#have i...have i already captioned some michael drawing with the same words. not sure

[ztpx]

Hey mx handman hand me a hand

[dimples-of-discontent]

Oh anons flooding my inbox to tell me that I’m a conspiracy theorist for thinking there’s more to this finale than meets the eye and/or that it’s totally the writers’ fault, you have no idea how much I do not care! I’m tagging anything related as “finale theories” and you should feel free to blacklist it using whatever method you so choose. I’m staying away, until the dust settles, from drawing any conclusions about what exactly happened to the script (either to make it what it was pre-covid or post-covid) or what cut scenes might have contained, or who was at fault for how it all turned out.

To the anons who think I’m reading too much into Jensen and Misha’s relative “silence” on the finale, I have some comments. With Misha it’s harder to tell, but I am completely convinced that Jensen is deliberately not engaging with finale-related content because he’s so alienated, angry, and disappointed. I think Misha is finding ways to talk about it that he thinks will support the fandom, rather than the network, and frankly he is far more used to having to deal with the feeling of being screwed by the network but still loving the fans. But Jensen really trusted them and they did him really dirty.

Leaving aside the fact that neither Jensen nor Misha was in the CW “thank you” video--which is LOUD AF of them--let’s look at the social media angle. We already know that Jensen wasn’t happy with the finale as it was written (which likely included Dean dying and, yes, that was probably his biggest beef, but I’ll bet he had some words about Misha’s character too) and talked to several people about it. He was then told to accept it and make his peace and he did that and did the best he could. Now, since November 5th we’ve heard very little from him and definitely not in the ways you would expect to hear from the star of a long-running show like SPN.

He’s been much more forthcoming about how proud he was of the scene he shot with Misha in “Despair.” Jensen and Misha both posted about 15x18 and Jensen happily talked about it on a livestream. It meant so much to him personally (as the last scene they’d film together, or as a momentous moment in the show, or as something else) that he had someone film it on his phone just for him and admitted breaking character. They talked it through beforehand a lot. They talked about it after a lot and texted each other fan reaction videos. They were glad to be able to do something that meant so much to us and that brought the story to this point.

Over on Twitter, Misha seems pretty much his same self, using the proper hashtag (which in the old days of Twitter he used to mock Jensen for not knowing how to do) and RTing nostalgic comments from Kripke, Jim Michaels, etc. His personal tweets just tagged Jensen and Jared. The set pics he shared were from 15x18. Jensen just gave Entertainment Weekly a RT for the finale. He’s pretty much full-time on Instagram, but that’s still pretty little engagement. He liked two tweets, both on 11/5 when 15x18 was airing, by Misha and Bobo Berens, but zero tweets related to the finale. (Jared tweeted during the finale a few times and then sent some comfort to the fans. FWIW he also didn’t RT or tag any network folks. I think he’s probably less happy than he seems, but he’s a company boy doing a new show with them so his hands are tied.)

Over on Instagram, on the day of the finale Misha was busy. He posted a pic of Maise “Spon on-set props assistant” in a trench coat robe. Jensen liked that. He also posted a video recapping and asking people to tune into the finale. Jensen did not like that. THEN he posted a pic of him and Jensen filming 15x18. Jensen liked that. Pic of Misha and the kids about to watch SPN? Jensen likes it. Pic of Misha crying during the finale and saying how much he’s going to miss Sam and Dean that actually tags Jensen? Jensen does not like it. The gist? Jensen “likes” all Misha’s posts from that day except the two related to the content of the finale (rather than watching it with West and Maison...and besides, soft boy Jensen isn’t going to not like a pic of West and Maison!).

And here’s Jensen’s account. On November 3rd, Jensen posts to thank TV Guide. On the 19th he posts to thank Entertainment Weekly. On the day of the finale, he posts a pic of Dean’s boots and a video of him getting dressed as Dean “for the last time - for now.” (I think that was a clumsy attempt not to spoil anything but I will also hold onto the idea that maybe he will do his own version of a sequel. The day after the finale he posts a slightly salty photo of the piece of rebar (aka “the rusty nail”) that killed Dean captioned “Excuse me....uh, ‘set dec’!!! Can we get this removed please?!?!” and uses the hashtag “spnfamilyforever.” That’s the hashtag for us--for the fans--rather than anything official. Those posts were both for us too, showing him loving Dean and loving being Dean and being just as pissed as us about his death. (For the record, Jared posted a pic of him watching the finale, also hashtagging the spnfamily, and Jensen liked it.)

All the people that he’s not thanking reads very loudly. Contrast to all the thanks he (and everyone else) were throwing like roses at the 300th episode party. Jensen is a generous guy. He’s professional, everyone likes him, and he likes to credit everyone for their accomplishments. For him to be this silent and not write a single caption thanking ANYONE aside from TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly (who he needs to keep on his good side for his own production company)? IS SO OUT OF CHARACTER!!! Every con, every interview, he talks about how they couldn’t do what they do without the help of all these other people along the way. To not have it in him to thank those people? He must be hurting so incredibly badly.

He cares about us so he’ll do what he can for the SPN family. But it won’t surprise me if the clusterfuck of an ending alienated him so much that we don’t get things we might otherwise (more panels, for example, or cons) because he is just done working with the people who hurt him. I’m glad he was smiling in that most recent livestream because he sure doesn’t seem happy right now.

[blackbutterfliescal]

With Eyes To Hear

A Michael Clifford One Shot

Pairing: Barista!Michael Clifford x Deaf!Reader

Word count: 3.4K

Rating: Fluff

Requested by: N/A

Content: second person POV, gender neutral reader insert, Deaf!reader (uses sign language & lip reading primarily), first date, singular mention of smoking

A/N: The Deaf community is very near and dear to my heart. I’ve been taking ASL classes for just over 2 years but I’m not Deaf/HoH. I will not claim to be a voice for this community but if you are Deaf/HoH, I welcome any thoughts you want to share with me. If you want to read a really sweet Luke fic by someone who is hearing impaired, check out Can You Hear Me? and Valentine by Frankie. 💕 Also!! big big shout-out to my bby Adri for making this pretty moodboard for me 😇😘

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Feedback is always appreciated! 😊

———

This afternoon was proving to be the longest in recorded history. At least that’s what it felt like to Michael. The cafe had been dead since he got there after lunch and it was nearing closing time. He felt like he could count this shift’s customers on one hand. Rainy days were always slow, but today seemed never ending.

Michael could hear the rain falling outside the door, which Calum left propped open for one last smoke break. As he moved around the pastry case to sweep the small seating area, Michael glanced out the windows to see that any hint of daylight was gone. The street lights had flickered on outside the cafe and reflected brightly off the rain-slick pavement.

He resumed his sweeping, determined to leave on time today. He broke out of his cleaning trance at the jingle of the bell above the front door. He did his best to plaster on a smile, knowing he had less than ten minutes until close.

“Oh, sorry we’re-” He stopped short.

Heavy boots hit the floor repeatedly in an effort to knock the water off on the welcome mat. The door slammed shut behind you and, though you didn’t seem to notice him, Michael winced slightly at the sound. You shrugged the oversized rain jacket off your shoulders and hung it on the coat rack by the door.

So much for leaving on time tonight,he thought.

He made his way to the register as you approached. You gave him a small smile and wave and he couldn’t help the tired grin on his face. “Sorry,” you mouthed, eyebrows furrowed. You really wouldn’t be out for coffee so late if you weren’t desperate. And you were trying hard not to track the rain all over his clean floor.

“What can I get you?” he asked. The exhaustion was evident on his face.

“Do you have a pen and paper?” you signed.

“Ummmm…” Michael dug in the pockets of his apron quickly for the notepad and pencil he usually kept. He handed them over to you in a hurry and you let out a giggle at his frantic actions. Michael’s stomach picked up with butterflies and his face cracked into a smile at the sound. You slid the notepad back across the counter with your order and your name scrawled at the bottom. When he looked up to meet your face, you gave him a timid smile.

He read out your name as he leaned down to grab a to-go cup and started to make your coffee “I used to go to have a babysitter with the same name. They were so strict! I remember this one time….” He trailed off as he turned to the machine behind him. Michael always rambled when he got nervous. And he was always nervous around people he thought were cute. When he faced toward you again, you noticed his lips moving and waved your hand to get his attention.

“I’m deaf. I can’t hear you. But I’m pretty good at reading lips! Just face me when you talk.” You kept the polite smile on your face as his cheeks flushed red. This wasn’t new territory for you by any means and you had become an expert at navigating situations like this, unfortunately.

“Oh! I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking.” he sighed and looked at his feet.

You waved again to draw his gaze back to you. “It’s fine! Just remember to look at me when you speak.” Michael smiled at you sheepishly with a small nod. “Okay.” He wasn’t familiar with the signs you were using, but he could piece together what you needed from him.

He quickly finished the order and placed the coffee on the counter, telling you not to worry about paying for it. Besides, he’d already counted the money drawer and didn’t want to have to do it again for a single coffee. You held his gaze with a toothy grin for a few beats before pointing at the door awkwardly.

“I’m...going to go. Thank you very much! I’ll see you around,” you signed.

You pulled the raincoat on again and wrapped your hands around the warm coffee before disappearing into the rain, letting the door slam behind you.

Michael stared at the door long after you’d gone. It wasn’t until Calum came back in to do some last minute clean-up that he snapped out of it.

———

That night when Michael got home, he sat in his usual spot at the computer. His phone buzzed on the table next to him, lighting up briefly to show a text from Calum.

Are you joining the game or not, man? We’re getting our asses kicked.

Michael had been at this for hours and could probably use a break to play. After a moment of thought, he shot back a quick reply.

Not tonight.I’ve got something else going on.

He sat his phone face down, causing him to miss Calum’s cheeky response, and glanced at the clock at the bottom of his computer screen. He’d been researching for hours. He decided to watch one more video before calling it a night. A yawn that stretched across his face as he clicked play on yet another video titled Deaf Culture 101.

———

It had been almost a week and Michael was still hoping to see you come back into the cafe. He’d been working on signs for anything he thought might be helpful but practicing your name was his favorite. He made Calum quiz him every day when the mid-afternoon lull hit. Calum completely understood where his friend was coming from but sometimes Michael got on a soapbox about inaccessibility for hours and that always made Calum roll his eyes, regretting his decision to be helpful.

When you appeared in the cafe that morning, Calum threw a wink at Michael and watched as a nervous blush crept across his face and neck. Calum gave him a small thumbs up and made sure to stay out of his way as you got closer to the front of the line.

“Good morning!” He spelled your name out at an agonizingly slow pace. “How….are you…..today?”

A wide smile took over your face and you suddenly felt a little embarrassed that you didn’t get his name last time you came in. You quickly found the name tag pinned to his apron and let out a sigh of relief before replying politely. You did your best to use signs you thought he might recognize and give him time to register them.

It took a lot of concentration for him to remember the right signs now that you were here and you could tell that he was panicking and clearly flustered. He remembered your order and your smile reached your eyes at his thoughtfulness.

“And one of these!” you said, leaning forward to point at your favorite treat in the pastry case for clarity. When you looked up from the baked goods, you met Michael’s light eyes. He must be the sweetest thing in here, you thought while holding his gaze. Your eyes went wide with shock at your own mind, causing you to glance around the rest of the shop before realizing the two of you were holding up the line.You quickly shuffled to the cash register where Michael rang up your breakfast.

As he gathered the change in his hand, you motioned for him to keep it and he slid it into the tip jar. “Thank you!” he signed with a smile. His nervous brain got ahead of him and he couldn’t come up with the right signs before he blurted out, “I wanted to ask if you’d want to hang out this weekend? I’m available Sunday afternoon?” You smiled again, reading the question on his lips. “Sure! That sounds great! Do you want to text me and make plans?” you asked, looking around for a pen and paper to write down your cell number.

Shock and excitement ran across his features as he picked up your coffee cup from the counter. He scribbled his phone number on the cardboard protector and handed it to you. Michael always felt so awkward making small talk and a new language made him even more nervous. He genuinely couldn’t believe you had agreed to a date with him. You gave him a small wave as you pivoted toward the door, giving him another smile over your shoulder before making it outside.

Michael was stuck in the same place with a goofy grin on his face until the next customer made their way to the register. Calum clapped his hand across his friend's shoulders to pull him back to reality but he didn’t come down from cloud nine for the rest of the day.

———

The two of you exchanged constant messages until Sunday rolled around. Your conversations were effortless and, most of the time, about nothing. You’d discussed every favorite you could think of, the strangest orders he’d taken each day, the interesting people you saw on your commutes, and he’d even snapped you hilariously edited candids of Calum. Poor guy had no idea his friend was turning him into a pirate or a pilot or a heavy metal rockstar.

You’d gotten a slow start to your morning as you made breakfast and sat down to watch the news until it switched to local programming around eleven o’clock. As you were getting ready for your afternoon with Michael, you realized the two of you had never decided what you were doing. He did ask you to hang out after all, so you hoped he had something in mind. When you messaged him to ask, you felt the tiniest bit guilty nixing a couple of his ideas immediately. Movies just weren’t practical since captioning devices were notoriously bad and, though a nice restaurant sounded lovely, the lighting was almost always too dim to read lips. He was throwing ideas around pretty quickly, so you thought it a little odd when he disappeared for a few minutes after a couple of rejected ideas. You knew he wouldn’t just leave you hanging, so you sat your phone down and continued your routine, deciding that if you didn’t hear from him by the time you were done, you would pitch a few plans of your own. After about ten minutes of silence, just as you picked it up to propose a place to go, your phone buzzed and lit up with Michael's name at the top of the screen.

I have a plan but it’s a surprise. I’ll send you the address but promise me you won’t look it up! Oh, and wear sunscreen 😎

You can’t help the amused smile that took over your face as you promised not to ruin his surprise. You wondered what in the world you’ve gotten yourself into but knew you’d have a good time with Michael no matter what.

After another half hour, Michael texted you that he’s ready when you are. He sent you the address and you couldn’t help trying to piece it together. You were somewhat familiar with the part of town where you were meeting, but not enough to figure out what he had planned. You let him know that you were on your way, sunscreen and sunglasses in tow.

After a short drive across town, you pulled into a fairly empty parking lot. Panic started to creep into your stomach until you spotted Michael standing outside his car at the other end, waving happily with a big grin on his face. As you parked, he came to the side of your door to help you out. He was always so sweet and thoughtful that it caused a permanent blush on your cheeks.

“Hi! How are you? I’m excited to see you again,” he signed, much improved from the last time you’d seen him. The smile on your face always seemed to accompany the warm blush when you were with Michael. “Me too!” you said as you looked around to see where he’d brought you. Your brows furrowed as you turned back to meet his gaze, “What are we doing here?” Determined to keep it a surprise, he told you that you would just have to be patient and wait. 

Patience is a virtue but not one you were known to possess, so you quickly pulled the things you needed out of your car and locked it up. Michael took your hand and led you down the sidewalk. You knew you were near the banks and you could smell the water but you still were at a loss for what you were doing.

The two of you strolled hand-in-hand for a few blocks, content with the silence between you. You had only known each other for a short time, but it made you happy to see that he had so quickly become comfortable with you. He wasn’t the same nervous, rambling man you first met, though you will admit you found him charming either way. When it came to navigating the hearing world, you were almost always outside of conversations and it made you feel warm that Michael didn’t see the need for mindless jabber. He was waiting until he could properly sign with you and that meant more than you could let him know. Instead, as you made your way wherever, you both watched the sparse tourists out and about the area for the afternoon. 

As you came upon a small path toward the banks, he motioned to the side to let you know that’s where you were headed. After a few more steps, you cleared the last row of buildings and saw the pier stretched out in front of you. Of course it was the pier and you couldn’t believe you didn’t realize sooner! You stopped for a second to take it in. It had been a while since you had gone to the pier because it was always a draw for visitors and you tended to avoid the large crowds. You took in the rows of carnival games and fried food stands outfitted in flashing lights before seeing a pair of tourists flying from one end to the other on a giant zipline. Your eyes went wide with shock and you shot a quick, worried glance at Michael. He began to laugh before he replied, “don’t worry - we’re just here for games and food!” He barely finished signing to reassure you before he wrapped your hand in his again and he took off, pulling you toward a pair of whack-a-mole seats.

The light crowd that afternoon meant that you could walk up to any stand without a wait to play and you were convinced Michael wanted to play every game there. When you were both beat out at whack-a-mole by the ten-year old next to you, you decided buzzer games probably weren’t your strong suit. The two of you raced between game stands in a never-ending fit of laughter. Some games had you competing against each other and the playful trash-talk amused the game attendants. Then, just as quickly as you’d started your banter, you’d find a single player game and become each other’s biggest cheerleader.

After losing at the cat rack, tin can alley, and the balloon bust, Michael wanted to try his hand at a game of chance, since clearly precision was not for him. His pace between games had slowed down considerably since you’d arrived and he was determined to win something to take home. He just hadn’t found much luck. The two of you wandered down the wooden platform with your fingers lazily entwined until you found the ring toss booth. You dropped his hand and signed excitedly to him that you’d find another game to try.

When he came very close to winning on several rings from the first bucket, Michael decided to give it a second go. The two of you tossed one red ring after another, almost making it many times but always watching them bounce off to the side. You picked up the last two rings in the bucket and handed one to Michael. His eyes met yours and you both nodded before turning back toward the game. He used his free hand to count down from three and you both sent the rings sailing through the air. You watched intently as they bounced around the bottle tops before Michael’s landed squarely around the golden glass bottle in the center.

He threw his arms up in the arm in victory as you looked at him with surprise and celebration on your face. His arms came down around your shoulders in a quick hug before the game attendant came over to help him claim a prize. Without hesitation, he turned to you and asked “Which one do you want?” You glanced up at the options and pointed out a small stuffed animal hanging right above you. As if on instinct, you hugged it to your chest when the attendant handed it over and thanked them and Michael. Smile on your face, stuffed animal in one hand, and Michael in the other hand, you couldn’t have been happier as you wandered between stalls.

The smell of something sweet caught your attention as you looked around to find the source. Michael must have read your mind because he began guiding you in the direction of the food stand without warning. To your surprise, the person inside the booth knew enough sign language to take your order without needing a pen and paper. Michael beamed from ear to ear watching your happiness as you were able to order treats for both of you. He only caught every second or third word, but he could see the elated smile on your face. Michael had needed to step in at most of the games throughout the afternoon, so you felt very excited to find someone who spoke your language.

Once you’d retrieved your treats and thanked the worker again, you began to walk back toward the parking lot leisurely. Just as you finished your snacks and were about to approach the end of the pier, you spotted a small photo booth kiosk. You grabbed Michael’s hand and tugged him off in that direction without much of a choice.The two of you piled onto the narrow seat and closed the curtain before you fed money into the machine. You selected a decorative frame with the date in the corner and the onscreen countdown began.

For the first pose, you held up the prize Michael won you with a toothy grin and he threw up a thumbs up, earning a laugh from you. You both pulled a funny face in the next pose and when it popped up on screen, you noticed that Michael had the tiniest bit of food stuck on the outside corner of his lips. You turned toward him and reached your hand up to rest on his cheek as your thumb swiped away the residue. Michael let out a small gasp as his face turned to you. The camera flash for the third picture caught you off guard and caused you to pull away as heat flushed over your cheeks. Before his confidence faltered, Michael cupped your face and brought his lips to meet yours. Your eyes fluttered closed briefly before he pulled away and looked into your eyes. You could read the hesitance in his expression until you placed a peck on his lips to tell him that it was okay. His mouth stretched into a wide smile and you felt your cheeks burn even hotter as you pulled back and glanced timidly at the stuffed animal in your lap.

Michael reached for the copies of the printed film strip at the bottom of the machine and flushed as he realized the last picture was of your kiss. He handed you a copy as he signed “cute” with a smile before opening the curtain and stepping out of the kiosk. You carried the photo strip in the same hand as your ring toss prize so you could hold Michael’s hand in the other. As you made your way back down the sidewalk to your parked cars, you leaned your head against his shoulder. He placed a sweet kiss to the top of your head with a smile, earning a contented hum from you before you fell back into silence for the next few blocks. You had known you would have a good afternoon with Michael, but it had exceeded all expectations.

———

taglist: @easierlftv @haikucal @kingcals @youngblood199456 @bookercth @atlcalm @another-lonely-heart @ashtonsos @castaway-cashton @itsjen223 @softbabiestan​

[buzzdixonwriter]

My Five Most Influential

Someone asked:   Who are the most influential writers in your life?

Good question.

The broad answer is that one gets influenced many different ways by many different sources.  I enjoy poetry and song lyrics because they find ways of conveying the strongest emotional content in the most concise manner, music brings a sense of dramatic rhythm and fulfillment, the visual arts suggest ways of subtly adding many insights to a single strong idea, etc., etc., and of course, etc. (and that is also an example of a creative influence in my work).

But…to boil it down to those whom I most consciously made an effort to emulate, we find ourselves facing five creators that primed the pump.

This is not to say others whom I began following after them didn’t wield a lot of influence (thanx, Ernie, Bert, Jack, Bob, and Hank!) but these are the foundation of everything I’ve done in my career.

(And to those who notice a lack of diversity, I know, I know…but to be honest I have to acknowledge the truth, and the truth is for whatever reason, by chance or by choice, by fate or by fortune, these five dominated my sensibilities.  I trust that I’ve grown and expanded my horizons since then, but they’re the hand I got dealt.)

. . . 

Carl Barks

I loved ducks as a kid and my grandmother and aunt would always bring me a passel of duck-related comics when they came to visit.

There were some Daffy Duck comics mixed in there but while I know I looked at and enjoyed them, none of them stick in my mind like the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories of Carl Barks.

Typically my grandmother would read these comics to me and I’d imprint the dialog and captions in my brain, replaying them as I looked at the pictures over and over again.

Barks never wrote down to his audience, and his stories covered a vast array of genres, everything from straight domestic comedy to oddball adventures to screwy crime stories.

Donald and his nephews encountered dinosaurs more than once (another big favorite of mine), and Uncle Scrooge setting out to explore the asteroid belt in order to find a new home for his fabulous money bin was another tale I loved literally to pieces, but A Christmas For Shacktown remains my all time favorite graphic novel.

I’ll concede there are better graphic novels, but none of them warm my heart the way that Christmas story does.

Barks showed it’s possible to combine heart (not to be confused with sentimentality or =yuch!= schmaltz), vivid characters, and strong, intricate narrative.  His plots where typically filled with unexpected twists and turns but his characters were always deeply involved in them, not just along for the ride.

He’s one of the greatest storytellers in the 20th century, and his work remains timeless enough to last for several centuries to come.

. . . 

Ray Bradbury

The first Ray Bradbury story I remember encountering was “Switch On The Night” in its 1955 edition, read to my kindergarten class towards the end of the school year.

This would place the event sometime in the spring of 1959.

“Switch On The Night” captivated me because it was the first story I’d ever heard that showed what could be seen in the dark that couldn’t be seen in the day.

Even as a child, it made me realize the night wasn’t scary, but contained wonders and insights we miss in the harsh glare of day.

I don’t recall if the kindergarten teacher told us the name of the author, and if she did it didn’t stick, but boy howdy, the story sure did!  Did it open the doors of the night for me, or was I already inclined to be a night person and it simply confirmed that as a valid identity?

I dunno, but I’m typing this right now at 12:24am.

And the thoughts Bradbury planted in little Buzzy boy’s brain stayed and grew and flowered, as you can read in my poem, “The Magic Hours Of The Night”.

The next time I encountered Ray Bradbury’s writing was in grammar school, certainly no later than junior high.  I was already interested in science fiction by that point, and had read “The Pedestrian” in one of my school English books (we weren’t taught the story in class; the teacher skipped over it for whatever reason but I read it anyway then re-read it and read it again and again).

Anthony Boucher’s ubiquitous 2-volume A Treasury Of Great Science Fiction was in my grammar school library and in it was Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” (which I would later learn was one of his alternate Martian Chronicles and a crossover with Fahrenheit 451) and in that story he offered up a veritable laundry list of outré and outlandish fiction to be tracked down and read, authors to dig up and devour.

Oh, man, I was hooked.

So of course I began looking for all the stories and writers Bradbury listed in his short story but I also began looking for Bradbury’s own work and before you could say, “Mom, can I get a subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club?” I’d read The Golden Apples Of The Sun and A Medicine For Melancholy and R is For Rocket never once dreaming that at some point in the future the roadmap Ray plopped down in my lap would eventually lead to us being co-workers (separate projects, but the same studio at the same time) and friends.

There is a beautiful yet deceptive simplicity to Ray’s work, and even though he wrote his own book on writing (The Zen Of Writing) that has lots of good insights and professional tricks & tips, he himself wasn’t able to explain how he did it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good Ray Bradbury parody.

I’ve seen parodies that clearly are intended to evoke Ray Bradbury, but only in the same way a clumsy older relative might evoke Michael Jackson with a spasmodic movement one vaguely recognizes as a failed attempt at a moonwalk.

But, lordie, don’t think we didn’t try to emulate him, and while none of us fanboys ever came close, I think a lot of us did learn that less is more, that the right word carries more impact than a dozen paragraphs, and that there’s magic in even the most ordinary of things.

And of course I discovered the film and TV adaptations of his work, and in discovering them I also discovered that there are some things that just can’t be translated from one media to another, and that the light, effortless appeal of Ray’s work on the page (paper or pixel) can at best be recaptured with a good audio book reader but even the best dramatic adaptions -- even those by Ray himself -- are cold dead iron butterflies compared to the light and lively creatures flying about.

So eventually I stopped trying to write like him, and instead picked up the valuable lessons of mood and emotion making an impact on a story even if the plot didn’t make much logical sense.

Decades later I would become a fan of opera, and would learn the philosophy of all opera lovers:  Opera doesn’t have to make logical sense, it just has to make emotional sense.

Ray Bradbury, opera meister.

. . . 

H.P. Lovecraft

As noted above, Bradbury’s “Pillar Of Fire” tipped me to numerous other writers, first and foremost of which turned out to be Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Okay, before we get any further into this, let’s acknowledge the woolly mammoth in the room:  H.P. Lovecraft was a colossal asshat racist.

He was a lot of other terrible things, too, but racist is far and ahead of the rest of the pack.

It’s a disillusioning thing to find people one admired as a youngster or a teen later prove to have not just quirks and eccentricities and personal flaws, but genuinely destructive, harmful, and offensive characters.

I’ve posted on that before, too.

How I wish it were possible to retroactively scale back that hurtfulness, to make them more empathetic, less egregiously offensive (in the military sense of the word), but that ain’t so.

We have to acknowledge evil when we see it, and we have to call it out, and we have to shun it.

Which is hard when one of its practitioners provides a major influence in our creative lives.

Here’s what I liked about Lovecraft as a kid:  He was the complete opposite of Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury’s instinctive genius was in finding the right word, the simple word that conveyed great impact on the story, drawing the reader into the most fantastic situations by making them seem more familiar on a visceral level.

Lovecraft achieved the exact opposite effect by finding the most arcane, bedizened, baroque, florid, grandiloquent, overwrought, rococo verbiage possible and slapping the reader repeatedly in the face with it.

If Bradbury made the unreal real, Lovecraft made the weird even more weirder.

And let’s give this devil his due:  The Strange Case Of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror are two masterpieces of horror and serve as the bridge between Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, not to mention his creation of Cthulhu and other ancient entities existing beyond the ken of human knowledge…

…oh, wait, that’s where the story simultaneously gets messy yet provides a convenient escape hatch for fans.

While Lovecraft created Cthulhu, he did not create the Cthulhu Mythos.

That was primarily the invention August Derleth, a writer / editor / agent and H.P. Lovecraft’s #1 fanboy.

Lovecraft had some loosely related ideas in his stories and several themes he revisited repeatedly (in addition to racism).

He also had a circle of fellow writers -- including such heavy hitters as Robert “Psycho” Bloch and Robert E. “Conan” Howard -- who picked up on his ideas and, as way of a tribute, incorporated them in some of their stories.

Derleth took all this and Lovecraft’s unfinished manuscripts and short ideas he jotted down and turned it into a whole post-mortem industry, linking all of Lovecraft and other writers’ tales.

And he did a damn fine job of it, too.

So much so that the Cthulhu Mythos has taken on a life of its own, and pretty much anybody can play in that cosmic sandbox now (including Big Steve King and a ton of Japanese anime) and so Lovecraft’s works have an enormous influence on pop culture…

,,,but Howard hizzowndamsef can be -- and is -- cancelled.

Derleth and various biographers downplayed Lovecraft’s virulent racism for decades, and I don’t think Ray Bradbury was ever aware of the scope and tenor of Lovecraft’s bigotry when he name checked him in “Pillar Of Fire” and other stories.

In a similar vein Bradbury didn’t know -- because thanks again to overly protective literary executors, nobody knew -- just how big a racist asshat Walt Whitman was, either.  It is one thing to call shenanigans on a Bill Cosby or a Harvey Weinstein or a Donald Trump because their egregious behaviors were noted long before they were held accountable, but quite another to do so on a creator who died while hiding their most awful behavior from thousands if not millions of fans who felt inspired and uplifted by their work.

It’s one thing to call out a contemporary bigot and not support them by not buying their work, it’s quite another when their bigotry has been shielded from view and fair minded, decent people have used their work to draw inspiration into their own creativity.

Of course, I had no way of knowing all this when I was in junior high and seriously began tracking down Lovecraft’s work.  

He possessed a flair of the horrific and unearthly that to this day is hard to match (but easier to parody).  He was a tremendous influence on my early writing (truth be told, I zigzagged between Bradbury’s stark simplicity and Lovecraft’s overarching verbosity, giving my early oeuvre a rather schizophrenic style) and the ideas he sparked still reverberate to this day.

If only he hadn’t been such a giant %#@&ing asshat racist …

. . . 

Harlan Ellison

In a way, I’m glad neither Harlan nor his widow Susan are alive to read this.

I cherished Harlan as a friend and greatly admired his qualities as a writer.

But damn, by his own admission he should have been thrown in prison for aggravated assault on numerous occasions (he was courts martialed three times while in the Army).

We’re not talking about arguments that spiraled out of control until a few wild punches were thrown, we’re talking about Harlan by his own admission stalking and ambushing people, knocking them unconscious or causing grievous bodily harm.

We’re talking about sexual abuse and humiliation.

We’re talking about incidents he admitted to which if true put people in life threatening situations.

And yet ironically, in a certain sense Harlan (a bona fide Army Ranger, BTW) was like the U.S. Marine Corps:  You’d never have a greater friend or a worse enemy.

I became dimly aware of Harlan in the late 1960s as I started diving deeper into literary sci-fi, transitioning from monster kid fandom to digests and paperbacks.  Harlan first caught my attention with his macho prose (years later a similar style also drew me to Charles Bukowski) in stories like “Along the Scenic Route” (a.k.a. “Dogfight on 101”) in which Los Angelinos engaged in Mad Max motor mayhem but soon it became apparent the macho posturing was just a patina, that the heart and soul of much of the work reflected great sensitivity and often profound melancholy (ditto Bukowski).

Harlan was a fighter, and again by his own admission, he acknowledged in his later years that he was not a fighter because his cause was just, but rather sought out just causes because he knew he would be fighting regardless of his position, yet possessed a strong enough moral compass to point himself in the direction of a worthy enemy…

…most of the time.

He hurt and offended a large number of innocent and some not-so-innocent-but-certainly-not-evil people.

He also helped and encouraged a large number of others, people who had no idea who he was, people who had no way of adequately reciprocating his kindness and generosity.

He defended a lot of defenseless people.

He also mistakenly defended a lot of terrible people.

If someone tells me Harlan was a monster, I’ll agree:  Monstre sacré.

What made his writing sacred was that no matter how outlandish the situation, Harlan dredged up from the depths emotions so strong as to be frightening in their depiction.

Skilled enough not to lose sight of humanity, outlandish enough to conjure up ideas and emotions most people would shy away from, Harlan hit adolescent Buzzy boy like an incendiary grenade.

Unlike my first three literary influences, Harlan was and remained active in the fannish circles where I was circulating at the time.  He regularly wrote letters and columns for various fanzines, including a few I subscribed to.

In a literary sense he stood, naked and unashamed, in full view of the world, and that willingness to go beyond mundane sensibilities is what made his work so compelling.

He certainly fired me up as an adolescent writer, and proved an amalgam of Bradbury and Lovecraft that got my creative juices flowing in a coherent direction.

I don’t think I ever consciously tried to imitate him in my writing, but I sure learned from him, both in how to charge a story with emotion and how to fight for what’s right regardless of the blow back.

I loved him as a friend.

But, damn, Harlan…you could act so ugly...

. . .

H. Allen Smith

Who?

Most of you have never heard of H. Allen Smith, and that’s a damn shame.

I’d never heard of him either until I stumbled across a coverless remaindered copy of Poor H. Allen Smith’s Almanac in a Dollar General Store bin in Tennessee in the late 1960s (it was a memorable shopping expedition:  I also purchased Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts and Let’s Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady [pen name of June Margaret O'Grady Skinner]).

Reading Smith’s editorial comments (in addition to his own essays and fiction he edited numerous humor anthologies) I realized I’d found a kindred soul.

Smith had a very conversational tone as a writer; his prose seemed off the cuff and unstructured, but he slyly used that style to hide the very peculiar (and often perverse) path he led readers down.

He sounded / read like a garrulous guy at the bar, one with a huge number of charming, witty (and delightfully inebriated) friends in addition to his own bottomless well of tall tales, pointed observations, and rude jokes.

Of all the writers mentioned above, that style is the one I most consciously tried to emulate, and one I seem to have been able to find my own voice in (several people have told me I write the same way I talk, a rarity among writers).

Smith was hilarious whether wearing an editor’s visor or a freelancer’s fool’s cap.  If you know who H. L. Mencken was, think of Smith as a benign, better tempered version of that infamous curmudgeon (and if you don’t know, hie thee hence to Google and find out).

Compared to my other four influences, Smith didn’t need to add the fantastic to his fiction:  The real world was weird and wacky and whimsical enough.

A newspaper man turned best selling author, Smith became among the most popular humorists of the 1940s-50s-60s…

…and then he died and everybody forgot him.

Part of the reason they forgot is that he wrote about things that no longer seem relevant (TV cowboys of the early television era, f’r instance, in Mr. Zip) or are today looked upon askance (and with justifiable reason; the ethnic humor in many of his anthologies may not have been intended as mean spirited, but it sure doesn’t read as a celebration of other cultures, viz his succinct account of an argument following a traffic accident between two native Honolulu cabbies rendered in pidgin:  “Wassamatta you?”  “’Wassmatta me’?!?!?  Wassamatta you ‘Wassamatta me’?  You wassamatta!”).

I’m sure I picked up a great many faults from Smith, but Smith also had the virtue of being willing and able to learn and to make an effort to be a better person today than he was yesterday, and better still tomorrow.

I’ve certainly tried applying that to my life.

Smith’s style was also invoked -- consciously or not -- by other writers and editors, notably Richard E. Geis, the editor of the legendary sci-fi semi-prozone, Science Fiction Review (among other titles).  Smith died before I could meet him, but while I never met Dick Geis face to face we were pen pals for over 40 years.

Geis certainly sharpened specific aspects of my writing style, but the real underlying structure came from H. Allen Smith.

Smith’s work is hard to find today (in no small part because whenever I encounter one in the wild I snap it up) but I urge you to give him a try.

Just brace yourself for things we might consider incorrect today.

. . . 

So there’s my top five. 

With the exception of Carl Barks and Ray Bradbury, none of them are without serious flaw or blemish (though Smith seems like a decent enough sort despite his fondness for X-rated and ethnic humor).

In my defense as an impressionable child / teen, I was not aware of these flaws and blemishes when I first encountered their writing (primarily because in many cases efforts were made to hide or downplay those aspects).

The positive things I gleaned from them are not negated by the negative personal information that came out later.

I can, for the most part re the more problematic of them, appreciate their work while not endorsing their behavior.

Ellison can only be described in extremes, but his fire and passion -- when directed in a positive direction -- served as a torch to light new paths (his two original anthologies, Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, pretty much blew the doors off old school sci-fi and belatedly dragged the genre kicking and screaming into the 20th century).

Lovecraft I can effectively ignore while finding entertainment value in the Cthulhu Mythos.

But I must acknowledge this isn’t the same for everyone.

For example, as innocuous as I find H. Allen Smith, if a woman or a member of a minority group said, “I found this in particular to be offensive” I’d probably have to say, yeah, you’re right.

But I can still admire the way he did it, even if I can no longer fully support what he did.

. . . 

By the time I reached high school, I’d acquired enough savvy to regard to literary finds a bit more dispassionately, appreciating what they did without trying to literally absorb it into my own writing.

I discovered for myself the Beat generation of writers and poets, the underground cartoonists of the late 60s and 70s, Ken Kesey, Joseph Heller, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. LeGuin, and a host of others, some already alluded to.

Some, such as the Beats and Bukowski, I could enjoy for their warts and all honest self-reflection.

Yes, they were terrible people, but they knew they were terrible people, and they also knew there had to be something better, and while they may never have found the nirvana they sought, they at least sent back accurate reports of where they were in their journeys of exploration.

By my late teens, I’d become aware enough of human foibles and weaknesses -- every human’s foibles and weaknesses, including my own -- to be very, very cautious in regarding an individual as admirable.

While I will never accept creativity as an excuse for bad behavior, if a creator is honest enough and self-introspective enough to recognize and acknowledge their own failings, it goes a long way towards my being willing to enjoy their work without feeling I’m endorsing them as individuals.

It’s not my place to pass judgment or exoneration on others bad behavior.

It is my place to see that I don’t emulate others’ bad behavior.

Every creator is connected to their art, even if it’s by-the-numbers for-hire hack work.

Every creator puts something of themselves into the final product.

And every member of the audience must decide for themselves if that renders the final product too toxic to be enjoyed. 

    © Buzz Dixon

[mydarlingfilm]

TIME DOESN’T HEAL

This is going to be a very long post and I would love to read it over and over again. It was painful and timeless at the same time. This conversation is hold between an Rolling stone and Pk.

In her first-ever in-depth interview, Michael Jackson's daughter discusses her father's pain and finding peace after addiction and heartache

Paris-Michael Katherine Jackson is staring at a famous corpse. "That's Marilyn Monroe," she whispers, facing a wall covered with gruesome autopsy photos. "And that's JFK. You can't even find these online." On a Thursday afternoon in late November, Paris is making her way through the Museum of Death, a cramped maze of formaldehyde-scented horrors on Hollywood Boulevard. It's not uncommon for visitors, confronted with decapitation photos, snuff films and serial-killer memorabilia, to faint, vomit or both. But Paris, not far removed from the emo and goth phases of her earlier teens, seems to find it all somehow soothing. This is her ninth visit. "It's awesome," she had said on the way over. "They have a real electric chair and a real head!"

Paris Jackson turned 18 last April, and moment by moment, can come across as much older or much younger, having lived a life that's veered between sheltered and agonizingly exposed. She is a pure child of the 21st century, with her mashed-up hippie-punk fashion sense (today she's wearing a tie-dye button-down, jeggings and Converse high-tops) and boundary-free musical tastes (she's decorated her sneakers with lyrics by Mötley Crüe and Arctic Monkeys; is obsessed with Alice Cooper – she calls him "bae" – and the singer-songwriter Butch Walker; loves Nirvana and Justin Bieber too). But she is, even more so, her father's child. "Basically, as a person, she is who my dad is," says her older brother, Prince Michael Jackson. "The only thing that's different would be her age and her gender." Paris is similar to Michael, he adds, "in all of her strengths, and almost all of her weaknesses as well. She's very passionate. She is very emotional to the point where she can let emotion cloud her judgment." 

Paris has, with impressive speed, acquired more than 50 tattoos, sneaking in the first few while underage. Nine of them are devoted to Michael Jackson, who died when she was 11 years old, sending her, Prince and their youngest brother, Blanket, spiraling out of what had been – as they perceived it – a cloistered, near-idyllic little world. "They always say, 'Time heals,'" she says. "But it really doesn't. You just get used to it. I live life with the mentality of 'OK, I lost the only thing that has ever been important to me.' So going forward, anything bad that happens can't be nearly as bad as what happened before. So I can handle it." Michael still visits her in her dreams, she says: "I feel him with me all the time."

Michael, who saw himself as Peter Pan, liked to call his only daughter Tinker Bell. She has FAITH, TRUST AND PIXIE DUST inked near her clavicle. She has an image from the cover of Dangerous on her forearm, the Bad logo on her hand, and the words QUEEN OF MY HEART – in her dad's handwriting, from a letter he wrote her – on her inner left wrist. "He's brought me nothing but joy," she says. "So why not have constant reminders of joy?" 

She fixes her huge blue-green eyes on each of the museum's attractions without flinching, until she comes to a section of taxidermied pets. "I don't really like this room," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I draw the line with animals. I can't do it. This breaks my heart." She recently rescued a hyperactive pit-bull-mix puppy, Koa, who has an uneasy coexistence with Kenya, a snuggly Labrador her dad brought home a decade ago.

Paris describes herself as "desensitized" to even the most graphic reminders of human mortality. In June 2013, drowning in depression and a drug addiction, she tried to kill herself at age 15, slashing her wrist and downing 20 Motrin pills. "It was just self-hatred," she says, "low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn't do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore." She had been self-harming, cutting herself, managing to conceal it from her family. Some of her tattoos now cover the scars, as well as what she says are track marks from drug use. Before that, she had already attempted suicide "multiple times," she says, with an incongruous laugh. "It was just once that it became public." The hospital had a "three-strike rule," she recalls, and, after that last attempt, insisted she attend a residential therapy program.

Home-schooled before her father's death, Paris had agreed to attend a private school starting in seventh grade. She didn't fit in – at all – and started hanging out with the only kids who accepted her, "a lot of older people doing a lot of crazy things," she says. "I was doing a lot of things that 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds shouldn't do. I tried to grow up too fast, and I wasn't really that nice of a person." She also faced cyberbullying, and still struggles with cruel online comments. "The whole freedom-of-speech thing is great," she says. "But I don't think that our Founding Fathers predicted social media when they created all of these amendments and stuff." 

There was another trauma that she's never mentioned in public. When she was 14, a much older "complete stranger" sexually assaulted her, she says. "I don't wanna give too many details. But it was not a good experience at all, and it was really hard for me, and, at the time, I didn't tell anybody."

After her last suicide attempt, she spent sophomore year and half of junior year at a therapeutic school in Utah. "It was great for me," she says. "I'm a completely different person." Before, she says with a small smile, "I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of, like, teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help." Her father, she says, also struggled with depression, and she was prescribed the same antidepressants he once took, though she's no longer on any psych meds.

Now sober and happier than she's ever been, with menthol cigarettes her main remaining vice, Paris moved out of her grandma Katherine's house shortly after her 18th birthday, heading to the old Jackson family estate. She spends nearly every minute of each day with her boyfriend, Michael Snoddy, a 26-year-old drummer – he plays with the percussion ensemble Street Drum Corps – and Virginia native whose dyed mohawk, tattoos and perpetually sagging pants don't obscure boy-band looks and a puppy-dog sweetness. "I never met anyone before who made me feel the way music makes me feel," says Paris. When they met, he had an ill-considered, now-covered Confederate flag tattoo that raised understandable doubts among the Jacksons. "But the more I actually got to know him," says Prince, "he's a really cool guy."

Paris took a quick stab at community college after graduating high school – a year early – in 2015, but wasn't feeling it. She is an heir to a mammoth fortune – the Michael Jackson Family Trust is likely worth more than $1 billion, with disbursements to the kids in stages. But she wants to earn her own money, and now that she's a legal adult, to embrace her other inheritance: celebrity.

And in the end, as the charismatic, beautiful daughter of one of the most famous men who ever lived, what choice did she have? She is, for now, a model, an actress, a work in progress. She can, when she feels like it, exhibit a regal poise that's almost intimidating, while remaining chill enough to become pals with her giant-goateed tattoo artist. She has impeccable manners – you might guess that she was raised well. She so charmed producer-director Lee Daniels in a recent meeting that he's begun talking to her manager about a role for her on his Fox show, Star . She plays a few instruments, writes and sings songs (she performs a couple for me on acoustic guitar, and they show promise, though they're more Laura Marling than MJ), but isn't sure if she'll ever pursue a recording contract.

Modeling, in particular, comes naturally, and she finds it therapeutic. "I've had self-esteem issues for a really, really long time," says Paris, who understands her dad's plastic-surgery choices after watching online trolls dissect her appearance since she was 12. "Plenty of people think I'm ugly, and plenty of people don't. But there's a moment when I'm modeling where I forget about my self-esteem issues and focus on what the photographer's telling me – and I feel pretty. And in that sense, it's selfish."

But mostly, she shares her father's heal-the-world impulses ("I'm really scared for the Great Barrier Reef," she says. "It's, like, dying. This whole planet is. Poor Earth, man"), and sees fame as a means to draw attention to favored causes. "I was born with this platform," she says. "Am I gonna waste it and hide away? Or am I going to make it bigger and use it for more important things?"

Her dad wouldn't have minded. "If you wanna be bigger than me, you can," he'd tell her. "If you don't want to be at all, you can. But I just want you to be happy."

At the moment, Paris lives in the private studio where her dad demoed "Beat It." The Tudor-style main house in the now-empty Jackson family compound in the LA neighborhood of Encino – purchased by Joe Jackson in 1971 with some of the Jackson 5's first Motown royalties, and rebuilt by Michael in the Eighties – is under renovation. But the studio, built by Michael in a brick building across the courtyard, happens to be roughly the size of a decent Manhattan apartment, with its own kitchen and bathroom. Paris has turned it into a vibe-y, cozy dorm room. 

Traces of her father are everywhere, most unmistakably in the artwork he commissioned. Outside the studio is a framed picture, done in a Disney-like style, of a cartoon castle on a hilltop with a caricatured Michael in the foreground, a small blond boy embracing him.It's captioned "Of Children, Castles & Kings." Inside is a mural taking up an entire wall, with another cartoon Michael in the corner, holding a green book titled The Secret of Life and looking down from a window at blooming flowers – at the center of each bloom is a cartoon face of a red-cheeked little girl.

Above an adjacent garage is a mini-museum Michael created as a surprise gift for his family, with the walls and even ceilings covered with photos from their history. Michael used to rehearse dance moves in that room; now Paris' boyfriend has his drum kit set up there.

We head out to a nearby sushi restaurant, and Paris starts to describe life in Neverland. She spent her first seven years in her dad's 2,700-acre fantasy world, with its own amusement park, zoo and movie theater. ("Everything I never got to do as a kid," Michael called it.) During that time, she didn't know that her father's name was Michael, let alone have any grasp of his fame. "I just thought his name was Dad, Daddy," she says. "We didn't really know who he was. But he was our world. And we were his world." (Paris declared last year's Captain Fantastic , where Viggo Mortensen plays an eccentric dad who tries to create a utopian hideaway for his kids, her "favorite movie ever.")

We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she recalls, walking on a dark roadside near the Encino compound. She likes to stride along the lane divider, too close to the cars – it drives her boyfriend crazy, and I don't much like it either. "We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things." 

In his 2011 memoir, Michael's brother Jermaine called him "an example of what fatherhood should be. He instilled in them the love Mother gave us, and he provided the kind of emotional fathering that our father, through no fault of his own, could not. Michael was father and mother rolled into one."

Michael gave the kids the option of going to regular school. They declined. "When you're at home," says Paris, "your dad, who you love more than anything, will occasionally come in, in the middle of class, and it's like, 'Cool, no more class for the day. We're gonna go hang out with Dad.' We were like, 'We don't need friends. We've got you and Disney Channel!'" She was, she acknowledges, "a really weird kid."

Her dad taught her how to cook, soul food, mostly. "He was a kick-ass cook," she says. "His fried chicken is the best in the world. He taught me how to make sweet potato pie." Paris is baking four pies, plus gumbo, for grandma Katherine's Thanksgiving – which actually takes place the day before the holiday, in deference to Katherine's Jehovah's Witness beliefs.

Michael schooled Paris on every conceivable genre of music. "My dad worked with Van Halen, so I got into Van Halen," she says."He worked with Slash, so I got into Guns N' Roses. He introduced me to Tchaikovsky and Debussy, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Temptations, Tupac, Run-DMC."

"His number-one focus for us," says Paris, "besides loving us, was education. And he wasn't like, 'Oh, yeah, mighty Columbus came to this land!' He was like, 'No. He fucking slaughtered the natives.'" Would he really phrase it that way? "He did have kind of a potty mouth. He cussed like a sailor." But he was also "very shy."

Paris and Prince are quite aware of public doubts about their parentage (the youngest brother, Blanket, with his darker skin, is the subject of less speculation). Paris' mom is Debbie Rowe, a nurse Michael met while she was working for his dermatologist, the late Arnold Klein. They had what sounds like an unconventional three-year marriage, during which, Rowe once testified, they never shared a home. Michael said that Rowe wanted to have his children "as a present" to him. (Rowe said that Paris got her name from the location of her conception.) Klein, her employer, was one of several men – including the actor Mark Lester, who played the title role in the 1968 movie Oliver! – who suggested that they could be Paris' actual biological father.

Over popcorn shrimp and a Clean Mean Salmon Roll, Paris agrees to address this issue for what she says will be the only time. She could opt for an easy, logical answer, could point out that it doesn't matter, that either way, Michael Jackson was her father. That's what her brother – who describes himself as "more objective" than Paris – seems to suggest. "Every time someone asks me that," Prince says, "I ask, 'What's the point? What difference does it make?' Specifically to someone who's not involved in my life. How does that affect your life? It doesn't change mine."

But Paris is certain that Michael Jackson was her biological dad. She believes it with a fervency that is both touching and, in the moment, utterly convincing. "He is my father," she says, making fierce eye contact. "He will always be my father. He never wasn't, and he never will not be. People that knew him really well say they see him in me, that it's almost scary.

"I consider myself black," she says, adding later that her dad "would look me in the eyes and he'd point his finger at me and he'd be like, 'You're black. Be proud of your roots.' And I'd be like, 'OK, he's my dad, why would he lie to me?' So I just believe what he told me. 'Cause, to my knowledge, he's never lied to me.

"Most people that don't know me call me white," Paris concedes. "I've got light skin and, especially since I've had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something." She points out that it's far from unheard of for mixed-race kids to look like her – accurately noting that her complexion and eye color are similar to the TV actor Wentworth Miller's, who has a black dad and a white mom.

At first, she had no relationship with Rowe. "When I was really, really young, my mom didn't exist," Paris recalls. Eventually, she realized "a man can't birth a child" – and when she was 10 or so, she asked Prince, "We gotta have a mom, right?" So she asked her dad. "And he's like, 'Yeah.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he's just like, 'Debbie.' And I was like, 'OK, well, I know the name.'" After her father's death, she started researching her mom online, and they got together when Paris was 13.

In the wake of her treatment in Utah, Paris decided to reach out again to Rowe. "She needed a mother figure," says Prince, who declines to comment on his own relationship, or lack thereof, with Rowe. (Paris' manager declined to make Rowe available for an interview, and Rowe did not respond to our request for comment.) "I've had a lot of mother figures," Paris counters, citing her grandmother and nannies, among others, "but by the time my mom came into my life, it wasn't a 'mommy' thing. It's more of an adult relationship." Paris sees herself in Rowe, who just completed a course of chemo in a fight against breast cancer: "We're both very stubborn."

Paris Jackson was around nine years old when she realized that much of the world didn't see her father the way she did. "My dad would cry to me at night," she says, sitting at the counter of a New York coffee shop in mid-December, cradling a tiny spoon in her hand. She starts to cry too. "Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do. And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'" She pauses. "Sorry, I'm getting emotional." 

Paris and Prince have no doubts that their father was innocent of the multiple child-molestation allegations against him, that the man they knew was the real Michael. Again, they are persuasive – if they could go door-to-door talking about it, they could sway the world."Nobody but my brothers and I experienced him reading A Light in the Attic to us at night before we went to bed," says Paris."Nobody experienced him being a father to them. And if they did, the entire perception of him would be completely and forever changed." I gently suggest that what Michael said to her on those nights was a lot to put on a nine-year-old. "He did not bullshit us," she replies. "You try to give kids the best childhood possible. But you also have to prepare them for the shitty world."

Michael's 2005 molestation trial ended in an acquittal, but it shattered his reputation and altered the course of his family's lives. He decided to leave Neverland for good. They spent the next four years traveling the world, spending long stretches of time in the Irish countryside, in Bahrain, in Las Vegas. Paris didn't mind – it was exciting, and home was where her dad was.

By 2009, Michael was preparing for an ambitious slate of comeback performances at London's O2 Arena. "He kind of hyped it up to us," recalls Paris. "He was like, 'Yeah, we're gonna live in London for a year.' We were super-excited – we already had a house out there we were gonna live in." But Paris remembers his "exhaustion" as rehearsals began. "I'd tell him, 'Let's take a nap,'" she says."Because he looked tired. We'd be in school, meaning downstairs in the living room, and we'd see dust falling from the ceiling and hear stomping sounds because he was rehearsing upstairs."

Paris has a lingering distaste for AEG Live, the promoters behind the planned This Is It tour – her family lost a wrongful-death suit against them, with the jury accepting AEG's argument that Michael was responsible for his own death. "AEG Live does not treat their performers right," she alleges. "They drain them dry and work them to death." (A rep for AEG declined comment.) She describes seeing Justin Bieber on a recent tour and being "scared" for him. "He was tired, going through the motions. I looked at my ticket, saw AEG Live, and I thought back to how my dad was exhausted all the time but couldn't sleep."

[comfsy]

The Legal Nomads 2019 Gift Guide: Art and Jewelry

I did my first ever holiday gift guide for travelers a few years ago, which was fun to compile. Readers seemed to enjoy the various items, and I was happy to share some of the products that accompanied me on the road. This year, I wanted to do something a little different. For starters, my life is a little different – something all of you already know. As a result, my own gifts to family and friends aren’t souvenirs from far-away places, but fun things I’ve discovered online. I wanted to share some of them here, especially as many are small businesses like myself.

I completed the resulting creative gift guide later than expected, because I could only type in 20 minute increments. I hope you enjoy this gift guide, one that focuses specifically on art and jewelry. There are so many shops with interesting work out there, and sometimes it’s hard to narrow it down.

The items below are from artists that I have supported, some of whom I’ve actually met, and they are all products I stand behind.

Unique Art and Jewelry Gifts for 2019

BECCA JANE DESIGNS

When searching for a gift for my mum’s birthday this year, I thought I would do something a little different. I looked for an artist who could illustrate our family with a beautiful border and then send her a printed copy for her birthday.

I’ve never commissioned this kind of gift before, and Rebecca – the artist I chose – was patient and kind, and we went back and forth a few times until I was satisfied. She even agreed to make my brother as depicted, wearing his favourite martini t-shirt.

I was waiting on this gift guide until my mum received her gift, and she loved it!

Rebecca’s full shop here, and note that she will do other kinds of designs as well, like Save the Dates for weddings, holiday cards, personalized baby blankets, and more.

LEXIGRAPHIQUE

I’ve followed Michael Buchino’s whimsical word work for some time on Instagram, as it combines two of my favourite things: learning, and art. His Insta feed, Lexigraphique, is one of those accounts that I send to multiple friends many times a week.

Before this guide went up, I wrote him to ask if he had any holiday items I could include, and lucky for all of us he was just about to launch the hygge cards below.

(c) Michael Buchino 2019

You can buy his prints and these cute holiday cards in his Buchino shop, here.

PICTRIXDESIGN

Anne Connell’s shop is a wonder to behold, chock full of paper goods designed — as she notes on Instagram and on her website — with an “absurd attention to detail” She lists herself as a precisionist, and it’s easy to see why. Her artwork is meticulous, delicately crafted, and very unique.

I found her botanical card series first, and clapped my hands with glee. As someone trying to get out in nature during brief spurts of respite from bedrest, they were a breath of fresh air. Her constellation cards, featuring each of the zodiac signs, are a clear crowd-pleaser. I’ve put those two types of cards below but honestly it’s worth heading to see her full shop.

I realize these are listed as cards, but I think they are frame-worthy all by themselves.

(c) Anne Connell 2019

(c) Anne Connell 2019

Botanical cards here.

Constellation cards here. 

And the full shop here.

NICALLENART

Nicola is a long-time Legal Nomads reader, and a fellow lawyer and traveler. She has generously shared bird illustrations and other fun to keep me cheered up when I’ve been down. She’s also a very talented artist, and her cards and other items are rich in puns and joyful artistry. 

Nicola’s work reminds me of the children’s’ books I loved most, with creative characters, maps, and whimsical animals. A talented hand-brush lettering artist, she also includes a lot of drawn typography in her work.

From a grumpy owl to a festive sheep, you’ll be sure to find holiday cards to your tastes. And one of my absolute faves is her wedding card below, “Of all the fish in the sea” — delightful.

(c) Nicola Allen 2019

(c) Nicola Allen 2019

(c) Nicola Allen 2019

Nicola’s full shop is here, with specifics from the above illustrations as follows:

Grumpy Owl here

Festive sheep here.

Of all the fish in the sea here.

BIRDSTRIPS

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Jess, the genius behind Birdstrips, in person twice. She’s currently in Montreal, and a friend introduced us just before I re-leaked last summer. Her illustrations have grown a huge following on Instagram due to its relatable messaging, and her captions that accompany the drawings are raw and vulnerable. Together, it’s powerful work that makes almost everyone feel heard.

In Jess’ words, the shop comprises “the existential distress of the flightless through the eyes of the flighted.”

(c) Birdstrips 2019

You can check out her images and pick up mugs, shirts, prints and more, here.

ABSTRACT AERIAL ART

JP and Mike Andrews, two brothers from the UK are an Instagram favourite of mine. I often share their images with my community because their eye is unique, and their pictures compelling. Like me, they absolutely love to travel. Unlike me, they specialize in photographing bizarre, aerial images our planet using drone photography.

Their goal: to share perspectives of the world otherwise unseen, captured from a vantage point most of us miss. A great gift option for those who love to roam.

Here’s one I love from them: Skyline, a drone photograph of a freighter that looks like a cityscape.

(c) Abstract Aerial Art 2019

(c) Abstract Aerial Art 2019

And this aerial view of a beach made me smile:

Their full gallery shop here.

TEKSTARTIST

Jason Markow, aka TEKSTartist is an artist I found a few years ago, and was hooked immediately. His work combines both traditional and digital media, a fusion of techniques that result in elegant yet crisp products. Given that my own products are typographic representations of food, I love that his art includes quotes he’s enjoyed over the years, visually represented in unique ways.

One of my favourites: this flower, “Your Garden, Forever” available here, created by warping and twisting the words from Tennyson’s famous quote – “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”― Alfred Tennyson

(c)TEKSTartist 2019

And the item below, The Giving Tree, was created by warping/twisting the words from the entire set of text from Shel Silverstein’s iconic book “The Giving Tree”. Buy a copy of the artwork here.

(c)TEKSTartist 2019

Full shop here.

EFFIN BIRDS

These illustrations of birds with curse words sayings are all the rage on Instagram and Twitter, for good reason: they’re hilarious. Crafted by Aaron Reynolds, they do seem to offend some, but as the name suggests exactly what they are it’s hard for anyone to be upset. Don’t like them? Close the tab. Personally, I find them exactly what I need, each and every day. Clothing, mugs, pins, and more at the link, including a new Effin’ Birds book.

Buy here.

TOTE BAGS: TYPOGRAPHIC MAPS OF FOOD

I’m excited to share the new tote bags in the Legal Nomads shop. Previously, I offered a canvas, bull-woven tote of the maps, with the map printed on once side. These new tote bags are black and white – and if people like, I can also swap out the handles to make them red or mustard! – and the design is printed on both sides.*

*If you’d like to swap out the tote bag for a different handle (example here), just send an email to jodi-at-legalnomads.com after you order, and I’ll make sure it happens.

The new tote has sturdy handles and holds up to 44lbs, perfect for errands and/or carrying a laptop without a laptop bag. Food maps of Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Portugal, Italy, and Mexico available.

(c) Jodi Ettenberg 2019

Shop the new totes here. The full shop is here.

VANRILEY

These beautiful macrame earrings are courtesy of the Van Riley shop, run by a fellow leaker. I wanted to share her work as I know how it is to worry about making ends meet with a CSF leak. If someone in your life loves macrame, please consider supporting her shop!

Macrame earrings and other items, on the VanRiley shop here.

MICAPEET JEWLERY

Given my love of nature, it’s no surprise that I also love jewelry that depicts it in design. I saw these gold leaf earrings recently and ordered a pair as my holiday gift to myself. They’re lightweight — great for anyone with headaches — and they are delicate and just so pretty. I like the contrast of the gold with the emerald green stud in the ear.

  If leaf earrings aren’t your thing, Mica also has necklaces, rings, and other earrings in a variety of shapes and sizes. They’re lightweight and beautiful, and oh so creative. Her jewelry is hypoallergenic and nickel-free.

Buy the same gold leaf earrings that I love here, with Mica’s full shop here.

GLDNxLAYEREDANDLONG

Several readers nominated this Etsy shop, and it’s the only one on this list that I haven’t also purchased myself. But when my readers are happy, I’m happy, and I wanted to share what brought them such joy in gift giving.

Chrissy’s shop features personalized, delicate jewelry for those who want to memorialize their care with initials or names. The image below is for the necklace that several readers bought, but her shop is full of other options, including rings, earrings, and pendants.

Personalized initial necklace here. Full shop here.

BEBANGLES

I’ve saved one of the best for last.

My friend Chantelle started Be., a company that sells bangles – but also much more than simply bangles. Chantelle is one of the most open-hearted, vivacious people I’ve ever met, and thankfully I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her in person years ago. Her company’s bangles work well in conjunction with the lightness and curse words of Effin Birds, two small business enterprises that use curse words to make a valid point. In Chantelle’s case, Be. takes a stand against societal norms. Her work aims to support women and girls in a society that often expects airbrushed perfection.

I received a few Be. bangles as a wonderful 40th birthday gift from Chantelle, and my two faves – that came with me to Florida are:

“I’m mostly peace, love, light, and a little go fuck yourself” – product here, and

“I stopped waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, and lit that bitch up myself” – product here.

I am someone who uses curse words as a form of punctuation, so those two bracelets are perfect. For those with less swear-y tendencies, lots of beautiful options like:

“Be you. The world will adjust.” (here), and

“Speak. Even if your voice shakes.” (here.)

All of Be.’s products here.

That’s it for 2019!  A big thanks to my friend Reine who helped pull many of the images and upload them for me, so that I could do this guide more easily. It would have been a 2020 gift guide without her. Hopefully there’s something fun in here for someone in your family.

Happy holidays, and thank you as always for all the incredible support.

-Jodi

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[newyorktheater]

I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways.

Austin Scott as Alexander Hamilton and Carvens Lissaint as George Washington, the new cast members of “Hamilton” on Broadway.

Two audience members signing before the open captioned performance of Hamilton (captioning display board behind them)

Anthony Lee Medina as John Laurens (and Philip Hamilton)

James Monroe Iglehart as Marquis de Lafayette and Thayne Jasperson as Samuel Seabury

Daniel Breaker as Aaron Burr

Evan Morton as King George

Austin Scott as Alexander Hamilton

Joanna A. Jones as Maria Reynolds (and Peggy Schuyler)

Mandy Gonzales as Angelica Schuyler

James Monroe Iglehart as Thomas Jefferson

Daniel Breaker

Hamilton on night when 125 audience members attended at discounted rate for open captioned performance

  When I had last seen Hamilton, about two years ago, the last remaining original principal cast member was just about to depart, and I was full of questions:

How would the show change with new leads?

Would the replacement cast members generate some of the same excitement as the original leads, whose roles brought them awards, fame, fandom and a promising future?

What would be the future of the show? Would it wind up being a Broadway institution like “Phantom of the Opera,” or would the seeming indestructible juggernaut simply peter out, like “In The Heights,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s last big success on Broadway, which was a critical and popular hit, but lasted only three years?

Four years after its debut, some of the answers have become clearer. About 125 people, out of an audience of some 1,300, were able to buy tickets at discounted rates to attend Hamilton as part of TAP, the TDF Accessibility Programs, which has provided just such services for people with disabilities since 1979.  Many of the audience members at the Hamilton open captioned performance were Deaf, and vigorously signing with one another before the show began.

In my first review of Hamilton, when it opened Off-Broadway in February, 2015, I found it groundbreaking and breathtaking, an astonishing show. But I also had a concern, which I expressed, half jokingly, as being part of my civic duty to make sure expectations weren’t raised too high: “Swirling with characters, crowded with incident, full of dense language, it’s simply too much to take in at a single sitting.” Why, I asked, was it necessary to have tworap battles about 18thcentury public policy, and threeSchuyler Sisters, and threesimilar numbers by King George?

Four years later, I’ve had many sittings — watching the musical on stage, listening to the album, and reading the libretto — and I get the show in a way I did not initially. The reason for three Schuyler Sisters, even though Peggy doesn’t really figure in the plot, is so that the number “The Schuyler Sisters” evokes R&B/Soul girl trios like Destiny’s Child or the Supremes. And I now see it as part of the show’s genius that Miranda found several ways to unfold the larger history of the early years of the American experiment. The King George ditties serve as entertaining reference points in the timeline. The most memorable of his songs, “You’ll be Back,”

uses a Beatles-like melody to present Great Britain humorously as a spurned lover reacting to America’s declaration of separation:

…when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!

  But then this is followed by “What Comes Next,” after the Americans have won the revolution, with an important question:

  You’re on your own. Awesome. Wow. Do you have a clue what happens now?

  And finally, “I Know Him”:

George Washington’s yielding his power and stepping away.

‘Zat true? I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do.

  The lyrics make fun of the second president John Adams (“That poor man, they’re gonna eat him alive!”) but it emphasizes what historians generally see as the most important action George Washington took as president on behalf of the fledgling democracy – quitting.

   Having the same character sing the same tune is a way of orienting us,  and the recurring phrase “Oceans rise/Empires fall” in all three iterations reminds us that the survival of the United States was not a given.

However, there is still the matter of the dense language. It’s only by reading along to the album that an ear untrained in rapid rap (e.g. my ear) could make out each and every word that Angelica Schuyler raps in “Satisfied,”  or the 19 words within three seconds that Lafayette reportedly raps in “Guns and Ships.”

This is why the open captioning,  scrolling on a LED screen beneath the stage at the far right corner of the auditorium, provided a level of clarity that might well make it possible to absorb the show’s layers in a single sitting.  Finally getting every word during a performance makes Hamilton’s  storytelling feel much more of a whole. It’s curious that audiences don’t push to make such captioning a more frequent occurrence.

The 2019 cast, too, is a revelation, though perhaps somewhat double-edged.

Some of the performers couldn’t be better. James Monroe Iglehart, who took over as the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in April, 2017, after a Tony-winning three year run as the Genie in “Aladdin,” is spectacular. He has a beautiful deep voice, and a playful nature that draws us in.  Mandy Gonzalez, whose performance already bowled me over when I first saw it a few months after she assumed the role as Angelica Schuyler, has grown in assurance. Jenny Harding-Fleming, who is usually the standby for all three Schuyler Sisters, performed as Eliza Hamilton on the night I saw the show, and was spot-on in her mixture of anger and heartache in “Burn.” I like Euan Morton as King George; he’s toned down the campiness (which struck me in past performances as gratuitously and uncomfortably reading as gay) without losing the humor. Daniel Breaker is the latest of a baker’s dozen of Aaron Burrs (including standbys and understudies.) If he doesn’t particularly stand out compared to originator Leslie Odom Jr. or Brandon Victor Dixon, he continues the tradition of having the clearest diction in the cast, which is to the good, since he serves most frequently as the narrator.

Christopher Jackson as George Washington (in foreground)

It was seeing Christopher Jackson in “In The Heights” that reportedly  convinced Carvens Lissaint, the son of Haitian immigrants, to become a performer. Jackson went on to originate the role of George Washington in “Hamilton” that Lissaint now portrays – first as a standby in the Broadway production, then full-time on the national tour, and since October at the Richard Rodgers. This is a compelling enough biography that I was disappointed how much Jackson’s performance overshadowed Lissaint’s. There’s less of a sense of natural ease and authority. Perhaps it’s a conscious choice to interpret Washington as more readily expressing his frustration, and I just needed to open my mind to a different conception of the first president of the United States.

I don’t think it helped that the new Washington is shorter than the new Alexander Hamilton.

In his Broadway debut, Austin Scott began last month as the bastard orphan born in squalor who became a hero and a scholar. Scott is a tall, handsome leading man with a fine voice. But he is the blandest of the Alexander Hamiltons I’ve seen so far, especially coming immediately after Michael Luwoye, who played the immigrant Founding Father with a fierce level of intensity, along with a look of hurt in his eyes that helped explain the man’s recklessness and his drive.

Perhaps the memory of the original cast will fade. Perhaps the new leads will grow into their roles.  But one of the things the latest performance of “Hamilton” on Broadway made clear to me is that the replacement cast members don’t have to give star quality performances for the show to shine.

For more photographs, videos and writing on this show over the years, check out “Everything Hamilton”

Hamilton Off-Broadway in February, 2015 with original cast members top left to right:Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton Bottom left to right: Okieriete Onaodowan Hercules Mulligan (later James Madison) , Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette (later Thomas Jefferson), Anthony Ramos as John Laurens (later Philip Hamilton)

  Buy Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) [Explicit]

Buy Hamilton: The Revolution

Buy The Hamilton Mixtape [Explicit]

Hamilton on Broadway 2019: New Cast, New Clarity I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways. 1,318 more words