again, “I could well die by the time we’ve finished!” You tsk’d him “Don’t be such a drama queen!” “And you’re expecting me to carry liquor back-!” “Would be helpful - will also warm you up...” you turned back to him with a grin “and we can’t very well drink and drive...”

You kept walking, but he slowed down, dragging his feet and trudging on purpose to really hit home with you how “difficult” this was for him. “...That’s not getting you there any faster!” “Well, where the f**k is this place!!?” You pointed ahead of you, “Just on that corner! Hey! You could run! That would warm you up!” Instead of saying a variant, and probably much less polite version, of screw you Danny opted to shove you instead. To his own peril, because it was a little too hard, and you ended up on the ground, in the snow.

He was laughing hard right away, which you supposed stopped him from grumbling but it also distorted his apology somewhat; “Sh-shit! I’m sorry!!!” You took about 5 full seconds to look up at him and react - “—oh! You are so dead!!!” “No! No! No!” He shrunk back - but too late as you grasped at the snow around you and threw it - “Stop!!” No way in hell you were about to stop though; as you scrambled to your feet and shook the snow from your clothing “Danny!!!” It was a whine. “Well I told you-!” You threw another lump of snow at him, he didn’t tell you anything, if he’d quit being such a drama queen you’d be there and back by now - “Stop! Dammit!!” “Oh no-! You full on deserve it-!”

And so, even though he was bitterly cold. The two of you wound up in a snow ball fight. The actual purpose of this walk soon forgotten. You were lucky no one else was around with the amount of yelling and laughing that was going on. Volume button clearly on max. Eventually your cold - and getting colder - boyfriend bent forward with his hands on his knees, exhausted. He took deep breaths after nearly every word, “That’s enough... I’m done... oh god...” You folded your arms, and teased him, ready to proclaim your victory; “Thought it might warm you up!” Danny held up his hand, “Maybe, a little. But, you’ve worn me out.” “Ahhh-! This must be the second most fun way to do that...” You couldn’t help your grin He ended up bending lower as he laughed “oh... god! Don’t! It hurts!” You approached him slowly, with a triumphant swagger to your step; “Do you give, Florida boy? Do I win?” “I didn’t say that.” “Do I win!?” You’d give him one more chance to give the right answer. He straightened “No.”

That was also his mistake, because the next thing Danny knew you’d wrestled him to another bent position and ice was sliding nicely down the back of his shirt. “No! NO!!” He almost shrieked, “F**k! Y/N!! Oh god!” “There. That ought to perk you up!” “Oh GOD!! Get it out!!” “Tell me I win and I’ll consider it!” “AH!!!!” It was certainly amusing to watch him twist his body to shake it out of his shirt quickly, to no avail. “Danny.” “I give, I give!!!” He flailed around trying to remove the ice himself - and by the time you’d got him to hold still to find it, it had pretty much melted.

“I hate you.” He was once again huddled up, looking sorry for himself, as you both continued your walk. You were still smiling, replaying his helpless shrieks in your head; “I love you too. It’ll be warm inside you’ll dry off in no time!” “Then we gotta go back!” “At which point the alcohol will warm us-!” You patted his chest; “Danny we got this covered!!”

**

In fact you spent a good hour perusing the shelves of the store, and he seemed to perk up a bit. Danny wasn’t a wine connoisseur himself, but you knew he knew how to pair dishes and wines. And as he selected them, equally enjoyed telling you how all the flavours were going to work. Then got to laugh at you going a little mad with the mixers. “Whiskey-!” “I knew you’d drag me down here!” “Hush...” He traced his fingers over the shelves, musing over the bottles “What, are you gonna top shelf me?” “If they have it...” “This better be the one you rave about.” He stopped with a smirk, and turned back to you, fingers on the bottle; “It’s gonna blow your mind.”

 Funnier still was the cashiers face when he saw all the alcohol, and you had to swear it was for your whole family to last all of Christmas and New Year. And to top that, when he politely asked for your ID and turned to Danny; Your partners face was a picture; “You’re KIDDING-!?” You eyed him; “Tell me you have it.” The look he gave you was murder, “Have you seen my face-!?” The cashier laughed; “If you have it, it wouldn’t go amiss sir...” Danny scoffed and handed it over, “I know you’re gonna try to make me feel good about looking under 21. I’m still insulted...” “That seems to be in order!” He grinned and handed it back to Danny who was still grumbling.

You were staring intently at his face as you left the store; “Fancy getting ID’d in your 40s...” “Clearly my youthful good looks-!” “Amen.”  He nudged you at your sarcasm; “Hey! We don’t need a repeat of earlier with all these bottles!” “Oh, I think we do! This time ice is going down your shirt!” “Oh I have no doubt you’ll get revenge..!” You smirked gently “Damn f**kin’ right!”

** By the time you got back the sky has cleared up. But Danny once again looked cold and worse for wear - so you set the fire going and bundled him in blankets on the sofa with a scarf. (After changing his shirt, of course). “Too early to pour whiskey?” “I wouldn’t say so...” You snuggled up with him but he was still grumbling away; “If I get a cold cuz of you-!” “Oh-! It’s just woe and suffering always with you, ain’t it Danny Rayburn.” “Yes. Actually. Especially with you...”  You fell silent as to the mock seriousness of his tone. “Geez I’m kidding-!” He wound his arms around you and kissed you gently “.... I love you. I wouldn’t change this for anything.” You pretended to huff; “Just checking!” Danny pulled you further to him and placed his head to yours, “You never should need to check though... should you? I would hope you knew.” “Danny...” Your voice was tender, because the last thing you wanted to do was lead him down that road, especially at this time of year; “I do... I do know.”

You shared a gentle, sweet kiss, before you were interrupted. By a sneeze. “Oh shit!” You hoped you hadn’t spoken too soon. “If this is a cold! It’s on you!” “At least whiskey is medicinal!” You grinned, but he didn’t find it all that funny.   “A cold for Christmas! Perfect!” “I think you’re overreacting to one sneeze Daniel Rayburn; I was way less dressed than you.” “You didn’t have ice stuck down your shirt!!” “Okay fair, I take the blame for that.” He huddled further into the blankets and you really did hope that it wasn’t a proper cold setting in. Or you would never hear the end of it. You sat and cuddled and continued to talk quietly, you running your hands through his hair and giving him soft kisses every so often.

 The next interruption was on behalf of your parents. Looking from you, not really all that bothered with the fire or blanket, to Danny, blankets and pillows and still wrapped in a scarf and as close to the fire as he could get himself on the couch, and sighed. Typical all they had asked for was an alcohol run. “What have you done to him!” Both of you looked up and you held up your hands defensively - “Nothing!” “Ha!! Nothing!!” He laughed “Sounds like something!” “It was a snow ball fight, no big.” “She fights dirty!” You gasped and nudged him hard; “I was raised right!” “Ah, well you’re a fighter, I knew that one already...” Your parents both gasped in mock horror at the attitude of their daughter; “Y/N!” “Oh come on! He needs to get used to the Midwest!” “Gently!” “What-!? No! Throw him out in the snow and leave him there for a few hours!” You laughed, “Then he’ll be a natural! That’s the only way you learn!” Danny narrowed his eyes as you, folding his arms; “Learned that the Miami hard way, did you?” You turned back to him, “You should ask the past me and her sunburn that.” He sucked his breath between his teeth; “Ow! Yeah I feel ya!”

Your parents brought you back to the real conversation; “How’s the alcohol looking!” “Good! Think we cleared the store!” Danny raised his glass “Thank you! Both of you-! And Danny, you don’t have to put up with her..!” “Oh!” He smiled “I rather believe she puts up with me... she’s no trouble.” He grinned, with a little wink; “Well... maybe a bit of trouble!”

 Your parents left you to it after that, and eventually his warmth and being cuddled here with him and blankets and the fire got the better of both of you. So when they returned a little bit later to call you both for dinner, you were both lying tangled in each other’s arms on the couch. Danny’s around you; protective, and yours arms around him; comforting... “Do we wake them?” “No... leave them to it...” “They’re good together don’t you think?” “Good for each other. I would say. It’s nice to see!” “Maybe she could have introduced him to the snow a little nicer.” “Ah... I think... if we know anything... Danny didn’t mind one bit!”

---

🌨 2 down, 4 to go! 🌨 But still happy to take on any requests! 😊

[deimosmeansdread]

( @acharlatan​)

Of course, Jackson remembers the night well. Head dazed by one too many vodka sodas and a heavy heart from yet another failed conversation with his ex. It was times like that he was glad to have a friend like Derek, he was someone he could speak to without fear of judgement, even when his rantings were beginning to make him sound like a teenager. “You know what?” Jackson challenged, if the topic were now open for discussion he may as well get it off his chest, “Did I touch your ass? Sure. Was it an accident? Absolutely. Did I leave it there a little longer than I should have, possibly? I didn’t know it was a crime, ok, for a straight dude to tell him best pal that he’s got a nice ass.”

Admittedly, it was nice that Neve’s name could be spoken without opening up a therapy session which would both emotionally exhaust him and the poor person who had to listen. It’s not something you want to unpack again when you’re confined in an old chevy on a 20-hour drive down to Miami. Perhaps that’s where all the negativity should stay, up in Chicago and finally lay to rest. That used to be the beauty of moving around state to state in his early twenties, so many fresh starts that he hardly ever felt begrudged with his past.

“Maybe I would have chosen you if you hadn’t been so quick to say you’d kill me,” the retaliation was stated as a matter of fact. If it really came down to it, and he absolutely had to pick to sleep with any male, the probability of that person being Derek was far more likely than Gerard, Jackson just didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

Jackson screws up his face at the idea of sleeping with Isaac, “I mean… all that sugar in his system, the kid’s stamina has gotta be off the charts.” Jackson signals to pull off the road and onto another, finally, the fields of infinite corn had come to an end, replaced with blue skies and fluffy clouds. “Kill Benjamin,” because if you’re going to kill anyone it may as well be the guy that caused your break up, “Marry Teirney and fuck myself. I don’t think I could marry me, I’m really messy and annoying and I’m definitely a blanket hog.” He clears his throat, cracking open the window a little so that Bella would hopefully stop excitedly panting as she chews on his lucky dice, “Alright, last one, Alma, Damien and Benjamin,”

The corn ends and is replaced by a typical small Midwestern town. Strip malls, dingy drug stores, chain restaurants and a cement-gray middle school, generic as Wonderbread and nearly as bland. It’s the epitome of generic, a carbon copy of a carbon copy. It shouldn’t strike any chords. And yet.

Derek knows this kind of town like the back of his own hand. This, not the bustle of Chicago– this is the kind of country he was raised in, the place where his life started. Where every new day felt like an ending, every shift of his powers, from a tiny spark to the roaring fire that burnt down his family home. Where his dreams of a normal life burnt down with it.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he left the safety of Chicago, it’s constant noise and movement and keep-it-moving energy. Out here, it’s like time has slowed down, compressed into nothing. The decade he’s spent avoiding towns like this turned to less than the blink of an eye, and suddenly he’s a scared teen again, his own fate out of his hands. It makes the whole shitshow of the last few weeks even worse to deal with, all the progress he’s made– joining the Jems, building a life for himself– undone by one impulsive decision, and he’s just as powerless as he was at 16, body and brain on fire.

Derek sinks a bit lower in his chair, trying to keep his eyes on nothing but the road ahead. His left leg starts to bounce, a nervous tic he hasn’t seen in a while; he crosses his arms over his chest, and tries to ignore everything.

“Yeah, it is a pretty great ass,” he says. It comes out flatter than he intended, and he ducks his head to look at his phone so he doesn’t have to face Jackson. He scrolls through messages without reading a word. “And you’re right about being a blanket hog. You sleep like a big, swaddled baby.”

Derek doesn’t want to think about Damien right now. Sure, he’d brought him up first, at the very beginning of the damn game. But that was before his mood took a turn. “Uh,” he mumbles, “Marry Alma, because I have standards. I don’t think I could handle Benjy in the sack, but I’m not into the whole office romance thing either, so…” He makes a face. “Can I pass? Or kill them both?”

[lemon-writings]

Hamish Update Pt. III

Genre: Literary fiction // Word count: 77,037

Here we are! Chapters VII-IX! I’ve written these chapters really recently, so I can go a little more in-depth with the process. The second half of this book (and specifically this particular trio of chapters, for some reason) is definitely the part I’m most proud of. Writing everything coming to fruition is just so satisfying. Is this what people who write books with actual plot feel like? Because it makes me consider writing books with real plot.

But in all honesty, I really enjoy writing this part of Hamish. I’m super happy with how everything’s turning out. One problem I do have with the latter half is that it is super depressing to write all the time, especially with the amount of rain we’ve been getting in Ohio right now (we love depression), so it is taking me a little longer to write than normal, since I keep sidetracking with random projects to try taking my mind off the deeper things. But when I am working on it, the words just flow. It’s beautiful.

Chapter VII

Epitaph: “I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I? Not at home with the dead nor with the living.”-Anne Carson, Antigone

Here is what’s been building this entire time: the funeral. That, and everything funerals entail, with the Celebration of Life and whatnot. The first time I wrote this, I read the funeral scene to my mom in full detail, and she started crying, because it reminded her of her father’s funeral. I, personally, loathe funerals, for what boils down to the fact that I am greatly horrified by being in the same room as someone who I once knew to be alive. That, and the crippling fear of death most people experience at least once in their lives.

There’s also a lot of Horacio’s... fantasies. There’s something deeply personal about the way I write him, sometimes, that makes rereading certain parts difficult. Horacio, in his darkest moments, feels he deserves bad things happening to him, nearly craves them, and he hates himself for it. The amount of self-loathing in this work is high.

Excerpts: 

Horacio, as always, is concerned about Hamish’s state of being alive, because that man always looks halfway dead, and at times, he’s more ghost than living person

The question of if you were dead or alive laid on my tongue, begging to be asked. Maybe I should’ve asked you. Maybe I should’ve checked your pulse. Maybe I should’ve laid my head on your chest and listened to your heartbeat. Maybe I should’ve left with you then and there and avoided the trap Leon kept guiding us to.

Hot take from a Farm Child: broken machinery is one of the most haunting things you can ever see. I could probably wax poetic about how terrible their beauty is, but I really don’t think anyone wants to hear about farm machines for three hours. (On a completely serious note, my uncle’s coat got tangled in a grain auger yesterday, and he could have died. Be safe around farm machinery. Please. It can be really dangerous, even if you’ve been around it for 60+ years.)

Leon’s descriptions are always some variant of men thinking being tall is intimidating. 

Leon bared his teeth once more, the animalistic beauty of it all making me wonder where Leon ended and his rage began. Primal is often used as a way to pull down others, to say you are not advanced the way I am, but Leon’s rage seemed like an advancement of humanity, a way of saying I have advanced my own humanity through my anger. He was gorgeous in the same way broken tractors on the side of the road are, monolithic kings taken over by the passage of time, their steel teeth rusty and eternal.

Did I reference “Father” by Warsan Shire? Yes. Yes, I did. Hamish is a huge Warsan Shire fan, because, like, it has his vibes. 

You recited a poem about fathers, about death, about life, speaking it as if it were scripture. When you finished, you began again. Or perhaps you never ended, speaking this poem forwards, then backwards, then repeating cyclically.

Yeet.

Chapter VIII

Epitaph: “I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.”-Catherynne M. Valente, “The Red Girl”, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

There’s a lot of plot stuff that happens in this chapter, so unfortunately, I do have to be a little shorter when it comes to this summary, but let it be said that I am not meant to be a thriller/action author. Do I enjoy watching Indiana Jones and Star Wars? Yes, I do. Should I be writing anything close to that? Absolutely not. It takes a lot of effort to do, and even with that, I would say that any sort of action scene I write is... not exactly “half-baked”, but most certainly not up to par with the rest of my writing. I’ll need to edit this chapter heavily the next time I go through Hamish.

That being said, there are moments in this chapter that I am proud of. Horacio and Ofelia’s interactions in this chapter are some of my favorites, just because they’re some of the only characters in this book who don’t violently hate/distrust each other.

Excerpts: 

When I mentioned kudzu to my mother, she mentioned it was an invasive species she’d seen a lot of during her time in the south, which just confirmed that it was a great metaphor to use. That’s always a sign, right?

I looked down at the flowers, then at her, wiser than anyone I’d ever met, the freedom ripping open her seams like something terrible and sharp, the parts of her that were so carefully cultivated spilling out of her like kudzu.

Horacio feels like he’s the only real person in a world of ghosts. The disconnect between Horacio and the people around him is heavily based upon the first time I disassociated. We watched the Blue Man Group in Chicago on a music/Spanish department trip, and the second I walked out of the building, I thought I was a freaking ghost. I had my first panic attack at 14 because I didn’t know if I was actually experiencing life. It was a wild experience.

Next to Ofelia, I looked out of place. Ofelia was hazy and magical in her presence, looking more like a dreamy memory than a real person, as if I touched her, my hand would touch only air. I was the solid type of real, unfortunately. Tall and unnaturally skinny, with a gritty, starving look to myself, the two of us next to each other were like a pastel-covered, out-of-focus impressionist painting next to a photograph of childhood labor in Industrial Revolution-era factories.

There’s also a confrontation with Leon that has some, um, spoilery moments. Leon is an asshole. I kind of love him.

Chapter IX

Epitaph: “[Grief is pain internalized, abscess of the soul. Anger is pain as energy, sudden explosion.]”-Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

Again, there’s a lot going on in this chapter. A lot. Marcus the bodyguard makes another appearance (underappreciated character of the book) and acts as a guardian angel. Bless Marcus. Seriously.

This chapter is more introspective than the last, so I enjoyed writing it a bit more. Or... a lot more, actually. I was not created to write action scenes, and I accept my fate. Horacio’s musings on fate are long-winded and beautiful and what I’m meant to write. It’s just a chapter of him reflecting, pining, and wishing he was in a different situation. Which. Fair.

Moments like this make me realize I am a cruel god who treats her characters terribly.

Excerpts: 

Starting this chapter strong with the true weighted blanket: death.

Death cloaked me like your blanket.

As I said before, Marcus? Underutilized character. I use him as much as I can, but the plot makes it difficult to use him as much as I wish. He’s the man we deserve.

Marcus was smart, was good at playing the game we all played without making it apparent that he was playing it. He knew what he was doing. “I want the best for Hamish,” Marcus said. He looked into my eyes. “You do, too.”

Horacio takes a moment to think awful, rage-colored thoughts about the people around him, which are, of course, one of my favorite things to wax poetic about. He’s a salty man, and he has all rights to be, because this entire work is just “things to be salty about, the novel”. Poor Horace. He just wants to live in a gay daydream, but he’s stuck in a nightmare. 

(Not to sound too Midwestern, but OPE, the shade.)

These people played their sick, twisted games like gods, forcing everyone to play along for their survival while they watched and knew exactly what they were doing to the rest of us mortals around them. In that moment, I was filled with the type of righteous anger that made me understand why people were drawn to religion. I wanted a higher power to strike them down, to make an example of them all, to say don’t do this, or you’ll end up like them.

I sounded like my parents, like all the religious nuts I’d ever met, the ones who said that those who didn’t fall their doctrine were inferior, were going to die, and suffer for being different. Is that how it begins? Is anger the true root of all cruelty?

That last line, is anger the true root of all cruelty? was probably my favorite line when I first wrote Hamish. It’s sort of become a thesis statement for Horacio’s past and the way he sees the world. 

Lastly, of course, we have

The Jams

We have a fine selection of songs here, a lot from my Lucy playlist (Lucy has one of my favorite playlists I’d ever made).

Oh No!!! - grandson

Temple Priest (feat. Paul Wall & Kota the Friend) - MISSIO

Destroy Me - grandson

BTSTU - Jai Paul

Seven Devils - Florence + The Machine

Pretty Little Head - Eliza Rickman

That’s the tea, y’all. If you’re interested in this and hearing writing updates for Hamish, then ask to be added to the tags list!

[boystownbirdie]

LMWTV4U: GOT S7E6

Welcome back to Let Me Watch TV 4 U, the blog where I watch TV for you! Tonight we’re talking bout Game of Thrones season 7 episode 6, “Beyond the Wall” aka Disney Presents The Walking Dead on Ice! Let’s jump right in to this icy abyss, shall we?!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

We open on a curious panning across of a map, and no I’m not talking about the opening credits. It looks like the giant map/table in Dragonstone? 

However we quickly cut to our Eastwatch crew...

...who are marching one by one further and further North. We’ve got Bae, (the artist formerly known as) Stoney, New-Thor (let’s just say Thor, shall we? He’s not so new anymore), Gingerbae, Gingerbun, Eyepatch, the Hound and approx 5 rando nightswatch dudes and/or wildlings who are doomed because no backstory = dead first.

First, we get some ice-breakers (sorry can’t stop won’t stop) when Thor tells us he’s never even seen snow before and I’m like bb boi come here to Chicago I’ll show you some midwestern winters! Thor is also still feeling a little salty toward Eyepatch and Gingerbun for selling him off to the red witch while the Hound keeps score and is like, Thor you didn’t really have it so bad. Gingerbun hands Thor the olive branch in the form of a flask.

Meanwhile, Gingerbae asks Bae about Khaleesi and Bae is all coy but GB sees right through that. Gingerbae helpfully reminds us that he still loves Brienne of Tarth (aka Ladyknight) very much.

Bae and Stoney swing their swords around (not a euphemism) and Bae tries to give his huge fancy sword to Stoney since it belonged to Stoney’s dad. Stoney is like naw, it’s yours man, give it to your KIDS. And we’re supposed to be thinking, whoa! Is Bae on the market for marriage/kids? Cuz sign us all up! Later Eyepatch tells Bae that Bae doesn’t really look like Ned Stark which, duh, cuz we know Bae is Ned’s nephew. But also Bae’s bio-dad was Khaleesi’s bro and apparently had silver-white hair like her so WHERE DID BAE GET HIS LEWKS FROM? Heaven, apparently.

Before we get into the meat, pun intended, let’s pop into Winterfell, shall we?

Sansa and Arya discuss gender roles and Arya tells us a tale of their dad, Ned Stark, sort of tacitly approving of her being a fighter rather than a lady. And then she’s like, speaking of, dad was killed by the Lannisters with YOUR help, Sansa. Arya brings up the letter she found last week that poor bb Sansa was forced to right by QPC and is not happy about it. And Sansa is really caught off guard but also like STEP ALL THE WAY OFF, I have been THROUGH IT. They argue about the past few years and who’s had it the worst but also as Leslie Knope would say, uteruses before duderuses, ya know?

Later, Sansa is talking to Littlefinger, who set up all this nonsense anyway and he’s like well Ladyknight can be your referee since she lurves both of you? But then Sansa sends Ladyknight away to King’s Landing to be her proxy in this upcoming summit with QPC. Towards the end of ep, Sansa decides to do some snooping of her own a la Arya last week and finds Arya’s suitcase full of faces from the face-swapping-assassin-training-academy which Arya dropped out of after a misunderstanding with a professor who wanted her killed. Sansa is like srsly, WTF? And Arya explains the face-swapping thing which sounds crazy the first time you hear it, but so did dragons and we got them now so all’s fair, right? Arya grabs a knife and basically threatens to cut Sansa’s face off but then hands Sansa the knife and scoots outta there. So at the end of the day, no Stark-on-Stark crime this week but stay tuned!

We pop in to see Khaleesi and Tyrion chatting by the fire…

She’s like, you know what I like about you? You’re not brave. And he’s like umm thanks? And then she’s like all of my fave bois are brave but stupid and she includes Bae on that list. And T is like, so you’re taking a liking to him, eh? They discuss strategy and have a little tiff wherein Khaleesi again questions T’s loyalty. And then he’s like btw, you said you can’t have kids so...who gets to be in charge when you die? And she’s like let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, and he’s like it’s called a LIVING WILL for a reason, babe.

Back North of the wall...

Bae and Gingerbae spot a bear but they’re like, that’s weird�� he’s got blue eyes-ahhh zombie bear! Zombie bear kills one of the no-name/ no-backstory guys (like we care!?) and maims Gingerbun. Eyepatch smartly cauterizes the wound with his flaming sword while the Hound is too busy having PTSD about fire. Really unfortunate to be afraid of fire in a world without electricity, huh?

Bae and Gingerbae spot a small crew of ice zombies and decide to take one of them prisoner. During the scuffle, Bae kills a leader-ice-zombie and suddenly all of his pals drop dead too. They find out that you kill the leader, the rest die too- good to know! But in capturing their prisoner-zombie, his squeals seem to alert the 5 million other ice zombies to their location and next thing you know, the crew is about to be trapped. Bae smartly tells Thor to run back to the wall and tell Khaleesi the scoop. Poor Thor has to give up his hammer before he leaves so that the rest of the crew has more zombie-smashing tools.

SOMEHOW, I still don’t understand the logistics of it all, but Bae and crew get stuck on this little island surrounded by a frozen lake. The 5 billion zombies surround them but can’t walk further into the lake without falling in. It’s a real pickle. Luckily, Thor does make it back to the wall to tell No-Knuckles to send word to Khaleesi.

Speaking of Khaleesi, that raven flew fast because she already got the scoop. She is DECKED OUT in her cold-weather best and is heading North to save the day with all 3 dragons. Tyrion is like BAD IDEA HUN but she goes anyway. While Khaleesi flies like the actual wind on her #1 dragon, poor Gingerbun has succumbed to his injures or maybe freezes in the night and is no longer with us. So, much like Rose must let go of frozen Jack (but why does she say “I’ll never let go” as she is literally letting go? I’ll never understand the word choice), Eyepatch has to burn Gingerbun’s body before he becomes a zombie too.

Sidenote: Why didn’t everyone bring weapons made of dragonglass or valyrian steel? We know now that only these 2 things plus fire kills the ice zombies and Bae just mined heaps of dragonglass from Khaleesi’s basement for this very purpose. Sometimes I think I should be the King in the North, ya know!?

But back to the battle, the Hound decides to skip stones across the lake like an idiot, which leads the ice zombies to learn that the lake is frozen solid again. Now that the zombies can cross the lake, they attack the crew and they are VICIOUS. Bae and co retreat to another little island but are completely surrounded and basically dead. Bae is tweakin’ out probably thinking about what a bad idea all of this was, when all of the sudden, Khaleesi’s dragons have landed!

They all fly around burning up ice zombies by the hundreds and narrowly missing our crew. After Khaleesi successfully wipes out a good number of zombies, she lands to let her priority boarding pass holders on dragon #1 with her. Meanwhile, Bae is still fighting off some zombies. The #1 in charge ice zombie aka the Night King, throws a giant ice spear at #2 or #3 dragon (honestly idk, let’s say #3) and makes it on the first try. It’s sad that #3 gets speared and all but I’m kinda like wow nice shot. Dragon #3 falls into the icy water and sinks and Khaleesi is weepin’ about it.

At the same time, Bae is now fully overrun by interloping zombies and this FLIGHT IS ABOUT TO DEPART, honey! He falls into an ice-hole and Khaleesi sees the Night King winding up his ice javelin so she has to go. I know what you’re thinking, wow Bae is super dead, right? He fell into a frozen lake whilst being attacked by zombies. WELL YOU ARE WRONG.

Bae crawls outta that ice hole, grabs his fancy sword, and starts walking. Soon enough the zombies see him walking in a non-zombie-like fashion so they are on it. BUT Bae’s uncle Benjen (who is pretty much the only person whose relationship with Bae is unchanged by his whole bio-dad and bio-mom thing!) rolls up on his horse with his incense-swinger! Uncle B saves Bae (remember Uncle B saved Bran last season?) and sticks him on his horse, but stays behind to fight off zombies with his incense-swinger. Bae, who is like 65% Leo-from-Titanic-frozen at this point, heads back to the wall.

The rest of the crew are back at Eastwatch and we learn that the Hound is the one who’ll be bringing the “sample zombie” back to show QPC. Khaleesi is watching from the top of the wall to see if Bae makes it back while Stoney is like, let it go, he’s dead, I’m alive and recently not-Stoney...when suddenly Bae rides back to camp.

On the ship back to Khaleesi-ville, Khaleesi sees Bae on the operating table and notices that he has a stab-scar on his heart. Remember when Bae died and then got brought back to life but then Bae has been super secretive about it? Well the secret's out babe! She watches him being warmed up/revived and sits there watching him sleep for awhile #gottaenjoytheview. When he wakes up (still topless!) he’s like wow I’m so sorry #3 dragon died this was a horrible plan. And she’s like no, I’m glad I saw the army of zombies. I will fight with you, Bae.

And Bae is like wow, also I know I said I wouldn’t kneel to you but honey, I will. Then he calls her Dany and she’s like...eww...my creepy bro used to call me that. And he’s like well then I’ll just call you MY KWEEN. And I’m like yassss gaga. Also they hold hands. Also, she’s like I can’t have kids, ok?!? So just… cards on the table. They hold hands some more and it looks like we might get a little kiss but naw, she’s G2G.

In our last scene, we see thousands of zombies working together (good for you! teamwork!) to pull dragon #3 out of the frozen lake. The Night King walks over and touches him and BAM! ZOMBIE DRAGON. SHIT IS GONNA GET REAL.

Let’s recap:

Biggest surprise this ep: Uncle Benjen? How did you know Bae was in this part of town?

Biggest letdown: I wanted more witty banter from Thor! Also, enough with the will-they won’t-they, GoT. This isn’t Cheers!

Important fashion moments: Khaleesi’s Wintertime Fantasy Realness was GIVING ME LIFE. THAT. COAT. 

Who died this ep? Gingerbun, a lot of ice zombies, Uncle Benjen (although he was kinda already dead?) and dragon #3. RIP Gingerbun I will miss being confused-ly attracted to you.

Thanks for reading! Tell your friends and subscribe!?

[leepennino]

The Sky Sucks

I must have been 5 or 6 years old, sitting outside on the sidewalk of my only childhood home. A pink house, that my mother and father - who tirelessly restored it called “MAUVE” and what the rest of our tiny town of 3,000 people in Momence, Illinois called “Embarassing”. We were an outsider family in this town of people who’s familial lineage ran so deep and they farmed all the land around us for all the years it’s been a farmtown.  There were the Johnsons, the Gilberts, the Murrays and everyone else who was related to them. We were the Goodrich’s from Chicago and the only family we had, who we followed to Momence were the Gobervilles. 

The Gobervilles literally lived on the other side of the tracks... 4 sets of railroad tracks that kept them far away from the rest of the town. All the houses on that side of town were pretty disheveled and most of the residents were unemployed. When we visited our cousins, in their dark dank house we felt like we were in a scary world very far from the christian farm town we had known. Kids literally ran around the streets without shoes and often had dirt on their clothes and faces, not because they hadn’t bathed but most yards on the East Side had no grass. This is the deepest part of the midwest where people actually somehow got southern accents and were pregnant by the age of 13. 

As I sat on the sidewalk my dad popped out of the house and said “Mom says I have to go and take you for a haircut, let’s go.”

My mom thought of me as her little princess.. which, I know sounds really lame and someone growing up with that usually turns out equally as lame. When I was this age I still had my baby blonde hair that was barely ever cut, it hung long down to my butt and I had bright blue eyes. My mom was obsessed with me, always showering me with compliments and “you’re so pretty” “You’re my little angel”  She was a bit obsessed with me, as all moms are I’m sure. But, my mom was especially in love- in a weird selfish way. I believed her words of “You’re my favorite, don’t tell anyone I said that” landed on me because I looked exactly like her. At an early age I knew this was probably not a cool thing to say to one child of three. And, anyway.. my brother and my sister were actually the coolest ones. I looked to them for everything, companionship, playtime, their cool clothes, my sister’s crimped hair, the way she danced to MTV and my brother’s room filled with black and blue toys instead of pink and flesh colored like mine. Jim and Julie had cool friends and even shared a pet iguana named Beavis. So, when I sat down in the salon chair,  6 year old Adi decided she needed a change, and something very ‘cool.’

Across from me in the salon were the normal posters, showing various styled and cut hair to inspire the customer to be brave and try something new. There were men with flat tops, shaved heads with all sorts of designs on the sides of their heads, lightning bolts, the Bull’s logo and zig zags. And there was one poster that really stood out. It was a large poster, a glamour shot of a woman on a deep black background. Small blips of light like lazers behind her. She looked at me with a confidence that said “ you can be this if you try” She had purple eyeshadow, very blue eyes and black eyeliner that accentuated them like a lioness. Her cheeks were airbrushed with glitter and a fade from coral to pink ending with white high on her cheekbones. And her hair, that’s what really won me over. It wasn’t long and soft and blonde like mine, it was dark, short and spikey. This woman was hot. She was sexy and she looked like a renegade. This woman was pretty much everything I currently was not, especially in my mom’s eyes. This woman on the poster could never be called a princess and I wanted to embody her look of dissident. 

When the high-school aged hair dresser sat me down and draped a vinyl cape over me I knew what I was going to do. 

“Just a trim, huh Dad?” She said looking to my dad for approval. 

“Yeah.” 

I slowly and confidentally kept my gaze to the poster lady’s eyes and squeeked out in my tiny voice “ No, I want that.” and pointed to the poster. 

“Oh... what?” The hair dresser questioned. 

“Dad, I want my hair like hers.” Pointing to the poster. 

My dad walked over, kneeled next to me and put his head beside mine to make sure my gaze wasn’t looking at the poster directly next to it, an image of a small girl with ribbons in her hair. 

He saw what I saw, the 30 something super model with lazers behind her. “Honey, are you sure?”

“Yes.”

So, the teen hair dresser lopped my hair off quicker than I thought possible. She kept me pointed away from the mirror, likely knowing I’d squeel to see my blonde locks disappearing. When she spun me around and I looked at myself I immediately knew I looked GOOD. I not only looked good, I looked hot and new and my blonde hair was surprisingly gone. The inch long hair was now only my brown roots, they had been awaiting this day and new era of cool rebellion. 

My dad helped me up into his 1991 Ford Ranger and I rolled the window down to feel the summer breeze on my newfound neck and ears on the short ride home, down the town’s single main drag, Dixie Highway to our Mauve home on Maple St. 

My dad brought me home to a puzzled and hysterical mother that didn’t know what to do with her daughter that now looked like her son. I felt pretty dumb. 

Every few weeks we’d head up to Chicago an hour away from Momence going a full 60 miles an hour for 60 minutes to visit Grandma Dorothy. My grandma lived in a house that had zero rules or restrictions. We did and ate anything we wanted and we were often accompanied with the Goberville cousins, John, Tony and Robbie. 

Dorothy had endless amounts of Fannie Mae candies, oreo cookies, ice cream and cases of RC Cola stacked on the steps to the basement. She aimed to keep us hydrated and happy with whatever we wanted. Dorothy isn’t the grandma to make home made meals and she had an extra freezer in the basement filled with Sam’s Club frozen Veggie Lasagna, Family sized Turtle Cheesecakes, Chicken Kievs and other easy to prepare meals and desserts for 6-10 people.  

Back in Momence, my dad mowed the lawn, drank beer and sat on a new maroon leather couch while my mom cried and threw all of my lacy outgrown dresses in the trash. In Chicago, we were LIVING THE LIFE. 

It was a standard 90 degree Midwestern summer day. Hotter than any other place on planet earth and the humidity made the tiny hairs on our faces drip with sweat.  My grandfather, Sonzo, ran a small power washing business.  So, while he was power washing semi-trucks needing a clean on their way across America, we kids would run the place and our grandma would read romantic novels. Grandpa’s equipment was always something we’d get into. He had  large 500 gallon drums that served as pools for us kids in the summer. Pools that were strapped on the back of a pull-behind trailer, but they still were mini pools. 

As we were splashing and playing my first-ever real life crush, Keith, the neighbor came by. He didn’t notice me and I didn’t really care until I realized he probably didn’t recognize me with my new haircut. I also realized I was not being babied in the way I normally was. The boys were treating me like a normal human, allowing me to splash and scream. They weren’t lifting me out of the pool as they generally would, they weren’t telling me to go inside and hang out with grandma on the couch.  As I was putting two and two together I realized I was finally in!  In the club, the club of being loud and crazy and filled with a summer’s rage that could not be stopped.

 I kind of figured my new haircut had something to do with it all. I asked my brother “Hey, Jim, do I look like a boy” And he kind of shrugged me off and replied “Yeah, I guess so”. Oh my god.. I AM A BOY! I instantly remember taking off my shirt and I felt like I was one of them, splashing away bare chested and having the most fun I had ever had at grandma’s house. We played and played and I laughed and knew I would never be dismissed again thanks to the poster woman I was now a fierce kid that everyone accepted and loved. 

As the sun began to set and the air grew colder we put the top back on the water drum and ran inside to grab as many fudgcicles we could eat. We sat in the backyard gobbling away the ice cream bars. I was so calm, happily I looked up at the sky and said with my new found confidence. “This Sucks!” Everything went silent. This seems like a simple word to be used by kids, but this was not what a 6 year old Adi Goodrich was supposed to say. The Gobervilles used that kind of language freely, but not us, not the Goodrichs. We were the good cousins that obeyed the adults and would never use poor language. I obviously had no idea what that word even meant looking up happily at the clouds. My brother shrieked as I said it. “ADI!” Scolding me like a parent would normally do. I was embarrassed and felt my coolness slowly disolving. Jon, Tony and Robbie began laughing and I felt my eyes instantly moisten. Trying to keep it together I dropped my head and became quiet. They all noticed my instant embarrassment and started making fun of me “Aw, Adi baby is cryyying” “Poor baby!” Jim, being the good brother he was put his arms around me and assured me it was okay “Adi, it’s okay, but you can’t say things like that.” And, I lost it.. I began weeping and I left my ice cream on the table and went inside to find Dorothy. I bursted through the door screaming and crying. She probably thought I was hurt saying “What’s wrong, what happened” I couldn’t obviously tell her “ I said a bad word and now I”m not a cool again” So I blurted out “they called me a boy!” and I continued to cry. “awwwww...Adi, it’s okay, I love your new haircut! It’s like mine! Don’t you think grandma is pretty? You look like me! You don’t look like a boy” She put her hands on my shoulders looked square at me and said “We just need to fix it up a bit.” 

I’m assuming all good midwestern grandma’s are the same.. all having a handy salon ready in their bathroom. You could curl, dye, crimp, cut and style anyone at anytime you needed to without spending too much at the salon. So, my grandma placed a vinyl cap with tiny holes on my head and described ‘tipping’ to me. “It’s just a little bit of blonde pops, we’ll dye it and then we’ll curl it. Those boys are going to love your new hair.”  She proceeded by using a tiny hook to pull out portions of my hair to dye. I sat for 45 minutes with a strong smell of chemicals eating away my new brown hair. After the dye set she permed my hair, more chemicals and more sitting in the bathroom. Dorothy smoked her long Viceroy cigarettes the entire time. She washed and dried my hair and styled it with a little mouse. I looked into the mirror with my grandma saying “Isn’t it cute, you look like Shirley Temple! Oh my god, you look just like her! You look adorable” I looked at my self in the mirror with horror and back to my grandma and realized that I didn’t look like Shirley Temple at all. What I looked like was a 65 year old Grandma Goberville with a puff on top of my head that was peppered with bits of bright blonde curls. I did not feel sexy or mysterious or cool, I felt like an old woman inside a 6 year old body. And I no longer felt like an honorary neighborhood kid in the boys club. 

I smiled a tiny smile of embarrassment and remained silent as my proud grandma brought me down the carpeted stairs, into the cigarette smelling kitchen, pushing open the metal 1970′s era door, walking me down along the house, down the long sidewalk to the backyard where all the boys were lounging in the sun. I joined all my cousins and brother on the pavement and sat down quietly hoping they wouldn’t notice.. Jim said it looked nice and as soon as my grandma left my cousin Tony hit it perfectly with the most current 90′s pop culture reference. “Adi! You’re Boy Meets World!” AKA Ben Savage.

Back home to Momence, I arrived to an even more startled mother who said she was going to murder Dorothy and I felt a quivering guilt for my grandma’s untimely death. I went to bed feeling like a total loser and awoke to a dress hanging in my room. 

“Put your dress on, Adi, it’s picture day today!” My mom added a bit of mouse that my grandma packed for me and I was off to school resembling Ms. Ostrow my elderly school teacher as I walked into the room. Somehow no one really cared about my new haircut and sat in front of the camera with my tiny smile, faking confidence. 

My portrait is of a 6 year old girl looking a bit uncomfortable, nothing new for this age of school-portraits. I wore a denim dress with tiny red heart shaped buttons going down my chest. In that picture I can see myself dreaming of the day I’d swim in the water and look up at the sky happy as can be and say “this Sucks!”

[h-bailey]

In Chicago, an undertaker tries to save teens from the streets — and is burying those he can’t

Spencer Leak stands in front of Leak & Sons, one of the oldest funeral homes on Chicago’s South Side (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

CHICAGO — Spencer Leak Sr. has never known life without death.

From the moment he was old enough to remember, he was ambling around the funeral home his father founded here on Chicago’s South Side in 1933, when few places in the city were willing to bury blacks. Bodies of the dead, lifeless and still on gurneys and in coffins; the tears of anguished families struggling with loss — It was just a normal part of childhood for Leak, who came to view death as a shared and inescapable part of the human experience, no matter one’s race.

Leak had no second thoughts about what he would do with his life. In the third grade, long after he’d started working odd jobs in the family business, like answering phones, sweeping floors and working as an usher at funerals of people he didn’t know, Leak stood up and told his classmates that he wanted to be a funeral director, just like his dad. “They thought I was crazy,” Leak, who is now 80, recalled on a recent afternoon. “But to me, death was a way of life, a normal part of life.”

To be a mortician, one has to operate with a certain level of personal peace and understanding about human loss. Taking cues from his dad, who he says “taught him everything,” Leak has relied heavily on his Christian faith as he has continued the family business, viewing it as his own form of ministry. (He also had a parallel career in criminal justice, including four years as the head of the Cook County Jail). But lately, Leak’s relationship with death has grown considerably more fraught.

As the patriarch of Leak & Sons Funeral Home, one of the oldest funeral homes on the South Side, he has watched as his hometown have been ripped apart by unspeakable brutality in recent years, fueled by a dramatic spike in gun violence that Chicago officials have struggled to contain.

Last year, according to the Chicago Tribune, 781 people were killed — a massive jump over 2015, when there were 492 recorded homicides. A majority of the deaths have been attributed to a surge of shootings on the city’s South and West Sides, where the echo of gunfire has become a daily part of life. More than 4,300 people were shot in 2016, compared to 2,989 in 2015. All told, least year’s murder total was the highest since 1996, when 796 people died.

Spencer Leak Sr. consults a schedule of dozens of funerals he planned to attend on a recent Saturday. (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

After last year’s bloodshed, Chicago police hoped the city’s brutal winter would slow the gang feuds that have been blamed for many of the shootings, but the disturbing pace of violence has continued mostly unabated.

Since Jan. 1, according to a tally maintained by the Tribune, more than 1,000 people have been shot and at least 230 killed — a rate that is roughly the same as last year. The grim toll looms as Chicago braces for Memorial Day weekend, which has proven in the past to be the kickoff to a bloody summer. Over the three-day holiday last year, 69 people were shot and six of them were killed, and many worry about a similar horror this year.

For Leak, the crime rates are more than just dire statistics. Not only has there been an increased number of shootings near his funeral home on Cottage Grove Avenue in the Chatham section of Chicago, he’s been responsible for burying most of the dead. This role offers him a closer view than most of the unprecedented violence that has taken hold in this Midwestern city.

While Leak doesn’t keep an official tally because he doesn’t want to be seen as benefitting from the violence, his employees estimate Leak & Sons handled between 250 and 300 funerals for homicide victims last year. Since January, they have averaged two to three funerals a week for murder victims, sometimes more — many of them for young men in their 20s and younger.

“I measure what is happening here in how many times I have to comfort a mother grieving over her beautiful child, how many times I have to sit across from mothers at this desk, watching them cry, talking about their beautiful babies who are gone too soon,” Leak said during a rare quiet moment in his office. “I see these mothers in here once or twice a week, often more, and that’s too many. Something needs to be done to stop it.”

Leak operates his chapel with the idea that every victim is to be cherished, every lost life is to be celebrated, so as to not to forget the humanity of those whose lives have been sacrificed in what he describes as a “war on the streets of Chicago.” Like his father, he has a policy of never turning any family away, even if they can’t pay for the arrangements — a decision that has not been good for his bottom line but allows him to sleep better at night, knowing he’s tried to do what little he could to ease someone’s pain.

Spencer Leak Sr. meets with a grieving family at Leak & Sons. (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

Yet some of the funerals he’s had to arrange for those caught up in Chicago’s street violence have been harder to bear than others.

Over the last five years, Leak has buried scores of kids, including a 6-month-old who was shot and killed while sitting on her father’s lap in a parked car. Police said it was a botched gang hit aimed at her father. In 2013, tragedy hit even closer to home. Leak buried his receptionist’s 17-year-old son, a youngster he had tried counsel after his mother voiced concerns that he was running with the wrong crowd. The boy had been gunned down in an alley two blocks from the funeral home where his mother worked, another victim of gang violence.

“There is no safe place,” Leak said.

The intensity of the violence has taken a toll on Leak and his employees, who have been overwhelmed in making arrangements and also worried about their own safety. Though funerals used to be a moment of truce in Chicago’s bloody gang wars, some memorials have themselves grown violent in recent years, disrupted by brawls, stabbings and even shootings. Workers at other funeral homes have reportedly been shot at during processions, but Leak’s chapel has so far avoided any violent incidents. He employs armed security guards at his chapel here and at his second location on the West Side. And he works closely with Chicago police. He almost always schedules the funerals of suspected gang members at churches, which remain one of the few areas of refuge on the South Side.

“Praise be to God, we’ve been blessed that we haven’t seen violence that others have,” Leak said. “Young people do not act out in church the way they would act out in a funeral home.”

While he’s relieved by the pause in violence, Leak has been disturbed to notice young people at memorials who seem to be there less out of mourning and more out of curiosity. Sitting in the pews, they intently examine every aspect, from the coffin to the music to the reactions on people’s faces. They come, he says, to see how “it is all carried out” as they plan for their own memorials.

Amid threats of violence at funerals for homicide victims, Leak works closely with Chicago police on security (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

“They haven’t given themselves an option of a long life. They don’t expect to live any longer than their friends,” Leak explained. “They see this violence in a different way than we do. They don’t expect to live long. They come in, imagining what will happen when they get shot.”

Leak stops and shakes his head. “To see something like that, to see this phenomena, you just can’t believe it. … How did we get here?”

It’s a question that has vexed many in Chicago, including Leak, who is determined to be more than just another mortician charged with burying the dead.

Walking a reporter into his office, past a television blasting news of a shooting the night before in a neighborhood a few miles away, Leak said his anguish over what has happened to his city, for all the lives that have been lost, has made him think about his legacy, about what he’s leaving behind. He wants to be viewed as an “activist funeral director,” someone who did whatever they could to try and stop the violence that is ripping the city apart. What is happening in Chicago is complicated and there are few easy solutions — though that hasn’t stopped him.

“I can’t sit here and be depressed and sad. I’ve got to do something about it,” he said. “You’ve got to be an activist, because if you’re not, people will accuse you, and rightly so, of being a bystander. … The reason we’re in the shape that we’re in is that bystanders have sat there and watched crime; hypocrites sitting on the side of the road in the city of Chicago who have done nothing.”

Leak speaks with some perspective. He and his family have been on the front lines of history in Chicago for decades. His father, Rev. A.R. Leak, came to the city from Arkansas in 1927 as part of the “Great Migration,” in which blacks fled segregation in the South. He worked a series of odd jobs, including as a bathroom attendant at the 1933 World’s Fair. Taking the $500 he earned from that job and borrowing $500 from his parents, the elder Leak opened a funeral home on the South Side to serve Chicago’s growing black population, people who were often too poor to bury their loved ones or find cemeteries that would accept nonwhites.

In the early 1960s, the early days of the civil rights movement, A.R. Leak helped desegregate the city’s all-white cemeteries. At the time, the family was close to Martin Luther King Jr. — the father marched with King on his march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965; while the son drove the civil rights leader around during his visits to Chicago. Some of these moments are memorialized in black-and-white photos that adorn the walls at Leak and Sons, where one of the three funeral chapels is named after King.

It was during the civil rights movement that Leak met his first wife, R&B singer Mavis Staples, to whom he was married for eight years. Shortly after, he met his second wife, Henrietta, the mother of his three sons, who now assists in the family business, helping prepare bodies for funerals. The two have been married for 48 years.

Spencer Leak Sr. consults with his staff before beginning a day of funeral visitation and planning. (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

While he continued working with his father at the funeral home, Leak got a master’s degree in criminal justice and held a series of state and local government corrections jobs until 2001 — including four years in the late 1980s as head of the Cook County Jail, one of the largest county jails in the country. He took charge of the family business full-time after his father died in 1993, and eventually retired from public service. But it’s hard for him to shake that history as he surveys what is happening to his city.

He points a finger at multiple groups — the police for not doing their job to the best of their ability; city officials who have underfunded schools and infrastructure, leaving much of the South Side devastated; groups like Black Lives Matter that he says have focused more on conflict than seeking common ground in the effort to find solutions.

While many focus on illegal guns flooding into the city, Leak argues that it’s more than that. Guns, he says, are merely an instrument for those who have lost regard or were never really taught to value their lives or those of others. That’s especially true for those living in the most impoverished parts of the city, where it’s easy to feel as though your life isn’t going anywhere.

As a man of faith, Leak strongly believes in teaching the Bible in schools and has advocated for it in Chicago’s public schools, although he admits it’s unlikely to happen. But at least, he argues, schools could teach basic values like morals and love. “Leave the faith out of it if you’re concerned about the constitutional issues,” Leak said. “Take an hour of the day and try to somehow teach these children how not to want to destroy each other. Teach them the value of human life.”

Though it is not yet summer, when violence is traditionally at its worst, the phones are already ringing nonstop at Leak and Sons. The waiting room is almost always packed with families waiting to meet with Leak and his staff about arrangements. They are busier than ever.

A workaholic like his father, Leak puts in long hours — waking up at 6 a.m. and working until 7 or 8 p.m. — and he rarely takes a day off. His staff worries he might be working himself too hard.

On the weekends, Leak and his three sons often attend as many as 20 funerals a day — a mix of clients who have died of natural causes and those lost to violence. While most memorials used to be held on Saturdays, there are now so many funerals that Leak has been increasing the number of Sunday services, trying to meet the demand from grieving relatives.

En route to a funeral, Spencer Leak Sr. greets residents at a memorial for shooting victims on Chicago’s South Side. (Photo: Jon Lowenstein/NOOR for Yahoo News)

On a recent Saturday, Leak visited 10 funerals in a little over four hours, ferried around the South Side in a rain of Biblical proportions, that seemed unwilling to let up even for those desperate to see the sun. That morning, scores of activists were lined up along 70th Street as part of a human chain to mark the lives lost to gun violence and encourage residents to take back their community. And as his car passed, Leak rolled down the window to encourage those who stood there drenched in cold and misery. “The rain is gonna stop!” he called out. “The rain is gonna stop!”

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Montana papers retract their Gianforte endorsements after assault citation

Obama in Berlin: We can’t hide behind a wall

CBO score: 23 million more Americans would be uninsured under House bill

DeVos grilled by Democrats on public school cuts, private school discrimination

Photos: Cat visits every national park

[junker-town]

Ranking the 9 NFL mascots that we should all be worried about

We need to save Jaxson de Ville from himself and the Browns’ dog mascots from, well, the Browns.

Mascots usually fall into two categories: adorable friend who is equally fun-loving and mischievous, or the eerily expressionless face that will bring about our eventual demise.

Like any other sports league, the NFL has its share of disturbing mascots. Don’t pretend that on those sleepless nights, surrounded by nothing but pitch-black darkness and strange creaking noises you have never heard before, you’re not scared that Sourdough Sam is hiding under your bed, ready to hack you into pieces while the Jesse Belvin version of “Goodnight My Love” suddenly starts playing out of nowhere.

But there’s another type out there, one that I’m far more concerned about than any Pennywises-in-training: mascots who are silently (mostly because they don’t talk) crying out for help. They need our sympathy, not our suspicion.

Some mascots, we need to save. Here’s a ranking of the nine I’m most worried about:

9. Sir Purr, Carolina Panthers

NFL mascots like nothing more than to show up kids on a football field.

But Sir Purr has to live with the shame of getting blown up by a Pee Wee leaguer, doing his best Clowney impersonation at about 1/16th the size:

well ok then pic.twitter.com/gBARXGImyo

— Indianapolis Colts (@Colts) July 12, 2018

Even worse for Sir Purr, it happened in front of his peers who will never stop roasting him now. You can even see rival Freddie Falcon give the camera a little head shake just to punctuate the humiliation.

No one bothered to see if he was wounded, beyond his pride, either:

I’m ok. If anyone is wondering.

— Sir Purr (@SirPurr) July 12, 2018

I’m not sure you are, Sir.

8. Who Dey, Cincinnati Bengals

Here are the first three photos that popped up when I searched for Who Dey:

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Poor, sweet Who Dey. Tells you everything you need to know about the Bengals, though, doesn’t it?

7. Staley Da Bear, Chicago Bears

Like Who Dey, Staley Da Bear never seems happy. Unlike Who Dey, Staley is angry all. the. time. Even in situations where ANYONE, even the Queen’s Guard, would crack a smile.

Eating pizza? Angry:

.@TheRealStaley surprised @Chicago_Police officers today in the 11th & 15th districts w/ pizzas donated by @BeggarsPizza. pic.twitter.com/rQlqQiw6wa

— Bears Outreach (@BearsOutreach) June 28, 2018

Hanging with his besties? Angry:

Hangin’ w/ my fellow fur balls today @MX_College for #ChicagoSportsAlliance pic.twitter.com/4Ip44jvBQc

— Staley Da Bear (@TheRealStaley) June 25, 2018

Spending quality time with his beloved mother? Angry (and also might be flipping us the bird?):

Can anyone accommodate two for brunch? My mama bear is in the mood for “blue-beary” crepes. Happy Mother’s Day! ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/qpLbDTv7uE

— Staley Da Bear (@TheRealStaley) May 13, 2018

Playing with puppies — PUPPIES!? Angry?

PUPPIES

Who is angry when there are all those sweet puppers around?!?

Maybe it was all those years in close proximity to sourpuss Jay Cutler. Maybe it’s his Midwestern psyche that represses negative thoughts and feelings to an unhealthy degree. Maybe four straight seasons of the Bears finishing below the Lions have taken their toll.

But things are looking up for the team, at least. Now it’s time for Staley to figure out why he’s so mad at the world and take the necessary steps to improve himself so he can remember what joy is.

6. KC Wolf, Kansas City Chiefs

One day, KC will discover his true origin story: he’s a rodent, not a canine, and he was born inside a Showbiz Pizza in the late 80s.

His ensuing identity crisis and downward spiral will be a trainwreck. We won’t be able to look away, but there’s nothing we can do to avoid it, either.

5. Jaxson de Ville, Jacksonville Jaguars

Jaxson is both reckless:

And, like the Jags themselves, a hatin’ ass troll:

Did a photo shoot with @Waste_Pro_USA this morning. Only expected to see @Titans_TRac, but also found @blue and @TexansTORO1 in the truck # pic.twitter.com/lYSj2sKjBF

— Jaxson de Ville (@JaxsonDeVille) June 28, 2018

His total savagery is why we love him. It’s also the reason to be worried that he’ll either 1) lose at least one shag-carpet appendage after a Jackass stunt gone wrong, or 2) someone he pissed off will try to feed him to a gator.

4 and 3. Swagger and Chomps, Cleveland Browns

For some reason, the Browns have more mascots than they have wins in the past two seasons.

Swagger is a real dog, and he looks like a big ol’ goofball:

Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Good dog

Chomps is a costumed dog, and he looks like he needs a hug:

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

In the mascot world, I can’t think of anything more heartless than asking man’s best friend to try to get people to cheer for a team whose biggest highlight in the past decade is a pulling off a pretty good tribute to The Office. I’m surprised Chomps and Swagger haven’t already starred in an ASPCA commercial that turns us into a blubbering mess who curses the good name of Sarah McLachlan.

The Browns are about one more double-digit losing season away from these good boys needing to be rescued and placed in home that will treat them well.

2. Sir Saint, New Orleans Saints

I’m not a doctor, and I’m not sure how mascot anatomy works, buuuuuut ...

... is it possible to have prostate cancer on your chin?

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Sir Saint should really get that checked out by a professional. It doesn’t need to be Movember to take action.

1. Steely McBeam, Pittsburgh Steelers

You know those basic psychological thrillers you’d find at the airport, probably with “Girl” in the title, about a man who is doing brutal, stomach-churning things to women and a detective who’s trying to catch him? And the twist is that it’s not one man but two — and they’re father/son, because there’s a not very subtle metaphor there about the damage parents can do to children and the consequences as they grow older.

I’m afraid Steely McBeam could be on that path, thanks to who I assume is his father: Purdue Pete.

Purdue Pete has definitely killed before, many, many times:

Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

Steely still has some life in those eyes. He’s not there ... not yet:

Getty Images

But we have to make sure he has no contact with Purdue Pete, who would do nothing but fill his head with poison and a warped sense of right and wrong. For the sake of Steely and for the safety of the general public.

[allineednow]

<p>'Flight Season' Is A Touching Story Of Grief & Survival Written By An Immigration Rights Activist -- EXCERPT </p>

Acclaimed young adult writer Marie Marquardt is notorious for creating works of emotional fiction that truly resonate with her readers, whether they are teens or adults. In her upcoming , out from Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press in February, Marquardt has crafted her most personal and relatable story yet, and Bustle has an exclusive excerpt of the highly anticipated publication below.

Vivi Flannigan is barely holding it together. She is still mourning the loss of her beloved father, she's in danger of failing college, and to top it all off, she has developed an uncontrollable obsession for birds that seems to follow her wherever she goes. Determined to turn things around and live out her father's dreams for her achievement, Vivi secures a hospital internship that could very well save her from losing her spot at Yale -- that is, if she can survive the whole summer stuck with a hostile nursing student and a pain-in-the-butt patient. As she struggles to put the pieces of her life back together, Vivi's connection with TJ, a nursing student desperate to get out from under the responsibilities of his family's Brazilian restaurant business, and Ángel, an undocumented orphan and the fussy heart patient they are both assigned to care for, begins to change her life in ways she could never have envisioned.

A riveting story about love, compassion, and belonging, Flight Season is a timely publication that tackles one of the largest issues in America today: immigration and the status of undocumented young adults. Illustrated by Emily Arthur, a studio artist and professor of printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the beautiful book is peppered with sixteen simple but stunning sketches and handwritten notes concerning various bird breeds and their behaviours.

Emily Arthur

The author of two previously acclaimed young adult books, Fantasy Matters and The Radius of Us, Marie Marquardt is a professor at Emory University and an immigration rights advocate. In Flight Season, she pulls draws from her own professional experiences working with immigrant teens and her personal experience with mourning the loss of her father while a young student to make an emotionally compelling story about survival, loss, and finding the way home.

Author Marie Marquardt, picture courtesy of Kenzi Tainow

"Flight Season is a tribute to the strength and fortitude many teenagers I have come to know and love, who confront all sorts of adversity with a maturity and inner strength that adults often don't comprehend," says Marquardt of her book. "It is also an act of resistance to the societal norms that tell us certain things (like an Ivy League degree) matter most, when -- actually -- they are not quite as critical as those intangibles of friendship and love and human flourishing."

If you're tearing up at the sight Marquardt's remarks, just wait till you read her heartwarming book. It is not out until February from Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press, but you can begin studying Flight Season at the moment with an exclusive excerpt for Bustle readers. See the first chapter of Marquardt's emotional YA novel below:

Chapter 1: Vivi

BIRD JOURNAL May 29, 12:37 p.m.

Grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum)

What is this little guy doing at a South Carolina rest stop? Is one of nature's greatest navigators lost?

Social Behavior: typically not in flocks, can be very

Secretive, but frequently perch atop shrubs to sing.

Telephone: double or triple ticking note, followed by long insect- like buzz.

Habitat: migrating bird, found during breeding season in much of the northern and midwestern United States. Winters in Mexico and the coastal southeastern US.

It is a migratory bird, and it should be LONG GONE!

Lately, I have developed a fascination with birds. It started in December, when a lovely small songbird perched above me in the branch of an enormous pine tree and refused to close up. At the time, all I knew was that it was loud and small and incredibly persistent.

Now I know it was an American robin.

Birders give every bird's tune a phrase, which is supposed to mirror the rhythm and tone of their sound. One of my favorite common birds, the barred owl, sings out in a low tenor, Who cooks for you? But the American robin does not ask questions. Instead it incessantly controls: Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up! That's a particularly frustrating thing to hear when you're sitting at an outdoor funeral in the blinding light of a Florida winter, trying to look closely at the eulogy.

I don't remember much from that day, except for the way bright blue the sky was, set against all of those dark suits, and the number of people had crammed into my backyard--hundreds of mourners pressed against the edge of the still lake. And I remember hearing fragments of a traditional hymn, because everyone around me was singing about "awesome wonder" and "the greatness of God," while I was entertaining such not-so-awesome thoughts as: I wonder where the ashes are and When will all of these folks leave us alone?

I stayed outside and sat in the shadow of the sprawling pine tree. I stared up at the Spanish moss, gray and dripping from each branch, waiting to feel something. Anything.

And that robin? He stuck around and kept me company. He sang to me, high and clear, until all of the guests had gone back to their not- torn-through-with-grief lives (probably feeling quite anxious to cheerily cheer up!) .

After that, I started to listen to birds, which was not terribly difficult. As it happens, they were paying a whole lot of attention to me.

Take this tiny sparrow: I'm on my way home after having (barely) survived my first year of college, and I'm not even remotely surprised when I pull into the parking lot of a run-down gas station, only to encounter him watching me with beady black eyes. He is perched on a rusted-out handicapped parking sign, staring right at me.

I believe he's a grasshopper sparrow, or maybe a Savannah sparrow. In any event, this little guy should already be at his summer home in Maine, or maybe hopping around the grasslands of the Great Plains, plucking up insects. He does not belong into the swamplands of rural South Carolina--not with summer fast approaching.

This poor bird has lost its bearings.

His stout neck flicks from side to side and he lets out a loud call: a triple ticking note followed by a long humming buzz.

Tick-tick-tick-buzzzzzzzzzzzz.

His insect-like call gives it away. He definitely is a grasshopper sparrow, so he definitely is missing.

Unless, of course, he stuck around to await me.

These birds may have pea-sized brains, but they're not dumb. They're incredible. They can make their way across continents with nothing but their own good sense. 1 time, a group of scientists packaged up a few dozen sparrows in Washington State, took them on a plane to Princeton, New Jersey, and set them free. Within a couple of hours, they all were going straight for their wintering grounds in Mexico.

What sort of sparrows were those? White-crowned?

I pull out my phone to perform a quick search, but I'm distracted by a series of incoming texts.

The first few are from my roommate, Gillian. From the fragments I can see, it seems that she's reached Chicago, the first stop on our epic summer music road trip. We planned it together, and then I abandoned her before it even started.

Since I'm now at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, on my way home to repair last semester's epic mistakes, I can't muster the energy to consider her texts.

I scroll down to the next one, from my mom:

I'm thinking maybe just a small change of plans... . Call me!

I watch the screen, forcing myself to take slow breaths, wondering if she will tell me more. Nothing. When I look up, the sparrow has hopped over to perch on a metal pole with a convenience store's entrance, like he's urging me to go in.

Maybe that bird is right. Perhaps I need to head in and get something to eat before I make this call--Twizzlers to gnaw on. They always calm my nerves.

I close my bird journal and place it in the passenger seat. I rest the binoculars on top and get out of the car. The door jangles as I go indoors.

"Want somethin'?" A man behind the counter asks. "Twizzlers?"

"Last aisle, on the right."

I walk along the grey linoleum floor, following the almost-white path made by hundreds of feet shuffling toward the candy.

"Look up," the guy says. "See 'em there?"

I look up, but I don't see them. I'm unashamedly, scanning the brightly colored candies crammed onto metal shelves. I'm having difficulty pay- ing attention, because even through the thick plate glass, I hear that little sparrow's song.

Tick-tick-tick-buzzzzzzzzzzzz. Tick-tick-tick-buzzzzzzzzzzzz. Tick-tick- tick-buzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The convenience store clerk comes out from behind the counter with, of all things, a baby strapped to his back--and a handgun attached to his belt.

He reaches beyond me and then hands me a king-sized bag of Twizzlers.

"Here you are, miss." He glances out the window at my car. "I guess you will not be needing gasoline."

My car's electric. Additionally, it is beautiful and sleek and near flawless. I know that teenagers should not drive a vehicle like this. I get it. So the amused tone in his voice and how he looks back at me and gives me a quick once-over--they don't bother me. I understand where he's coming from.

And I can't exactly explain to this guy, this kind stranger with a baby on his back and a gun in his belt loop, how much this car means to me--how much more it is for me than a status symbol for the environmentally aware. Because, here's the thing about my car: no matter how bad things get, I can still climb in and press the start button. I can gently bring the engine to life, and I can remember the moment I got it--a moment full of the bright possibility of a beautiful future. I'm clinging to this future, grasping for it, but I feel it slipping out of my reach, darting off with nervous, erratic, unpredictable jolts. It's like I'm trying to hold on to a hummingbird.

"Never seen one of these in person," the clerk says. "How far can you go without charging it?"

"Three hundred and fifty miles or so. It's remarkable." I know I'm gushing, but I really like that car with all my heart.

"And what do you do out here on the road if you need to charge it?"

"I have an app. It tells me where I can stop to bill. ''``A program?" he asks, his eyebrows arching.

"Well, you know what they say." I shrug. "There is an app for everything these days."

He nods and pinches his lower lip, like he's thinking, but he does not ask anything more.

I'm tempted to tell him about the amazing birding programs I have on my phone--among them can really recognize any North American bird from a photograph and a GPS locator. But he will probably think I'm a basket case.

Down here on the ground, we barely ever provide these feathered wonders a moment's notice, even though they've been on Earth for eons more than we have. Most people don't know that birds are dinosaurs' closest descendants. They will, no doubt, outlast us all, and that is probably for the best.

Most people find my bird obsession weird. I get it. Six months ago, if someone had suggested to me that I'd be pulling over to the side of the road on a regular basis to strap a pair of binoculars around my neck and grab a journal from the glove compartment, or if someone had explained to me that I'd sketch furiously while struggling to discover the subtle differences between two sparrows, or I would know to focus my attention on the trill of their tune and the hue of their underbellies, I'd have said they were insane.

But the truth is this: I only started paying close attention to birds because they started paying attention to me.

I could offer any number of examples from the past six months. The horned owl that followed me home as I ran away from a dorm party where a junior I'd never met before cornered me and started to grope. The common raven that dive-bombed me a few times as I tried to enter the lecture hall where I was supposed to take an English exam covering a wide assortment of Canadian books on the subject of refuge--most of which I had not managed to read.

And this one, from a couple of weeks ago: I was studying for exams, utterly sleep-deprived and subsisting on Twizzlers and Monster Energy drinks. During exams, distance in the library is incredibly tough to find, and I was feeling proud that I had managed to find a personal desk by the window in the Southeast Asia Reading Room.

Yale's library is an astounding construction--it seems more like a cathedral than a place to store books. In fact, when I first got to campus last fall, the distance felt somewhat overwhelming. It seemed almost too quintessentially Ivy League to be actual. But any library with the motto a library is a summons to scholarship carved on the walkway was exactly the place I had to be that week. Up until that point, my next semester at Yale had been significantly lacking in scholarship, and I had three short reading days to make up for lost time.

I was camped out at a desk by the window, cramming the stabil- ity patterns of reactive intermediates into my exhausted brain. A small yellow bird came tapping on one of the windowpanes with its beak--so hard I was sure it would violate the leaded glass. And then the bird perched on a branch and started to call out.

That bird was an American goldfinch. Its call? Po-ta-to-chip, po- ta-to-chip. After enduring a few minutes of unrelenting tune, I eventually gave up, slammed my textbook shut, and took the stairs down to the library's exit. Dazed, I emerged onto Rose Walk and into the sunlight. I followed the scent of buttered toast to the Cheese Truck and ordered the daily special, a grilled Caseus cheese with farm-fresh spinach, with potato chips on the side. I let my eyes fall shut and slowly breathed in the most comforting aromas of all time. I then carried those chips and grilled cheese on sourdough to my favorite bench in a shady corner of Calhoun courtyard and devoured them.

It was among the best sandwiches I have ever eaten. The chips were fantastic, too, with the perfect amount of salt and a satisfying crunch. I'm almost sure I tanked the exam. Remembering all those stability patterns was probably a lost cause from the start, but I'll never forget that perfect grilled cheese--and the goldfinch that made me stop to eat it.

I hang around in the candy aisle for another moment or two, pretending to examine the shelves. I peer over a tower of chewing gum. The clerk is altering his gun holster to transfer the sleeping baby into a Package 'n Play. It is set up under the counter, behind the smoke display. I really don't want to interrupt him, so I wait till after the baby is settled to pay.

Standing there, desperate to kill time so that I won't have to make that call to my mom, I believe asking if he brings his baby to work every day. But then I fear that there is some tragic story behind it all--like maybe his wife left him for his brother, or she died in a horrible interstate accident between an eighteen-wheeler. Maybe he had been in the car too. Perhaps it was his fault, and the agony of having murdered his wife is almost too much for him to bear.

God, what's wrong with me? Not everybody's life has to be in shambles.

I decide that's enough death and destruction for now. His wife

Probably went to see her mom in Beaufort or something. Or maybe she's at home, right around the corner, making tuna sandwiches for lunch. Perhaps he just likes hanging out with his little girl in the office-- a way to pass the time.

I say a quick thanks and head toward the door. "Hi, Mom. I was just going to call."

I swing the door of the convenience store open, and a blast of sweltering hot air hits me at precisely the same time as her voice.

For as long as I can remember, my mom's voice has functioned as a precise barometer of her mood. With only a few words, I can tell how she's faring. It's tough to admit, but I have come to dread our telephone calls. Because, when she's sounding bereft, and I'm several states away, doing everything I can to hold it together enough to keep from failing out of school, I don't have any idea how to speak to her.

But today she seems good. Great, actually.

"My friend Anita is going to North Carolina for the summer. She is giving pottery workshops at an artist colony near Celo--"

I'm not sure how any of this is related to Mom and me. But I believe I know what she wants me to say, so I say it. I interject with a passionate "And?"

"She's decided to focus the workshop around trees, roots, leaves, and branches..."

"Oh, well, I just thought you should know..."

It is a game we used to play when Dad came home from a day in court with another wild idea. He would burst into the kitchen, announcing a series of facts that seemed in no way related to our lives.

Did you two know that Bhutan has extraordinary biodiversity? And an incredibly diverse selection of climates... .

The takin is Bhutan's national animal, but most folks travel there to get a sighting of the Bengal tiger or the clouded leopard... .

Oh, and there are some fabulous Buddhist monasteries there. I mean, if you're into that sort of thing... .

I was just driving home from work and thinking about how you two may not know a whole lot about Bhutan, and perhaps you should... .

And I have booked a trip. Vivi's spring break. How does that seem to y’all?

So, even though it hurts, physically, to play this game with my mother, and a hole is opening up in my chest, I squeeze my eyes shut and allow me to do it.

"And she's offered us her beach cottage."

I lean against the wall and rip open the bag of Twizzlers.

"It is so adorable. Just a few houses from the ocean. You are going to love it."

I begin gnawing on a Twizzler, watching the sparrow hop to the pavement and begin a little jig.

"Uh, that sounds like a great adventure, Mom."

I say it because that is the way the game always ended. But what I really want to say is: Can I please just come home?

[funface2]

Dave Chappelle Doesn’t Need To Punch Down – BuzzFeed News

reader

In his occasionally funny new Netflix special, Chappelle continues to make anti-trans and victim-blaming jokes. Why can’t he strive to be more thoughtful?

By

Tomi Obaro

Tomi Obaro BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on August 27, 2019, at 6:43 p.m. ET

Netflix / Via screenshot

Dave Chappelle in his new Netflix special, Sticks & Stones.

What’s the most embarrassing public statement you’ve ever made that you’ve had to walk back? As a Sagittarius and a former conservative evangelical Christian — and quite a zealous one — I have plenty.

I won’t regale you with all of them, but certainly one of my top 10 is when I logged on to Facebook dot com in the year of our Lord, 2009. Michael Jackson had just died, and my Facebook feed was disturbingly lacking in sympathetic words of sorrow. One girl whom I went to high school with posted a status about how she didn’t understand why people were so upset about his death — he was “a gross pedophile.”

I was in a vulnerable place. The high school I went to was full of white people who liked to listen to Dave Matthews Band and ask me whether I tanned. I had spent hours in a fugue state watching videos of Jackson when he was a lanky teenager, wiggling his sequined hips in the “Rock With You” music video, his skin still the color of a coconut husk. He still had that wide, broad, and beautiful nose that looked like my nose (and that I too had once hated).

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote under that girl’s status. It was something mean and cutting, and I definitely went on about how he had been acquitted. She responded by saying that swooping in to comment on the post of a random classmate I wasn’t even friends with in real life to defend Jackson was proof of how ridiculous I was being. Touché. I promptly unfriended her and reminded myself to never get into Facebook arguments; they were a black hole.

I thought of that time, and that current of righteous anger, as I watched Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix stand-up special, Sticks & Stones, which came out this week and has been predictably pilloried for its dismissal of sexual assault victims and anti-trans jokes. Chappelle proudly confesses as much early on in the special: “I’m what’s known on the streets as a victim-blamer.”

He defends Jackson, conceding that even if the two men who came forward in HBO’s documentary special Leaving Neverland earlier this year were telling the truth, it would be an honor to be molested by a musical legend: “I know more than half the people in this room have been molested in their lives. But it wasn’t no goddamn Michael Jackson, was it? This kid got his dick sucked by the King of Pop! All we get is awkward Thanksgivings for the rest of our lives.”

Chappelle still wants it both ways. He is willing to address criticisms of his earlier sets that were more flagrantly, lazily anti-trans, but not actually apologize or admit to changing his mind or express any meaningful empathy.

It’s the kind of purposefully ludicrous statement that’s designed to provoke, of course — it’s not even funny so much as shocking. You hear the audience gasp. (But the loudest boos of the whole night are reserved for when Chappelle jokes about how there’s no such thing as good 36-year-old pussy, which is the punchline to an R. Kelly bit. It’s telling that you can hear an audible exhale when Chappelle concedes that Kelly probably did rape his alleged teenage victims, even though he throws Surviving R. Kelly documentary filmmaker Dream Hampton under the bus to make that point.)

“I’m sorry, ladies, I’ve got a fucking #MeToo headache,” Chappelle complains. “This is the worst time ever to be a celebrity. Everyone’s doomed,” He defends Louis C.K., freely admitting that he’s biased as he’s friends with the guy. “They even got poor Kevin Hart,” Chappelle says. He describes Hart’s 2011 tweet about smashing his hypothetically gay son’s head with a dollhouse as “obviously” a joke. That’s before he launches into a whole spiel about “the unspoken rule of show business,” which “is that you are never, ever allowed to upset the alphabet people” — those people being “the Ls and the Gs and the Bs and the Ts.”

At this point, we’re reentering a familiar cycle: Chappelle releases a special on Netflix, he says something incendiary, it’s quoted back to him in a headline, and Chappelle reacts to the criticism in another Netflix special.

But Sticks & Stones feels distinct in that it encapsulates Chappelle’s paradoxical urges. You could say he’s doubling down, as some critics have written, but that’s not quite right. It’s a low, low bar, but some of the more truly vile anti-trans stuff has been excised from this recorded special. (It was filmed in Atlanta in 2017, two weeks before his run of sold-out Radio City Music Hall shows, so maybe he had time to reconsider the “man-pussy” jokes.)

But Chappelle still wants it both ways. He is willing to address criticisms of his earlier sets that were more flagrantly, lazily anti-trans, but not actually apologize or admit to changing his mind or express any meaningful empathy. In his 2017 special, Equanimity, he talks about receiving a letter from a white trans fan who criticized his transphobia, using the remark to essentially make more tired anti-trans jokes (and it turns out some of the details of the bit were highly embellished). And in a surprise epilogue to Sticks & Stones, he tells another story about Daphne, a trans woman who attended several of his sets in San Francisco and laughed hard at every joke. Afterward, according to Chappelle, they chatted at the bar and Daphne thanked him for “normalizing transgenders.” The audience at Radio City Music Hall, where Chappelle told this story, applauds loudly. It’s cringe-inducing — such a blatantly cynical, familiar move out of the old “I have a marginalized friend, so I can make this joke” playbook. (When Louis C.K. joked about his black friends who have stood by him, I imagine he must have been talking about Chappelle.)

What is especially frustrating about Chappelle’s trans jokes is how he essentially acts as if black trans people don’t exist, and as if black trans women in particular aren’t more likely to be victims of violence. His truth-to-power comedy only works if he acts as though trans people and black people are wholly separate entities. It’s enough to make you want to tie Chappelle to a chair and force him to binge-watch episodes of Pose.

Even if you ignored all the offensive jokes — which is a big ask, so I understand if you can’t — you’re still left with comedy specials that aren’t even particularly funny.

It’s enough to make you want to tie Chappelle to a chair and force him to binge-watch episodes of Pose.

And it grates, of course, because he has been shattering the mythos constructed around him ever since he famously walked away from a reported $50 million deal with Comedy Central in 2005. Dave Chappelle! The funniest man in America! If he had lived in Midwestern bliss for the rest of his life, his legend as one of our most hilarious, biting, silly, essential stand-up comics alive would have stayed intact — even if he did always have a few sets and sketches that were stupid and sexist and racist. But now he’s just like any other rich, middle-aged has-been, bravely taking on “cancel culture,” even as he continues to nab $60 million deals with Netflix.

As Vulture music critic Craig Jenkins recently tweeted, this cycle of jokes, outrage, jokes, repeat doesn’t actually affect Chappelle’s bottom line. He’s still a millionaire — and one who’s still getting booked, at that. So what’s really to be gained from punching down on the most vulnerable? Despite his fearmongering about celebrities falling victim to “cancel culture,” it’s not like Chappelle has actually been shunned. It has merely become less cool to say that you’re a Dave Chappelle fan at certain parties in Brooklyn.

As a beleaguered fan (like “I once spent more money than I had in my checking account to split a cab ride with a girl I didn’t know to watch him perform in a suburb of Chicago and then got stranded in said suburb because there were no cabs going back to the city”–level fan); I want to believe that Chapelle is more thoughtful than he’s been acting lately. And even in Sticks & Stones, which is better than the last two specials, there are kernels of funniness. He still makes me laugh out loud. He can still tell a story with surreal, spellbinding relish — his bit on buying a gun is hilarious. His face is so expressive; his eyes twinkle with impish glee. The way he holds his cigarette and leans forward, looking like a mischievous little boy, shocked that he can get away with it.

But he’s not a little boy. He’s a grown-ass man. And it feels like he keeps making anti-trans and victim-blaming jokes just because he can, which, sure. But why not strive to be more interesting, more original, more thoughtful?

Toward the end of the special, before the epilogue, Chappelle appears to make a conciliatory gesture: “If you’re in a group that I make fun of, just know that I see myself in you. I make fun of poor white people because I was once poor.” I waited for him to say what he saw in trans people, in victims of sexual assault, or in gay men. But he never said anything. ●

CORRECTION

Aug. 28, 2019, at 00:38 AM

Kevin Hart’s tweet about breaking a dollhouse over his son’s head was in 2011. An earlier version of this post misstated the year.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Source link

Bài viết Dave Chappelle Doesn’t Need To Punch Down – BuzzFeed News đã xuất hiện đầu tiên vào ngày Funface.

from Funface https://funface.net/funny-news/dave-chappelle-doesnt-need-to-punch-down-buzzfeed-news/

[johnheintz]

Q School

This June 28 is the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall. The Stonewall Riots mark the birthday of the modern gay rights movement, and the culmination of gay rights isn’t same-sex marriage. The culmination of gay rights is a world of free of discrimination. The world has come a long way since 1959, but LGBTQ people, and especially kids, still face challenges. 

School is still a painful place for most LGBTQ kids. Research and advocacy groups like GLSEN continue to produce studies showing that 90% of students at school face harassment because of their sexual orientation, and over 60% feel unsafe.  

The Foundations of Q School

The idea for Q School came from a few sources. 

The first was the need for a school free of that harassment. It’s hard to learn when you’re afraid of getting punched. 

The second was learning that Chicago is the only major US city with no school for the LGBTQ community and its friends. New York has the Harvey Milk School. Los Angeles has a gay charter school housed in its community center.  Even Milwaukee, Denver, Dallas and Atlanta have dabbled with LGBTQ schools. Chicago is a notable outlier. 

The third source was the desire to combine the positive values of the LGBTQ community with best practices in teaching and learning. When I decided to start a school, I’d already worked and studied for almost thirty years in some of the best secondary and higher education institutions in the world. I’d also been out most of my life, and I knew all of my life’s best lessons I’d learned from the gay community.

Growing up gay meant learning early to value patience, kindness, compassion, freedom, difference, perseverance, diplomacy and excellence. I wanted to build the perfect school, where every student went on to happy careers and lives, and building a school rooted in those values would create the best school on earth.  

Q School will be rooted in the best values of the LGBTQ community and the best practices of the professional teaching and learning community.  

The Path to Q School

I lived in Uptown. Uptown is a racially, ethnically, sexuality, gender-identity and socio-economically diverse neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. It’s located between Andersonville and East Lakeview, Chicago’s more famous gay neighborhoods. Most of my friends who lived in Boystown, part of East Lakeview, didn’t have families. The preponderance of families I knew in East Lakeview were Jewish friends’ families, mostly straight, who developed an intellectually and culturally robust civil culture in the midst of a major gay capital. 

Andersonville had more LGBTQ families, so it seemed like a better place to start a school.

Finding a Home for Q School

As ground zero for midwestern LGBTQ families and our friends, Andersonville seemed like the right place to build the school. The goal is to I started by proposing a charter school. My motivation for creating a charter school was not political. In Chicago, saying “charter school” and “not political” in the same sentence defies logic. Chicago and the state of Illinois are so polarized politically that ”charter school” is one of those litmus test words that you must support or reject. After a few conversations, I saw that the class politics of the idea would overwhelm the little LGBTQ community politics I was hoping to enthuse. The aldermen running Andersonville for a long time told me point blank that he could never support a charter school in his neighborhood. He loved the idea a Q School, but it needed to be a private school. I heard a similar tale from most politicians with whom I spoke. 

Funding Q School

Q School will likely need to be a private school. That saddens me because, while I have no problem with private schools, being able to accept poor kids, especially poor LGBTQ kids, really appeals to me. Being the idealistic dreamer I am, my charter idea went further. I wanted to create a multijurisdictional charter school. 

In other words, I wanted to create a charter school that could accept kids from Chicago as well as the suburbs around Chicago. In Illinois, this disrupts the near religious line between school districts, especially in terms of funding. Illinois came up with a plan to allow students to attend schools wherever they wanted, the Illinois Charter Commission, and I wanted to use it. The way it works is simple. If a local school board doesn't approve a charter, the State Commission can approve a charter that encompasses that district and others around it. 

Public Funding for Q School. 

First, I like the idea of getting public money to pay for LGBTQ kids, not all of whom can afford a private school. My mission in life is educating youth. I’ve learned how to fundraise, but my real passion is running inspiring and successful schools. Education is a social good, and the public should pay for it, for the future of all of us. 

Second, I like the idea of a publicly-funded school over multiple districts because, for far too long, the oppressive distinction between districts and funding levels has held Illinois back from progressing in any meaningful way with education improvements. This is a complicated problem, but if the harms outlined in Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 book Savage Inequalities have only worsened. 

If we locate Q School in Andersonville, I wanted to welcome kids from anywhere in Illinois. All the arguments excluding suburban kids had nothing to do with teaching and learning, so the Illinois Charter Commission gave us a way to bypass them. 

Supporters of Q School

GLSEN, the biggest national LGBTQ education advocacy group, transformed in Chicago into the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance. Talking with them was the next stop on my journey. They loved the idea of a school rooted in the values of the LGBTQ community.  I didn't mention that I was considering configuring the school as a charter. After hearing from politician after politician that charter is a dirty word in Chicago, I decided to set aside the idea of funding as much as I could and focus on the idea.

My biggest support came from a mother who volunteered for a neighborhood Chamber of Commerce. The mother had a 4-year-old who was gender non-conforming, so she loved the idea that I was planning a school where she could be sure her daughter would be welcome.  

Designing Q School

Design challenges took most of my time. Like the funding challenge, the design challenge wound up a political challenge. Milwaukee’s Alliance School taught me a valuable lesson. I spoke with the LGBT school in Milwaukee called The Alliance School. The head of the alliance school was a teacher who’d been elected to the position for less than a year when I spoke with him. He explained to me that, for better and occasionally for worse, The Alliance School had become am “island of misfit toys" in the Milwaukee school system. 

I wanted to confront this challenge head on. LGBTQ parents who would send their kids to Q School understand this. I wanted straight parents who would send their kids to Q School to understand this as well. Yes, the LGBTQ community is an oppressed minority. No, a school serving that community would not focus on that oppression. 

Q School will prepare students for college, career and life better than any other school. Achievement at the school will be so extraordinary that Mitch McConnell will want to send his great-grandkids there. 

Building a Q School community

Q School is still in the planning. If you’re intrigued, reach out. First, share your thoughts or questions. Reach out to us. Tweet at us. Email us. Second, we’re looking for partners, educators, parents, students, board members, thinkers, activists, designers and programmers. Contact us or add your name to our mailing list on our website to receive updates.

John Heintz is an educator building Q School from the ground up.  

[mikemortgage]

Millions of Americans are still trapped in debt-logged homes 10 years after the housing crisis brought the nation to its knees

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. — School bus driver Michael Payne was renting an apartment on the 30th floor of a New York City high-rise, where the landlord’s idea of fixing broken windows was to cover them with boards.

So when Payne and his wife Gail saw ads in the tabloids for brand-new houses in the Pennsylvania mountains for under US$200,000, they saw an escape. The middle-aged couple took out a mortgage on a US$168,000, four-bedroom home in a gated community with swimming pools, tennis courts and a clubhouse.

“It was going for the American Dream,” Payne, now 61, said recently as he sat in his living room. “We felt rich.”

Today the powder-blue split-level is worth less than half of what they paid for it 12 years ago at the peak of the nation’s housing bubble.

Located about 80 miles northwest of New York City in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, their home resides in one of the sickest real estate markets in the United States, according to a Reuters analysis of data provided by a leading realty tracking firm. More than one-quarter of homeowners in Monroe County are deeply “underwater,” meaning they still owe more to their lenders than their houses are worth.

A sale sign advertises a price reduction on a house in Pennsylvania.

The world has moved on from the global financial crisis. Hard-hit areas such as Las Vegas and the Rust Belt cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland have seen their fortunes improve.

But the Paynes and about 5.1 million other U.S. homeowners are still living with the fallout from the real estate bust that triggered the epic downturn.

As of June 30, nearly one in 10 American homes with mortgages were “seriously” underwater, according to Irvine, California-based ATTOM Data Solutions, meaning that their market values were at least 25 per cent lower than the balance remaining on their mortgages.

It is an improvement from 2012, when average prices hit bottom and properties with severe negative equity topped out at 29 per cent, or 12.8 million homes. Still, it is double the rate considered healthy by real estate analysts.

“These are the housing markets that the recovery forgot,” said Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at ATTOM.

Lingering pain from the crash is deep. But it has fallen disproportionately on commuter towns and distant exurbs in the eastern half of the United States, a Reuters analysis of county real estate data shows. Among the hardest hit are bedroom communities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions, where income and job growth have been weaker than the national norm.

Developments in outlying communities typically suffer in downturns. But a comeback has been harder this time around, analysts say, because the home-price run-ups were so extreme, and the economies of many of these Midwestern and Eastern metro areas have lagged those of more vibrant areas of the country.

“The markets that came roaring back are the coastal markets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. He said land restrictions and sales to international buyers have helped buoy demand in those areas. “In the middle of the country, you have more flat-lined economies. There’s no supply constraints. All of these things have weighed on prices.”

In addition to exurbs, military communities showed high concentrations of underwater homes, the Reuters analysis showed. Five of the Top 10 underwater counties are near military bases and boast large populations of active-duty soldiers and veterans.

Many of these families obtained financing through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA makes it easy for service members to qualify for mortgages, but goes to great lengths to prevent defaults. It is a big reason many military borrowers have held on to their negative-equity homes even as millions of civilians walked away.

A poor credit history can threaten a soldier’s security clearance. And those who default risk never getting another VA loan, said Jackie Haliburton, a Veterans Service Officer in Hoke County, North Carolina, home to part of the giant Fort Bragg military installation and one of the most underwater counties in the country.

“You will keep paying, no matter what, because you want to make sure you can hang on to that benefit,” Haliburton said.

These and other casualties of the real estate meltdown are easy to overlook as homes in much of the country are again fetching record prices.

But in Underwater America, homeowners face painful choices. To sell at current prices would mean accepting huge losses and laying out cash to pay off mortgage debt. Leasing these properties often won’t cover the owners’ monthly costs. Those who default will trash their credit scores for years to come.

The windows of a house are boarded-up with plywood in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, where in 2013 almost one in 10 properties was vacant.

Dreams deferred

Special education teacher Gail Payne noses her Toyota Rav 4 out of the driveway most workdays by 5 a.m. for the two-hour ride to her job in New York City’s Bronx borough.

“I hate the commute, I really, really do,” Payne said. “I’m tired.”

Now 66, she and husband Michael were counting on equity from the sale of their house to fund their retirement in Florida. For now, that remains a dream.

The Paynes’ gated community of Penn Estates, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is among scores that sprang up in Monroe County during the housing boom.

Prices looked appealing to city dwellers suffering from urban sticker shock. But newcomers didn’t grasp how irrational things had become: At the peak, prices on some homes ballooned by more than 25 per cent within months.

Today, homes that once fetched north of US$300,000 now sell for as little as US$72,000. But even at those prices, empty houses languish on the market. When the easy credit vanished, so did a huge pool of potential buyers.

Eight hundred miles to the west, in an unincorporated area of Boone County, Illinois, the Candlewick Lake Homeowners Association begins its monthly board meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer.

Nearly 40 per cent of the 9,800 homes with mortgages in this county about 80 miles northwest of Chicago are underwater, according to the ATTOM data. Some houses that went for US$225,000 during the boom are now worth about US$85,000, property records show.

By early 2010, unemployment topped 18 per cent after a local auto assembly plant laid off hundreds of workers. At Candlewick Lake, so many people walked away from their homes that as many as a third of its houses were vacant, said Karl Johnson, chairman of the Boone County board of supervisors.

“It just got ugly, real ugly, and we are still battling to come back from it,” Johnson said.

While the local job market has recovered, signs of financial strain are still evident at Candlewick Lake.

The community’s roads are beat up. The entryway, meeting center and fence could all use a facelift, residents say. The lake has become a weed-choked “mess,” “a cesspool,” according to residents who spoke out at an association meeting earlier this year. Association manager Theresa Balk says a recent chemical treatment is helping.

Annual homeowner’s dues of US$1,136 are being stretched to pay for all the upkeep. But those fees may be a big deterrent for many would-be buyers at Candlewick Lake, said association board member Randy Budreau.

“A gated community like this, with our rules and fees, it may be just less attractive now to the general public,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2018

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2My85s6 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[todaynewsstories]

Millions of Americans still trapped in debt-logged homes ten years after crisis

EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa., 2018 (Reuters) – School bus driver Michael Payne was renting an apartment on the 30th floor of a New York City high-rise, where the landlord’s idea of fixing broken windows was to cover them with boards.

A home is seen in the Penn Estates development where most of the homeowners are underwater on their mortgages in East Straudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar

So when Payne and his wife Gail saw ads in the tabloids for brand-new houses in the Pennsylvania mountains for under $200,000, they saw an escape. The middle-aged couple took out a mortgage on a $168,000, four-bedroom home in a gated community with swimming pools, tennis courts and a clubhouse. 

“It was going for the American Dream,” Payne, now 61, said recently as he sat in his living room. “We felt rich.”

Today the powder-blue split-level is worth less than half of what they paid for it 12 years ago at the peak of the nation’s housing bubble.

Located about 80 miles northwest of New York City in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, their home resides in one of the sickest real estate markets in the United States, according to a Reuters analysis of data provided by a leading realty tracking firm. More than one-quarter of homeowners in Monroe County are deeply “underwater,” meaning they still owe more to their lenders than their houses are worth.

The world has moved on from the global financial crisis. Hard-hit areas such as Las Vegas and the Rust Belt cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland have seen their fortunes improve.

But the Paynes and about 5.1 million other U.S. homeowners are still living with the fallout from the real estate bust that triggered the epic downturn.

As of June 30, nearly one in 10 American homes with mortgages were “seriously” underwater, according to Irvine, California-based ATTOM Data Solutions, meaning that their market values were at least 25 percent lower than the balance remaining on their mortgages.

It is an improvement from 2012, when average prices hit bottom and properties with severe negative equity topped out at 29 percent, or 12.8 million homes. Still, it is double the rate considered healthy by real estate analysts.

“These are the housing markets that the recovery forgot,” said Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at ATTOM.

Lingering pain from the crash is deep. But it has fallen disproportionately on commuter towns and distant exurbs in the eastern half of the United States, a Reuters analysis of county real estate data shows. Among the hardest hit are bedroom communities in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions, where income and job growth have been weaker than the national norm.

A home is seen in the Penn Estates development where most of the homeowners are underwater on their mortgages in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar

(See a list of the Top 10 underwater U.S. counties and Reuters’ methodology at tmsnrt.rs/2CMQEnX).

Developments in outlying communities typically suffer in downturns. But a comeback has been harder this time around, analysts say, because the home-price run-ups were so extreme, and the economies of many of these Midwestern and Eastern metro areas have lagged those of more vibrant areas of the country.

“The markets that came roaring back are the coastal markets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. He said land restrictions and sales to international buyers have helped buoy demand in those areas. “In the middle of the country, you have more flat-lined economies. There’s no supply constraints. All of these things have weighed on prices.”

In addition to exurbs, military communities showed high concentrations of underwater homes, the Reuters analysis showed. Five of the Top 10 underwater counties are near military bases and boast large populations of active-duty soldiers and veterans.

Many of these families obtained financing through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA makes it easy for service members to qualify for mortgages, but goes to great lengths to prevent defaults. It is a big reason many military borrowers have held on to their negative-equity homes even as millions of civilians walked away.

A poor credit history can threaten a soldier’s security clearance. And those who default risk never getting another VA loan, said Jackie Haliburton, a Veterans Service Officer in Hoke County, North Carolina, home to part of the giant Fort Bragg military installation and one of the most underwater counties in the country.

“You will keep paying, no matter what, because you want to make sure you can hang on to that benefit,” Haliburton said.

These and other casualties of the real estate meltdown are easy to overlook as homes in much of the country are again fetching record prices.

But in Underwater America, homeowners face painful choices. To sell at current prices would mean accepting huge losses and laying out cash to pay off mortgage debt. Leasing these properties often won’t cover the owners’ monthly costs. Those who default will trash their credit scores for years to come.

DREAMS DEFERRED

Special education teacher Gail Payne noses her Toyota Rav 4 out of the driveway most workdays by 5 a.m. for the two-hour ride to her job in New York City’s Bronx borough.

“I hate the commute, I really, really do,” Payne said. “I’m tired.”

Slideshow (18 Images)

Now 66, she and husband Michael were counting on equity from the sale of their house to fund their retirement in Florida. For now, that remains a dream.

The Paynes’ gated community of Penn Estates, in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is among scores that sprang up in Monroe County during the housing boom.

Prices looked appealing to city dwellers suffering from urban sticker shock. But newcomers didn’t grasp how irrational things had become: At the peak, prices on some homes ballooned by more than 25 percent within months.

Today, homes that once fetched north of $300,000 now sell for as little as $72,000. But even at those prices, empty houses languish on the market. When the easy credit vanished, so did a huge pool of potential buyers.

Eight hundred miles to the west, in an unincorporated area of Boone County, Illinois, the Candlewick Lake Homeowners Association begins its monthly board meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer.

Nearly 40 percent of the 9,800 homes with mortgages in this county about 80 miles northwest of Chicago are underwater, according to the ATTOM data. Some houses that went for $225,000 during the boom are now worth about $85,000, property records show.

By early 2010, unemployment topped 18 percent after a local auto assembly plant laid off hundreds of workers. At Candlewick Lake, so many people walked away from their homes that as many as a third of its houses were vacant, said Karl Johnson, chairman of the Boone County board of supervisors.

“It just got ugly, real ugly, and we are still battling to come back from it,” Johnson said.

While the local job market has recovered, signs of financial strain are still evident at Candlewick Lake. 

The community’s roads are beat up. The entryway, meeting center and fence could all use a facelift, residents say. The lake has become a weed-choked “mess,” “a cesspool,” according to residents who spoke out at an association meeting earlier this year. Association manager Theresa Balk says a recent chemical treatment is helping.

Annual homeowner’s dues of $1,136 are being stretched to pay for all the upkeep. But those fees may be a big deterrent for many would-be buyers at Candlewick Lake, said association board member Randy Budreau.

“A gated community like this, with our rules and fees, it may be just less attractive now to the general public,” he said.

Reporting by Michelle Conlin and Robin Respaut; Editing by Marla Dickerson

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source link

The post Millions of Americans still trapped in debt-logged homes ten years after crisis appeared first on Today News Stories.

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2D6FACv via IFTTT

[jafreitag]

The Liner Notes Felsen Interview

Back in November 2017, Liner Notes featured “Vultures on Your Bones,” the new single by Bay-area ensemble Felsen. That track kicks off their new album, Blood Orange Moon, which was released last month. It’s great. (And that’s not damned faint-praise. I enjoyed TF outta this record. And everybody, especially my best friend, knows that I’m a music snob.) Listen for yourself. You’ll dig.

Felsen honcho Andrew Griffin and I grew up together in Valparaiso, Indiana. We’re old friends. We recently had a chance to Q&A via email about the new record. Here’s the result – the first-ever LN rock star interview. If you’re expecting Lester Bangs chatting with Joe Strummer, you will not be disappointed

JF: Describe your life path from Valpo to Oakland.  How did a Midwestern kid end up on the left coast leading a rock band?

AG: I moved from Valparaiso to Chicago in 1991 with my Loudflower bandmates after I graduated from VU.  I worked shitty restaurant jobs, and we were really going for it for about another year until the band imploded.  I started taking drum lessons soon thereafter, and that teacher encouraged me to further my education and go to Berklee College of Music.  I moved to Boston in the fall of 1993 with my girlfriend, Norene. I started school in January 1994. Norene and I got married in ‘96 and then we moved to the SF East Bay in 1998. I started working playing drums and teaching lessons.  I worked my way up the food chain of bay area drummers, toured the US with a few different bands, went to Europe a few times. Always working. I started teaching in schools, different music programs, daycare music, you name it, I did it. Plus…thousands of gigs…you’ve got to if you wanna eek out an income.  I played lots of rock, singer songwriter stuff, cover bands, wedding bands, jazz, country, Zydeco, Blues, Salsa, Cumbia, musical theater gigs, Big Band…everything. I learned much along the way. I had a band when I first arrived in the bay area, where I was the songwriting drummer – that being my 3rd valiant attempt with this concept, the first being in Valparaiso with the aforementioned Loudflower.  It never really seemed to work out though. Odd concept I guess – songwriting drummer with someone else singing and fronting the band. I set that notion aside around 2000 and just focused on drumming. I started to produce other people’s music. I was also a busy co-writer with a handful of really talented Bay Aarea songwriters. Mmost notably, I worked closely with Rich McCulley in the early 2000’s.  I was Rich’s drummer, and we wrote a bunch of tunes together, played about 180 gigs from coast to coast putting 70,000 miles on his van (seriously).  The drumming life was good to me.

JF: When did you form Felsen?

AG: I started to record what would become Felsen’s first album, Accidental Drowning, in the fall of 2007.  I had no real plan at the time. I was in the middle of a long cancer ordeal, and I guess I was killing time, as I wasn’t working much due to my sickness.  There was also some desire to commit to tape my songs as my health situation was rather grave and perhaps my time was short. I had a newborn son at home at the time, and I wanted to leave something behind just in case.  I thought I would have other friends sing the tunes as I’d done in the past, but when I started to write about what I’d recently been dealing with (life and death and being a dad), I realized I had to sing. I’m still learning.  I’m a work-in-progress. That album took about a year to record, and then a few months of mixing. I got a small record deal with an East Bay label, 9th Street Opus, and they encouraged me to put a band together and make a go of it.  I was now the frontman, singer in a band–didn’t see that one coming. That was in the summer of 2009. I’ve been doing Felsen ever since.

JF: There have been various lineup changes.  I think the last time that I saw the band at Valpo’s legendary Club Coolwood, you were a quartet.  How has the band evolved since then?

AG: It’s really hard to keep a band together.  I’ve done my best. People come and go over the years.  Mainly, they run out of time (or money) or have moved from the area.  I will say, though, that every time someone new comes into the band, the bar always gets raised higher.  The level of musicianship is ever increasing as I’m able to attract better and better players as the band’s notoriety grows, we get better gigs, better money etc. I’m very, very grateful to all the folks who’ve helped me along the way.  In my current lineup I’ve got two people who’ve been with me about four years each. I haven’t been touring as much, mainly playing around the bay area and Northern California, and have had the luxury of playing with a slightly larger ensemble – sometimes up to 7 musicians.  When we tour again, it’ll most likely be a more compact unit, most likely a quartet. Touring is dreadfully expensive. Hey…can we sleep on your floor? Can you make us a vegan meal? Can I get your credit card number?

JF: You played drums in high school, right?  And you were in bands back then. I can’t remember the names.

AG: You are correct, sir.  I’m a proud alum of the very fertile Valpo music scene.  My first band was with Chad Clifford, who’s still going strong in Valpo.  Here’s a few band names: Merge, The Happy Bunch, Blue Elvis, Astral Zombies, Buddha’s Belly, Loudflower.  Anybody remember these bands?

JF: I remember the Happy Bunch, and maybe Astral Zombies, haha. When did you start playing guitar?  When did you start writing songs?

AG: My parents were kind enough/wise enough to allow my bands to practice in their house when I was in junior high and high school.  The guitars and amps, etc., lived in the house, and I guess I got curious about guitar around 9th grade and started fooling around then.  Maybe around 11th grade I could play a little bit. My freshman roomie at Valparaiso University had a guitar and an amp that I was constantly playing.  By my sophomore year, I had acquired a guitar (the borrow-to-own program thankyouverymuch) and basically started writing tunes the same way I continue to.  I was writing lyrics in highschool for my bandmates to sing and started writing poetry and short stories in college. I guess that all melded together. I’ve always mainly enjoyed creating original music. I’ve never been a very good or dedicated cover band guy.

JF: Do you still play drums?  With Felsen? I know you’ve gigged with other bands, too.  Camper Van Beethoven? Cake?

AG: Yup, still quite busy playing a lot of drums and teaching tons of lessons. If you know of anyone who needs a drummer…let ‘em know…I’ll do my homework…but I’m very, very expensive.  OK JK. I’m really fortunate to have lots of opportunities to play great original music here in the bay area (and beyond). I love it very much. The new Felsen album is all me on the drums.  We were going through some personnel changes at the time. Super fun experience for me. And, yes, a few big name gigs along the way.

JF: Describe your process with respect to songwriting.  Are you a notebook guy, scribbling lyrics in coffee shops when inspiration hits?  Or a device guy, recording snippets on your phone? Or are you more structured? Which comes first, chords or words?

AG: I’m pretty disciplined about recording new song snippets on my phone or computer.  Also, I keep folders in my google drive. There’s a random lyric folder where I dump words, phrases, stuff I hear in passing, or on TV, or Netflix or read on the internet or in a copy of the New Yorker (my doctor’s office magazine of choice) or just bizarre stuff my kid says. I then begin to sort through that stuff, sifting it out into more specific files – like a file all about technology or Trump or nature or death or love or sadness. I play guitar and stare at the screen, and, eventually, the words start to coalesce around the music (or vice versa).  I also keep a file of good opening lines and a file of song titles. Metallica starts with titles, and I wouldn’t argue with those dudes. That’s an interesting way of going about business, IMHO. Too many songs have shitty boring titles. I like song titles that could be movies, or novels. Good movies and interesting novels. “The Telepathic Kind.”  That’s a good title. Or “The Secret Life of Guns.” “Blood Orange Moon.” “White Denim Jeans.” Yummy titles. I’d read those books.

JF: I’m a New Yorker fan, too. I regularly snag passages and dump them into a notebook app. Such good writing, particularly about music. (Amanda Petrusich is a god among manboys.) Speaking of words, is there an aerial theme?  Airplane, Airline, Moon?

AG: I just saw Up In the Air again the other day.  Amazing movie. I guess that one really hit me years ago.   It takes years for me to wrap my brain around something. Re: air travel, etc. It’s a lonely world of airports and shitty motels.  I’ve spent a lot of time on the road. i guess I really saved up some of that sadness. I move at a glacial pace processing life events and churning them into songs.

JF: Are the songs on the new record all new? Have you played any of them live before going into the studio?

AG: There was really only one tune that Felsen had been playing on stage before recording the new album: “Poor in a Wealthy City.” I wrote much of that tune in a motel room in the Midwest when Felsen was on tour in the fall of 2013.  I wrote very deliberately for this new album. I did perform a handful of the tunes, as I was writing them. I wrote for two years, and then spent two years recording.

JF: Describe your process with respect to recording/production.  Were you involved on the production end of BOM? If so, what were your goals?  Do you have an idea of what you want a song or an album to sound like when you press record?  I’m thinking of something like Ansel Adams’ concept of previsualization. Maybe preaudialization?

AG: On Blood Orange Moon, I had a pretty clear idea of what I was going for. I started a branch of the Felsen family tree, playing with a few new faces and a few old ones, referring to that unit as the Felsen Symphonette. Incorporating cello, glockenspiel, synth, acoustic guitars and hand percussion – a bit of a departure from the electric guitar-heavy music of previous of Felsen albums. The Symphonette started to perform house concerts and backyards – low volume, lo-fi, and low tech.  Why not write an album of that lower volume stuff? I was inspired by a Rolling Stone review of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass that described that album as “music for mountaintops.”  I liked that idea alot. I was also greatly under the musical narcosis of Beck’s twin albums Sea Change and Morning Phase, as well as Songs for a Blue Guitar by Red House Painters. I also heard Serge Gainsbourg’s tune, “Bonnie & Clyde” in an episode of Mad Men and eventually found Serge’s Historie de Melody Nelson. I recruited Allen Clapp of the Orange Peels to mix the album.  This album needed tons of reverb, and Allen has a special understanding of reverb.  He and his studio live on a mountain – music for mountaintops, indeed. Blood Orange Moon’s tempos are slower, volumes often quieter, and I’m often singing in a lower register. The tunes kinda sprawl out more and take more time to unfold.  They’re kinda cinematic in scope. The overall pace of the album is much slower. That’s a good reminder for all of us to just slow down.  Life is way too chaotic and insane right now. Chill out America.

JF: The production on “The Telepathic Kind” is lush in a ’70s way.  (Not a criticism. I love ’70s music.) Intentional?

AG: Yes and no.  It kinda seeps out of me.  I love the early 70’s Pink Floyd – Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon era.  I wanted that tune to be really dreamy and kinda narcotic sounding.  That one also owes much to Sun Kil Moon’s “Ghost of the Great Highway” as well.  Mark Kozelek really knows how to take his time and let a tune slowly unfold.  I love that. It takes courage to do that, too. On previous Felsen albums, I guess I was holding onto the idea that we would someday, somehow, get a song on the radio, and I had been making what I believed were radio-friendly albums (to the best of my ability).  I guess I’ve officially abandoned that idea entirely this time around and just made an album that I enjoy listening to. So…lots of 6 minute tunes this time ‘round.

JF: Guitar solos are pretty prominent on the new record.  Was that intentional? Did you do those?

AG: There’s a few.  I’m OK with it – I’m old fashioned.  Seems like they’re being abandoned, but I’m all for it.  The guitar solos were all done by Dylan Brock. I love Dylan’s playing.  He toured and recorded with Felsen for about four years. He’s got a real unique sound.  I hear Johnny Greenwood and Johnny Maar in his playing. Also a hint of George Harrison. There’s some pedal steel, and that was done by Gawain Matthews, who also engineered a goodly bit of the album.

JF: Talk about the instrumental interludes.  I think of you as a wordy guy, and it was fun to hear a few purely musical tracks.

AG: They’re like incidental music in a movie.  Again, going for kind of a cinematic thing.  I put a lot of thought into the sequencing of the album – I always do, but this one feels really special in that regard.  The album flows from start to finish, and it’s meant to be listened to as an LP, as well. I know that’s a tall order for our overly-stressed-out and frantically-paced society, BUT if you can just slow down and listen to this, you’ll really see it as an album.  I think it holds up. The three, short instrumental interludes really help tie it all together and make it feel more album-like.

JF: “Spanish Jam Sandwich” is like psych-rock Felsen.

AG: Yup.  Felsen is a cult.  That’s our theme song.

JF: What has been the local response to BOM?  I know you played a record release show recently.

AG: Excellent response locally.  We got lots of great press nationwide, and then we had a team of local friends write their own reviews.  My fav review so far has been from one of the bay area’s finest songwriters, Mr. Maurice Tani. My new, all time fav quote re: Blood Orange Moon: “It sounds expensive – back in the day of album rock, an album like this would have cost a mountain of corporate cash and a cigarette boat full of drugs.”  Nailed it.

JF: Any plans to make it back to the Midwest?

AG: We hope to be back in 2018.  Maybe play the Popcorn Festival?  Contact your local congressman and demand Felsen. Also, contact Von Tobels and see if they’ll underwrite our tour.  You never know.

Fwiw, Von Tobels is a local hardware store. For years, the business called itself the “Do-It Center.” I’m sure no teenagers ever had sex in their parking lot just because. Anyway, thanks, AG. I’ll have an influences playlist from him in the next week or so.

More soon.

JF

    from WordPress http://ift.tt/2oRnfQ0 via IFTTT

[eddiejpoplar]

Winter Be Damned, You’re in Prime Car-Buying Season

-

The dreadful depth of winter is one of the best times of the year to buy a car, but most people don’t seem to know that. In fact, if you ask people, many of them might tell you the winter, especially in the northern half of the country that is battered by snow, ice, wind, and salt, is an especially bad time to buy a car. “Make the old car last one more winter” is their motto. But in the face of that—and partly because of that—the dead of winter has become a great time to buy a new car.

-

Back in the days of meaningful annual model changes, crank windows, and AM radio, there were some good reasons to avoid buying a car in midwinter. Before carmakers figured out how to fight a winning battle against rust, the idea of keeping your new car out of salt-laden slush meant you might have a better chance of avoiding early-onset oxidation. I mean, who wants their brand-new car to start rusting away in the first few weeks?

-

But that was then and this is now. And the present moment favors the idea that buying when others are not buying—in the stock market they call it being contrarian—is a smart move. Instead of waiting for spring and battling hordes of other car buyers for the most popular vehicles with the most desirable equipment, you can get into the market early and pick off a good deal without tripping over other car buyers in the dealership.

-

Here are some good reasons why midwinter is a great time to buy:

-

1. Only the Strong Survive (Winter)

-

Winter is tough on your car, so if you are concerned about the overall reliability of your vehicle, the winter months are the poorest months in the year to take a chance.

-

“When it is warm out and when it is nice out, people don’t worry so much,” John Hennessy, owner of Chicago-area River View Ford, told C/D. “And then they get to the winter months, and you get a little snow on the ground, and they get a little slippage because their tread isn’t so great, or it is taking a little longer to slow down with their braking, and now they have a dilemma.”

-

Should you get your current car fixed and try to make it through the winter, or do you take the money you would have used to fix the car and put it into a down payment on a brand-new vehicle? It might make sense to take the latter course.

-

2. Warmer Incentives

-

In days gone by, car manufacturers were more content to wait out winter with the expectation that sales would inevitably pick up in the spring. But today’s market is too competitive and too dependent on continued cash flow to sit out a couple months of sales or even let them slip markedly. So, to keep the sales party going in the face of miserable weather, the carmakers get more generous with the incentives they offer consumers to get them to buy or lease.

-

“In the northern states, you’re battling snow, you’re battling freezing temperatures, so inventories start to build up,” Hennessy said. “Well, manufacturers know that, so the levels of incentives they put on are always extremely good.”

-

Fellow Midwestern dealer Ray Scarpelli, president of Illinois-based Ray Chevrolet and Ray Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, agrees.

-

“The manufacturers know that people in the middle of winter take a little enticement to get them out in cold weather, in snowy weather, to look at a car,” Scarpelli told us. “So the rebates tend to be really aggressive, and they offer strong lease payments.”

-

3. Auto Shows

-

For the same reason, winter is the time for the local auto show in many cities. Car dealers, in cooperation with the auto manufacturers, put on these shows in an effort to persuade otherwise on-the-fence buyers to get off the couch and get serious about buying a car. To support the local auto show and turn auto-show visitors into paying customers, individual dealers, regional same-make dealer associations, and carmakers go to uncommon extremes to make their midwinter deals irresistible.

-

“The public knows that come February there are going to be great incentives going on at the Chicago auto show,” said Hennessy, who happens to be chairman of the show, “because manufacturers put a little extra on to try to entice people who go to the auto show to buy a car.”

-

The same holds true across the country as local dealer associations, car manufacturers, and individual dealers get together to throw midwinter events their experience tells them will result in increased business.

-

4. Lonely Dealers

-

The typical dealership depends on foot traffic, and when poor weather prevents potential customers from going out car shopping, dealers are more eager to close deals with those few customers who do brave the elements. Most consumers don’t realize that dealers finance a significant portion of their inventory, so they have car payments, too. And that means they are often more willing to take less for a car rather than making another payment on it. So a shrewd negotiator has more leverage in late February than in the beginning of June.

-

Hennessy agrees that the lack of traffic caused by inclement weather can be a big consumer advantage. “When dealers aren’t seeing a lot of people, we are more inclined to step up and put more money into that trade that isn’t worth too much,” Hennessy said. “We’re paying interest on that car sitting on the ground, so I’d rather relieve that interest and put a lot more money into that trade and help you get into the car.”

-

-

How to Negotiate Your Next New-Car Lease Like a Pro

-

Should Your Next New Car Be a Used Car?

-

How to Make a Satisfying Car Purchase in an Hour or Less

-

-

Having said all this, just scraping the snow off your current car and driving to the closest dealership won’t necessarily guarantee you a good deal. But if you approach the transaction with knowledge, you can use the snow, ice, and cold to save yourself some serious money.

- from Performance Junk Blogger 6 http://ift.tt/2GVojd6 via IFTTT